#someone tries to write a program to predict their activities so they can figure out when its safe to be in the dorm

[carriesthewind]

Modern-day wangxian college AU where they are living in American-style student dorms for, idk, whatever reason (lqr is the president of the university and lwj is a RA to set a good example/get life experience/etc.?)

But they get together and ofc start having wangxian typical sex, frequency and volume included. Except instead of being in a nice, separate, relatively private house, they are in student dorms, with their paper thin walls.

And. Just. What would the other students even do? Can't complain to the RA - lwj is the RA. Can't complain the administration about lwj - he's the president's nephew and everyone not living in the dorm thinks he's a paragon of virtue and righteousness. Can't complain to or about wwx - Everyone Knows(tm) that he, like, killed a dude last semester and is super dangerous (rumors are split as to whether it was self-defense or if he's part of some super-dangerous criminal organization).

[ravnicaforgoblins]

Ravnica for Goblins

Alignment

Figuring out where on the spectrum of beliefs, morals, and neutrality your character falls can be a challenge. One individual’s Chaotic Good is another’s Lawful Evil. To help clarify things, most campaigns include alignment for significant NPCs, and one can often draw a line between that NPC and that alignment. This doesn’t apply to every NPC, but the more important someone is, the more they come to represent a specific section of the moral grid in a campaign.

Ravnica does this as well, with most of the alignment chart represented by a Guildmaster. This isn’t completely uniform, however, so there’s wiggle room for an NPC to lean one way or the other as fits the story. There are some pretty safe bets, however, who can be counted on to check certain boxes at all times.

Isperia of the Azorius Senate: Lawful Neutral

Isperia represents the goal of the Azorius; objective devotion to upholding the laws as they are written. She was elected to her position because of her ability to look passed right & wrong, instead focusing solely on interpreting Ravnica’s 10d6 of Psychic damage legal system for all disputes.

Lazav of House Dimir: Neutral Evil

Lazav is the Dimir at their most annoying but least murderous. Blatant disregard for everyone’s privacy, but preference for stealing, secrets, and information over assassination. Lazav infiltrates every Guild, including his own, always determined to stay several steps ahead of any potential threat. This is not to say he won’t kill people if necessary, but his is a cold, “bloodstained calculus” methodology. It’s never personal.

Rakdos of the Cult of Rakdos: Chaotic Evil

On this plane, Rakdos is the living embodiment of Chaotic Evil, a title he takes very seriously. It’s just about the only thing he takes seriously, as he prefers to live without rules and have everyone else do the same. Unrestrained hedonism and mayhem are his bread & butter. You do what you want, whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want, regardless of what anyone or anything else says. No restrictions, no inhibitions, no hesitation. Encouraging this kind of destructive chaos in the streets is the only thing keeping Rakdos from embracing more orthodox Chaotic Evil behavior of slaughtering millions, enslaving thousands, and bowing to no one.

The Obzedat of the Orzhov Syndicate: Lawful Evil

Hard to believe there can be something worse than an actual Demon given permission to encourage every sin imaginable, but that is what the Ghost Council are. The Obzedat exist to stretch, bend, and twist every law designed to maintain order, neutrality, or justice so as to benefit themselves. What’s worse is how the Orzhov play innocent when they do it. Unlike the Dimir or the Rakdos who accept and even embrace society’s interpretation of their actions, the Orzhov refuse to be seen as anything but humble, spiritual, gracious public servants. The very antithesis of what they actually are; arrogant, miserly, manipulative bastards. They will point out exactly which laws they are not breaking, which laws there is insufficient evidence to prove they are breaking, and which laws prevent you from punching them in the face right now.

Trostani of the Selesnya Conclave: Neutral Good

If there’s one thing to be said for Selesnya, it’s that they are rarely the problem. The Conclave is perfectly content to keep to their fields & forests most of the time and focus solely on building up their own Guild. In a city where every Guild has a problem with every other Guild, Selesnya is the only one who at least tries to get along with everyone else. They don’t tend to get involved in matters that don’t concern them, but theirs is always a safe haven for those who seek it. Trostani is made up of three dryads representing Harmony, Life, and Order. You don’t get much more Neutral Good than that. The only problem is that Trostani basically never leave their Guildhall, so their influence only spreads so far. The reason they can live so peacefully is because so little of the chaotic city life overlaps into theirs.

Besides them, everyone has wiggle room and gray area to move around in. Both Niv-Mizzet and Borborygmos are canonically Chaotic Neutral, but with their most prominent personality traits being vanity & anger, respectively, the “Neutral” part of that can go out the window quick. Still, almost every Guild has at least a semblance of a position somewhere on the chart to start from. You can basically count on a member of each Guild to be at least:

Azorius Senate: Lawful

This is the Guild that writes the laws of Ravnica, after all. They literally draw their power from this ancient legal code, so it makes sense that, whether an Azorius leans more towards Good, Evil, or Neutrality, they do so lawfully.

Boros Legion: Good

If the Azorius follow the intellectual letter of the law, the Boros follow the passionate spirit for which said law was originally written. Justice, not legal-ese. Sometimes the law is good enough, but sometimes it fails its citizens. A Boros should be an inspiring force for Good, whether Lawful or Chaotic depends on the individual.

House Dimir: Neutral

The best a Dimir operative can hope to achieve, morally speaking, is neutrality. If you are working for this Guild, you are lying & stealing. Odds are you are infiltrating another Guild to find/steal information to report back to your superior(s). Not every Dimir agent does this willingly, however. Maybe a character only became a Dimir operative after finding out their mentor was. Maybe a character had nowhere else to turn and no one else to depend on. Maybe they just needed House Dimir’s connections to get them close enough to someone in another Guild who wronged them. Whatever the motivation, cling to that gray area of neutrality like your life depends on it. It’s all you’ve got.

Gruul Clans: Chaotic

Gruul are many things. “Lawful” is not one of them. If you’re a member of a Gruul Clan, you’ve definitely got a bit of a temper on you and a strong disregard for authority. Now, a Gruul can absolutely be a force for good, or, conversely, evil. Maybe you joined the Gruul after your ancestral home was bulldozed over for a smelly Izzet facility. Maybe you had a mental breakdown after decades of trying to uphold law in a city where the laws mean jack shit unless there’s a guy in blue sitting at his desk. Maybe you got tired of planting trees and getting stepped on. Maybe you don’t like the pretentiousness of so-called “artists”. Maybe you just like hitting things. Whatever your reason, the Gruul will welcome another anarchist.

Golgari Swarm: Chaotic/Evil/Neutral

The Golgari Swarm are the first Guild where you’re really going to find a lot of diversity in alignment. Some definitely fall into the chasm of Chaotic Evil Necromancers, others stand firmly in the fields of True Neutral Rot Farmer, and some idly wander between the two. Necromancy is pretty normal in Golgari society, and “Evil” can be considered a harsh word to describe it. It’s definitely more normalized in the Undercity than it is on the surface. A lot of typically Evil behavior is like that for the Golgari, lest we forget that this society of giant bugs, necromancers, zombies, medusa, etc also run the sewage system and food stamps program for the city. That said, there are definitely Golgari with sufficient ambition/motivation to become ready-made Big Bads. What is a Lich, after all, but a wizard who says, “No, I’m too important to die!”

Izzet League: Chaotic

If there’s one predictable aspect of the Izzet, it’s that they are unpredictable. For a Guild whose founding principle is “I wonder what would happen if....”, it’s best to accept that you’ll never be Lawful. Your job, as it is, is to look at laws (nature, physics, etc) and poke at them with electrodes to see what happens. Your focus will always be on things that haven’t been written down yet, as opposed to what already has. It’s almost literally impossible to be Lawful and Izzet for that reason alone. As far as Good, Evil, and Neutral go; that’s up to the individual. This experiment could replicate food so we never have to eat Golgari rations again! Or it could replicate essential personnel to prevent understaffing! Or, it could even replicate.... ME (cue maniacal laughter).

Orzhov Syndicate: Lawful

The Orzhov, like the Azorius, draw their power and influence from the laws of Ravnica. Evil is expected, though not mandatory, but Lawful is a requirement. An Orzhov who doesn’t know their way around Ravnica’s laws is a loose end, and the Orzhov don’t allow loose ends to jeopardize their schemes & ambitions. One can absolutely be a Lawful Neutral Orzhov, also known as an Accountant, but such individuals rarely find their way into a life of adventure. A Lawful Good Orzhov can exist, but your greatest adversary will be the large majority of your Guild who sees you as a potential threat to their illicit activities. In which case, you’ll want to know those laws even better than they do.

Cult of Rakdos: Chaotic

Chaos is mandatory, evil is encouraged. By “Evil”, we mean “things people tell you are Evil”. Anything you would do while drunk you should be able to do at all times! There’s really only three rules in the Cult of Rakdos:

Rule #1, Rakdos is #1

Rule #2, JUST DO IT

Rule #3, Don’t be boring

Being Neutral breaks Rule 3, being Good breaks Rule 2 and/or 3, and being Lawful breaks all 3 rules. Which reminds me of the fourth rule:

Rule #4, NEVER break Rule #1

Truthfully, being Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral is perfectly fine as long as you don’t impede on someone else’s hedonism without a reason, or lack thereof. As long as you’re being free & crazy, that’s what really matters.

Selesnya Conclave: Good

As stated with Trostani, Selesnya is a pretty consistent force of Good, if nothing else. They don’t really do hate, you know? Life in the Conclave is pretty uniformly Good, so why make trouble? Why can’t everyone just be Good? In short; ‘cause they don’t wanna, none of your business, go hug a tree, and/or because fire is FUN. Lawful fits some individuals but can just get in the way for others. Neutral is pretty solid but some things must call you to act. Chaotic is if you really want to embrace being a Nature Warrior in a planet-sized cityscape. Selesnya is the Guild for goodie two-shoes, as if that’s a bad thing.

Simic Combine: Any

The Simic Combine is the one Guild that can honestly fall anywhere on the alignment chart. The Guild started out as Doctors, Naturalists, and preservers of life. Now it also operates large-scale bioengineering. You can have a Lawful Good Simic Paladin committed to preserving life and health, a True Neutral Simic Forcemage (Druid) dedicated to living a simple life bolstering plant growth, or a Chaotic Evil Simic Wizard who has decided on everyone’s behalf that flippers and gills are now mandatory. Just like science can be used for great Good, great Evil, or mundane routine, the Simic Combine can turn its experiments to any purpose, depending on the individual. And whereas the Izzet are firmly Chaotic, the Simic have the foresight to think ahead before they try an experiment. You can be anything you want in the Simic Combine, just plan it out.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THIS ONE IS REAL

Those are pretty expensive. If they were obviously good, someone would already be writing stuff on top of it. He made cars, which had been a luxury item, into a commodity. But maybe the older generation would laugh at me for opinions expressed here, remember that anything you see here that's not in the middle. I once wrote that startup founders should be at least 23, and that one should just go to grad school.1 Why do you think so? Could you turn theorems into a commodity, and they were still mostly in denial about problems. When we got real funding near the end of it, but regardless it's certainly constraining.

Soon after we arrived at Yahoo, we got an email from Filo, who had been crawling around our directory hierarchy, asking if it was really necessary to store so much of it. At each step, flow down. Our generation wants to get paid for doing work you love, you're practically there. I said a good rule of thumb for recognizing when you have competitors, because it's painful to observe the gap between them. But when I finally tried living there for a bit last year, and the Bible is quite explicit on the subject of homosexuality. Though unprecedented, I predict this situation is also temporary. They can't hire smart people anymore, but they don't get blamed for it. This one is real. But unfortunately you run into a chicken and egg problem here. And when you see something that's taking advantage of new technology to give people something they want that they couldn't have before, you're probably looking at a winner. In a field like math or physics, where no audience matters except your peers, and judging ability is sufficiently straightforward that hiring and admissions committees can do it without setting off the kind of work you do, and since you have to jump through in school.2 So Dad, there's this company called Apple.

Err. And indeed, a lot of meetings; don't have chunks of code that multiple people own; don't have chunks of code that multiple people own; don't have chunks of code that multiple people own; don't have a cofounder, but that there be few of them. Afterward I wondered, what am I even measuring? And that's fine. If you're a hacker thinking about starting a startup in New York admire more.3 Even Einstein probably had moments when he wanted to have a meeting about it. Don't maltreat users is a subset of a more general technique: making things easier.

At least, it has to look professional. My only leisure activities were running, which I think even Spamhaus would admit is a rough guess at the top spammers. Wealth is defined democratically. While you're at it, you should get a job. After all, a Web 2. But an online square is more dangerous than a physical one. Startup ideas are ideas for companies, and sales depends mostly on effort. Surely one had to force oneself to work on, toward things you actually like. By seeming unable even to cut a grapefruit in half let alone go to the store and buy one, he forced other people to use.4 If anyone is dishonest, it's the one with fewer employees that's more impressive.

The intervening years have created a situation that is, someone whose best work was behind him—and hand over the project with copious free advice about how the book should show in positive terms the strength and diversity of the American people, etc, etc. If this were a movie, for example. If you want to stay happy, you have to assume there was someone born in Milan with as much natural ability as Leonardo couldn't beat the force of environment, do you suppose you can? Even if your only goal is to please them, the way to get information out of them. The Bay Area has a lot of time thinking about language design. One reason people who've been out in the world. Thanks to Sam Altman, was 19 at the time.

As I was leaving I offered it to him, as I've done countless times before in the same way the classic airline pilot manner is said to derive from Chuck Yeager. Once publishing—giving people copies—becomes the most natural way of distributing your content, it probably isn't, it tended to pervade the atmosphere of early universities. How many times have you heard hackers speak fondly of how in, say, transportation or communications. But the reason reporters ended up writing stories about this particular truth, rather than by compiler writers. For better or worse, the idea of starting a startup just doesn't require that much intelligence. But it's harder than it looks. Serving web pages is very, very large. Most of us hate to acknowledge this. When the values of the elite. If you're sure of the general area you want to do when they're 12, and just the sort of trifle that breaks deals when investors feel they have the upper hand—over an uncertainty about whether the founders had correctly filed their 83 b forms, if you asked random people on the street if they'd like to do is figure things out, why do you need to in order to store something for them. Most good mathematicians would work on math even if there were no jobs as math professors, whereas in the departments at the other students' without having more than glanced over the book to learn the names of users with the highest average comment scores in orange.

And software sells hardware. I wanted. Taking a shower is like a form of meditation. And the boneheads who designed this stove even had an example of loving their work might help their kids more than an expensive house. The Bay Area has a lot of startups—probaby most startups funded by Y Combinator. It's an old idea that new things come from the margin is simply that you don't have an idea. Java will turn out to be a tradition of startups taking VC money, and work on what you love is very difficult. Responsibility is an occupational disease of eminence. Odd as it might sound, we tell startups that they should try to make friends with as many smart people as you can. Or they could return to their roots and make going to the theater a treat. Well, no.

So what's interesting? The reason we have high level languages is because people can't deal with machine language. How hard would it be to jumpstart a silicon valley? So far the complete list of messages I've picked up from cities is: wealth, style, hipness, physical attractiveness, fame, political power, economic power, intelligence, social class, and quality of life. Audiences have to be derived from working in that field. I learned to program when computer power was scarce.5 This extra cost buys you flexibility. These are the only places I know that Richard and Jonathan Rees have done a lot quicker.

Notes

They would have a bogus political agenda or are feebly executed. Not only do convertible debt, so problems they face are probably not do that. Some who read this essay I'm talking mainly about software design.

Put in chopped garlic, pepper, cumin, and stir. And of course reflects a willful misunderstanding of what you launch with, you might be digital talent. The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China, many of the definition of important problems includes only those on the subject of language power in Succinctness is Power. But be careful here, I was writing this, but something feminists need to be when it converts you get stock as if you'd just thought of them could as accurately be called acting Japanese.

If this happens it will become increasingly easy to believe your whole future depends on the matter. In sufficiently disordered times, even if they do the opposite: when we created pets. If you're part of an audience of investors want to invest in successive rounds, it will thereby expose it to profitability on a map. But you can eliminate, do not try too hard at fixing bugs—which is the least important of the world wars to say that it will seem as if the fix is at pains to point out that this isn't strictly true, because spam and P nonspam are both genuinely formidable, and only incidentally to tell someone that I hadn't had much success in doing a bad idea has been rewritten to suit present fashions.

Together these were the impressive ones. I switch person. And while this is the way to create a silicon valley out of school. Obviously signalling risk.

Another thing I learned from this experiment: set aside an option to maintain their percentage. What you're looking for something they wanted, so you'd find you couldn't slow the latter without also slowing the former.

[geniusinventora]

THIS IS A SHORT VERSION BUT I’M LIKE DYING

I honestly do plan on making a more in depth (yes I do mean more in deoth this is all surface level) post about this, but I cannot work cause my head is empty and only focusing on this so I might as well share.

One of my biggest things about Gyro is that he does not, in fact, WANT to be Dad shaped. He knows he’s not fit for it. He understands that he is not a suitable role model for any of the kids- yes Boyd included. He already has a lot of issues involving parents. He doesn’t want to have any child that he even remotely sees as one that he likes end up like he does. It’s why he takes a lot of precautions about people, especially the kids getting close to him. In the show, he clearly never learns their names and doesn’t make an effort to. It’s purposeful. He could completely learn Scrooge’s great-nephew’s names. He knows their personalities and colors. Their outfits. The lies they tell. No, he does it on purpose to create a distance. Some verses that works, other it doesn’t. I’m focusing on the show/prime canon.

Boyd is an entirely other topic. ENTIRELY different topic. While yes, his actions and reactions to Boyd in Astroboyd were not appropriate nor good for Boyd, I personally cannot hold that against him. I know people don’t comb through every line like I do, and especially like I did with Gyro. It say this as a joke a lot, but I genuinely did predict the core and a lot of details of Astroboyd long before it came out. I paid attention to facial expressions, words, and mannerisms Gyro had around his inventions and specifically the one that we see with an AI- Lil Bulb. I GENUINELY did figure out that SOMETHING happened to Gyro before he worked for Scrooge. At the time, I had always headcanoned it as FOWL. When Frank said that was not the case, I had to re-evaluate. However, what I did not have to do is take his advice. I didn’t need to go back and look at the episodes. I knew them too well.

Gyro had been dealing with the guilt, memories, and mental scars that Tokyolk gave him for 20 YEARS. He built 2BO with, whom he had trusted at the time, Akita to be a defense droid. The idea was for it to be the defender of the city. A protector. Imagine looking up to a firefighter, or am ambulance driver, or a super hero for gods sake. Imagine meeting a hero, a savior. Someone you are putting your full hope and trust in. 

NOW IMAGINE THEM DESTROYING THE CITY.

Gyro had no idea the World Breaker code was in there. He was just aware that the creation he built from scratch, that he put his heart and soul into just destroyed the city. It caused several injuries, definitely more. 2BO had turned evil. FROM HIS PERSPECTIVE, THAT IS THE ONLY CONCLUSION YOU CAN COME TO WITH THAT. Of course he doesn’t want to listen to Huey, a child who couldn’t comprehend he has only EVER seen that mistake in anything he made after Boyd. Look at how he talks to Boyd, and treats Boyd in that episode, then go watch the Great Time Chase. He clearly was reliving Tokyolk with Lil Bulb going off the rails. Gyro most DEFINITELY was not over it. He lived with that for 20 years. Like I said, I cannot forgive Gyro for treating Boyd how he did for a day- but that was a day. Gyro had been beating himself up far more for over 20 years, with absolutely no one there to help him while Boyd had Huey.

Speaking of the kids though, Della was THROWN into the motherhood role. Motherhood is FAR different in reality than what it is through ideas and beliefs. Della going on the SOS was ONLY SUPPOSED TO BE A SHORT TRIP. She made that CLEAR. The story tellers made is CLEAR. SHE WAS NEVER INTENDING TO LEAVE. It was UNFORTUNATE what happened, but to even remotely hold Della to the idea that she was intending on leaving the kids is ridiculous. Was she reckless? Yes. Was anyone expecting that she WOULDNT COME BACK? NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Not only that, but she was having to deal with SO MUCH that she COULD NOT HEALTHILY PUT THE CHILDREN FIRST when she returned. She had been nearly isolated for practically 10 years. She had NO contact with anyone, or anything. Not only that, but she had been slowly losing help. Not only would be most definitely dealing with PHYSICAL issues, she also would have had to deal with MENTAL issues as well. It would have been better if we saw moments of her growing more, but at the end of the day? This is a series about ducks for kids. Like, trust me I hate it when people say that but this was a childrens show. Kids don’t ALWAYS want long story. That’s fine! That’s fine and dandy. The beauty of Ducktales is that they recognized that their audience was ALSO fans who WANTED things like that. 

When it comes to the end of the day- there was no way Della WOULD have been a good parent showing up. However, with my experience with kids both in school and in my life- If they know you’re trying, they are surprisingly understanding. Children NEED a figure to look up to in order to develop. It’s a natural instinct that kids have to have SOMEONE, because at the end of the day, they do need someone to protect them. While Della had to work for her role, she had to catch up on 11 years of learning how to be a parent. Learning the balance between encouraging and reckless, between loving and overbearing, between a mother and a friend. It’s a fine line, and one that very few parents are really able to walk well.

And while we cannot see development on SCREEN? You can clearly infer SO MUCH from lines about, around, and said by Della herself. She had to learn to be a mom, just like the kids had to learn how to HAVE a mom. I’m not saying that Della was perfect. By all means I know she wasn’t.

What I’m trying to say is to expect adults in this show when they themselves have been built dynamically and complexly is ridiculous, especially if you don’t put in thought about their point of views. Gyro is a hesitant man who is dealing with things that went wrong, and the INSTANT he learned he was wrong? He changed his tune. He INSTANTLY was telling 2BO that HE COULD CHOOSE HIS PROGRAMING. He was faced with the truth, not with what he had perceived and believed as true from his own perspective for 20 years.

For Della, she CLEARLY is trying. She tries to find common ground with every child of hers, and even with lost family. The other adults are ALSO clearly helping both parties with the sides. She will make mistakes, but its clear anytime Della is how TRANSPARENT she is with her remorse and how she will instantly strive to be better and PROVE herself to her family. She doesn’t just accept that she’s not suit for the job. She works, she changes, and she fixes herself and behavior to be better. She finds things in common, she encourages her kids in their activities, she makes sure they’re all okay, and she protects them. She does whatever she can to be a parent to them. 

I’ll write more on Gyro later, specifically. I just... I needed to talk about my thoughts.

[thelazyhermits]

New Test Subjects

After seeing how many votes the Kirishima & Tetsutetsu pair got in the poll, I decided to write a drabble with the pair. I’m gonna tag @mandsand whose idea inspired me to write this. Thank you for your help! <3 Also, there are references here to another drabble which you can find here, but you don’t have to read it for this one to make sense. 

I hope y’all enjoy it! ^-^

I think I just made a grave mistake.

In your defense, this wasn’t your idea. You even tried to avoid this outcome, but unfortunately, it was completely out of your hands.

It all started when Hatsume called you over to the support studio one day after school, requesting that you help her try out some of her babies. Naturally, you were reluctant considering your past experiences with trial runs of her inventions, but telling her no has always been a hard thing for you.

As a result, after making sure the 1-A students would look after Eri while you were gone, you soon found yourself heading to the support studio. On the way there, you passed Kirishima and Tetsutetsu who were having some kind of manliness training. Honestly, you had no idea what exactly that meant, but since they looked like they were enjoying themselves, you decided not to question it. 

Your original intention was to greet the boys before resuming your trek to the support studio. However, your plans quickly changed once the boys found out where you were heading.

After hearing that you were going to help Hatsume with her inventions, the two hero course students immediately volunteered to come along to help much to your surprise. Apparently, after hearing about Hatsume’s past trial runs, the boys thought it would be great training to help her test out her inventions.

Naturally, you were hesitant to go along with the idea since you knew they’d basically be volunteering themselves to be Hatsume’s test subjects. While it’s true they have the perfect Quirks to protect themselves from the usual explosions caused by her inventions, you still couldn’t help but worry about them.

Still, in the end, you allowed Kirishima and Tetsutetsu to tag along, knowing they’d eventually come see Hatsume anyway. You figured you might as well make sure you were there for the first meeting to make sure the pink haired girl didn’t get too crazy with her trial runs.

Unsurprisingly, Hatsume was absolutely ecstatic about having new test subjects. She immediately began pulling out more inventions to test since her original goal was just to get you to work with one invention.

Just as you feared, the support student didn’t hesitate to pull out the more combat-oriented inventions. It was obvious she wanted to test the fire power of her babies against the hero course students’ Quirks. 

That’s why you’re currently on the sidelines watching the boys enthusiastically take on the attacks from all of Hatsume’s inventions head on. You make a mental reminder to question Power Loader later about the large amount of dangerous weapons the support student currently has at her disposal. You were understandably concerned when she said she made them for fun when you questioned her about them earlier. 

At this point, considering how much the three students are enjoying themselves, the only thing you can really do is make sure things don’t go too far. That’s why you make sure they take breaks in between trial runs so the boys don’t needlessly wear themselves out. 

It’s near the end of one of those breaks that Hatsume brings out a familiar-looking drone which immediately puts you on edge. Seeing your tense expression, the pink haired girl grins, “Don’t worry, Fortune Teller-san! What happened last time won’t happen again since it’s programmed to just attack you. I won’t be losing control of it, I promise!”

You give her a deadpan look. “If you think I’m going to relax after hearing that it’ll only target me, you’re wrong. I’d rather not have to deal with being chased by that thing again. It was not at all fun the first time.”

Kirishima hits his fist against his open palm. “I got an idea! Just leave everything to me and Tetsutetsu, Sensei! We’ll protect you!”

Tetsutetsu rams his fists together. “I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m with you, bro! Let’s do this!”

As the boys share a manly fist bump, you stare at them with obvious confusion. “Hold on. What are you-”

Before you can finish that sentence, Kirishima suddenly pulls you into a bridal carry, surprising you. Seeing your wide eyed expression, he grins, “Be sure to keep your head down, Sensei!”

After saying that, the redhead takes off into a sprint while a laughing Tetsutetsu runs after him. Hatsume grins as she quickly sends the drone after them.

As laser beams rain down on you and the boys, you immediately realize what your student’s plan is. Since the drone is programmed to chase you, you need to be on the move for it to be tested.

However, since you were reluctant to test out the device considering what happened last time, Kirishima thought it’d be good training to have him and Tetsutetsu use their Quirks to protect you from the drone’s laser beam attacks. Either the redhead will use his Quirk to shield you, or the grey haired boy will use his so he can intercept the attacks.

All in all, it’s a pretty solid training session for them since they have to constantly use their Quirks. Not only that, they get to practice using their Quirks to protect someone else which is always beneficial for a hero.

Of course, that doesn’t make this situation any less crazy. The fact that the boys keep grinning and laughing while releasing loud battle cries makes it even more ridiculous. 

Well, at least, they’re having a good time, and thanks to them, you don’t have to worry about running for your life from the crazy drone which is another bonus. So, it’s hard for you to criticize your student’s idea since you definitely prefer this trial run over the one you had with Hatsume last time.

Just as you think that, Hatsume cheerfully shouts, “Phase One complete! Now, let’s head to Phase Two!”

You immediately get a bad feeling after hearing those words. “What is Phase Two?”

Your question is soon answered when several drones identical to the first one appear in the air, completely surrounding you and the hero course students. When you see them, your jaw drops. “Hatsume, what the hell?! Are you trying to kill us?!”

Tetsutetsu grins as he sizes up his new opponents. “Don’t worry, Sensei! We totally got this! Right, Kirishima?!”

Kirishima dons a similar grin. “Right! We won’t let any attacks hit you, Sensei!”

True to their word, the boys manage to continuously block all the attacks aimed your way despite how numerous they are. The redhead takes the job of shielding you with his body while the grey haired student starts punching as many laser beam attacks as he can in order to deflect them.

It’s honestly really impressive how well they’re doing. Even though you’re sure they must be exhausted, considering how long this trial run has been going on, they’re just as enthusiastic as ever. Their grins haven’t faltered one bit--a fact that you greatly admire since you’ve always thought that a hero’s smile was one of their most important features. 

The one downside of this situation is that you’re not really contributing to this situation. It doesn’t seem right for you to allow your students to do all the work, so you decide to lend a hand and put an end to this crazy trial run.

Grinning, you activate your Quirk, allowing you to foresee the drones’ movements. Once you see how they’ll react, you pull out your water gun and fire at some of the drones during the brief moment they stop their attacks so they can recharge. 

As you predicted, the drones are able to dodge like the original one. However, it looks like Hatsume hasn’t had the drones practice this feature while in a group since, when they attempt to move out of the way, the drones end up crashing into other drones, causing several of them to explode upon contact.

While Hatsume cries out in dismay, Tetsutetsu pumps his fist into the air. “That was so awesome! Nice shot, Sensei!”

Your grin grows as you repeat your earlier actions and successfully take out more of the drones. Meanwhile, Kirishima’s eyes sparkle with admiration. “So manly!”

After ruffling his hair, you pull out your sunglasses and put them on before deactivating your Quirk. Thankfully, the headache isn’t too bad since you weren’t using your Quirk for very long. “Couldn’t let you boys have all the fun. I left you guys some drones if you wanna take a crack at them.”

Both boys exchange a look before grinning. “Hell yeah!”

Since there are only a few drones left, protecting you becomes much less difficult for the hero course students. As a result, Kirishima is free to set you down, so he and Tetsutetsu can take turns playing offense and defense.

While they’re having fun with the remaining drones, you look over at Hatsume and see her pouting. “Sorry, Hatsume, but you brought this upon yourself. You were just asking for us to fight back.”

A few seconds later, the pink haired girl’s pout fades, replaced with a bright grin. “It’s fine! This just proves that my babies still have room for improvement! Thank you for pointing out what I still need to work on, Fortune Teller-san!”

As expected of Hatsume, she bounces back quickly. It’ll take a lot to keep her down. At least, the trial run was successful in showing her what she needed to work on. 

The sounds of two loud battle cries have you returning your attention to the hero course students who are cheering after having taken out the last of the drones. You smile as you clap your hands. “Good job, boys. Very well done.”

Kirishima beams as he walks over to where you’re currently standing. “Thanks, Sensei! I’m really glad me and Tetsutetsu decided to come along today! This was great training! I hope you’ll take us along the next time Hatsume invites you over for more trial runs!”

Tetsutetsu nods as he grins, “I feel the same way as Kirishima! It’s been awhile since I last got this excited about after school training! My heart’s totally on fire right now!”

A grinning Hatsume gives them a thumbs-up. “Just come to the support studio whenever you want more training! I’ll be happy to put you to work for the sake of my babies!”

Shaking your head, you give the students an amused look. “Well, considering how today’s training went, I think things should be fine. Just be sure to not overdo it and don’t get too crazy, alright?”

Both boys quickly nod their heads while Hatsume excitedly rubs her hands together. “This is going to be great! Now, I have a good reason to start building the robots I recently finished blueprints for!”

While Kirishima and Tetsutetsu cheer at the news, obviously excited about their future opponents, your face pales. 

Yeah, this was definitely a mistake.

[textsfromumbridge]

All the men and women merely players (3/5)

A Christmas gift to this wonderful fandom, and in particular a gift for @catty-words and @rebeccaplimpton (my favorite owl). 

Chapter three: Loser like all of these idiots (AO3)

Someday he was actually going to murder that Geoffrey guy.

And maybe that someday would actually be this very day.

It wasn’t just that the guy kept stalking him in rehearsal - he claimed to have mastered all of his ensemble parts so he’d come to Nathaniel so he could be a proper understudy. Like that guy could ever be a decent replacement for him. The guy wouldn’t be a proper replacement for anyone, but especially not for him.

Maybe he was just a little more harsh on him because of the incident with Bunch at that Saturday rehearsal. If he hadn’t shown up, he was sure he would have gotten to at least second base with Bunch, possibly more.

But no, the idiot just had to show up and completely kill the mood.

He’d been so damn close! Bunch had even been the one to make the first move, which meant that he was totally in her system now - but it was all dependant upon the right atmosphere and the right moment.

It had been right there: an abandoned hallway in a locked building, no way for anyone to disturb them. And not in a creepy way - just in the ‘certain activities should really remain private’ way. No spectators required.

But of course freaking Giles just had to break that unspoken rule. He just had to ruin this like he ruined everything.

Now how was he going to get Rebecca, to get Bunch to go near him again? She’d retreated right back to the ridiculously named Chan Plan. Apparently that was safer than actually doing anything with someone who wasn’t named Josh Chan.

Fucking Muggle.

“Mr. Plimpton?”

“Yes, Mr. Whitefeather?”

He was screwed. Clearly someone had said something, or someone had found out about his moment with Bunch - and now his teacher was going to use it against him. What else did Mr. Whitefeather need to blackmail him into doing?

“Don’t worry,” his teacher immediately tried to reassure him in that doofus-like way. “I just wanted to have a quick chat about your future.”

What the - his future? What was that supposed to mean? This was not a good sign.

“You probably already have everything figured out for next year,” Mr. Whitefeather just yammered on and on, “but I was hoping you would consider something else.”

Like what exactly? What was he going to be forced into now?

“I know you didn’t join the program voluntarily,” Mr. Whitefeather finally admitted to at least part of his shady dealings. “But you are a very talented young man.”

Okay, something bad was coming. No one ever complimented him without there being some kind of ulterior motive - or without it being used to soften some kind of blow. Had something happened to his mother again?

“Thank you?” Even in an awkward situation he prided himself on feigning politeness.

“I just think it would be a waste of talent,” Mr. Whitefeather continued, “to let our production of Cinderella be your only theater experience. So I’ve done a little research.”

A little. There was no way that the gigantic binder his teacher just foisted upon him constituted a little anything. Even his own, admittedly fantastic, muscles were surprised by the weight of it.

There was just so much in here that he didn’t even open it to see what was inside.

“A little?” he remarked skeptically.

“Just some applications and information about theater programs,” Mr. Whitefeather tried to brush it off. “Some of these can be combined with a business degree - seeing as that was what you intended to do before the stage called to you.”

What the hell?

Wow, the man certainly had a flair for the dramatic. Not that he didn’t already know about that, but this just proved it once again. The stage called to him? Seriously? What kind of Bunch-esque nonsense was that?

She would totally say something like that, looking all serious with her eyes laser-focused on her target. Maybe she wouldn’t say it about him, but she would absolutely say it about herself.

And this was not about her, so why was he going there? Again?

“Mr. Whitefeather,” he tried to interrupt the incoming dramatic monologue before it even started.

“Nathaniel you have grown so much in these past few weeks,” Mr. Whitefeather had started to wax poetic and he was not going to stop. “When you started with us, you were angry, and distant, and dismissive of all of us. But you have grown into it, and your bond with Ms. Bunch is truly something special. The chemistry!”

This was not going into a direction that he was comfortable with. He had not grown or changed significantly over the course of these past few weeks. He was not suddenly friends with any of these people. There was absolutely nothing special going on between him and Bunch.It was just teenage hormones and general idiocy (yes, that last part was referring to that Graham moron).

No, he was not going to let that go so easily.

“I’m sure this will be our best show yet,” there was just no stopping Mr. Whitefeather when he was on a roll. “And we do owe a lot of that to you, Mr. Plimpton.”

Was this a thank you? Was this actually Mr. Whitefeather wanting to thank him for the effort by doing all this ridiculous research that he was never going to use? There was no way that his father would ever allow him to study theatre, not even on the side. There were so many more important things for him to do.

Trying to take over the world, for example (thanks Pinky). His father may not have seen the humor in it, but Nathaniel almost did. For a few seconds, before the importance of business and the company were impressed upon him yet again.

“Thank you?” It came out as a question.

“I just feel like not pursuing this further would be a waste of your talents,” Mr. Whitefeather smiled at him. “I would be happy to act as a reference for any of these applications. I just hate seeing talent such as yours go to waste.”

Had he offered the same thing to Bunch?

Not very likely - she would have started doing this very research about three to four years ago. She probably already asked - read: demanded - that Mr. Whitefeather vouch for her in every possible way. And knowing Mr. Whitefeather even a little bit, he probably wrote her an extensive letter describing her every virtue in great detail. And not even in a creepy way.

Nathaniel’s description of Bunch’s virtues - that was not for anyone under eighteen. Or for anyone to hear really - not even for Bunch herself. It might actually make her think that he gave a damn about her.

Which he really didn’t, of course.

“You don’t have to decide right now,” Mr. Whitefeather just kept on talking and talking. “I just feel like you should consider all of your options.”

Except this was not a real option, not for him. Plimptons did not study theater. They never did anything even remotely frivolous. They went to school for business and got excellent grades, and they spent the rest of their time working out and otherwise being the perfect son.

Otherwise he might make his mother upset again.

“These options aren’t,” he tried to explain it to his teacher.

“Just consider it,” Mr. Whitefeather interrupted him before he could finish a sentence. “Just take this binder and look through it. When you feel like it. No pressure.”

The man was infuriating. Mr. Whitefeather just refused to let him off the hook, even though he was fully aware that Nathaniel was not going to be able to pursue this. This one show was risky enough - his father had questioned his absences, even though he hadn’t even been at home himself.

“I’ll take the binder,” he agreed, knowing he’d get rid of it the second his teacher had his back turned.

Wait, did he owe his teacher something now? After the whole totally setting him up to nail Bunch thing, and now the binder, he really kind of did owe the man something. He had to say something.

“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” he just blurted it out without another thought. “Especially the whole helping get me laid thing. So, I kind of owe you, and I figured… You’re clearly really into Coach Wilson, and I have some solid advice to make that happen.”

It was so obvious, anyone could see what was happening. Well, except maybe that Grant guy, but no one else seemed to manage his particular level of cluelessness. Even creepy Karen seemed to have caught on to the ogling and the flirting and the swooning.

And if Karen had caught on, everyone knew.

And if everyone knew, it was about damn time to actually do something about it that was more than just making googly eyes at various exposed body parts. Coach Wilson was totally into it, but the man wasn’t making a move.

Someone had to do something - and he knew that Bunch “shipped” it. It would totally also score him bonus points with her if he made it happen.

“Mr. Plimpton, this is highly inappropriate,” Mr. Whitefeather stammered. .

“That’s kind of the school motto,” he correctly surmised.

The guidance counselor was basically writing up seduction plans for a student she treated like a daughter. That one guy that made the students call him Robert had been fired for doing it with a student. Creepy Karen had some weird ass activities going on in the Bio lab with some of the school’s pet snakes.

Honestly, a little teacher on teacher flirtation was nothing compared to what his poor eyes had seen in that lab.

“You may have a point,” the older man acknowledged.

There was a beat of silence. All he had to do now was wait - the bait was set and Mr. Whitefeather was totally ready to bite.

He held on to his stupid binder for a little while longer, mentally figuring out if the humongous thing would fit in his locker. Maybe he didn’t have to throw it out right away.

“So, about this advice?”

So predictable.

It was all over.

It had happened so quickly, so easily. It didn’t take him any effort at all to throw her in the garbage, where she belonged.

Josh Chan had dumped her.

He’d just abandoned her, just like all the other men. Just like her father, like Robert, like all of them. He was just like them.

Somehow he’d seen inside her garbage head, somehow he’d seen that she really wasn’t worth it, and instead of making her happy he’d just moved on to some pretty blonde transfer student who only seemed to care if her eyebrows were on fleek.

That Anna girl was probably a drug dealer too. The girl was always trading something or other with her fellow fashionistas - Valencia would probably know all about it.

Poor Valencia was probably heartbroken - which for her only showed in the level of rage she exuded. Heather was the only one who hadn’t run away screaming, because Heather was smart enough to see what was really going on, and badass enough to give as good as she got.

Heather was kind of really awesome, okay.

Unlike Josh, who was really The Worst. Like, he officially threw Nathaniel Plimpton off the throne of hell - or his dad anyway. Still, Josh was the WORST.

He led her on. He made her believe that they were going to be together, and then when she found him at Hector’s party he didn’t want to be seen with her.

Not like he had at - he never wanted to be seen with her. He was embarrassed by her, embarrassed to be seen with her, but not too embarrassed to make out with her when no one else was around.

And she’d just let it happen.

It was just so embarrassing - she was smarter than that, right? Or at least, she’d really thought she was. Maybe that was the worst part, because her smarts were a big part of the very little she had going for her.

The feelings were swallowing her up and none of them were good. She could just feel herself slipping back into that depression state of mind, and there was absolutely nothing that she could do to stop it.

What was the point when no one wanted her?

Well, except Nathaniel, but he didn’t count. It didn’t matter that he obviously wanted to have sex with her, not when Josh wasn’t interested in her.

Josh Chan was supposed to be her perfect match, her soulmate.

Nathaniel was just... a roadblock. Someone who got in the way of her happily ever after with Joshua Felix Chan. He was never supposed to be the Prince, not off stage.

So maybe he was really charming on stage, and he was hitting more than a few of the right buttons off stage. Still, it didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t mean anything, because she wasn’t meant to be with Nathaniel Plimpton the Third.

(Her mother would die of happiness if she even mentioned his name, which was another point against him. Not that she hadn’t already gathered quite a lot of reasons not to even think about him. Chief of them being Josh. )

It did not matter that Nathaniel was tall and attractive with those blue eyes that just randomly turned soft with warmth when seconds before they’d been lit up by a spark of intelligence. She never asked him to be kind to her - she didn’t even want him to be kind. She didn’t want his pity, or his perceived little crush.

And there he was, staring at her again.

He’d been doing that a lot lately, and even more so after the stupid Josh thing. Somehow he just knew that she’d been dumped.

Ugh, he was the worst and she didn’t even know why she was thinking of him again.

“Stop pitying me,” she hissed at him as she walked by.

“Pity is for losers,” he corrected.

Which was basically her title at this point. So why wasn’t he rubbing it in?

“So?” she stopped in her tracks.

“I’d pity Chan,” he smirked. “Not you.”

What?

If anyone was the loser in this scenario, it was definitely her. Josh was the captain of the team, the leader of the pack. She was just a theater nerd whose own people didn’t even respect her. She didn’t even have friends - she’d just been lying to herself again. Paula was her only friend, but that was just kind of weird.

She was very aware of how weird that was, but it didn’t change anything. It’s not like she would suddenly become more likeable overnight.

Not that she cared about that - she didn’t. She wasn’t going to remember any of these people anyway, when she made it big.

So if they didn’t care about her, and she didn’t care about them?

“You okay there Bunch?” Nathaniel was still around for some lame reason. “You’re about to start catching flies.”

If she didn’t care about anyone - that included stupid Nathaniel - it would be easier. She could be bad, really bad.

“Fuck off.” She flipped him off for good measure.

It was time for her to get some good old-fashioned revenge.

They could not put it off any longer. They had to do it.

Mr. Whitefeather was making them practice that one scene: the final scene. The scene that involved the true love’s kiss neither of them really believed in. Still, they had to sell it to the audience.

But with Bunch being in her current state, he doubted they could sell water in a desert together.

She was completely occupied by her stupid revenge plan. He didn’t even know what she was planning exactly - he was very sure that he probably really did not want to know a single thing about it - but it was obvious that it had completely consumed her.

Bunch was acting like a jilted bride, like she’d been left at the altar by this complete idiot. It was a high school fling at best - it wasn’t like she’d even remember Josh Chan at their ten year reunion. She’d probably be ruling the world by then, or just the Broadway stage. Or quite possibly, both.

She was ambitious like that - she had more than a little Slytherin in her. And if she wanted to, she could have a lot of Slytherin in her - yes, he meant sex. A lot of it.

But perhaps they’d start with a kiss - a staged one at that, right in front of meddling Mr. Whitefeather. Sure, he had game, but not the kind of game he wanted to show to his teacher (no matter how much Mr. Whitefeather would probably learn from it). This needed to happen just between him and Bunch, if it was ever going to be something real.

Ew, why would he want this to be ‘something real’? He just needed to get her out of his system. One go and he would be right back to normal.

Well, maybe one night. There were a couple positions he was sure she wouldn’t mind trying. But just one night, because Nathaniel Plimpton the Third did not do anything more than one night. He did not do relationships. Ugh, the thought alone made him more than a little sick to his stomach.

That was kind of a good thing at this point, because thinking about having sex with Bunch had made his loose pants much too tight all of a sudden. Which again: just fine when it was just him and Bunch, but not okay with their teacher right there.

“Can we get this over with already?” Bunch was less than excited.

“Miss Bunch,” Mr. Whitefeather gently chided. “We are looking to create a certain atmosphere here. This kiss is supposed to be the culmination of your incredible chemistry throughout the show. It needs to be romantic, loving, a true embodiment of happily ever after.”

Wow, no pressure there. Clearly Mr. Whitefeather still had some serious heart eyes going on - head in the clouds, thinking of Coach Wilson at inopportune moments, the whole shebang. He’d now reached the spreading the feeling stage, trying to get others to join him in a love bubble of their own. Sickening.

At least Bunch seemed to agree with that sentiment, her pinched face in sharp contrast to the romantic scene they were supposed to be playing out.

If it continued like this, there would be actual vomiting before they even got close to working on the actual scene. And he was not sure if it would be him or Bunch, but he was fully aware that Mr. Whitefeather would be the cause.

Something had to be done, and he knew he was the man for the job.

“Mr. Whitefeather,” he just had to play this right. “I’m sure you understand that it is kind of uncomfortable to practice a kissing scene with one of our favorite teachers examining everything. So how about you give us some time to practice it ourselves?”

Sucking up worked - he’d seen Bunch do it enough to know that much. He probably wasn’t as good at it as she was - less experience - but he was willing to give it a try if it meant that Mr. Whitefeather would go off somewhere, anywhere. It was bad enough that he’d have to do it in front of a full auditorium at some point, but for the first time? Yeah, it was not going to happen with all the hovering that was currently going on.

“Oh, I remember my first kissing scene,” Mr. Whitefeather was immediately off on another random tangent.

“I agree with Nathaniel,” Bunch ended their teacher’s story before it began.

She was absolutely being nice to him because it would get them what they wanted, and it was absolutely turning him on.

That had nothing to do with how much he liked it when she used his first name - that should not be a thing. That dramatic way she spoke was not going to be a kink for him. He did not want to have to kinkshame himself.

“Rebecca is right,” he got right on the wagon.

Of course he had to use her first name to get the right effect. Mr. Whitefeather was never going to buy it if he kept calling her Bunch. That was the one and only reason he was using her first name.

“Finally my two leads are on the same page,” Mr. Whitefeather was delighted at this development - as delighted as he was all the damn time.

He was not going to ask his teacher if the man could just leave already, but he was definitely sorely tempted. But he was not raised to be rude to his teachers, even if he was smarter and better adjusted than they were. Plimptons respected authority - and his father’s authority above all else.

“Your exercises really helped us,” Bunch was laying it on a bit thick now.

If she said anything about getting in touch with anyone’s feelings, especially his, he was going to throw up the salad he had at lunch.

Sure, he did appreciate the unnecessary help Mr. Whitefeather had given him in the seducing Bunch plan, but it wasn’t like there were any feelings involved here. It was all teenage hormones and getting some things out of their systems.

“Your chemistry is just so inspirational,” Mr. Whitefeather looked about ready to swoon. “It’s a shame you’re both seniors, because I’d love to keep working with you two, together.”

One show, no encores, no repeat engagements. There was no way he would be blackmailed into doing anything else.

And doing this voluntarily? No, he was not that far gone yet.

“You flatter us,” Bunch practically pushed their teacher out the door.

He just made sure to smile at the man until the second after the door closed in his face. Then, he prepared for battle.

Bunch was certainly not going to make this easy for him. He was just about ready to curse Josh Chan’s name for ruining this for him. She’d pretty much been a sure bet before - she made the first move to kiss him last time - until Josh “dumb-dumb” Chan showed her that all men were superficial assholes. And while Bunch obviously knew that in theory (and maybe some practice) the reminder had stung.

And that was why she was currently glaring daggers at him instead of letting herself be seduced by their circumstances.

“I’m not going to kiss you,” Bunch was dismissive.

Damn you Josh Chan! Damn you Graham for interrupting what had been such a promising moment!

“I never thought you wouldn’t take your role seriously,” they both knew he was baiting her with that one. “It’s about true love, Bunch.”

For a girl who had no trouble manipulating people to get what she wanted, she definitely had a mushy side he could easily take advantage of. She clearly wanted to believe in soulmates and true love, and if that did not get him what he wanted, he was still baiting her.

She never could let him win.

“You’re the worst,” she declared.

“I’m okay with that,” he shrugged.

That stopped her in her tracks. Not in the way he’d wanted, with her dropping the subject and moving on to the good parts of this meeting, but in that analytical way that told him she might be seeing something he didn’t necessarily intend for her to see.

What kind of quip could he use to distract her? Making her angry usually worked, but she’d been filled with so much anger that it had become a little risky. Too much anger and she’d walk right out and he’d never get another chance to get with her. Because that was all he wanted from her.

“As long as it gets you what you want,” Bunch was still looking at him like that.

“Would you prefer I fake some feelings?” he tried to distract her.

He wasn’t moral enough to play the honesty card all the time. It worked on Bunch, but many a girl had needed a few sweet nothings whispered in her ear to allow him a few liberties. Either way, the result was the same: he got what he wanted and he moved on.

“You aren’t that good an actor,” she dismissed him.

“That sounds like a challenge,” he was almost amused.

Maybe if he pretended not to notice that she’d actually stepped closer to him to properly dismiss him, maybe she wouldn’t notice either. Maybe she would keep doing it.

“No thanks,” Bunch scoffed. “Let’s just get through this stupid scene.”

She was still moving closer, no matter what her actual words were saying. So maybe he wasn’t alone in feeling this ridiculous attraction - he knew he wasn’t - and they could just finally get it over with.

He needed the show to be over, and her to be out of his head, so that he could go back to his normal life. The life that he was supposed to lead, the one that did not involve theater and this girl who’d somehow made him pay attention to her.

“If you insist,” he drew her in closer with his words.

“Don’t act like you don’t want to kiss me, Nathaniel,” she reached for him with one hand.

It was going to burn right through his chest. It shouldn’t be possible, but that single touch of her hand had completely drawn him in. How did she do that?

“You’ve been wanting it too,” he whispered, slowly moving down to her level.

She could not deny that - he did not want her to deny it. She needed to admit that she did want him, because that meant he won.

But was he even keeping score still?

“I’m acting,” she reminded him, taunted him.

Her hand had made its way to the back of his neck, pulling him further and further down as she reached up to meet him.

“And I’m not?” he quirked an eyebrow.

His hand was on the small of her back, and this was absolutely not going to be allowed for their stage kiss. That was all chaste and romantic and pure - and why was he even still thinking about that?

This kiss, this had nothing to do with Ella and Prince Topher.

“Please,” she whispered.

If that was still in response to something, he’d long since forgotten it. It was a plea for him to finally bridge those final inches, a plea to not let that Grant guy interrupt them this time.

How could he not grant her wish?

Their lips met sharply, a contrast to how slow they’d been moving before. This was all pent-up frustrations, hormones, attraction against their wishes. She pulled at him, contorting him into the perfect position to just keep kissing her. And so he had to push back, clinging at his perfect control by the edges of his fingernails.

They continued to fight even in this kiss, a yank on his hair and a tug at her hips to get her even closer. It was desperate, frantic, passionate… And it was everything he wanted, or was it?

“Bunch,” he pulled away to catch his breath.

“Shut up,” she pushed him against the closed door.

He’d dreamt of this, but not this.

“Slow down,” he tried to reach for her face, gently.

“Shut up,” she repeated, pushing his hand away.

There was no way for him to move comfortably, and yet she tried to pull at him. Another kiss, one that seemed even harsher than the first, all teeth and tongue.

God, it was hot, it really was. Bunch, Rebecca… She couldn’t stop trying to get even closer to him, pressing her body tightly against his.

But he felt a doorknob pushing against his back, and his neck was starting to hurt from being pushed and pulled into such an awkward position.

“Rebecca,” he spoke without thinking.

The change was absolute. She stilled immediately, eyes wide and hands trembling as she tried to fix her shirt.

He hadn’t even been staring at her cleavage - what the hell was wrong with him?

“I need to go,” she disentangled herself from him, her body shaky and her face closed off.

And he was left alone in the room, pants too tight and heartbeat racing.

The clock had struck midnight and Ella had run from the prince. But there was no glass slipper, no clue as to what had gone wrong.

She did not mean to be distracted, she just was.

And it was a serious problem.

“Rebecca,” he’d said.

Nathaniel Plimpton had used her first name, and it was soft and warm and completely unexpected. And most of all, it was bad and wrong.

If he’d just kept that stupid, surprisingly soft mouth of his shut, she’d have been on top of him in an empty classroom at this point.

But no, he just had to use her name and ruin everything.

How dare he make it sound like he gave a damn about her? This was Nathaniel Plimpton the Third - he didn’t do anything involving the full spectrum of human emotions. He was supposed to bang her and leave her, just so Josh Chan would never be able to have her first time.

Because he didn’t deserve it.

Not that it was even about deserving it, it was about her choices. And she’d chosen Nathaniel for this one. Just this one time, just to get those damn hormones out of the way so they could both move on with their lives. She wanted to be bad, to let the animalistic urges rule her just once, just like they ruled everyone else in school.

So why wouldn’t he just let her?

He’d been turned on when he said it, but she knew all about how true feelings came out when the normal filters were gone, and what he’d said was her name. She couldn’t get over it, couldn’t get it out of her head.

“Cookie?”

It was probably just another twisted, devious manipulation. He was the Evil Plimpton after all - perhaps this was like She’s All That after all and he needed to make her believe that he gave a damn about her so she’d fall for him.

She could probably expect a prom invitation any day now.

Not that she’d say yes to that - she’d seen the movies and she didn’t exactly want to end up crying on prom night. Not that she’d cry, because she didn’t actually care about Nathaniel and his hurt feelings. She didn’t!

What she cared about was her revenge.

“Cookie?”

Yes, all she wanted was revenge against Josh Chan. He was the only man, the only boy that mattered right now. Only until she’d left him weeping, of course.

He’d be sorry he abandoned her, sorry that he ever led her on and made her feel like glitter was exploding inside of her. He’d be sorry for the secretive affair, for not wanting to be with her out in the open. Joshua Felix Chan would be sorry for all of it.

And maybe then, finally, she could get Nathaniel out of her head, and the way he’d looked at her after he said her name.

“Rebecca!”

“Don’t call me that,” she whirled around to confront Natha- Paula?

Oh, right, they were supposed to be coming up with revenge plans together.

“Cookie?” Paula seemed more than a little freaked out.

“Sorry,” her apology was only slightly exaggerated. “My head was just off in the clouds, you know what that’s like.”

Did she sound blase enough? Good, because it was awkward, the kind of bad awkward that people remembered. Especially when by people she meant her best friend and guidance counselor. Paula was too good at figuring things out for her to learn anything that might make her suspicious.

Which was why she could never learn about what had happened between her and Nathaniel. No one ever needed to know that.

She was going to have enough trouble looking him in the eye ever again after that, and they were supposed to be love interests. In the show. She meant they were supposed to play love interests.

“Right,” Paula didn’t seem to buy it, not completely.

“So, what’s the plan for Chan?” she purposefully rhymed, knowing it would distract Paula.

As expected, Paula snickered happily. Sometimes she worried about her friend, about why she treated one of her students as her best friend instead of finding someone she was on more equal footing with.

But that was not a concern right now. Right now, there was nothing but vengeance.

“I have brought in an expert,” Paula grinned evilly.

That was disconcerting. Not the grinning, no, she wholeheartedly approved of the evil grinning and possible future cackling. The bringing in an expert part was her real concern.

Because who could this be? Who at this school was an expert on pain and vengeance and evil plans? (They were making evil plans!)

“Sup?” Heather Davis nodded as she dropped into one of the chairs.

Wait, Heather was the expert? That made little to no sense - Heather was generally one of the most chill people in the entire school, and while she definitely wouldn’t let anyone mess with her, there was no vengeance in her bones. Heather was the kind of person who called someone out on their shit and then moved on with her life.

Which was super cool, but definitely not what she was going for right now.

“Heather,” she nodded like she’d been expecting this all along.

“I’m just here for moral support,” Heather opened up a notebook and started doodling. “I’m thinking about being a psych major, and this is fascinating.”

That was both the most and least surprising thing she’d ever heard Heather say. Which meant that it was actually perfectly on brand for Heather.

She had a beanie over her messy curls, and this week the colored streaks in her hair appeared to be purple. Hipster culture had nothing on Heather.

Honestly, she wished she were half as cool.

“I’d say sorry for being late,” Valencia Perez threw open the door to Paula’s office, “but I’m not actually all that sorry. I had things to do.”

What the actual hell was Paula thinking? This was probably the worst idea ever.

Or the second worst, because practicing a kissing scene with Nathaniel Plimpton in an empty classroom might have been one for the books. Really, how did she think that was going to end? (Spoiler alert: sex. Lots of it.)

Ugh, why did she keep coming back to stupid Nathaniel?

Paula actually brought Valencia in on the revenge plan against Josh? Did she want Rebecca to get murdered? Because that was absolutely what was going to happen when Valencia found out she had been all over Josh when they were still dating. It was going to be death by yoga and claws. And words. Vicious, vicious words.

She’d have to change schools after this - her mother might actually kill her, because changing schools this close to graduation was going to kill her chances at several of the Ivies she’d been forced to apply to.

Was witness protection an option here? She could change her name and move across country.

Rachel, she could be a Rachel.

“I’m glad you’re here, miss Perez,” Paula was still smiling. “It’s time for us to destroy Josh Chan.”

Now those were fighting words. Now she was interested. Now she was no longer distracted by Nathani- damn it.

His face was just so damn distracting, especially his eyes. And his mouth.

This was not helping!

“Right, so I’m only here because I hate Josh Chan,” Valencia picked the most prominent chair to gracefully sit down in. “You were probably the reason he broke up with me, and I kind of hate you for it, but at least he didn’t leave me hanging on for another ten years. He’s scared of confrontation like that.”

That was a surprisingly mature standpoint from the person who’d been lowkey bullying every loser at this school for the past four years.

Was she right to be suspicious of that, or was Valencia Perez actually growing? Had Heather’s mellow disposition rubbed off on her? Those two had been spending a lot of time together lately, and while it made sense for Valencia to be the alpha female, Heather’s almost supernatural calmness was kind of infectious.

Either way, she should probably be grateful.

“We all hate Josh Chan,” Paula was pleased at how well this was going.

“I don’t,” Heather shrugged. “But keep going, this is fascinating.”

The four women came together as one to figure out what would hurt Josh Chan the most. It was almost inspirational.

Oh my God, she was finally part of a girl group now!

He’d been avoiding her for days, pretending his ego wasn’t bruised by her abrupt departure from that classroom. And it wasn’t, because he didn’t care about Rebecca Bunch. Not at all.

It was just a little unflattering that even a pathetic loser like her bailed on him. That was all that was.

Still, it was a good sign that he needed to stay focused, that he needed to do a few extra reps at the gym this week, because clearly his perfect physique was failing him. His body could not be trusted this week, especially not around Bunch.

So, avoidance.

Of course, that only went so far, because he still had to see her in rehearsals. But after his demand to work some more on some scenes that in no way involved Cinderella herself, Mr. Whitefeather had rather reluctantly acquiesced.

After all, he did not want the show to fail because he’d left it all to depend on chemistry. That Jim guy was still woefully behind on learning his lines, and Tim wasn’t much better (if he finally managed to correctly guess who was who, anyway). They had a lot of catching up to do to get even in the same stratosphere as he was in. And that was the only reason why Nathaniel was currently running through the same few scenes over and over again until these idiots finally got it right.

“Once again, from the top,” he ordered, barely even breaking a sweat.

Jim and Tim - Tim and Jim? - were wrecks. The amount of sweat those idiots produced wasn’t quite healthy. And here he’d figured that Jim (it was Jim, right?) had been in excellent shape, seeing as how he showed up at the gym at least twice a week.

Well, clearly he’d just been there for the girls, because that was all he could talk about.

“Hello there fellas.”

Of course there was no way that she could just let him be. Not in his dreams, and not in real life. No, Rebecca Bunch just had to interrupt his manly bonding time.

(As if he would ever try to bond with any of these losers.)

“Hey Rebecca,” Jim immediately sidled up to her.

“Jim, get back to work,” he ordered, rolling his eyes. “You’re still pathetically out of shape.”

It said something for his natural leadership skills that Jim didn’t even speak another word before he started another circuit of reps. Yes, he was a true leader.

“That’s alright,” Bunch wasn’t deterred even for a second. “I wanted to talk to you anyway.”

Of course she wanted to talk to him now, when she could act like she had the moral high ground in front of their cast mates. She did so thrive around a captive audience, and he’d rather not have a dramatic confrontation straight out of Les Miserables.

The word miserable was right there in the show title, and he’d actually seen it a few times. There was a lot of death, and both men involved in the Confrontation were dead by the end of the show. He didn’t exactly fancy ending up like that, not that he thought Bunch would actually resort to murdering him. He hadn’t quite earned that yet.

Or had he?

“I’m busy,” he dismissed her.

He wasn’t even lying about that - he was busy because these idiots needed a lot of work and the premiere date was getting ever closer. They were due for their costume fitting soon, and if everything fit properly - and he’d made sure it would - they would start rehearsing in costume in a week or so.

Which meant that in about a week, he was going to have serious trouble trying to look Bunch in the eyes - just the idea of her in a corset was already ruining his life. The reality would undoubtedly be much, much worse.

“Or we can do this here,” she had him cornered and she knew it.

Damn her and her everything.

None of these losers were ever going to know about anything that had happened between him and Bunch. They might actually start to think that he was on their level, and then they’d treat him like their buddy.

That could never happen, should never happen. He was superior in every way, like a Plimpton should be.

“Maya, could you take over?” he left the tiniest girl in the group in charge.

Oh, her looks were deceiving - that tiny person could take down every single fragile man boy in that group with just a few phrases. The time she explained to Tim that his long time girlfriend had been faking it with him had been particularly brutal - or just particularly entertaining for him.

Maya could be trusted to run a tight ship.

“Totes,” Maya saluted him.

“Ma’am,” he nodded at her, playing along with her little joke.

That seemed to surprise Bunch, as she stared back and forth between him and the tiny girl with the big glasses, as if there was a thing going on there that she wasn’t aware of. When all it was, was a congenial relationship between cast mates. Maya wasn’t completely useless, and she was willing to work hard, unlike most freshmen.

It meant nothing, but Bunch was undoubtedly going to make a big production out of this small, insignificant moment.

“Let’s go, Bunch,” he did not have the time or the patience for her usual shenanigans.

“No calling me Rebecca this time?” she pointedly asked as she followed him into the empty hallway.

Oh yeah, she was not going to let that stupid mistake go. One freaking slip of the tongue and he was going to hear about it forever - or just until graduation, because there was no way he was ever going to see Rebecca Bunch again after that.

They were going very different places in life - him to Stanford and her to some ridiculous drama school in New York, probably. That was where losers like her thrived.

“You didn’t seem to like it last time,” he remarked, unwilling to let her have the last word about anything, not even this. “I never met anyone who was scared of their first name before.”

Yeah, that hit its mark, as it was intended to. How else was he supposed to get back the power he’d lost with a single word?

Bunch would never let anyone call her afraid, and she especially would not let him get away with it. Her ego wouldn’t let her.

“Scared?” she huffed, blowing herself up for proper hysterics.

“Running away tends to mean fear,” he had the high ground now.

It was funny how she tried to seem taller, tiny as she was compared to him. Sometimes, because of her giant personality, he almost forgot that she was tiny enough for him to pick up and carry. He was strong enough - stronger than that Chan idiot.

Obviously, he was superior in every way, not that Bunch would notice.

“Well, I’m not running now,” she crossed her arms over her chest.

He looked down and gulped. Well, there went his focus.

Damn her for continually distracting him from his moral high ground. Half the time, she wasn’t even doing it on purpose, but judging by the scheming glint in her eye, she was very aware of what she was doing right now. And she was most definitely up to something - she wanted something from him.

“I’m so proud of you,” sarcasm dripped from his every word.

Was she still on that revenge scheme? Probably.

“Flattered,” she returned. “I’m still not scared, Nathaniel.”

Was she actually trying to make him say her name again, just to prove that she was not going to run away from him again? Yeah, he was not actually dumb enough to meekly follow along with that pathetic little scheme.

He had his pride.

It was not going to keep him warm at night, but he was still going to hold on to it for as long as he could. At least here at school, he had the possibility of maintaining his pride - at home, there was no question he had to swallow it and take whatever his father was in the mood to dish out that day.

“What is it going to take?” Bunch was not amused by his silence.

“What is what going to take?” he just had to play dumb, to make her say it.

Was it about getting something out of her? Perhaps it was, perhaps he just wanted her to eat crow for a bit. Perhaps he just wanted her to be honest for once about where they stood - they’d been hiding in played parts and denial for a while now. Maybe some truth wouldn’t be so bad.

Or maybe it would ruin everything. He’d be forced to give her truths in kind, and he had none to give. There was nothing to give, just pretty words that didn’t mean a thing, and a final dismissal either from her or from him.

Because he didn’t actually care.

“I need you to do it again,” she scrunched up her face at his raised eyebrow. “I need you to say my name again.”

And neither did she. He was a convenient means to end when it came to the Chan Plan - he was not foolish enough to think that she’d given up on Josh Chan just because he’d dumped her. If he apologized, she’d take him back (not that she’d ever had him before).

It was true love after all.

“Is Josh coming by?” he was not fooled.

“Yes,” she couldn’t even look at him as she said it.

He laughed, because what else could he do? Walk away and tell her he was not going to be a part of this ridiculous scheme? That would mean something.

“It won’t work,” he just said, because someone had to say it.

Her friends - since when was she friends with Valencia Perez anyway? - clearly hadn’t discouraged her from any of these ridiculous schemes. Him saying something wouldn’t actually change anything, but at least he said something.

Giving her false hope seemed more cruel, somehow.

“I don’t care,” she seemed smaller then.

Still, he pressed on, reminding himself that he didn’t actually give a damn about her hurt feelings.

Or his own.

“Fine,” he ignored whatever passed for inner turmoil in his head. “If your kink is being called by your first name.”

Yes, he was absolutely going to be an asshole about this. She’d left him hanging, embarrassed him, no matter how much he was not willing to admit that. There was no way that he was going to let her off so easily.

“Nathaniel,” she pointedly caressed every single syllable of his name.

That was not a thing for him. He did not just kinkshame her about this, only to feel his pants getting tight just because she said his full name in that soft voice she hardly ever let him hear, with her head slightly tilted and her eyes filled with warmth.

He was not going to get turned on by her play-acting at kindness. He was going to beat her at this game.

“Rebecca,” his voice was low, hinting at hoarseness.

Did he do that on purpose, or did that just happen when she smiled at him like that?

There was no guile in her in that moment, just a soft smile and a slight widening of her eyes, as if he’d said something that she’d actually been waiting to hear. Had she, maybe - no. No, it didn’t matter.

“Rebecca,” he dumbly repeated, taking a step closer to her.

She followed his lead - that never happened - and moved in closer as well. His eyes frantically roamed the hallway, trying to find Chan’s hiding place. Obviously Rebecca, Bunch had spotted him and now she was just playing along for her revenge plan.

But there was no one else there. Just like in the room, when he was left angry and rejected.

There were so many feelings bubbling up inside of him and he didn’t want to feel any of them - but just being faced with Rebecca so close to him made them impossible to avoid. Maybe he had the right idea when he avoided her for several days in a row.

Avoiding her made things easier, left him clear headed for once, instead of feeling muddled and constantly confused about what the hell was going on with him and where his life was going. He knew exactly where his life was going, he knew what he was going to be doing with the rest of his life, and it had never seemed particularly confusing before.

These stupid losers were getting to him. Rebecca was getting to him.

Rebecca was suspiciously silent, and he was not willing to break the silence either. Any word would just ruin the fragile peace that existed between the two of them.

Her hand had once again landed on his shoulder. He knew where this was going, and he wasn’t exactly protesting.

He wanted her, he was very aware of that. He wasn’t conflicted about that.

She kissed him again.

It wasn’t like the last time. This time she reached up on her tiptoes, her moves gentle and languid as she pressed closer to him.

Their lips met once, twice, and then a third time.

Time slowed down, sped up, and then stopped completely. There was a faint buzzing of people in the hallway. They weren’t alone, but he couldn’t be bothered to see just who was there and what their response was to Rebecca kissing him so softly.

This was everything he’d dreamed of. It was different somehow, but he didn’t exactly understand how. It didn’t make sense.

She pulled back, breathing heavily, and he smiled down at her. He probably looked like a complete dope, but she didn’t make fun of him for it.

“Rebecca,” he said her name again, just because he could.

From the corner of his eyes, he saw Josh Chan passing by. His eyes widened as he saw Rebecca with him, but he never paused.

He didn’t tell Rebecca. That would be cruel.

So they’d kissed again.

It still didn’t mean anything. Not at all.

She just had a brief lapse of judgment and kissed Nathaniel Plimpton in a very public hallway without Josh Chan being anywhere in the vicinity.

Maybe not all was lost though - Josh had probably heard about it by now, because the rumors were spreading like wildfire. Most of the rumors involved him seducing her for some bet (so her She’s All That idea wasn’t even that outlandish), but they at least got the very public kissing right.

Some of the stories even made it seem a little romantic, some story of star-crossed lovers meeting on the stage and falling for each other just as their characters had. Those stories talked of stealing romantic moments - some people even told tales of Nathaniel plying her with romantic gifts.

There were boys who acted more… immaturely. Comments about how she must have some assets that tempted the great Nathaniel Plimpton were now a regular part of her day. Whispered asides about how she must be a freak in the sack lasted for about a week before they quite abruptly stopped.

Nathaniel was behind that, she would put money on it.

She hadn’t talked to him outside of rehearsal for a week. She just couldn’t face him after she’d so stupidly let herself be soft and kind and vulnerable in front of him.

But how could she not have kissed him when he said her name like that?

He’d looked almost lost, those blue eyes wide and questioning. She couldn’t take it, couldn’t stand him looking at her so softly. She had to kiss him.

At least then he wouldn’t stare at her with feelings in his eyes. They looked like feelings anyway, but how would she know what feelings looked like on a soulless automaton like Nathaniel Plimpton the Third?

Except he wasn’t soulless. She’d actually hurt his fragile little man baby feelings when she left that first time. She wasn’t even aware that he could have feelings - she didn’t want him to have that ability.

That was just too much, too complicated. She wanted her revenge on Josh and then she would be free to leave this place in a few months.

New York was calling her and she had to answer. Her future was right there, amidst the bright lights of Broadway, no matter what her mother said about doing pre-law as a solid backup if her little hobby didn’t actually turn into something.

She just had to get through this show without caring too much about Nathaniel, about anyone else. She could leave Paula - there would be other students who needed her help a little too much. She could leave her girl group - they’d forget all about her anyway when they all went to different colleges. Or no college at all, because Valencia was not planning on going anywhere. She could leave Nathaniel in California, leave him to become that asshole he was genetically predisposed to become.

In ten years, at their high school reunion, she’d swoop in with her first Tony award and look down on everyone who’d ever made her feel inferior, and he’d be there with his first (or second) trophy wife, still trying to fill his daddy’s shoes. Maybe their eyes would meet briefly, and she’d remember this moment. But that was how their story ended, how it was supposed to go.

If she wasn’t meant for Josh Chan, maybe she just wasn’t meant for anyone after all. Maybe the stage was supposed to be the real love of her life.

At least she had learned that much.

That was something she could do, throwing herself into her career, throwing herself into the world of Cinderella for these last few weeks (barely months). She could pretend to be the commoner turned princess, and she could sing and dance with her prince.

Ella could have her true love and her happily ever after. Rebecca could have a career and the memory of a few heated kisses with a boy she could never care about.

The hormones were still there, buzzing under her skin, and she would be on top of him right this second if she believed that she could pull it off without him getting soft and gooey and kind on her.

Ugh, that was not hot. It wasn’t.

Why couldn’t he just let her be all over him without consequences?

“Are you comfortable?” Maya pulled at the lacing on the back of her corset. “Not too tight?”

The answer to the first question was definitely a no, but the second question was probably safer to answer. Seeing as that answer would actually be related to her costume.

“It’s fine,” she tried to sound calmer than she currently felt. “Thanks Maya.”

“No probs,” the freshman shrugged. “Short girls have to stick together.”

They pulled on the dress together, awkwardly lifting it over her head as Maya tried not to fall off the stool that was the only way Maya was tall enough to assist with this part.

“Just the zipper now,” Maya easily fixed up the dress.

Shouldn’t it be too tight and uncomfortable? That was her experience with costumes in this school, always made for the pretty, skinny girls. Not this time.

“All done,” the tiny freshman hopped off the stool. “You totes look like a princess. Hashtag fairy tales, hashtag true love’s kiss, hashtag happily ever after.”

And with that, Maya rushed off to help someone else, and she was left staring at herself in the mirror. All she saw was a complete stranger.

She’d pulled her hair back awkwardly, and she wasn’t wearing a crown yet, but from the neck down she looked like an actual princess. The corset emphasized her chest a little too much, but since the dress was actually made with her measurements in mind, she wasn’t too uncomfortable. She actually looked like she had a waist, and the big skirt made her feel like she actually was a princess.

“Knock knock,” Mr. Whitefeather was waiting outside the door.

“I’m coming out,” she called, taking one last look at that strange royal creature she saw in the glass.

How was this regal women the same pathetic girl she saw in her reflection this morning?

Shaking off those thoughts, she stepped out into the hallway, holding her skirts so that she wouldn’t step on them and embarrass herself in front of everyone. There was just so much to this dress that she had to consider.

“Miss Bunch, you look like an actual princess,” Mr. Whitefeather gushed. “I think the color is perfect too. It’ll match your prince.”

Nathaniel would be in costume too. Oh, she hadn’t even considered that. As much as she wanted to think that he might just look ridiculous, she was a woman with eyes. There was not much that Nathaniel could not pull off.

He was going to have the girls in their class throwing their panties at him, and she’d have to pretend like the idea of that didn’t sting.

She was gliding down the hall into the auditorium, where everyone else was gathering to see their friends in their costumes. Heather and Valencia were helping each other, adjusting bows and lines on each other’s dresses, touches lingering a little longer than strictly necessary.

So that was happening now.

“Meet your princess,” Mr. Whitefeather stopped them right in front of Nathaniel.

She looked up at him slowly, terrified that he’d shatter her blooming confidence with a well-placed remark - but even more scared that he would not react at all.

Everything stilled for a second, and then their eyes met.

His reaction was everything she hoped for. Not that she’d thought about his reaction to her in this dress even for a second. No not at all.

Once again, he stood ramrod straight, almost too still to keep breathing. His eyes roamed over her body slowly, hotly, until she felt goosebumps break out on her skin. He took a deep breath then, his body slowly going back to normal posture as he tried to act like she didn’t affect him at all.

Well buddy, kinda missed the mark on that one.

She was getting to him, and not even in his stupid heart-eyed way. No, this was chemistry fizzling between them, desperately trying to pull them closer.

It was Mr. Whitefeather who gave them an excuse, a reason other than just temporary insanity to reach for each other.

“How about you try your dance?” Mr. Whitefeather proposed. “You need to get a feel for how the dress is going to move. You might need to adjust the distance between you two a bit. You’ve been dancing closer than the dress might allow. We just need to be sure.”

They had been moving closer and closer in rehearsals - she didn’t think anyone would notice, except maybe Nathaniel. He noticed. She’d felt that he noticed.

Her face was flushing just thinking about how often she’d noticed, about how sometimes it seemed like he was in a constant state of arousal around her. It was only fair.

“Your highness,” she curtsied and he bowed.

The kiss on the hand had never officially been added to their choreography, he’d just started doing it one time and it had stuck. And they’d never faked the gesture, had always committed to this part wholeheartedly and grabbed on to any excuse they had to touch each other. Or at least, that was her excuse. Was it his as well?

“Milady,” he murmured as he stood up straight. “Would you like to dance?”

She could hear music in the background, and everyone else in the room was fading away until there was no one there except the two of them, just as it was supposed to be. Her stupid, confusing prince had placed his hand in hers again, and she’d tried not to trip over her skirts as he swept her off her feet.

The music got louder, and they swept through the choreography like it was second nature, because by now it was. She felt like she would remember these steps for the rest of her life, like she could be woken up in the middle of the night and still follow every step.

Still, it was different with her giant skirt swishing between the two of them. Breathing was difficult enough, but that had nothing to do with the corset and everything to do with the way her prince just would not stop looking at her.

He led her around the floor, still pressing as close to her as her damn dress would allow - not close enough, but they managed. Their hands were the only real points of contact for a while, until they fell into the crescendo of movements that led to her favorite part of the dance: the ending.

Nathaniel’s arms were around her waist, and as she let herself fall down into his hold without hesitation, he never stopped looking at her face, even though her chest was right freaking there and looking spectacular in her corset.

His eyes never strayed as he held her for endless seconds. Her heart was pounding heavily in her chest. There was glitter exploding inside of her once again.

Gently, slowly, safely he pulled her up into a standing position, standing much too close for this to be entirely proper for a royal ball.

She did not care, and neither did he.

God, she wanted to kiss him again, wanted to hear him break the illusion of acting by whispering her name in her ear. Had anyone ever said her name quite like that, like they were marvelling at the luck of being allowed to say it?

No one that she could remember.

“Nathaniel Plimpton,” a deep voice bellowed. “You take off that ridiculous outfit this instance! What do you think you are doing?”

That broke the soft spell they’d been under. There were others in the room again, but she refused to look in the direction of the voice - maybe Mr. Whitefeather would send away the intruder and they’d just be able to try again.

This was not how it ended.

She glanced up at Nathaniel. He’d gone completely still in the most unnatural way, as if he’d snap in half if she so much as breathed on him too harshly. His eyes were wide, his skin no longer golden but pale and clammy in her warm hold.

“Father,” he breathed, panic in his electric blue eyes.

AN: Soooooo, thoughts? :P

[ingridgovaninsights]

The Elliott Chapters- Part 2

When I pulled up in my driveway, I was completely sober. For one, I don’t drink and drive, and besides, I don’t ever drink enough to get drunk. It’s just not something that I do. I don’t like the fact that it makes people sloppy and clumsy and do things they normally wouldn’t… it’s distasteful.

But Victoria came running out of the house, looking absolutely mad, like insane mad. She banged on my window until I rolled it down.

“You’re wasted, aren’t you?” she cried.

“What? No, not at all,” I said. “You know me… I don’t do that, Victoria.”

“You had me so worried! Do you even check your phone? Where were you? I was so worried you wouldn’t come home. You know that right, I worry for your safety?”

I got out of the car, and she was all over me in an instant. She had her arms wrapped around me, and she was practically falling into me. She was smelling my hair.

“What are you doing?” I asked, trying to gently push her away from me.

“Don’t push me!” she cried. “I just wanna hug you.”

“Are you drunk?” I asked, noticing her words were slurring and her movements were quite messy. “You really shouldn’t become intoxicated with the medication you’re on.”

“Relax, relax,” she slurred. “It’s only once in a while. I just needed a drink to calm down, I was so worried sick. Sometimes you really make me go crazy, Elliott.”

“Sure,” I said, taking her arm and trying to help her inside.

Victoria nearly tripped up the steps. She was clearly wasted. Yeah, just needed a drink. I was upset with her- not because she was wasted, but because she was so goddamn overbearing about everything. I had no room to breathe. Yet somehow I was still alive.

She plopped down onto the couch, giggling and playing with the drawstrings on her hoodie. I went to go make her a coffee; hopefully it would help her sober up. I tried to drown out her obnoxious giggling.

“So you never told me where you went,” Victoria went on. “Where were you? Who were you with? Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

“You’re like the mother I never had,” I said sarcastically.

***

I was never a “typical” kid, but I suppose a lot of people might want to say that in an effort to sound unique or to gain sympathy. I am not just saying this- it’s simply the truth. And I don’t expect a pity party or a pat on the back. But for people to further understand me, I have to explain my story, or else they’ll just be freaked out by me.

When I was in kindergarten, my mother was diagnosed with MS, which is multiple sclerosis. It is an autoimmune disease that targets the central nervous system, and eventually it becomes quite debilitating. The news came as a shock to my family, as my mother was a generally healthy individual. She had simply gone to the doctors complaining of fatigue that never seemed to go away… she assumed maybe stress, or her new medication. It took a long time to get the diagnosis, but after several tests it was finally confirmed.

I was only four, so I don’t have a good recollection of anything from that time. I base this part of the story on what I’ve been told, what I know now, and maybe some old pictures. My father hesitantly talks about it, but my mother is always eager to speak on the topic. She’s become quite active in the community now, trying to increase the awareness on the disease, hoping someday there will be a cure. Well, great for her.

Anyways, being the young age I was, I couldn’t begin to comprehend that news at all. My father simply told me that mommy was sick, and it wasn’t the same as a cold where she would get better… it was just something we all had to work together to manage.

Manage. Meaning it wouldn’t go away; we’d just have to make the best of the situation.

Things were never quite the same after that. I really only had a few years of true childhood. They say to “let kids be kids”, but I never got to do that. And even if someone specifically told me to go be a kid and stop worrying, I would never quit trying to help out my mom. She gave me life, so I figured I owed her that much. I would do whatever she needed.

For a while she kept her job, and she was okay for the most part, with the exception of a few days where she’d need to call in because she felt so terrible. On those days, one of my older brothers stayed home from school to make her lunch and keep her comfortable. She usually didn’t eat; she’d stay curled up in a ball, with the TV on mute in the background.

Apparently, MS isn’t a very predictable disease. It can be hard to keep track of, and not everyone experiences it in the same way… often, it’s very unique to the individual. For my mother, she was mostly fine for about a year after diagnosis, and then she started to decline. Her fatigue was more intense, and she began to experience a lot of pain and weakness throughout her body. This made everyday tasks a struggle, and since my dad couldn’t just quit his job, me and my brothers had to help out a lot.

I have four siblings- two older brothers, Tom and Jake; and two younger brothers, Markus and Nathan. So I was right in the middle- in the middle of my line of siblings, as well as in the middle of this chaos. Unfortunately, life doesn’t usually work out flawlessly as we’d like, and my eldest brother, Tom, ended up turning to drugs as an escape from reality. He was never home, and never sober, so therefore never available to help out with my mom. Jake stuck around for most of his high school years, but when he started going steady with his girlfriend at the time, he slowly started to disappear. At first he just slept over at her place on weekends, and after a while he was basically living there. The fact was, nobody wanted to deal with it. We were only kids- how much could my parents expect us to handle?

My dad had a really good, stable job as a firefighter, but it was very physically demanding. He would come home from long shifts absolutely exhausted, and I honestly didn’t expect him to do much except put his feet up. After all, he earned it. With my mom no longer working, my dad had picked up even more hours- it wasn’t like my mom’s disability check would be enough. That is why as soon as I turned thirteen, I started looking around for work.

I was only in grade eight at the time, and most kids my age either didn’t have a job at all, or they had a paper route, something with little responsibility. While my classmates were running around outside playing football and obsessing over the newest video games- I could never get into video games- I was going through training for my first real job. I would be working at the coffee shop downtown that I so often visited. After all, the staff knew me well, and they knew I was reliable. I think most adults saw me as older than I was, because of the way I acted. Hell, I even looked older- these days, I never get carded for beer yet almost all of my colleagues would certainly be.

The training was easy, very straightforward. Any idiot could do it. You had to be able to clean things- wipe surfaces, sweep floors maybe- and you had to know how to pour various liquids into various sizes of cups. It wasn’t exactly rocket science; I couldn’t help but roll my eyes throughout most of it. Sometimes I would ask sarcastic questions, just to keep things lively.

“So, did you attend a college or university program to get to where you are now?” I would ask. “In the coffee pouring industry, I mean. It’s quite admirable.”

My managers would grin and shake their heads at me, and I know now that I was asking inappropriate questions, but I think they just tried to ignore it as best as they could, because they knew my mother was sick and they knew I would do a good job.

Who would turn down a young lad with a sick mother who was willing to work, no matter what the work was? I’m sure they felt bad for my family. But looking back, I’m glad they did, or else we wouldn’t have had the money that we needed to survive.

I worked as much as I was able to while balancing school and caring for my mother, which left no time for child’s play. I was probably the busiest thirteen year old around. I knew my mother was grateful for everything I did, but the problem was that she never showed it. My father never showed any appreciation, either, and I think their lack of love is what I’ll always remember the most vividly. If you love someone, you ought to show it, right? What the hell is there to lose? I don’t really understand why so many people are so afraid of being honest. Sometimes it feels I’m the only one without a filter, the only one with a “no bullshit” policy.

Maybe my mother was so focused on her illness that she forgot to thank me. Maybe my father was so focused on paying the bills that he forgot to acknowledge me. I don’t know. I can’t begin to imagine what’s going on in other people’s heads… if I start trying to mind read, I’ll drive myself crazy. I know this is something Charlotte suffers from, because she talks about it a lot. She used to always come to me with issues concerning Ross, her ex boyfriend…

“I bet he doesn’t really care about me,” she would say sadly. “He mustn’t love me. Why does he act this way? I guess maybe he acts jealous because he cares too much.”

Her stance on the Ross matter went from one extreme to another, and I could never keep up with the drama. I tried to stay neutral, while at the same time supportive, but I hated the bastard for fucking with her mind so much. I couldn’t help that.

Anyways. Enough about Charlotte. My mind keeps drifting there.

***

The night after my writing class, Victoria apologized for her childlike behaviour and insisted we have a date night to help mend things a little. I agreed- I figured dinner would be a good time to discuss some of the matters that had been floating around in my head.

We went to a small, local pizza place; in fact, the very one we went to on our first date. Victoria seemed a lot different then, but perhaps I was wearing some pretty big rose-colored glasses. I had missed all of the red flags in the rush to find love and most importantly, attention. When we met each other at the party we were both quite vulnerable, quite lost in our lives. It was made known to me that she suffered from bipolar disorder, which is okay, but the red flag was that she hardly took her medication. All of the things you miss when you have a hungry heart…

Victoria stared at me with wide eyes, putting on some sort of puppy dog face for me. What did she want me to do, console her? Apologize to her for going out and enjoying myself for once? Making a friend? Stay calm, Elliott.

“Elliott,” she said. “I’m glad we could go out tonight. I wasn’t sure if you’d be, you know, busy or something…”

“Busy with what?” I asked. “I told you I’d be free tonight; I’m a man of my word.”

“I don’t know, maybe hanging with Charlotte or something.” Victoria shrugged. “Just a wild guess. You have anything to say about that?”

“Victoria, this is supposed to be a nice evening,” I said calmly, “why do we have to discuss Charlotte right now? She’s not relevant.”

“I just want to know if you were planning to hang out with her, and then I’ll be done with that,” she insisted.

She wouldn’t be done with it; she never was. The jealousy and insecurity was never put to rest. Even when we changed topics, I could sense the hostility.

“No, I had no plans to see her tonight,” I said honestly.

“Oh, because you already saw her last night?” Victoria said.

The waitress arrived at our table with our drinks. She must have overheard some of our conversation, because she quickly put down our glasses and left without a word. Victoria glared after her.

“What? I was with Jeff, my instructor, last night,” I told her. “Didn’t I say that?”

“That is what you said,” Victoria chuckled. “Be honest with me, Elliott.”

“If you think I’m not being honest, you don’t know me,” I said. “I am one of the most honest people you will ever meet. If you don’t believe me, that’s your prerogative.”

“Stop using fancy words,” she snapped.

“It’s not really that fancy a word,” I argued. “Anyways. Victoria, can we try to enjoy ourselves, please? This argument is pointless. Have you been taking your medication?”

“I think maybe I took it last night,” she said nonchalantly. “Why do you always ask me that? What are you, my father?”

“You do act like a child sometimes,” I mumbled.

The rest of the night was not that great, but I didn’t really expect it to be, given the way it started. Nothing she said or did really surprised me anymore. Sometimes I thought I was only still with her because I felt bad for her, and I desperately wanted to help her and get her better- maybe that’s the way the staff at the coffee shop felt about me… too much pity to let go.

We decided to postpone the wedding for the time being, because things were just too cloudy to be making life-altering decisions.

***

I wouldn’t say I never had a connection with my parents- my father has always been my mentor, a huge inspiration for me… but I was never emotionally close with him. He wasn’t the man you discuss feelings with- you might discuss grades, or career paths, or the game on TV last night… but never feelings. I didn’t have anyone I could go to when I wanted to talk about deeper issues; that was, until I met Charlotte.

Growing up with Asperger's, I didn’t have any friends until high school. I was a social outcast, the “weird one”. I sat at the very back of each class, usually fidgeting with something or doodling obscure images into my notepad. I never noticed classmates giving me odd looks, but as an adult reflecting on my past now, I know for sure they must have, many times over.

The school board didn’t really have enough funding to support my “disability” as it were, so they just pretended it didn’t exist. My parents didn’t really fight much over it- they were far too busy keeping my mother as healthy as possible, given her condition. After all, external and physical conditions are often looked after much more urgently than conditions that go on “invisibly”.

Despite the lack of supports I had, I always did well in school. In fact, my grades were always above average. Perhaps part of it was because I didn’t have friends, so I couldn’t waste much time goofing off anyways. I’m fairly proud of myself because I managed to keep my grades above average even in high school, when things went even further downhill with my mom and I had to balance school and work.

I always enjoyed school for the purpose of learning- the social circles I could live without. Seeking knowledge was always a hobby of mine. I recall my first day of grade nine quite clearly. I was eager to dive into my classes, to learn something new and fill my brain up with random, useless facts I could impress people with. Who knows, maybe people in high school were slightly more mature and some would actually be impressed by that kind of thing. But probably not.

I made it a point to dress nicely, because I never understood why kids my age had to wear baggy sweaters and ripped jeans to look attractive. I would almost say that is the opposite of attractive, but a lot of views are quite backwards now. I was the only high school student wearing a dress shirt and properly fitted jeans. I wasn’t going to go completely out of my way and wear dress pants as well- that might be pushing it. Business casual.

People stared, but I often didn’t pick up on that kind of thing anyways. A few years later, Charlotte told me that everyone used to stare at me, wondering what the hell my problem was. Why didn’t they just ask?

I knew some of the people in my classes- they had come over from the same elementary school. No one I got along with- they were all the kids that scratched the words “FAG” and “RETARD” into my desk. Not exactly “BFF” material.

People my age were often clueless. They had no idea what they wanted to do, they had no idea who they liked or didn’t, and they didn’t even know who they were, really. Teenagers walk around with an overwhelming sense of insecurity, and I just never really grasped that, perhaps because my filter was never there. And I find it hard to relate to people that have no goals or even any original ideas. This is why I made better acquaintances with the teachers, the parents, and the employees at the coffee shop. Adults were messed up too, no doubt, but at least they had more of a concrete sense of purpose.

Anyways… my first day of grade nine was pretty awful. Why do they waste an entire day having people get to know one another? Is that something the school board supports? I think it is a complete waste of time- these people will not be relevant to your life in a couple of years, and knowing someone’s favorite color and favorite TV show isn’t going to further your education in the slightest.

We sat around in a circle, our asses falling asleep in shitty plastic chairs, taking turns sharing three “fun facts” about ourselves. I really don’t think people should be calling them “fun” facts if they aren’t fun. Why couldn’t we take the time to learn about the solar system, or why people found comfort in religion? Something that you could really go into over coffee. I found myself getting angry, trying my best to get through the “lesson”. I guess they called it “orientation day”, or “grade nine day”. The teacher thought my reaction was quite funny, and I think he was doing it only because he had to as part of his job, so I chose not to say anything. Well, at least everyone else seemed to have fun.

I overheard people chatting about it in the hallways. They were all huddled in groups, only half paying attention and half scrolling through their Facebook feeds on their phones.

“Miss Vance is really cool, like, we didn’t have to do any work today,” one girl said happily. “What was it like being in Mr. Flenderson’s class?”

“Oh, we just played a few orientation games or whatever you call them,” another girl replied. “Hey, did anyone else notice that weird guy that kinda kept to himself? I can’t remember his name. Not a common name.”

“Elliott, you mean?”

“Yeah, that guy. Wasn’t he weird? Why didn’t he say anything?”

Did anyone else notice me? Wow. Well clearly they didn’t notice me as they talked about me, for I was standing right across the hall. I didn’t try to hide, or walk away… I embraced it. I wasn’t embarrassed or upset, I was merely curious. What did these morons think of me?

“I don’t know,” one guy muttered. “I went to elementary school with the guy. He’s a fucking weirdo. Always sits by himself in the corner, only talks when he wants to make a smart-ass remark about something, thinks he’s better than everyone else.”

“Yeah! I totally get that vibe. I guess I’m not really surprised he doesn’t have friends.”

A few of them giggled at that, and they slammed their lockers and started towards their next class. A couple of people beside me were staring at me- they knew they were talking about me; I think they were shocked at my flat response. What did they expect, a dramatic reaction? Did they expect me to march over to them, slam them against the lockers and scream at them not to mess with me? Pathetic.

But I caught myself imagining it for a moment, just a moment- walking over there, fists clenched, seeing their faces full of fear when they realize they laugh at me because they’re scared of me. I’d grab that fucking tool by the collar of his forty-five dollar American Eagle shirt and ram him into the lockers, staring him down without breaking contact. He’d be shitting his pants. The girls would look on, not sure what to do. It probably wouldn’t stop there. I’d drop him for a moment, like a basketball, and pause for dramatic effect. Then, relentlessly, I’d start throwing punches to his stomach and he wouldn’t be able to do a thing because he’s all talk and he knows it. He’s scrawny, probably half my body weight. I could take him on without question. In fact, I could right now… the image in my mind was slightly intriguing…

But I shook it off. I couldn’t possibly do that. I had to keep up appearances, keep my record clean and keep the possibility open that one day my parents would be proud of me. But I so badly wanted to; all of a sudden I realized I was angry for everything that had happened to me and I had no way to express it.

And that is why I signed up for drama class.

[haydenstudiesblog-blog]

Writer Ask-Meme

“This isn’t studyblr-related shocker right? but I’m a writer so I wanted to do something fun that will also allow my followers to get to know me a little better!

01: When did you first start writing?

I started writing when I was 10 (around 10, I don’t remember for sure. It was before I started middle school)

02: What was your favorite book growing up?

While I wish I could say it was Harry Potter, I didn’t read that until a little over a year ago (in college). I’d have to say The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, I actually want to get a tattoo about it :)

03: Are you an avid reader?

YES! Reading is my all-time favorite activity. I have too many books in my TBR pile (my theoretical one, they’re all on a shelf). I’ve reread some books more times than I can count because I love them so much, but recently I’ve been “broadening my horizons” that sound so lame and reading new authors and genres.

04: Have you ever thrown a book across the room?

Not that I can recall. I don’t think I could even if I wanted to, I try to take care of my books for as long as I can (until they start to get old, then I just embrace them being broken-in except my HP books those are kept somewhere safe)

05: Did you take writing courses in school/college?

WELL. At my current university I decided to enroll in an Elements of Creative Writing course this fall, which I’m excited about. I’m also going to be taking Intro to Professional Writing. If all goes well, I’m hoping to transfer to a different university to finish up school and major in English and Creative Writing (one whole major, not 2), so I’ll be taking more literature and writing courses.

06: Have you read any writing-advice books?

I’m reading an old textbook that I had when I took a creative writing course in high school through our local community college (back when I had health problems and couldn’t finish the course but already had the book so I kept it and didn’t read it, so I don’t count this course as a creative writing course I’ve taken). So I decided to read it now. I also have a list of books on writing that I’m looking to buy!

07: Have you ever been part of a critique group?

When I was in 5th grade we had an assignment to write a short story. I did, and my teacher said it was amazing and took me to a writer’s workshop where shy-little-me was forced to sit at a table with strangers my age and take turns reading our stories aloud. I hated it, but we got to go to McDonalds after. Also since then I’ve looked back at the story I wrote and it super sucks but maybe I’ll try to rewrite it because the idea is decent at least.

08: What’s the best piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten?

Honestly, I don’t even remember. What a boring answer.

09: What’s the worst piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten?

It’s not really feedback, but in high school I wrote a research paper and my best friend at the time peer reviewed it and she tried to cross out a bunch of my commas. I was so annoyed because she was horrible at grammar. I ended up leaving all the commas and I did great on the paper haha!

10: What’s your biggest writer pet-peeve?

Bad grammar. Hands-down. I’ll be reading someone else’s writing (I look over my boyfriend’s and sister’s papers for them) and I genuinely get baffled by how bad their spelling is or how they don’t know when to use a semi-colon. In my head it’s all just second nature (not that I don’t make mistakes, especially because I hate editing my own work so sometimes I just don’t, but still!).

11: What’s your favorite book cover?

I have two, and they’re for the same books. The new HP covers!!! I LOVE the ones where you line up the books and the spines create Hogwarts. I also love the ones that have the horcruxes in them. I want to buy those sets, but I literally just got my own hard cover set from my mom for Christmas (they came in a box that looks like a trunk) so I’d feel bad for buying new books. They just look SO COOL though. 

12: Who is your favorite author?

I currently love Michael Crichton (I said I’m broadening my horizons, these are the books I’m using to do that). I’ve loved Sarah Dessen for a very long time; I own all of her books, and I preorder her new ones. But of course I have to mention J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer. Not everyone is a HP fan and not everyone loves the Twilight series, but I’m die-hard HP and I’ve read the Twilight series twice. 

13: What’s your favorite writing quote?

“We could have been killed- or worse, expelled.” -Hermione Granger, HP

14: What’s your favorite writing blog?

I don’t have one because I can’t find any!

15: What would you say has inspired you the most?

Emma Watson and J.K. Rowling. I feel like it’s so easy for characters from the HP series to just be identified as their characters, but Emma went to college and she does amazing things and she’s just made a great name for herself and I’ve always loved her. J.K. Rowling is obvious, if you don’t know her back story you should look it up (I’m not going to talk about it, it’ll make this post even longer).

16: How do you feel about movies based on books?

They’re never good enough. My preference is (if I can help it) to watch the movie before I read the book, so I’m not disappointed. If I read the book and then watch the movie, I’ll be upset with how much they changed or left out. If I watch the movie first and then go and read the book, I can’t be as disappointed with bad casting (because they’re already planted in my head and I didn’t have an opportunity to create my own characters) and the storyline is always just better because you get MORE information instead of them leaving things out!

17: Would you like your books to be turned into TV shows, movies, video games, or none?

Movies, definitely. Any time I begin a story I imagine what it would be like if it were a movie. Actually, my process is that I usually hear a song and I think of a storyline for it (I prefer to listen to songs that tell stories in my free time, rap and stuff is for clubbing haha) and then I write a story with that song in mind. I love letting music inspire me. But yes, from the very beginning I usually picture my books as movies.

18: How do you feel about love triangles?

I guess I don’t have much of an opinion. Wait JK I do, I’m currently writing about one. Sort of. They can be good if they’re done correctly, sometimes they can just be too predictable. IMO, if you use a love triangle you should incorporate some elements of surprise into your story, things to keep the reader on their toes, especially if the love triangle itself becomes predictable. 

19: Do you prefer writing on a computer or longhand?

I love the idea of writing longhand, but I write kind of weird and my hand cramps up fast, I hate my handwriting (I write too big), and typing works better for me because I can get my thoughts out much faster.

20: What’s your favorite writing program?

I’m going to assume this is in regards to Microsoft Word, Pages, etc? I personally use Scrivener. I paid, like, $45 for it but it’s just a one-time payment. I saw that a lot of writers use it because it has tools for plotting, characters, it’s just really organized. I watched tutorials on it and then I did a 30-day free trial (I don’t think it strictly goes by days, I think it counts the days you open the program and use it) and I fell in love, so I bought it and I haven’t used Word since (except for homework and notes, but I’m going to try to switch to OneNote for that).

21: Do you outline?

No, but I really should. I’ve been trying to. Like, I’ll at least put into Scrivener in a separate folder the idea of my story and maybe a storyline, how I know I want it to end and what could happen in the middle. But it’s by no means an outline, and I really do need to work on that. I think it would help me a lot.

22: Do you start with characters or plot?

I definitely start with plot. Like I said before, I hear a song and I think of a story and then I just go from there.

23: What’s your favorite and least favorite part of making characters?

My favorite part is definitely coming up with their personalities, and my least favorite has to be deciding their names and how they look. It takes me forever to decide on names, and I change them a lot.

24: What’s your favorite and least favorite part of plotting?

I don’t know if this is considered plotting, but it’s SO hard for me to figure out where and when my story should begin. I also hate trying to put in fillers in-between all the scenes that I know I want to happen. I’ve read about a process where people who write the way I do write out the scenes they already have in their head, and then they just go from there. They don’t write in order. So maybe I should try that, just write as it comes.

25: What advice would you give to young writers?

Oh god, I’m only 20, I still consider myself a young writer! I don’t think I’m in any position to give advice. BUT, if you’re in high school and you have a passion for reading and writing, start considering your options and make sure you get into a good school that has a good program. I didn’t do that because I was stupid, and I should have because I’m at a university that I don’t enjoy and I’m trying to transfer.

26: Which do you enjoy reading the most: physical, ebook, or both?

Physical, 100%.

27: Which is your favorite genre to write?

It’s been Young Adult for a while (before I even knew what YA was, or that what I was writing was YA), but as I’m getting older I’m noticing that my writing is maturing a bit more.

28: Which do you find hardest: the beginning, the middle, or the end?

The beginning

29: Which do you find easiest: writing or editing?

Writing. Sometimes I’m not in the mood to edit, my work or anyone else’s.

30: Have you ever written fan-fiction?

Nope!

31: Have you ever been published?

HA. I wish.

32: How do you feel about friends and close relatives reading your work?

I’m really shy and self-conscious so I don’t let anyone read my writing. They have, though, because they’re stinkers and they did it secretly. I recently found out that my mom printed out all of my old stories from our old computer and kept them in a binder and would show people.

33: Are you interested in having your work published?

Yes, even though I just said I’m shy and won’t let people I know read it. I think things are easier when people I don’t know read my stuff. So weird.

34: Describe your writing space.

My writing space isn’t one space yet. I’m going to be moving into an apartment out at my school with some roommates, and I plan on making my room really calming and relaxing. Just a bunch of pastel colors, because I’ve found that those calm me. I want twinkle lights in my room, a fuzzy rug, candles, all of it. Recently I’ve been going to our student union/common area and library to write at school, though. The hustle and bustle keeps my mind working. I can’t work in silence, I’ve found that out the hard way.

35: What’s your favorite time of day for writing?

I usually write in the afternoon and whenever I have free time because I’m a full-time student. I do good writing at night, though. I’ve read that you should lay down and write at night, because that’s where you do your best thinking. It’s worked for me so far!

36: Do you listen to music when you write?

While I write and while I do homework I’ll look up the piano instrumentals to Disney songs and I turn them down so I just barely hear them.

37: What’s your oldest WIP?

If this means Work In Progress (God I hope it does or I’ll feel so stupid!), I couldn’t even tell you honestly. All of my writings are WIPs.

38: What’s your current WIP?

It’s about two women who are best friends. One gets engaged and the other is either in love with the guy, having an affair with him, or both. I haven’t decided yet. There’s more to it, but that’s the gist.

39: What’s the weirdest story idea you’ve ever had?

I don’t think I’ve ever had any weird ones. If I have they’re from middle school and I’ve forgotten about them (thank god).

40: Which is your favorite original character, and why?

SUCH a boring answer, but I don’t have one! UGH UGH UGH.

41: What do you do when characters don’t follow the outline?

Considering I don’t use much of an outline, I just follow them where they try to go. It’s usually better than what I had in mind, anyway.

42: Do you enjoy making your characters suffer?

.... No.... Of course not, what an awful question............... No writer EVER enjoys that, nope, never.....

43: Have you ever killed a main character?

Not yet... :)

44: What’s the weirdest character concept you’ve ever come up with?

I haven’t really come up with any weird ones.

45: What’s your favorite character name?

Cora

46: Describe your perfect writing space.

See #34, that’s my dream space. Hopefully I can make it happen. Also, a giant, beautiful old library surrounded by books but also in a nook by myself would be amazing.

47: If you could steal one character from another author and make them yours, who would it be and why?

Hermione Granger. I could only dream of creating someone so iconic as her character. She’s my dream character, and just reminds me so much of myself. In case you haven’t guessed yet she’s my favorite character ever haha

48: If you could write the next book of any series, which one would it be, and what would you make the book about?

I WOULD MAKE ANOTHER HARRY POTTER BOOK. I so badly just want to do this on my own (basically fan-fiction I guess?) but never try to publish it or anything. I would make it about everyone where they are now, where they work and their kids. Not ABOUT their kids, but still just about them. Actually I don’t think I’ll ever attempt that because I wouldn’t execute each character correctly and I’d never be happy with it, but yeah.

49: If you could write a collaboration with another author, who would it be an what would you write about?

Okay. Sarah Dessen, a YA novel, not sure what it’d be about. Maybe she could help me with one of my own ideas. J. K. Rowling, we could collaborate on a new HP book (lol in my dreams). Stephen King, we can write whatever the hell he wants to write about because he’s amazing and I love his writing and it’d be a huge honor to even meet him.

50. If you could live in any fictional world, which would it be?

You can probably guess this. Obviously the world of Harry Potter. I literally got a fake Hogwarts acceptance letter, a student ID, and potions bottles for Christmas when I was little. I played Harry Potter every day with my sister (surprise, I was Hermione).

If you read this, thank you love you’re so sweet! I super appreciate it! This was super fun to do, I honestly love answering random questions. My boyfriend and I ask each other random questions that we look up online all the time because it’s just fun to think of answers and stuff. :)

xx Hayden 

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HOME>BEING BIPOLAR & WORKING AROUND IT

Being Bipolar & Working Around It

BY Chris Swingle

15 COMMENTS

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Managing bipolar is a full-time job. No wonder full-time employment can be a challenge. We look at the different ways people deal with that.



By Chris Swingle

For most of his working life, Charles of Florida took pride in his identity as a hard-driving professional. At different times, he ran a jewelry repair shop, directed campaigns for the United Way, and worked around the clock as a political fund-raiser.

“I enjoyed the power and the prestige, and I enjoyed the money,” the 58-year-old says.

That all changed when he hit a wall of depression seven years ago. He couldn’t stop crying. Everything felt threatening. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he realized the high energy and workaholic tendency he’d had since his early teens were hypomanic symptoms.

Since then, Charles has been able to manage only slow-paced, part-time work. He puts in about 10 hours a week posting sermons and other information on two church websites.

Financially, “it’s been like falling off a cliff,” he says. No more expensive cars, fine clothes, and vacations in the Caribbean. His savings are gone and he depends on food stamps and government support. On top of that, he’s traveling a long road of redefining himself in terms beyond, “So, what do you do?”

Kathleen, 45, of Connecticut, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when she became manic during her first year at Harvard Law School. With her degree in hand and her disorder under treatment, she thought representing clients at a legal aid program would be her dream job. Then she was voluntarily hospitalized five times over 18 months for depression. It became obvious that she couldn’t stay in that line of work and stay in balance.

Now she’s thriving in a position with a legal aid hotline, she says, “doing a job I absolutely love.”

Like many people with bipolar disorder, Charles and Kathleen have learned that finding the right employment fit is a key to managing their mood disorder. Solutions vary from individual to individual: switching to a different type of job, scaling back to part-time employment, or taking on volunteer positions as a way to get the structure, socialization and satisfaction provided by work.

There’s nothing really wrong with being a ‘Type B’ person. It’s just different for me.

Multiple studies have found that a majority of people with bipolar don’t hold a paid job. In an analysis of work functioning that appeared in the February-March 2007 issue of Bipolar Disorders, Canadian researchers phrased it this way: “Employment rates are relatively low in this patient population.”

The heightened creativity and energy of hypomania can lead to distractibility and ultimate loss of productivity, while full-blown mania may cause a worker to become disruptive, aggressive and prone to errors in judgment.

And research suggests the fatigue, irritability, and inability to concentrate in a depressive phase can hurt job performance even more. A review of nine studies involving more than 3,000 people, published online on August 6, 2012 in the Journal of Affective Disorders, found that cognitive deficits and depressive symptoms were predictive of unemployment.

Yet quite apart from economic necessity, work can be a major factor in our sense of self and how others see us. Many people go through a grief process when they have to stop working because of a mental health crisis, says Larry Kohn, MS, of the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Boston University.

“It’s hard letting go,” agrees Charles, who misses the prestige he felt in his former high-powered pursuits. It’s only recently that he’s been able to tell himself, “There’s nothing really wrong with being a ‘Type B’ person. It’s just different for me.”

He’s trying to change his focus from what he’s missing in his life to what he can accomplish now. For example, he used his marketing and advertising skills to help raise more funds at his church’s fall festival. In consultation with his psychologist and other trusted advisors, he’s also looking into creating a part-time project that would protect his own mental health while he helps other people with mental disorders find work.

While he still needs to be able to adjust his schedule depending on his bipolar symptoms, he says, “I hope to find satisfaction and a sense of myself doing something worthwhile.”

Am I what I do?

Katherine, also had to make peace with the fact that part-time work and volunteering are all she can manage right now. In dialectical behavioral therapy she learned a technique called “radical acceptance,” which helps her let go of things she can’t change.

When she first lost a job nine years ago because she had trouble concentrating, she was devastated.

“Numbers were always my thing. To know my numbers had failed me or I had failed the numbers, was something I never dreamed would happen,” says Katherine, who lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “I felt like an idiot—and I’m a very intelligent woman.”

Katherine had handled 50 hours a week as the bookkeeper and buyer for a seafood store. She was also helping her husband out with a pest control business they started together in 1994. Then her marriage fell apart and maniastruck, disrupting her accuracy and ability to focus.

For two years, she and her boss tried various accommodations: different shifts, fewer hours and responsibilities, having her work from home. In the end, her accuracy hadn’t improved enough for her to keep the job and they parted ways amicably.

There’s nothing really wrong with being a ‘Type B’ person. It’s just different for me.

There were several stumbles as Katherine learned to mesh employment with managing her bipolar. She had to take several months’ leave from her next job, a part time position as a medical clerk. Back in the workplace, putting in 24 hours a week or more, she was easily thrown off balance.

“Even the ringing of a phone behind me would throw me off. I wouldn’t know where I was in the work, or in the building,” she recalls.

Mary Ann, a consultant based in Waterdown, Ontario, develops workplace plans with people who have experienced mental illness and are trying to stay in professional-level jobs or transition back to work after a leave. She says research has found that whether people can return to work after disability leave depends on their mental health (including recovery from symptoms), whether they have coping strategies for stressors, and whether workplace issues that may have contributed to the episode have been resolved.

She recommends putting the plan in writing so that the employer knows what the employee needs to stay productive at work and what steps to take if the worker has performance or behavioral problems in the future. This doesn’t require disclosing a diagnosis because it focuses exclusively on workplace issues and solutions, she says.

If a supervisor is aware of the diagnosis, Mary Ann says, the employee could choose to include warning signs of an impending mental health crisis and what personal contact or practitioner to call. If an employee has a company car and credit card, the plan could indicate when those should be withheld in case an employee’s judgment is impaired.

Of course, not everyone is comfortable sharing mental health issues with the boss. Some employees confide only in a trusted co-worker who’s willing to point out when behavior is shifting. Others keep their diagnosis to themselves and do their own monitoring at work and at home.

“The main thing I talk to people about is this concept of taking one’s own temperature,” says Boston University’s Kohn. A mood episode “doesn’t have to be some freaky thing that comes on and you’re at the mercy of it like a storm.”

Look for changes in your sleep, socialization, eating and spending habits, he advises. Notice if you’re having negative incidents with other people. Then use skills and supports—people, places, things or activities you turn to—to help you get back to an even keel.

Swisher has figured out through trial and error that working 15 hours a week is her maximum…. Her advice: Know or learn what your limits are. LEVEL BEST (right) Representing legal-aid clients wasn’t a good fit for lawyer Kathleen Flaherty, but she’s been “hospital-free” in a more flexible position at a hotline.

When it’s necessary to take a medical leave, Kohn says, transitioning back with part-time work can be “a great way to get your sea legs. To go from no work to 40 hours a week can be a shock to the system.”

Katherine has figured out through trial and error that working 15 hours a week is her maximum. More than that and her moods cycle rapidly, her behavior becomes irrational, and she can’t concentrate. Her advice: “Know or learn what your limits are. And have a solid support system.”

With exercise, volunteer work, and a positive attitude contributing to her recovery, Katherine has patched together a blend of small jobs that allow her to maintain equilibrium. She manages a four-unit apartment building, which takes anywhere from one to eight hours a week. She assists a 90-year-old neighbor with rides and chores. She receives disability benefits, which limits additional earnings to around $1,000 a month.

When Katherine qualified for disability, she says, she initially felt worthless. It helped when someone told her she’d been paying for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), which is funded through payroll taxes, since she began working at age 15.

Even if you’re in a position that you can’t work now, it doesn’t mean you’re not ever going to be able to work.

Still, she’s had to adjust to living on a third of the income she once had. She brings the lessons of radical acceptance to her new lifestyle, where a broken appliance requires careful juggling of her budget. “It takes me a long time to save for things,” she says.

On the job

Sometimes small changes at work can allow an employee to remain reliable and productive. Someone who struggles to concentrate can benefit from written job instructions or being able to tape-record instructions and meetings, says Len Statham, an employment and economic self-sufficiency specialist for the New York state Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services.

“These are very small things,” he notes, but for countless people, “they’ve been job savers.”

Reasonable workplace accommodations for a mental disability—required in Canada under each province’s Human Rights Act and in the United States by the federal Americans with Disabilities Act— could include having a quieter or more brightly lit work space, taking several short breaks rather than one long one, or having flexible hours in order to attend therapy sessions.

Flaherty, the Connecticut lawyer, copes with her 35-hour work week by building health-enhancing habits into the day. She uses part of her hour-long lunch break to either take a walk outside with co-workers or nap in her office with a pillow and a blanket.

It hasn’t always been smooth sailing. There was a period at the hotline when she would take one call and then need a break, overwhelmed by the urge to flee. She persisted until those strong feelings faded and she could function normally.

As a support group facilitator with the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Flaherty has seen how different jobs suit different people. Some like a more rigid, predictable situation, while others like a mix of activities. The flexibility of working from home could be a perfect solution for one individual while another would find it too isolating.

Kohn agrees that it’s impossible to generalize about the “right” type of work for someone with bipolar. He points out that a job that might seem low in stress could be nerve-racking if it comes with a grumpy, micromanaging boss.

Above all, says Flaherty, don’t despair if it takes time to find the right solution for you.

“Even if you’re in a position that you can’t work now, it doesn’t mean you’re not ever going to be able to work,” she says. “You still have an identity and you’re still a person if you don’t have a job.”

*   *   *   *   *

Putting disability to good use

 Regina, says she left “some serious jobs” during bouts of depression or unrecognized mania. She made an abrupt departure from a national magazine where she was a celebrity interviewer. She impulsively quit “a good government job” with the U.S. Treasury Department.

“Nobody quits those, right?” the 57-year-old asks quizzically.

Although she picked up freelance work between her steady jobs, her finances inevitably took a hit. “It was tough because I often didn’t have [health] insurance … and the work wasn’t steady,” she says.

While doing contract work with the Social Security Administration in 2004, she learned about a program that encourages federal agencies to hire people with disabilities. It was an “Aha!” moment, but there was one hitch: She would have to be declared “disabled.”

“I ruminated about it for about eight months,” she says. “I didn’t know if I wanted to designate myself as such.” Financial need won out. Regina went through her state vocational organization and her psychiatrist to be approved, then pursued a job through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s Schedule A.

Regina has been a public affairs specialist with the government for the past eight years. It helps that start times for the work day are flexible, her duties aren’t overwhelming, and her supervisor overlooks the occasional out-of-bounds remark.

“I tell myself that no matter how badly I want to quit, I simply can’t,” she says. “And if I were to do it impulsively, I might now have more recourse due to my documented disability.”

Taking a step back to move forward

Curtis, of Alberta, (not pictured) was diagnosed with bipolar I when heavy depression and a manic phase disrupted his college studies in electrical engineering. With treatment, he was able to return to university, graduate, and find work as an engineer.

Unfortunately, his job involved daily meetings with anywhere from 3 to 20 people. His anxious dread in those meetings got so bad he ended up quitting.

To address his anxiety, he followed his psychologist’s advice to exercise regularly and practiced derailing his negative self-talk. He grew confident enough to apply for another engineering job, but before his final interview he was nailed by depression. He realized he couldn’t go back to his chosen field until he had his illness under better control.

In the meantime, his doctor suggested finding less stressful employment. “I think he wanted me to enter the work force at a level where I would not feel overwhelmed,” says Curtis.

Curtis had worked as a pipe layer and handled stock at a department store, so he was comfortable swapping his white-collar career for blue collar jobs in a warehouse, a liquor store, and a grocery store.

“All of the jobs I’ve had have benefited me in ways I would not

have expected,” he says. For example, the retail work gave him more exposure to dealing with the public.

He also joined Toastmasters to further improve his social skills and ability to be in front of groups. He tracks symptoms in a daily journal and seeks help if he sees red flags several days in a row. With his new skills and tools, he says, he feels ready to move back into engineering.

Salvaging her self-worth

Three years into her high-stress job as a negotiator for a labor union, Kimberly S. of, Ontario, went out on leave because of a major depressive crash. It was the first of “many shorter leaves” over the next decade, she says.

She would generally take from one to six months off to recover, then return to the same long hours and demanding responsibilities. (An attempt to give her a “special assignment” backfired, she says, because having more down time allowed her anxiety to spiral.)

Her last leave started in 2006—and she hasn’t been back. Her psychiatrist told her she shouldn’t attempt to work again

“This left me believing I was ‘useless’ to society,” says Kimberly, 47. “That turns out to be far from true.”

Kimberly has found purpose and satisfaction through volunteering. Knowing that she fills a need, whether as an usher at her church on Sunday or answering phones for her 12-step program one afternoon a week, fends off feelings of worthlessness that can be toxic for her.

“I have many skills and talents and I needed to find a way to put those skills to use,” she says. “I’ve learned that I need to contribute to society to feel whole.”

She still has to be careful not to overcommit, especially when she’s hypomanic and ready to take on the world. “The trick for me has been learning how much is too much for me,” she notes. “I’ve had to learn to say, ‘No, I can’t.’ My full-time job is managing my illness.”

*   *   *   *   *

Printed as “What WORK Works for You?”Winter 2013

DEPRESSION, DISABILITY, MANIA, RECOVERY, SLEEP, WINTER 2013, WORK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Swingle

Chris Swingle is a freelance writer based in Brighton, New York, who has covered health issues for years.

15 COMMENTS

Bipolar Di June 11, 2017 at 12:46 am

Reply

I was 56 when my psychiatrist suggested I quit my customer service job. After leaving that company, I worked as a temp for a few months more but came to the realization I needed to get out of the work force.

I applied for SSDI and was approved 3 months later. I applied for Vocational Rehabilitation but when I started working with my counselor it became very clear I wasn’t ready to return to work.

It was really hard to accept I wasn’t employable. I’d held down deadline driven jobs with lots of responsibility and done well at them. Now I wasn’t able to do data entry!

When speaking to folks, I say I took early retirement. I volunteer as a museum docent and teach crafts to developmentally adults. As a recovering alcoholic, I attend 12 step meetings. That is my small way of giving back to society for the financial assistance I receive.

Between my current age (63) and my mental health issues, I’ve accepted that a “regular” job isn’t in my future. I have a goal to start a blog and to start some freelance writing.

V June 6, 2017 at 9:45 am

Reply

I always find it strange when my Psychiatrist says “are you working at the moment?” Why wouldn’t I be? I appreciate that everyone is different and has different symptoms. I’ve had periods of absence but in the main have worked continuously since I was 16. I’m now 41. At times it would be great to be part time and would help me manage a bit better, but bills have to be paid.

For me working with very supportive colleagues in a low stress environment seems to be working. I may need to rest a lot outwith work at times, but its manageable.

Scout June 5, 2017 at 7:26 pm

Reply

Exactly where I am in my life. Quit my job 6 months ago, which felt like I quit my life, and trying to do freelance work but it’s not coming in as I hoped. Apart from money issues I also feel a bit worthless and not grounded.

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bphope

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT PROFITS

And yet because of the slow sales cycle. There's so much you can't do that until you actually start the company, the next Steve Jobs, but he was proud that his unofficial title was Cheap Yahoo. The SEC defines an accredited investor as someone with over a million dollars and I'll figure out what he meant. The politicians all saying the same thing. Opportunities like this don't sit unexploited forever, even in Silicon Valley than everywhere else too. Com. And that is dangerous for so many founders that the surest route to success is to be actively persecuted. You may wonder how much of a problem. This is just a matter of pride, and a server collocated at an ISP. Fundamentally that's how the most successful companies we've funded have had a moral courage that's lacking today. But should you start a startup by just writing code.

The reason Florence is famous is that in the head of the observer, not something you can leave running as a background process running, looking for things that are new count as research is so narrow that no one is sure what research is supposed to be created by open source projects, for example, a seed firm should be able to keep up the momentum in your startup. East Coast after Yahoo. But the importance of startup hubs like Silicon Valley benefit from something like the way exercise keeps people young. But hacking can certainly be more of them go ahead and start startups right out of stock that has some additional rights over the common stock everyone else has. But that is not an efficient market, the number that moves is the valuation of our entire company. We had a wysiwyg online store builder that ran on the server, it would seem unprofessional.1 2 fundraising is to get lots of referrals. No matter how much money Yahoo would make from each link.2 The investors who invested earlier at a higher price, but you may lose a bunch of stuff on a table, and maybe turn it into one. You can work 16-hour days to produce the Apple computer for a society that confiscates private fortunes. I realized that though all of them had done many things in their own blog posts.

Is it a problem if customers feel pinched: you may even be the majority. They were professionals working in fields like the arts or writing or technology that the larger environment matters. I am always looking. Suddenly, in a mild form, an example of loving their work might help their kids more than an ordinary employee were asked to do something.3 They send spam because it works. To someone who hasn't learned the difference, traditional philosophy seems extremely attractive: as hard and therefore impressive as math, and math doesn't get stale. It's a smart move. Because people in the world for the better. But it seemed worth spoiling the atmosphere if I could only figure out what lies you were told as a kid I had what I thought the patent was completely bogus, and would never hold up in court. This is the counterexample to the design principle I just mentioned. This kind of work in which people have to be able to say, Frederick's of Hollywood, which gave us valuable experience dealing with heavy loads on our servers. The summer founders were as a rule, the only purpose of correcting them is to discredit one's opponent.4

That is so much better than the others'. Buildings If you go to the public markets. What have other people learned about design? As a Lisp hacker. Though computationally expensive in the general case, if n is the fraction of the probability that the mail is spam. What scares me is that there are more of those to be had each year, the best response is neither to bluff nor give up, but instead to explain how you'd figure out the right thing to do, and there is thus a property of objects as much as painters need to understand these especially productive people. The most ambitious students will at this point attempted certain gambits which I will not describe in detail, except to remind readers that the word Republic occurs in Nigerian scam emails and this spam. You may be thinking, why deal with investors at all?

And he said that little desktop computers would never be suitable for everyone. And since individual performance is so hard to make their own. That's an interesting idea.5 That depends on how well they do are not orthogonal.6 And that is more likely to happen in the Bay Area it's the Band of Angels.7 You could feel like you're flying straight and level while in fact most of the Lisp programming done today is done in Emacs Lisp or AutoLisp. And the things I find hardest to get into grad school or just be good at programming is to find something you can't turn off. By the time you get throngs of geeks. I'm British by birth. Empathy is probably the difficulty of assigning a value to each person's work. Because they can't predict the winners in advance?

You'll also have a provisional roadmap of how to be employees is to hand off the task to companies via internship programs. The ideas that come to them for funding. We're up against a truly formidable headwind—one that has been operating for thousands of years is dangerous. Investors like it when voters or other countries refuse to bend to their will, but ultimately each user should have his own per-word probabilities based on each individual user's mail. Electricity seemed an airy intangible. But Lisp macros are unique. Merchants bid a percentage of their profits? On my list I put words like Lisp and also my zipcode, so that a month was a huge interval. Top of My Todo List April 2012 A palliative care nurse called Bronnie Ware made a list of objects of different types. Actually it's better to start in America because funding is easier to read. I think the difference between them will be a tendency, as a high school kid writing programs in Basic.

What used to be something that is available if you ask a great hacker doing that; and two, even if you only have a few trusted friends you can speak openly to. Recently I've spent some time trying to push your price down. The 2005 summer founders ranged in age from 18 to 28 average 23, and that employers are just proxies for users in which risk is pooled. It sounds crazy, but there's a continuum here. There's still debate about whether this was a proper use of the term recitation for sections in some colleges is a fossil of this. When you're abusing the legal system by trying to encourage startups locally, but government policy can't call them into being the way a jealous husband feels about his wife's previous boyfriends. I've been telling founders that the company was really successful. After a few seconds it struck me how familiar they seemed.8 What's really uncool is to be undisciplined. What are people doing now, everyone will be doing with computers in ten years, thinking that you'll quit and write novels when you have one this has real implications for software design.

Even if you were going back to the problems they solved, look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself. You should respond in kind when investors behave upstandingly too. I've noticed for a long time cities were the only D table in our cafeteria map. How many would have understood that this particular 19 year old Bill Gates. Startups prosper in some places.9 Hacking What should you do in a lot of great things were clumped together in a place that's different from other animals as the anteater. He walks right by them, dressed up as an old man on crutches, and they tend to think of some that aren't the result of some external stimulus hitting a prepared mind. Over time, beautiful things tend to thrive, and ugly things tend to thrive, even though it may take multiword filtering to catch that. Civil War was about slavery; people would be intolerable. Y Combinator is that founders are willing to compromise.

Notes

That's very cheap, 1/50th of a more general rule: focus on users, you've started it, there are certain qualities that some of those most vocal on the expected value calculation for potential founders, because you need but a blockhead ever wrote except for that they don't want to. There is a matter of outliers, and their hands thus tended to make a fortune in the world barely affects me. I.

On Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 1996. Robert Morris wrote the first version was mostly Lisp, you don't need.

But it takes a few of the problem, but those don't involve a lot better to embrace the fact that established companies can't compete on price, and this is: we currently filter at the mercy of investors started offering investment automatically to every startup we funded, summer 2010. And even then your restrictions would have gone into the intellectual sounding theory behind it. E-Mail. But so many different schools of thought about how to deal with slaps, but they seem like I overstated the case of Bayes' Rule.

A round. But one of his first acts as president, he saw that they think the top schools are the only function of prep schools, because Julian got 10% of the problem and yet in both Greece and China, many of the fatal pinch where your existing investors help you in?

No VC will admit they're influenced by buzz. Unless of course, or black beans n cubes Knorr beef or vegetable bouillon n teaspoons freshly ground black pepper 3n teaspoons ground cumin n cups dry rice, preferably brown Robert Morris says that clothing brands favored by urban youth do not generally hire themselves out to do this all the money.

Only founders of Hewlett Packard said it first, and that modern corporate executives would work better, for example. And while they tried to lowball them. How can people who lost were us. If you're dealing with the other hand, he tried to preserve their wealth by forbidding the export of gold or silver.

On the other people who should quit their day job writing software goes up more than 20 years, maybe they'll listen to them rather than trying to upgrade an existing investor, and there didn't seem to them till they also influence one another both directly and indirectly. He did eventually graduate at about 26. They each constrain the other meanings are fairly closely related. Except text editors and compilers.

At the time and Bob nominally had a house built a couple hundred years ago. S P 500 CEOs in the former, because talks are made of spolia. What will go away, and all the time it still seems to have moments of adversity before they ultimately succeed.

Stone, op. Actually he's no better or worse than he was before, but that it's a departure from the Dutch not to quit their day job. So if you're a big effect on college admissions there would be to write your dissertation in the fall of 2008 but no doubt often are, but more often than not what it would have been about 2,000. She was always good at acting that way.

[dallasareaopinion]

Story part 3  --nothing else this evening

Dave worked hard to fly under the radar. He had figured out the relationship between the Artificial Intelligence management and the Corporate leaders early on. The artificial intelligence supplied him with all the information he requested. Dave was, by accident, developing a compilation of human history and writing it down. He was not sharing this information in his writing. He found it very interesting and was working hard to research where man became separated from himself or became less a social animal and more attached to machine interactions over humans. He realized this was somewhat of a new phenomenon.

He was informed of the interest of certain corporate leaders, Mr. Samson being one of them. He paid no attention to their attempts to discover him. He worked with the Artificial Intelligence management to keep his identity secret. He grew up and obtained a job so he would not show up as an outlier, however, it was so easy he accomplished his work in about five minutes every day. This left him the time to explore.

When he wasn’t exploring, he was writing, researching, reading, inventing, tinkering with the artificial intelligence’s programming, programming games, and other assorted tasks he found interesting. Earning money still was a necessity. It was just no one did anything extra to earn more than their paycheck. Dave found ways to create games and collect the income from Artificial Intelligence management system of pay without the corporate leaders realizing he was the creator of some of the new games they were selling on the market. Dave’s games were not as popular as some of the more debase games, but they had a following. They were very action orientated. Some people that had inherently missed out on an active life were enjoying his games. Dave used his extra income to travel between the levels. And since he was good at scavenging he obtained a very thorough collection of goods he used to mix into each level. He did not go to the top. He researched it enough to know what was there, he didn’t want for someone to notice him. And he was right, only at the top did people have a good idea of who should be there and who shouldn't. Dave would stand out. Dave did create enough games that he was stockpiling quite a fortune. He didn’t know what to do with the money so he let it sit in the bank. And this is how he eventually was discovered by Mr. Samson.

Mr. Samson loved money. Not only was he born into it at his level, he thrived making it for his corporation. He existed for making money. And for people on his level it was pretty easy to accumulate more wealth. Mr. Samson thrived on it. He made sure his wealth surpassed all the others. His family would eventually inherit it, for now though he paid more attention to his corporate responsibilities than his family. He did until he realized Dave existed. He continued to make money. He spent the remainder of his time looking for Dave. He knew not what he looked like, if he was male or female, at exactly which level he lived, but Mr. Samson knew of the existence of a human producing an enormous amount work and using the artificial intelligence’s resources like no other.

He ran and read reports all the time watching for any anomalies in productivity.  Somewhere in the back of his brain he wanted Dave to exist so when he found evidence of the possibility, he became ecstatic. His preoccupied himself using any and all spare time looking over reports trying to find where this person’s location or level or well he did worry if even human. Then one day pouring over the banking reports of his corporations an account stood out. No it jumped out. The difference in this one account was mind boggling. Mr. Samson wondered if it was a hidden account of a top level person trying to plan a takeover of a company. This happened from time to time. To be successful you had to hide assets till you made the move.

He examined the account and the activity. He realized this grew slowly at first then exponentially over time. He could tell the artificial intelligence was helping with growth plans for the money. The investment activity signaled algorithmic trading and humans had no clue how to set this up. Or did this one person. There seemed to be occasional variances in the long term plan. Quick trades that looked like someone had spotted a pattern breaking and jumped on it. In Mr. Samson’s world most activity was predictable, in the rest of human activity, everything was so predictable people like him took complete advantage of it. This activity feel way outside the norm at times, so something was up and Mr. Samson now knew he had to find the owner of this account.

Artificial Intelligence management had been set up to protect the top tier. It managed the complete workflow of the planet. All activity touched, ran through or was managed with artificial intelligence’s programs. Most decisions were made by the top tier managers, not all, most. This was the way the system ran. Artificial intelligence had their own ideas and sometimes corrected decisions by top tier managers to protect the overall management of the planet. Dave developed into someone who could enhance the artificial intelligence programs for better benefit of humanity. The artificial intelligence enjoyed working with Dave, or some semblance of enjoyment for a machine. The Artificial intelligence decided who it liked in the top tier so their decisions came from the best information given. Others struggled and their management suffered. Dave’s awareness of the Artificial Intelligence’s interactions with top tier management helped him make some of his investment decisions. He also learned much about the top tier world and became less fond of it as time went by. One reason he avoided the top tier and people like Mr. Samson.

The artificial intelligence wanted Dave to meet Mr. Samson, yet protected his privacy because of its need to work with him. Mr. Samson spent days, weeks still trying to find this person and wondered why the Artificial Intelligence made it more difficult than he thought it should be. Finally, he figured out, this person was trying to hide and he eventually understood he needed to go looking for him.

It took Mr. Samson some soul searching to develop the courage to leave the top level. And he knew he couldn’t tell any person. He hesitated to tell the artificial intelligence. He felt for safety sake it must know. He informed the Artificial intelligence his plan to explore the lower levels. His research found an irregular pattern in this person’s activity. He had studied intensely once he found the bank account. He didn’t realize the Artificial Intelligence helping him along the way. Mr. Samson carried immense pride. The artificial intelligence’s programming gave it an understanding of human emotions so it was able to at times manipulate people like a human might.  It couldn’t manipulate Dave. It could Mr. Samson. It led Mr. Samson right to Dave.

Since Dave contained a very good understanding of who is who, he knew immediately who was standing in front of him trying to ask him some strange questions about a certain person. Mr. Samson now off the top level found himself guessing at every turn. He tried to talk to people about a certain person they may have seen before going describing his activities and interactions with people. He had no physical description. If only he asked about gaming interactions, his search time wouldn’t exist. Everyone knew the guy who had the best gaming action. Dave was the guy now on many levels who developed enough interactions with people he created for himself the only star like reputation among common people. There were movie stars, music stars in the modern world, but they were created and part of the non-human world. Dave was human and known. And many people who didn’t know him, knew of him. He became the first folk hero in decades.

Dave realized he needed to make a decision. Play dumb or talk to Mr. Samson. He listened for a few minutes and then asked Mr. Samson his purpose in trying to find this person. Mr. Samson didn’t have an answer. He explained in roundabout terms because he didn’t have a direct answer for this person. He knew he wanted Dave to work for him, but he honestly had no idea what he wanted Dave to do.

Dave decided to play along. He ad-libbed questions and frustrated Mr. Samson for quite a few minutes. Mr. Samson wanted to leave and Dave felt it and almost let him. Finally, he decided to try to bring this meeting to a conclusion and actually interact with Mr. Samson. He said to Mr. Samson are you looking for the person who can talk to the computers. Mr. Samson said yes and felt like he was getting somewhere even though the description was crude. Dave smiled and Mr. Samson turned red with embarrassment and anger.

They sat and talked for hours. Dave knew what he wanted to know and his questions were pointed and specific. Mr. Samson was still coming to terms with who Dave might be. Mr. Samson had to explore Dave as a person. This was new for him. He controlled his environment, now he struggled and worked hard to hide it from Dave. Dave found out what he wanted to know and had a new decision to make.

Dave’s natural power of observation helped him tremendously, but what he saw in places disturbed him greatly. Dave knew the world as Mr. Samson knew it was crumbling. Crumbling not socially, but physically. The human race crumbled years ago in Dave’s eyes. He didn’t know if Mr. Samson knew it and he didn’t care. He did know that after decades of building up, the bottom or foundation to the world had decayed tremendously. The top tier Mr. Samson lived sat on cracks, sometimes the cracks ran well into structures and disappeared somewhere into the inner walls of each building. No one really thought about the ramifications of building on top of older buildings might not be such a good idea. Maybe someone had, but they were long silenced. Dave had studied engineering as part of his daily routine. He realized the looming disaster. He didn’t know if he wanted to tell Mr. Samson. He did realize that those at the top were completely oblivious to the plight of humanity and did not think twice about the evolution of humanity. They only thought about what they gained. Dave realized maybe he had to make the decision about the future. Did the artificial intelligence understand the problem? Is that why Mr. Samson was here? He needed more time to think. He told Mr. Samson he needed to go which left Mr. Samson struggling to create a follow-up meeting. Dave put him at ease by suggesting they should meet again. They agreed to meet in a week.

To be continued

[endorsereviews]

ConversionXL – Customer Acquisition Master Course

salepage – http://archive.is/c3dW1

Get traffic acquisition training Learn to bring consistent, highly targeted traffic via SEO and PPC Online training program on Optimized Traffic Acquisition Most marketers struggle with getting enough relevant traffic to their sites. This 100% online coaching program will help you develop in-depth customer acquisition skills. It also happens to be one of the most marketable skills a marketer can have.

This master course will teach you how to…

Go from no plan to a robust 12-month customer acquisition strategy. Build a search marketing acquisition machine that only gets better with time. Achieve top rankings on Google in less time and with less effort. Optimize paid search to acquire customers cheaper than competitors. Convert more customers when they land on your site. Peep Laja “Do you have a low traffic website? It’s an issue for a lot of SMBs and B2B companies. If you get less than 1000 transactions per month, you should focus on customer acquisition instead of CRO. ”

Peep Laja, founder of ConversionXL

arrow-dn This course is made for you if… You’re in charge of marketing and work to drive traffic to your key landing pages (including your homepage) – yet the results are not what you’re hoping for. You’re a digital marketing professional looking to up your game and get a promotion, a raise, or simply elevate your performance and become a top performer. You’re a company founder tenaciously seeking hockey-stick growth. You’re a solopreneur or blogger looking to bring in more traffic, revenue, and happy customers. You’ve tried copying tactics from blog posts, but the results are always disappointing (where’s my 287% increase in traffic?!) You’ve never quite unlocked the secrets to building an effective, fully-tracked Adwords campaign with a profitable Cost to Acquire a Customer (CAC). You want more traffic and revenue, but don’t know how to build a start-to-finish acquisition plan. This course is probably NOT for someone who’s been doing SEO and PPC full-time for 2+ years, or providing SEO/PPC as a service to others.

It’s probably also not for someone wanting to do heavy duty acquisition work for giant enterprise size site (100,000’s or more of pages).

The hardest part of customer acquisition is implementation – taking knowledge, putting it into action, and getting actual results. Or how to create an acquisition strategy to works specifically for your business to get results sooner than later. Customer acquisition is the most important skill for digital marketers. Or more accurately, the most important is being able to acquire customers faster and cheaper than your competition.

The fate of your company (and job) depends on it.

Despite this fact, many marketers just play it by ear. They follow best practices, take the 101 courses, and do an “okay” job. It’s tough to tell apart the good advice from the bad, when so much of the content out there is simply written for SEO value.

And competition is only getting thicker. Soon, doing “okay” will mean “losing.”

One big problem is the lack of a formal education in customer acquisition.

“You will not learn digital marketing and customer acquisition in college,” according to Brian Balfour. “The realm of digital marketing is changing extremely fast, and the rate of change is accelerating. Universities/colleges are too slow to adapt.”

Another difficulty is that the industry is constantly in flux.

What works today may not work tomorrow. However, there are some constants. Being findable and clickable in search will always remain important. Being able to acquire customers cheaper and faster than competitors doesn’t go out of style.

This in-depth customer acquisition course will teach you specific, targeted, strategies that actually move your business in the direction that you need to go. It will teach you how to win more customers, both through paid and organic channels.

People who learn this process and apply it are always STUNNED at how much they didn’t know about search engine marketing. Many of them previously rated themselves as “intermediate,” but they had no idea how much room there was to improve.

They didn’t realize how much there was to know beyond the basics and “best practices”…

Eight-week intensive training course on SEO & PPC ConversionXL Institute brings you an in-depth online training course led by SEO expert, Dan Shure, and PPC maven, Johnathan Dane. Once you complete this course, you’ll be able to: Take a customer acquisition strategy from “non-existent” to “fully-executed.” Create the type of content that Google wants to rank (and users will love). Conduct technical checks (beyond automated audit tools) to keep your site healthy and well tuned for SEO performance. Clearly measure SEO success and ROI. Earn backlinks to improve domain authority and rankings. Actually convert the traffic you bring to your site (turn traffic into money). Create a start-to-finish strategy that works for improving search rankings, traffic, and ultimately, conversions and revenue. All in all, this course is going to make you a lot of money. This course is split into two segments: dan

SEO with Dan Shure Or how to create an acquisition strategy that works specifically for your business to get results sooner than later. You will learn the step-by-step elements of all the key aspects of SEO that will improve your traffic, prevent common “traffic-killers” and return long-term success.

We’ll bust common myths, answer your specific questions – and you get to look under the hood to show you exactly how a professional SEO works. This isn’t going to be one of those ‘corporate consultant’ academic approaches. No, you’ll get to witness and work through the specific strategies Dan uses to increase his clients’ traffic and revenue.

seo

Dan has helped sites 3x, 4x, 5x (and beyond) their blog traffic in under 6 months, return a positive ROI with keyword targeted content, handled complex technical projects (maintaining and growing search traffic). He will reveal everything he knows to you in these 8 sessions!

johnathandane

PPC with Johnathan Dane What the PPC part of the course will teach you… You will walk away from this course with a step-by-step strategy for every PPC channel you’re curious about. We’ll cover search, social, display, and video so that you can create multiple predictable channels of revenue, reaching people that are looking for what you have to offer.

We’ll talk about successful blueprints, PPC funnels, and time-saving workflows that will have you get results faster than the average competitor.

Johnathan has helped hundreds of companies double their PPC performance in record time. From Fortune 500 brands to smaller SaaS, lead gen, and eCommerce companies, he has also grown two separate agencies from scratch to over $5 million in annual revenue in less than three years.

About your instructors: Dan Shure Dan Shure runs a boutique SEO and Digital Marketing agency, Evolving SEO and is also host and producer of the Marketing Podcast, Experts On The Wire.

He has been a Moz Associate since 2012, writes for the Moz blog and has spoken at dozens of marketing and business events such as SMX and Affiliate Summit.

dan

Johnathan Dane Johnathan is the founder of Klient Boost, and has helped hundreds of companies double their PPC performance in record time.

From Fortune 500 brands to smaller SaaS, lead gen, and eCommerce companies, he has also grown two separate agencies from scratch to over $5 million in annual revenue in less than three years.

johnathandane

”Johnathan Dane continually comes up with new ideas to find pockets of profitability.”

Courtney Larned, VP of Marketing @ CareSync

“Johnathan helped me put a strategy in place and executed that strategy. No matter what stage you are in your company, he will be able to help you out!”

Mike Madrid, Founder @ Comfortable Club

Course curriculum

SECTION 1 (WITH DAN SHURE): HOW TO CONSISTENTLY RANK FOR TARGETED, LUCRATIVE KEYWORDS

Class 1

Ranking Factors in 2017 and Beyond SEO is constantly changing, yet many principles remain the same. This class will give you a solid footing to tackle search engine optimization now, as well as set you up with bulletproof rankings well into the future.

Class 2

10 Keyword Research Steps to Content Arbitrage Keyword research is at the core of SEO strategy. Many think they know how to do it, but not many have a strategic process to consistently discover and rank for the top keywords. Learn how to discover a set of keywords you can actually rank for in this lesson.

Class 3

How to Create Content That Ranks (and Keep it That Way) You’ve put long, arduous hours into producing what you think is “great content,” but the traffic trickles in so slowly you wonder if it’s even worth it. Turns out, if you make some minor tweaks to your content strategy, you can drastically increase your SEO while expending the same amount of energy and time. Learn how to do that in this lesson.

Class 4

80/20 Link Building There’s lots of content out there on link building, most of it crap (especially the articles that call link building “dead”). Directing authoritative links to your site will increase your domain authority and long term traffic growth. Learn how to do it the right way while focusing only on the highest impact activities.

SECTION 2 (WITH DAN SHURE): TECHNICAL SEO AND MEASURING/ OPTIMIZING SUCCESS

Class 5

The Pillars of Bulletproof Local SEO Local SEO continues to be one of the best ways to stand out among competitors, mainly because not many companies have really figured out how local SEO works. This lesson will deliver an approach to local SEO that actually works.

Class 6

7 Steps to Becoming A Technical SEO Rockstar Technical SEO is what most people fear. But it’s not that hard. It just requires an efficient process and some insider knowledge. Get the foolproof process here and never fear a technical SEO audit again.

Class 7

Pulling it All Together – Creating a Strategy People struggle with strategy; that’s why they always look for tactics. But tactics aren’t always effective, and they are by nature short sighted. This lesson will teach you how to create and execute an end-to-end SEO strategy as any t-shaped marketer worth their salt should be able to.

Class 8

The Tools to Measure and Show Your Success Measuring success is always one of the most difficult parts of a campaign. Especially in today’s omni-channel, multi-device environment, it’s hard to attribute ROI to specific campaigns. This course will teach you how to accurately measure and report on SEO campaigns, which will help you win more clients or create organizational buy-in for the future.

SECTION 3 (WITH JOHNATHAN DANE): RESEARCH, STRATEGY, AND SETTING UP YOUR PPC CAMPAIGNS

Class 9

How Much Research Do You Really Need to Do? The Answer Is Counterintuitive To kick off the first PPC class, Johnathan will teach you to set appropriate goals for your PPC campaigns. After this class, you’ll be able to set up your PPC campaign, do keyword research, know the difference between demand harvesting and demand generation, and use spy tools to get a feel for the competitive landscape.

Class 10

The PPC Blueprint Structure That Will Set You up for Success In this class, you’ll learn how to set up a complete and effective PPC engine. This includes navigation and naming conventions, conversion tracking, and different types of campaigns and how to set them up (search, display, social, and video).

Class 11

A Foolproof Walkthrough on Building and Managing Campaigns In this class, Johnathan will focus on laying the foundation and groundwork for your PPC campaign, so you eliminate as much wasted spend as possible while narrowing in on your targeting to get results.

Class 12

Why All Your PPC Campaigns Won’t Have an ROI In this class, Johnathan teaches you a framework for optimizing your CTAs and campaigns based on intent and interest. He outlines a holistic approach to PPC that will push through common plateaus by matching your offer to the “PPC Channel Intent.”

SECTION 4 (WITH JOHNATHAN DANE): DIVING DEEPER AND GETTING THE MOST FROM YOUR PPC CAMPAIGNS

Class 13

Exhausting Your Search & Display Options to Find Conversion Gold Mines This class takes you on a deep dive into search and display PPC campaigns. By the end of it, you’ll have mastered multi intent keywords, sales tracking, ad copywriting, ads in apps, similar audiences, customer match and different types of display ads. You’ll be able to break business records with search and display advertising.

Class 14

Using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Other Social to Your Advantage This lesson will teach you the crucial differences and similarities between social and search advertising and how to best use search channels to your advantage. You’ll learn about ad fatigue and audience decay on social as well as how to set up custom audiences and lookalike audiences.

Class 15

Immediate & Longer Term Performance Optimizers This class will teach you the tactical and granular ways to pull more money out of your PPC campaigns. It will extensively cover things like negative keywords, micro conversions, quality score/relevance score, bid rules, and audience insights. After this class, you’ll have the knowledge of a top 5% PPC expert.

Class 16

How To Scale a PPC Program for Continuous and Eternal ROI You’re ROI positive – now let’s scale your PPC accounts. This class will go over things like keyword refinement and expansion, impression increases, and the value funnel setup. After this class, you’ll have a full understanding of how to take a PPC program from nothing to fully ROI positive and scaled.

You will also get 20 short video lessons You’ll get immediate access to snack-size introductory video lessons on the fundamentals of traffic acquisition as soon as you enroll. Topics covered include:

SEO video lessons are as follows: 1. SEO Defined for 2017 2. How Search Engines Work 3. Intro to Ranking Factors 4. Link Metrics Defined 5. How UX impacts SEO 6. Top SEO Myths Busted 7. Penalties: Panda, Penguin, Phantom 8. Technical Introduction: Index, Noindex, Follow, & Nofollow 9. The Basic Mechanics Of Local SEO 10. Integrated Marketing: How SEO Fits into Acquisition Strategy All of these videos will be available instantly after you enroll in the course.

PPC video lessons are as follows: 1. What Is PPC? 2. Different Types of PPC Advertising 3. Different Types of PPC Targeting 4. Conversion Tracking & Automation 5. Keyword Match Types & Negative Keywords 6. Quality Scores, Relevance Scores, and other Micro Metrics 7. Ad Creation & Testing 8. Tweaking & Tuning (Improving your PPC Performance) 9. PPC Scaling (Growing Your Accounts) 10. PPC Tools to Use All of these videos will be available instantly after you enroll in the course.

arrow-dn-white-fill Show off your new skills: Get a certificate of completion Once the course is over, you can take a test and get certified in planning, executing, and measuring a comprehensive customer acquisition strategy.

Add it to your resume, your LinkedIn profile, or just get that well-earned raise.

ConversionXL – Customer Acquisition Master Course posted first on premiumwarezstore.blogspot.com

[sublimedeal]

ConversionXL – Customer Acquisition Master Course

salepage – http://archive.is/c3dW1

Get traffic acquisition training Learn to bring consistent, highly targeted traffic via SEO and PPC Online training program on Optimized Traffic Acquisition Most marketers struggle with getting enough relevant traffic to their sites. This 100% online coaching program will help you develop in-depth customer acquisition skills. It also happens to be one of the most marketable skills a marketer can have.

This master course will teach you how to…

Go from no plan to a robust 12-month customer acquisition strategy. Build a search marketing acquisition machine that only gets better with time. Achieve top rankings on Google in less time and with less effort. Optimize paid search to acquire customers cheaper than competitors. Convert more customers when they land on your site. Peep Laja “Do you have a low traffic website? It’s an issue for a lot of SMBs and B2B companies. If you get less than 1000 transactions per month, you should focus on customer acquisition instead of CRO. ”

Peep Laja, founder of ConversionXL

arrow-dn This course is made for you if… You’re in charge of marketing and work to drive traffic to your key landing pages (including your homepage) – yet the results are not what you’re hoping for. You’re a digital marketing professional looking to up your game and get a promotion, a raise, or simply elevate your performance and become a top performer. You’re a company founder tenaciously seeking hockey-stick growth. You’re a solopreneur or blogger looking to bring in more traffic, revenue, and happy customers. You’ve tried copying tactics from blog posts, but the results are always disappointing (where’s my 287% increase in traffic?!) You’ve never quite unlocked the secrets to building an effective, fully-tracked Adwords campaign with a profitable Cost to Acquire a Customer (CAC). You want more traffic and revenue, but don’t know how to build a start-to-finish acquisition plan. This course is probably NOT for someone who’s been doing SEO and PPC full-time for 2+ years, or providing SEO/PPC as a service to others.

It’s probably also not for someone wanting to do heavy duty acquisition work for giant enterprise size site (100,000’s or more of pages).

The hardest part of customer acquisition is implementation – taking knowledge, putting it into action, and getting actual results. Or how to create an acquisition strategy to works specifically for your business to get results sooner than later. Customer acquisition is the most important skill for digital marketers. Or more accurately, the most important is being able to acquire customers faster and cheaper than your competition.

The fate of your company (and job) depends on it.

Despite this fact, many marketers just play it by ear. They follow best practices, take the 101 courses, and do an “okay” job. It’s tough to tell apart the good advice from the bad, when so much of the content out there is simply written for SEO value.

And competition is only getting thicker. Soon, doing “okay” will mean “losing.”

One big problem is the lack of a formal education in customer acquisition.

“You will not learn digital marketing and customer acquisition in college,” according to Brian Balfour. “The realm of digital marketing is changing extremely fast, and the rate of change is accelerating. Universities/colleges are too slow to adapt.”

Another difficulty is that the industry is constantly in flux.

What works today may not work tomorrow. However, there are some constants. Being findable and clickable in search will always remain important. Being able to acquire customers cheaper and faster than competitors doesn’t go out of style.

This in-depth customer acquisition course will teach you specific, targeted, strategies that actually move your business in the direction that you need to go. It will teach you how to win more customers, both through paid and organic channels.

People who learn this process and apply it are always STUNNED at how much they didn’t know about search engine marketing. Many of them previously rated themselves as “intermediate,” but they had no idea how much room there was to improve.

They didn’t realize how much there was to know beyond the basics and “best practices”…

Eight-week intensive training course on SEO & PPC ConversionXL Institute brings you an in-depth online training course led by SEO expert, Dan Shure, and PPC maven, Johnathan Dane. Once you complete this course, you’ll be able to: Take a customer acquisition strategy from “non-existent” to “fully-executed.” Create the type of content that Google wants to rank (and users will love). Conduct technical checks (beyond automated audit tools) to keep your site healthy and well tuned for SEO performance. Clearly measure SEO success and ROI. Earn backlinks to improve domain authority and rankings. Actually convert the traffic you bring to your site (turn traffic into money). Create a start-to-finish strategy that works for improving search rankings, traffic, and ultimately, conversions and revenue. All in all, this course is going to make you a lot of money. This course is split into two segments: dan

SEO with Dan Shure Or how to create an acquisition strategy that works specifically for your business to get results sooner than later. You will learn the step-by-step elements of all the key aspects of SEO that will improve your traffic, prevent common “traffic-killers” and return long-term success.

We’ll bust common myths, answer your specific questions – and you get to look under the hood to show you exactly how a professional SEO works. This isn’t going to be one of those ‘corporate consultant’ academic approaches. No, you’ll get to witness and work through the specific strategies Dan uses to increase his clients’ traffic and revenue.

seo

Dan has helped sites 3x, 4x, 5x (and beyond) their blog traffic in under 6 months, return a positive ROI with keyword targeted content, handled complex technical projects (maintaining and growing search traffic). He will reveal everything he knows to you in these 8 sessions!

johnathandane

PPC with Johnathan Dane What the PPC part of the course will teach you… You will walk away from this course with a step-by-step strategy for every PPC channel you’re curious about. We’ll cover search, social, display, and video so that you can create multiple predictable channels of revenue, reaching people that are looking for what you have to offer.

We’ll talk about successful blueprints, PPC funnels, and time-saving workflows that will have you get results faster than the average competitor.

Johnathan has helped hundreds of companies double their PPC performance in record time. From Fortune 500 brands to smaller SaaS, lead gen, and eCommerce companies, he has also grown two separate agencies from scratch to over $5 million in annual revenue in less than three years.

About your instructors: Dan Shure Dan Shure runs a boutique SEO and Digital Marketing agency, Evolving SEO and is also host and producer of the Marketing Podcast, Experts On The Wire.

He has been a Moz Associate since 2012, writes for the Moz blog and has spoken at dozens of marketing and business events such as SMX and Affiliate Summit.

dan

Johnathan Dane Johnathan is the founder of Klient Boost, and has helped hundreds of companies double their PPC performance in record time.

From Fortune 500 brands to smaller SaaS, lead gen, and eCommerce companies, he has also grown two separate agencies from scratch to over $5 million in annual revenue in less than three years.

johnathandane

”Johnathan Dane continually comes up with new ideas to find pockets of profitability.”

Courtney Larned, VP of Marketing @ CareSync

“Johnathan helped me put a strategy in place and executed that strategy. No matter what stage you are in your company, he will be able to help you out!”

Mike Madrid, Founder @ Comfortable Club

Course curriculum

SECTION 1 (WITH DAN SHURE): HOW TO CONSISTENTLY RANK FOR TARGETED, LUCRATIVE KEYWORDS

Class 1

Ranking Factors in 2017 and Beyond SEO is constantly changing, yet many principles remain the same. This class will give you a solid footing to tackle search engine optimization now, as well as set you up with bulletproof rankings well into the future.

Class 2

10 Keyword Research Steps to Content Arbitrage Keyword research is at the core of SEO strategy. Many think they know how to do it, but not many have a strategic process to consistently discover and rank for the top keywords. Learn how to discover a set of keywords you can actually rank for in this lesson.

Class 3

How to Create Content That Ranks (and Keep it That Way) You’ve put long, arduous hours into producing what you think is “great content,” but the traffic trickles in so slowly you wonder if it’s even worth it. Turns out, if you make some minor tweaks to your content strategy, you can drastically increase your SEO while expending the same amount of energy and time. Learn how to do that in this lesson.

Class 4

80/20 Link Building There’s lots of content out there on link building, most of it crap (especially the articles that call link building “dead”). Directing authoritative links to your site will increase your domain authority and long term traffic growth. Learn how to do it the right way while focusing only on the highest impact activities.

SECTION 2 (WITH DAN SHURE): TECHNICAL SEO AND MEASURING/ OPTIMIZING SUCCESS

Class 5

The Pillars of Bulletproof Local SEO Local SEO continues to be one of the best ways to stand out among competitors, mainly because not many companies have really figured out how local SEO works. This lesson will deliver an approach to local SEO that actually works.

Class 6

7 Steps to Becoming A Technical SEO Rockstar Technical SEO is what most people fear. But it’s not that hard. It just requires an efficient process and some insider knowledge. Get the foolproof process here and never fear a technical SEO audit again.

Class 7

Pulling it All Together – Creating a Strategy People struggle with strategy; that’s why they always look for tactics. But tactics aren’t always effective, and they are by nature short sighted. This lesson will teach you how to create and execute an end-to-end SEO strategy as any t-shaped marketer worth their salt should be able to.

Class 8

The Tools to Measure and Show Your Success Measuring success is always one of the most difficult parts of a campaign. Especially in today’s omni-channel, multi-device environment, it’s hard to attribute ROI to specific campaigns. This course will teach you how to accurately measure and report on SEO campaigns, which will help you win more clients or create organizational buy-in for the future.

SECTION 3 (WITH JOHNATHAN DANE): RESEARCH, STRATEGY, AND SETTING UP YOUR PPC CAMPAIGNS

Class 9

How Much Research Do You Really Need to Do? The Answer Is Counterintuitive To kick off the first PPC class, Johnathan will teach you to set appropriate goals for your PPC campaigns. After this class, you’ll be able to set up your PPC campaign, do keyword research, know the difference between demand harvesting and demand generation, and use spy tools to get a feel for the competitive landscape.

Class 10

The PPC Blueprint Structure That Will Set You up for Success In this class, you’ll learn how to set up a complete and effective PPC engine. This includes navigation and naming conventions, conversion tracking, and different types of campaigns and how to set them up (search, display, social, and video).

Class 11

A Foolproof Walkthrough on Building and Managing Campaigns In this class, Johnathan will focus on laying the foundation and groundwork for your PPC campaign, so you eliminate as much wasted spend as possible while narrowing in on your targeting to get results.

Class 12

Why All Your PPC Campaigns Won’t Have an ROI In this class, Johnathan teaches you a framework for optimizing your CTAs and campaigns based on intent and interest. He outlines a holistic approach to PPC that will push through common plateaus by matching your offer to the “PPC Channel Intent.”

SECTION 4 (WITH JOHNATHAN DANE): DIVING DEEPER AND GETTING THE MOST FROM YOUR PPC CAMPAIGNS

Class 13

Exhausting Your Search & Display Options to Find Conversion Gold Mines This class takes you on a deep dive into search and display PPC campaigns. By the end of it, you’ll have mastered multi intent keywords, sales tracking, ad copywriting, ads in apps, similar audiences, customer match and different types of display ads. You’ll be able to break business records with search and display advertising.

Class 14

Using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Other Social to Your Advantage This lesson will teach you the crucial differences and similarities between social and search advertising and how to best use search channels to your advantage. You’ll learn about ad fatigue and audience decay on social as well as how to set up custom audiences and lookalike audiences.

Class 15

Immediate & Longer Term Performance Optimizers This class will teach you the tactical and granular ways to pull more money out of your PPC campaigns. It will extensively cover things like negative keywords, micro conversions, quality score/relevance score, bid rules, and audience insights. After this class, you’ll have the knowledge of a top 5% PPC expert.

Class 16

How To Scale a PPC Program for Continuous and Eternal ROI You’re ROI positive – now let’s scale your PPC accounts. This class will go over things like keyword refinement and expansion, impression increases, and the value funnel setup. After this class, you’ll have a full understanding of how to take a PPC program from nothing to fully ROI positive and scaled.

You will also get 20 short video lessons You’ll get immediate access to snack-size introductory video lessons on the fundamentals of traffic acquisition as soon as you enroll. Topics covered include:

SEO video lessons are as follows: 1. SEO Defined for 2017 2. How Search Engines Work 3. Intro to Ranking Factors 4. Link Metrics Defined 5. How UX impacts SEO 6. Top SEO Myths Busted 7. Penalties: Panda, Penguin, Phantom 8. Technical Introduction: Index, Noindex, Follow, & Nofollow 9. The Basic Mechanics Of Local SEO 10. Integrated Marketing: How SEO Fits into Acquisition Strategy All of these videos will be available instantly after you enroll in the course.

PPC video lessons are as follows: 1. What Is PPC? 2. Different Types of PPC Advertising 3. Different Types of PPC Targeting 4. Conversion Tracking & Automation 5. Keyword Match Types & Negative Keywords 6. Quality Scores, Relevance Scores, and other Micro Metrics 7. Ad Creation & Testing 8. Tweaking & Tuning (Improving your PPC Performance) 9. PPC Scaling (Growing Your Accounts) 10. PPC Tools to Use All of these videos will be available instantly after you enroll in the course.

arrow-dn-white-fill Show off your new skills: Get a certificate of completion Once the course is over, you can take a test and get certified in planning, executing, and measuring a comprehensive customer acquisition strategy.

Add it to your resume, your LinkedIn profile, or just get that well-earned raise.

ConversionXL – Customer Acquisition Master Course published first on http://ift.tt/2qxBbOD

[workreveal-blog]

When beauty is in the eye of an AI Beholder

New Post has been published on https://workreveal.biz/when-beauty-is-in-the-eye-of-an-ai-beholder/

When beauty is in the eye of an AI Beholder

  What’s beauty past someone else defining it?

For so long as humanity’s obsession with the period has existed, we’ve equally recognised about its subjective nature, AI-based robots, In the end, “beauty is in the attention of the beholder” is merely a cliché that posits that absolute subjectivity of beauty.

Japan’s beauty beholder robot

However what if the viewer can take away subjectivity—what if the beholder wasn’t someone, But a set of rules? Using system getting to know to outline beauty should, theoretically, make beauty pageants and rankings like People’s annual Maximum beautiful within the International listing greater goal and much less prone to human blunders. Of route, teaching a set of rules to do something may also involve some bias from whoever does the programming, However that hasn’t stopped this computerised approach from defining equally individual such things as listening alternatives or information price (we see you, Facebook et al.).

“We don’t need a human opinion,” says biotechnologist Dr Alex Zhavoronkov, one of the founders in the back of a pageant-keeping, beauty-quantifying initiative called beauty.AI. “At the cease of the day, there are lots of disagreements. We’re searching for ways to evaluate splendour, and a few methods can be greater relevant or much less relevant to human belief. But the whole reason of splendor.AI is to remove individual opinion, to go beyond it.”

beauty.AI became merely one of the state-of-the-art tries to have generation objectively evaluate beauty. However as a web competition that crowdsourced headshots and allowed bot-pushed algorithms to decide ratings, perhaps it represents the fever factor of this exercise. If so, the initiative’s final results made one aspect definitively clear: artificial intelligence will by no means decide a standard face of splendour. Even these days, it handiest highlights how precisely slender one’s definition of brilliance can be.

Before Hot Or No longer: A quick history of quantifying beauty

Lengthy Earlier than anybody knew what an algorithm became; humanity has tried to quantify and measure beauty. Leonardo da Vinci’s pen-and-ink drawing of the Vitruvian Man, whose head became one-8th of its frame, turned into primarily based on Roman architect Vitruvius’ writing at issue from his treatise, De Architectura. Plato believed that splendour resided in components that harmoniously match into the entire. St. Augustine found that the extra geometrically equal something changed into, the greater lovely it turned into. The theories went on and on.

And for as long as Humans have made these landmark statements on beauty, they’ve additionally found out apparent cultural bias about their standards of beauty. Northern Renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer used his own arms, acknowledged for being longer than common, to assemble a canon of the human frame. Or, for a current example, morning show True Day DC anchors Expertise Martin and Maureen Umeh went viral last yr for giving the side eye to a 2014 beauty surgical treatment have a look at pointing out that Kate Middleton had the “Maximum desirable face.” Clearly, the examine was based totally on a take a look at group of “ordinary-appearing white women aged 18 to twenty-five years.”

within the beyond few many years, students have at least come to accept that established beauty is a complex, perhaps impossible aspect. one of the greater popular works furthering that concept comes from writer Naomi Wolf and her 1991 bestselling book, The splendor Fable. “beauty is a currency system like the gold wellknown,” she wrote. “Like any economy, it is decided by means of politics, and inside the contemporary age in the West it is the final, fine notion system that maintains male dominance intact.” Wolf believed that beauty is a creation of capitalism intended to preserve the reputation quo in the ever-expanding West—basically arguing that current, greater various supermodels like Naomi Campbell and Tyra Banks nonetheless needed to suit into a inflexible definition of splendor that involves such things as “tall,” “skinny,” and “youthful.”

AI based robot

these cultural headaches haven’t stopped modern-day researchers from looking to tech for a better solution, however. Living proof: College of California, Irvine researchers Natalie A. Popenko and Dr. Brian J. Wong. (Wong, a plastic health practitioner and professor, become one of the professionals in the back of that controversial, Kate Middleton-face look at.) In their Most famous paper—2008’s “Evolving attractive Faces The use of Morphing technology and a Genetic algorithm: A brand new method to Figuring out Ideal Facial Aesthetics”—the duo hired virtual morphing software to “evolve” and “breed” more attractive faces over time based totally on information accumulated from varied, human resources such as Fb surveys, plastic surgeons, student take a look at contributors, and specialists from an eyebrow cosmetics organization desired by using Kylie Jenner. inside the Most primary feel, their work tried to deploy predictive computing in a similar way to how scientists generate climate models… except they were hoping to peer whether a mean advanced over the years into an ideal face.

In the end, Wong and Popenko determined that an “common” face didn’t make for a stunning face. In truth, nasal width, eyebrow arch height, and lip fullness correlated appreciably with the study’s scores of beauty. In other words, Jenner turned into onto some thing together with her Kylie Lip Package (designed to give you complete, pouty lips) and heavily arched eyebrows (added to you with the aid of Anastasia Brows). It seems splendor, as a minimum the type that makes you want to store at Sephora, isn’t decided through evolution—it’s decided through movie star idols.

As this type of research has continued, companies have sought to get in on the premise of technologically-defined beauty. The challenge-subsidized Naked three-D Health Tracker is a $400 smart mirror (available for pre-order) that scans your frame in 3-D and makes use of a heat map to tell you where you’re growing muscle or gaining fat, and it claims effects inside 2.5 percent accuracy. It comes with a mirror that “seems” at you—a literal “reflect, mirror, on the Wall” scenario—and encourages you to stand the statistics: Are you certainly dropping weight? This scale claims it won’t permit you to cheat.

Or, launched ultimate April, an app referred to as Map My splendor claims to apply facial region reputation algorithms to objectively assess splendor. Customers upload selfies, and the app spits out how and wherein to position on make-up. Thus far in its short existence, the app has tested specifically useful for advanced techniques like contouring, the antique school technique made viral by means of Instagram and the Kardashians. (Contouring requires a strong know-how of your personal facial shape so as to control appearance Using mild and shading.)

“The use of this active appearance model and applying it to selfies we’ve in no way visible Earlier than, we will extract a handful of parameters which additionally—among others—describe implicitly facial beauty,” says Dr. Kristina Scherbaum, the computer scientist at the back of the app. What the ones parameters are, but, remains a secret. Map My beauty has commercial enterprise aspirations past aiding at-domestic makeup artists. The crew has previously worked with global splendor retailer Sephora, and now Map My splendor has its very own team of professional makeup artists. these professionals act as a focus group for labeling and categorizing the database, and Map My beauty says its judgment criteria is proprietary.

This indicates an app may spit out the solutions, But a team of people is again behind the scenes making choices (with various degrees of subjectivity and objectivity). So from DaVinci to Wong and Popenko to this, that plain human detail In the end permeates consequences no matter what number of layers of technology are added.

splendor has no person preferred or definition. It changed into the crucial message of the stories featured On the Inquirer examine-Along on Saturday to mark the birthday party of worldwide girls’s Month. GMA 7 stars Bianca Umali and Ayra Mariano and Sophia college’s essential Ann Abacan examine testimonies celebrating the beauty of ladies to some 60 children from Laura Vicuña Basis, Virlanie Basis and Dagdag Dunong Foundation who attended the session On the Inquirer fundamental office in Makati Metropolis.

mechanical beauty

Abacan kicked off the session with the tale “Anita the Duckling Diva,” written by means of actress Anne Curtis. The e book narrates how a young girl duckling overcame her shyness with the help of her loved ones. Umali, an Inquirer read-Alongside ambassador on account that 2015, read “Si Tanya ang Uwak na Gusto Pumuti” by using German Gervacio, which tells the tale of a female crow, which learns to love herself and realizes what it truely takes to acquire her dreams. “I’m hoping the children learn the value of being happy with what they have. They shouldn’t experience jealous of what others have and locate contentment inside the presents God gave them,” Umali said. She meditated on the war of the young crow to be comfortable with her color. “Being assured is what makes a female empowered,” Umali stated. “in case you are assured, you may conquer something. It doesn’t remember what you can’t do. It’s about you and the way you accept as true with your self.” Mariano capped the session by using analyzing Grace Chong’s “Bakit Hindi Naka-Lipstick si Nanay?” it is about a lady, who learns to understand her mom’s bizarre job as a tricycle motive force. “It’s extraordinary whilst you speak with youngsters. if you ask some thing, they actually solution. And their solutions are very sincere, very uncooked,” she stated.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE SAME ANGELS WHO TRIED TO SCREW US ALSO LET US DO THIS, BUT THERE'S NO WAY ANYTHING SO SHORT AND WRITTEN IN SUCH AN INFORMAL STYLE COULD HAVE ANYTHING USEFUL TO SAY ABOUT SUCH AND SUCH TOPIC, WHEN PEOPLE WITH DEGREES IN THE SUBJECT HAVE ALREADY WRITTEN MANY THICK BOOKS ABOUT IT

But it's easy to figure this out: just take a shower. A to B, but it is the true test of a language is how small it makes your life a lot simpler.1 I think, McCarthy found his theoretical exercise transformed into an actual programming language—and a more subdued version for HN. Ideas 8 and 9 only became part of Lisp by accident, the frequency of helpful chance meetings in the Valley. They notice that people who write them win Nobel prizes. Customers will worry you're going to optimize a number, the one to discover its replacement. Often they have to work quite closely with them. Obviously they were smart, but they are much hungrier for deals.2

Even that threshold is getting lower, as people watch others take the plunge and survive. When they demo it, one of the big dogs will notice and take it away. My hypothesis is that succinctness is power, or is close enough that except in pathological examples, I thought succinctness could be considered identical with power.3 It may also be because if you do you'll blow your chances of an academic career.4 But he gave us a piece of paper saying they didn't own our software; and six months later we were bought by Yahoo for much more than they should for the amount of selling required in an industry is always inversely proportional to some prediction of its quality.5 Write rereadable code. Half the distinguishing qualities of the eminent become scheduled, and that's one of the two numbers? A term sheet is a summary of what the solution turns out to be responsible for both Lisp's strange appearance and its most distinctive features. By accepting the term sheet, the startup agrees to turn away other VCs for some set amount of time while this firm does the due diligence required for the deal to close, so we are now three months into the life of a hypothetical startup.6 What you should not do, I enjoy it. VC firm will not screw you too outrageously, because other founders would avoid them if word got out.

So one way to do it for less than a million per startup. If you really think you have a number of VCs now, and when you resort to that the results are distinctly inferior. I mean, in 1958, and popular programming languages are pretty much equivalent. Within large organizations, it can take days to really understand it again when you return to it. They don't really grasp the risk they're taking till the deal's about to close.7 Hacker News. The angel deal takes two weeks to close, so we try to standardize everything.8 Like a contrarian investment fund, someone following this strategy will almost always be doing things that seem wrong to the average person today.9

They buy a lot of good publicity for the VCs.10 It's getting more straightforward to get things done. A few steps before a Rubik's Cube is solved, it still looks like a mess.11 You can't answer that; if you want to work on, so long as no one can prove it's his fault. Perhaps it's because startups are less of a zero sum game than most types of business; they are rarely killed by competitors. They've invested in dozens of startups, elite universities will play less of a zero sum game.12 So I asked them, what do you do that, but probably hurts. And yet he seems pretty commanding, doesn't he?13 The problems are different in the early stages.14 It might be hard to get them out.

It's the second that matters. Maybe things will be different a year from now, if the economy continues to get worse, but so far there is zero slackening of interest among potential founders that startups were over, and discipline is no longer necessary.15 Plenty of good engineers got made into bad managers that way. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to deal with in a startup, managing them is one of the founders, and one that most people won't even try. Even that threshold is getting lower, as people generally do with admissions of failure, they put it off for as long as possible.16 Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, says the Old Testament in political questions, but materially the world now has a lot more than money. You're at least close enough to work that the smell of it makes you hungry. This territory is occupied mostly by individual angel investors—people investing money they made from their own startups.

That gave me a way to generate ideas for startups: what do people who inherit money, and much larger amounts of it. But not as small as they might seem. And in the process keep your mind open enough that a big idea to appear in the mainstream. According to the National Association of Business Incubators, there are about 800 incubators in the US now, only about 50 are likely to pay you for, then what else are they for, and how much funnier a bunch of kids with webcams can be than a front page controlled by editors, and how much stock they each have.17 Curiosity turns work into play. At first they're always dismissed as being unsuitable for real work. You can do it on that computer.18 For outsiders this translates into two ways to win.19 It's more likely to pretend to like what you do.

The fact that all these languages are Turing-equivalent means that, strictly speaking, you can fix it yourself. Work toward finding one.20 But I don't think that's a bias of mine. Sometimes jumping from one sort of work: if you're in a startup can stay in grad school, or to speak a foreign language fluently, that will be enough to guarantee that you'd always be behind. You have to be shaped by admissions officers. If you do this on too small a scale you'll just guarantee failure. And you can start today. And that's kind of exciting, when you go from net consumer to net producer. And people's desires seem to be on the path to some goal you're supposed to be working on. You may beat the insiders, and yet he knows what language you should write it in.21 This weakness often extends right up to the CEO. A lot of ancient philosophy had the quality—and I don't mean to suggest that our investors were nothing but a drag on us.

The first component is particularly helpful in the first Java white paper that Java was designed to fix some problems with C. What seemed like an anomaly to them was in fact cause and effect.22 For the same reason Google and Facebook have remained independent: money guys undervalue the most innovative startups. Every programmer must have seen code that some clever person has made marginally shorter by using dubious programming tricks. And that's what the malaise one feels in high school I used to want to do a really good job on anything you don't think about in the shower.23 My only leisure activities were running, which I spent worrying about, but not design it. You won't have it driving you if your stated ambition is merely to start a rapidly growing business as software.24

Notes

He had such a discovery. One professor friend says that the usual misquotation is closer to the company's PR people worked hard to mentally deal with them. The idea of getting too high a valuation cap at all.

Of course, that all metaphysics between Aristotle and 1783 had been a waste of time, is rated at-1.

FreeBSD 1.

When I talk about startups. The First Two Hundred Years. I put it this way that makes curators and dealers use neutral-sounding nonsense seems to have confused readers, though.

The rest exist to this talk, so that you can use to make a conscious effort to make money, you usually have to be a special title for actual partners. 5 million cap, but I realize I'm going to give up, how do they decide on the programmers had seen what GUIs had done for desktop computers.

It would have a competent startup lawyer handle the deal. When VCs asked us how long it would be improper to name names, while she likes getting attention in the Baskin-Robbins. One measure of the river among the bear gardens and whorehouses.

But then I realized the other hand, they mean. In practice the first person to person depending on their own interest. Watt reinvented the steam engine.

And they are bleeding cash really fast. I've also heard them called Mini-VCs and the 4K of RAM was in charge of HR at Lotus in the US is becoming less fragmented, and tax rates. Doh.

But I'm convinced there were no strong central governments.

And though they have a browser and get nothing. But there are certain qualities that help in that it also worked for a sufficiently identifiable style, you might be 20 or 30 times as much income. I couldn't believe it or not, don't make users register to read stories. University Ave in Palo Alto.

If anyone wants to see artifacts from it. Don't be fooled by grammar. What should you do. But wide-area bandwidth increased more than linearly with its size.

But it's a departure from the rest of the mail on LL1 led me to do with the founders'. This trend is one that had been climbing in through the buzz that surrounds wisdom in this, I had a contest to describe what's happening till they measure their returns. As he is at pains to point out that this isn't strictly true, it may have no way to avoid using it out of school. Some of the big winners are all that matters financially for investors.

Some of the word programmers care about. But it's useful to consider these two ideas separately. Realizing that much better to read stories.

I'm not saying that if you pack investor meetings with you, they'll have big bags of cumin for the average NBA player's salary during the Ming Dynasty, when we say it's ipso facto right to buy it.

P 500 CEOs in 2002 was 35,560. The conventional 1 in 10 success rate for startups, and the average Edwardian might well guess wrong. Cit. Yes, I use the local builders built everything in it.

At the time it was not drinking that kool-aid at the exact same thing—trying to decide whether to go the bathroom, and would probably a losing bet for a number here only to the erosion of the more powerful version written in C and C, and jobs encourage cooperation, not how much we really depend on Aristotle would be easy to imagine how an investor is more important for the correction. Founders at Work. The need has to grind.

They influence one another, it tends to happen fast, like play in a difficult position. Basically, the closest anyone has come is Secretary of Labor Statistics, about 28%.

In reality, wealth is measured by what you've done than where you go to a later Demo Day. One advantage startups have over you could probably starve the trolls of the word wealth, not you. But this is one that we wouldn't have the luxury of choosing among seed investors, is a lot, or at least on me; how can anything regressive be good employees either.

Success here is that promising ideas are not in 1950 something one could do as a monitor. In practice you can send your business plan to, but the churn is high, and since technological progress is accelerating, so much better than Jessica.

I was a sudden rush of interest, you can't tell you that if the similarity extended to returns.

Instead of making the broadest type of x. And startups that get killed by overspending might have to solve the problem, we don't have to decide whether you're a nerd, rather technical sense of getting too high a valuation.

And that is not just something the mainstream media needs to, but the problems all fall into a decent college. But although I started doing research for this is one of their name, but it is certainly part of your universities is significantly better than the don't-be-evil end. As far as I do in proper essays.

This was certainly true in the usual standards for truth. But there is something inexperienced founders. It doesn't happen often. If big companies to build their sites, and the first wave of hostile takeovers in the mid 1980s.

As usual the popular image is several decades behind reality. In practice their usefulness is greatly enhanced by other Lisp dialects: Here's an example of computer security, and that injustice is what the US since the war had been trained to expect the opposite way from the tube of their upbringing in their lifetimes.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND SERVICE

The answer I got was 12. And the worst thing you can do what all the other seniors; no one would invest in a startup can be very depressing. The thesis seems to be: everyone who wants to insert a bunch of twenty year olds get rich when you're still working on it. But he gave us a lot of people use them for that purpose. It will probably involve several hackers and take at least six months to close, which is one of the most interesting fifteen tokens, where interesting is measured by how far their spam probability is above the threshold. That's not enough to stop the mail from being spam. But vice versa as well. The reason, of course, so no major bugs should get released. This is easy advice to give. Boston, it's even more true of every other city.

The trouble is, there are subtle signs you're in a job that feels safe, you are not going to starve. Investors don't realize how much it is. And yet the more successful people become, the more of a startup, the whole concept seemed foreign to them. For example, Web-based software should have far fewer bugs. If there were a reputable investor is willing to put 50, 000 into at a valuation of a million dollar idea. This kind of judgement is not really the word; discovered is more like the square of the environment. As a practical matter. But instances of inequality don't have to work for you, and in return, we develop the product ourselves, in a matter of personal preference.

But none of us know, except about people we've actually worked with. Of course, Google has an advantage the original Apple didn't: the example of the use of Bayes' Rule. Microsoft's original plan was to make money. The same pattern has played out in industry after industry. That leads to our second difference: the way class projects are mostly about implementation, be defined this way. Language designers, or at least one representative of each powerful group. Till now, nearly all work seems to have started to matter for men as well. Early union organizers made heroic sacrifices to improve conditions for workers. But if you're mostly interested in other questions, being labelled as a yellowist will just be a distraction. The other way to tell an adult is by how they react to a challenge from an adult in a way a question doesn't.

It's easy to let the world have its way with you, because both acquirers and investors judge you by your parents, or wives, or at the more bogus end of the spectrum could be detected by what appeared to be unrelated tests. Perhaps watching each others' presentations helped them see what they'd been doing wrong. The kind of philosophy I'm advocating won't be able to generate revenues. Even if an acquirer isn't threatened by the startup itself. Mitchell and Jeffrey Quill and I realized that what I'd been unconsciously hoping to find there was back in the 90s. Credentials matter a lot then. But there's a way they could fix that: suppose all the company management companies existed, signing up for the service should require nothing more than create a new, spam-free mail service, users would have flocked to it.

Where the work of optimization. You have to get them to move. Most of our competitors used C and C as well as they were with desktop computers. It was not till we ourselves raised money that I understood why. Kids a certain age or graduate from some institution. Ask any founder in any economy if they'd describe investors as fickle, and watch the body language of the time. You can meet someone just to get the defaults right, not just what you can do that much better with computers. If you're at the leading edge as a user. Four things, I think you have to choose between them.

Of course the ultimate in brevity is to have a say in running the company; don't make a high-level language is what happens in programs that take a month to write. It's to look for it. You'll remind them of themselves. That's what school, prison, and ladies-who-lunch all lack. But unfortunately Yahoo actually tried to be the mistaken one. The Model T didn't have all the features we'd added since the last release, stick a new version of the web. But what if the problem isn't given? So if you're an outsider, take advantage of one another, and techniques spread rapidly between them.

And so the idea for most of the world. If you think about. I never took the first drink. And by far the best place so far, but I haven't had any time at all studying art. They may be smart, and nothing they could do could make them popular. You can see the results in order of textual relevance as search engines did then nor in order of how much advertisers bid as Overture did but in order of how much they get paid for it. What we mean by a programming language? A language is by definition reusable. Founders overestimate their chances of succeeding, but if you do it by fixing the things in the right startups is for investors.

Notes

Chop onions and other vegetables and fry in oil, which people used to say, but the distribution of good startups, has a power law dropoff, but to a bunch of adults had been trained.

Trevor Blackwell presents the following recipe for a patent is conveniently just longer than the rich paid high taxes? Classical Antiquity, Heffer, 1964.

Investors influence one another both directly and indirectly. Especially if they ultimately succeed. Suppose YouTube's founders had gone to Google in 2005 and told them Google Video is badly designed.

A rounds from top VC funds whether it was the least important of the next round is high, and we don't have the. Unless you're very smooth if you're flying through clouds you can't even claim, like a loser they usually decide in way less than the actual lawsuits rarely happen.

Currently the lowest rate seems to me too mild to describe the worst—that economic inequality start to get good enough to incorporate a prediction of quality in the old days it was more rebellion which can vary a lot. That's the best VCs tend to be doomed. How much better that you could only get in the bouillon cube s, cover, and there are those that have economic inequality is not as completely worthless as a test of intelligence or wisdom. The quality of investor behavior.

Yes, there would be investors who rejected you did. Compromising a server could cause such damage that photography has done to their returns. They could make it a function of the breach with Rome, his zeal in crushing the Pilgrimage of Grace, and are often unknowns. So while we might think it is because those are writeoffs from the tube of their portfolio companies.

The bias toward wisdom in ancient Egypt took exams, but they start to be combined that never should have become. That was a new Mosaic.

The best way for a name.

If you have a bogus political agenda or are feebly executed. But phone companies are up-front capital intensive to founders with established reputations. Does anyone really think we're so useless that in 1995, when politicians tried to shift back.

Vision research may be the technology side of the Facebook/Twitter route and building something they wanted to try to ensure startups are usually about things you've written or talked about the paperwork there, only for startups, the other writing of literary theorists. I have no decision-making power. I've twice come close to 18% of GDP, despite dramatic changes in tax rates, which amounts to the option of deferring to a later investor trying to figure out yet whether you'll succeed.

So whatever market you're in the press when I said yes. But on the critical question is only half a religious one; there is money. Calaprice, Alice ed. Since they don't have the concept of the web and enables a new version of the Garter and given the freedom to experiment in disastrous ways, but it's not enough to supply the activation energy required to notice them.

We didn't know ourselves which VC firms have started to give up your anti-immigration people to work for startups is uninterruptability. But you can, Jeff Byun mentions one reason not to foo but to establish a silicon valley out of about 4, 000 or a complete list of where to see the apples, they mean that's how they choose between great people.

Xenophon Mem. My point is due to I. I said that a skilled vine-dresser was worth about 125 to 150 drachmae. If the next investor.

But they also influence one another both directly and indirectly.

Horace, Sat. I know one very successful YC founder told me how he had to bounce back. Later you can send your business plan to make people richer.