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swinfinities · 5 years

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Long Live the Queen: Part Thirteen

Four years later

Padmé gently daubed the sweat from her forehead with a white handkerchief. She still wasn’t used to the humidity of the fourth moon of Yavin. After a decade in the thin, dry air of Tatooine, this jungle should have seemed like an oasis. But it felt more like drowning with every breath. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever really been dry since she arrived here.

A small hovercraft sped by, on its way back into the ancient temple that this fledgling group of rebels had converted into their base. Most of the soldiers on the transport offered a stiff nod toward Padmé as they passed. Some of the younger ones gave awkward salutes. It made Padmé cringe inwardly, but she kept a smile on her face and nodded back to her troops. She didn't like salutes. She never wanted to be seen as a military leader. She was, first and foremost, a diplomat, not a warrior. But as a leader of this rebellion (or whatever it was that you would call a bunch of fed-up farmers, bankers, and engineers with guns) acting as a general instead of a senator was unavoidable. Some of the other leaders—Dodonna, Raddus, even Senator Organa—weren’t as afraid to get their hands dirty, and Padmé was thankful for that. And of course, there was Ahsoka, known to all but a very select few as Fulcrum. She was always off somewhere, fighting unknown dangers and finding those who were willing to speak up against the Empire. Padmé had nothing but respect for her old Jedi friend but certainly did not envy her. Padmé’s place was here, serving among her people, not on a battlefield.

Soft footsteps approached from behind. Padmé knew those steps—each footfall was deliberate, calculated, but so smooth it was as if the feet simply glided over the pavement like a boat over water. It was the product of a lifetime of practiced poise and elegance.

“Senator Mothma,” Padmé greeted the fiery-haired woman as she approached.

“Good morning, Padmé.” Mon Mothma replied. More than anyone else, Padmé knew, this woman carried the weight of this rebellion on her shoulders. It showed. She always put on a strong face (and, indeed, she was strong) but in her eyes, a deep-seated sadness and pain had begun to show. Already, there had been so many losses and so few victories.

“Any news from Lothal?” Padmé asked.

“Yes,” Mon replied. “But it isn’t particularly good news. According to Fulcrum’s reports, our friends on Lothal have been forced to flee. Governor Tarkin has ordered a blockade of the entire system. I’m afraid we are shut out of that sector for the time being.”

Padmé sighed heavily. “You’re right. That isn’t good news,” she said. “Were there many losses?”

“Blessedly few, considering our opponent.”

“What do you mean?”

“Darth Vader.”

The air around them suddenly turned from stifling heat to ice cold.

“Vader? Vader was on Lothal? This is his first appearance in months and he attacks Lothal? Does Ahsoka know?”

“She does. She was able to successfully direct a rendezvous between the Lothal group and Phoenix Squadron. But yes, Vader’s appearance is… unexpected. But I prefer to think of it as something of a good sign. It means that our actions are starting to draw the Emperor’s attention. It means that he is beginning to see us as a threat.”

“It also means that the fighting is only going to get worse from now on.”

“It will. But someday, perhaps, all the fighting will mean something. Until then, we must keep pressing on.”

Padmé was silent. She shook her head softly. She just couldn’t push the images out of her head—images of Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight, a noble warrior, and a decorated general. Her husband. But now he was out there somewhere, murdering children, burning villages, and decimating armies of soldiers that Padmé herself had sent to their deaths. Maybe there was something she could have done, some words she could have said to stop him from going down this path. Would Anakin still be here if she could only have loved him just a little more?

No. Padmé stopped such a dangerous thought before it could really begin. Every so often, these sorts of thoughts would try to creep in, trying to lay hold on her mind like the choking roots of a noxious weed. But she was always able to pull them out before they did any damage.

So far, anyway.

“I want to talk to Ahsoka,” Padmé said.

“Of course,” Mon replied. “I’ll have Bail set up a call—”

“No. No calls. No more secret transmissions. I need to see her in person. We need to talk.”

“About what, may I ask?”

Padmé paused. A plan—or at least the beginnings of one—was forming in her mind. To what end, she didn’t yet know, but she knew it could lead to something important.

“About Anakin,” she said.

The corners of Mon Mothma’s lips turned up slightly, the closest thing anyone could call a smile from the senator.

“My dear friend, you do not answer to me. You may do as you wish. I only ask that you travel in secret. We cannot risk you being discovered. Not after everything we’ve built. Not after we just got you back. Frankly, it’s a miracle that the Emperor hasn’t discovered you yet. If he were to find out you are still alive—”

“You needn’t remind me, Mon.”

“I’m only asking you to be careful.”

“I will. I’ll wear a disguise. I’ll have Reymus take me in his old Starhopper. We’ll be invisible.”

“Of course. I’ve learned by now to never doubt you, Padmé. Fare thee well. And may the Force be with you.”

“And may the Force be with you, Senator Mothma.”

*****

There is no emotion, there is peace.

A stone coming at chest. Swing left. Block.

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

Another stone, coming at head. Swing up. Block.

There is no passion, there is serenity.

From behind now. Swing. Block.

There is no chaos, there is harmony.

Two stones. Duck one. Swing down. Block.

There is no death. There is only the Force.

Luke Skywalker repeated the mantra in his head. He was blindfolded, yet he could see through his mind’s eye the stones flung in his direction. His father’s lightsaber felt alive in his hands. The weapon swung effortlessly, hanging on the invisible eddies of the Force. Back and forth it swayed, the vibrant blue blade meeting each stone midair, cleaving them in two.

There is no death, there is only the Force, Luke repeated in his mind. Around him, everything was alive, singing aloud with the same voice, the same harmony that rang throughout the universe. It was the song of the Force. He had learned to hear it. He was just now beginning to learn how to sing with it.

And yet there was something else drumming behind the song. Not singing, no. Something discordant. Chaotic. Less a pleasing hymn and more a scream of agony. It was the Dark Side. Luke had felt it before, creeping through the Force like a dank fog.

Luke thought he could see a figure emerging through the mist. Something tall and broad, like a lumbering monster. The thing was steeped in the Darkness—it dripped with it, oozing hate and anger from every pore of its miserable body.

“V-Vader,” Luke said, through trembling lips.

He opened his eyes. The song of the Force fell silent as his concentration is broken. A large stone hit him right in the gut. Luke doubled over in pain. He could see Yoda drop his head in disappointment.

Again.

Obi-Wan walked over to him, helping Luke up out of the mud. Luke stood. He was taller now. Nearly as tall as Obi-Wan. He had grown broader, too. Stronger. His face was now less than that of a boy, and more of a man.

“You saw him again?” Obi-Wan asks, but it isn’t much of a question.

“More and more now,” Luke replied. “Sometimes it almost feels like every day.”

“It is a troubling time for you, Luke,” said Obi-Wan. “Your strength in the Force is growing. The Dark Side is beginning to tempt you. Every day, it will try to pull you in, to bend you to its will.”

“So how do I defeat it?” Luke asked.

Yoda chuckled at that.

“Defeat it?” Yoda said. “Defeat the Dark Side, you cannot. Defeat yourself, you must.”

“But Master Yoda, what does that mean?”

Yoda shook his head softly.

“Explain this lesson, words cannot. Learn through the Force, you must.”

“What are you saying, Master?” Obi-Wan asked. “Do you think he is ready?”

Yoda closed his eyes, meditating for a few moments.

“Ready, the boy may never be,” Yoda said, opening his eyes and looking at his student. “But time it is.”

“Time for what?” Luke asked.

“For your trial,” answered Obi-Wan. “The final trial on the path to becoming a Jedi knight.”

#Star Wars Infinities #Star Wars #Luke Skywalker #Padme Amidala #Obi-wan Kenobi #Yoda #Rebellion #Empire #Alternate History #alternate timeline

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222daysoflight · 7 years

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A Journey Through Kitee, Finland: Birthplace of Nightwish

So as some of you know and I’ve made a few random posts about, last December I visited Kitee, Finland, the birthplace of Nightwish and (arguably) of symphonic metal. I’ve been wanting to make a full post about it for a long time, but I really want to do it justice. It’s a long story, so I’ve put it under a cut, but I feel like there’s some good info in there.

I’m going to try to give it what it deserves, but the long and short of it is: Kitee’s the most magical place I’ve ever visited. And that’s not something I say lightly, or with anything but sincerity. I’ve been to a fair amount of places, but Kitee feels like nowhere else I’ve ever been.

I can see how it created something like Nightwish.

So, bits of background: Nightwish has been my favourite band since I was about 10. It was the first thing I remember ever autonomously liking, and I’ve pretty much always liked them with the intensity I do now, but I was very embarrassed about it and kept it a secret until I was about 16. Why that is is a different matter entirely, but my point in explaining this is to hammer home (as if the whole “Nightwish blog” didn’t do that already) is that Nightwish is something massively important and personal to me, and has been for more than half my life. Going to Kitee was like a pilgrimage.

Anyway, more practical things: I was in Europe in December. I had no intention of flying back to the States for Christmas, and I wanted to go somewhere. Ergo, Finland. Now, several years ago, in the early days of this blog, I was talking to someone who had gone to Kitee, and they had mentioned a name to me: Plamen Dimov. I found him on facebook and sent him a message asking if he would recommend some places to see in Kitee. He replied for me to text him the time my train would get into town, and he’d come pick me up.

So one cold December morning after Christmas, I got on a train from Joensuu, where I was staying, to Kitee, about a half hour south. I texted Plamen, got off the train, waited for everyone else to get into their cars and leave, and then approached the only car that remained.

It was the right car, fortunately, so I got in and introduced myself properly to Plamen Dimov. Essentially, his claim to fame is that he is the music teacher in the Kitee high school who originally taught Tarja, Tuomas, Emppu, Jukka, and Sami. He was instrumental in their earlier stuff, though since they’ve gotten bigger, he’s taken more of a step back. But (as I’ll talk about later) he’s still very close to Tuomas and the Holopainen family, and has, of course, taken on the role of tour guide to people who have somehow found his name and are juuuust obsessed enough to come to town.

He’s also a big, loud, intimidating Bulgarian man.That should definitely be noted. We realised afterwards that we hadn’t taken a picture together, and I regret that.

First stop after the train station was Plamen’s house, because he had lost the keys to the museum where all the Nightwish stuff was. On the way, he told me about how as kids around my age, the entire original lineup of Nightwish used to sleep at his house so that they could stay up together and finish the demo that would become Angels Fall First.

It was there, he said, that they actually came up with the name Nightwish for the band, basing it off the song of the same name. I was thrilled to learn this, since I had been wondering about that for years and the internet was not forthcoming. Plamen eventually found his keys, and we left again.

Stop 2 was actually the local convenience store, because I’m not very smart and had not bought a return ticket to Joensuu, and apparently they sell out. When the lady checked, the last train with tickets available was the 6pm train. Plamen said it really wouldn’t take us that long and he had afternoon appointments. I said it was fine, I would just wander around for a while, and then we would meet up again and he would take me to the train. This ended up being a lovely bit of luck, but I didn’t know that yet.

Kitee is a tiny town. The municipality (also called Kitee) it’s in has a population of about 10 000, but the town itself is essentially just one street with shops on either side, clusteres of houses on little side streets, and then farms and lakes and forests. Your classic small town, at first glance.

And Plamen knew everybody. Before we even made it to the museum, he had already stopped three times to chat with random people. He’s large and sort of scary looking, but also very, very friendly and charismatic. He also seemed to take great joy in interrupting his Finnish conversation to go “and this my visiting Canadian!” while pointing at me. This didn’t really ease how intimidated I was by him, but y’know, that’s just my personality.

Eventually though we did make it to the museum, which was an old barn converted for the purpose. We went in, and it had apparently originally been a museum about logging in the area, but Nightwish stuff was slowly starting to creep its way down the stairs to probably take over the building.

The upstairs area, as it were, was already cramped with artefacts in cases (for the ones that really couldn’t be left out in an uninsulated barn), and sort of roughly organised in another area (for the things that could get a bit cold or wet). And it was small, don’t get me wrong-- this isn’t a high-budget operation, and Kitee is a tiny town to have anything that big-- but it was fascinating what was in there. All of the editions of all of the albums. The original lyric sheet for “Eva”. The original artwork for the cover of Century Child. The certifications for when the albums had gone silver, gold, platinum. There was even a poster, inexplicably, from the Nightwish show that I had been to in Toronto two years prior.

Frankly, even despite its mediocre organisation and small size, it was a little bit overwhelming. It was like everything that had been so important in my life all in one room.

(I blame my poor photography skills on glare)

Plamen let me look around for a bit, then asked me what my favourite Nightwish album was. My answer for that is actually about four pages long, but I just said Once, because that’s the conclusion of those four pages.

On the way out he had me sign a guestbook, which was pretty fun to leaf through. It wasn’t signed very often, but the places that people had come from were pretty amazing: Mexico, Brazil, Japan, all over Europe. I put in my own name and a nice word in for Montreal, and then we left.

Next stop was the Kitee high school, which I thought was strange, but it turns out that Finnish high schools have recording studios in their basements (don’t tell me if not all Finnish high schools do, I want to believe), and that all of the Nightwish albums until Dark Passion Play were recorded in said high school basement. I think it’s technically called “Caverock” or something, but it’s totally just a recording studio below a school.

Now, this is the only recording studio I’ve ever actually been into, but from my inexperienced perspective (and you can tell me yes or no from the pictures) but that place is swanky. There were a few rooms that you sort of snaked through, but eventually you made it to the back, where there was what I would call a Nightwish shrine.

This thing is huge, and filled with signatures. It was sort of like the guestbook, but it had all of the members of Nightwish, their families, their crew, everybody who was important or had visited the town where it all began. Plamen gave me a marker and I dutifully added my name, country of origin, and date to the shrine. Not gonna lie, I felt a little bit proud with my name there alongside everyone else’s.

Then Plamen opened up a little storage closet, pushed aside some cleaning supplies, and pulled out a microphone. I know I already posted this once, but I just feel like it bears repeating.

P: Here, it’s the microphone Tarja used to record Once. Want to hold it? Me: Oh god no, I’m going to break it. P: You’re not going to break it, it’s already broken Me: No no, I’m going to break it more P: ... Just take it

And so I held the microphone used to record Once, my favourite Nightwish album, the one that Rolling Stone said was really good or something. It was just a broken microphone, but I think you can tell be the look on my face. I was absolutely smitten.

So when we were looking at the shrine wall, Plamen had pointed out the signature of John Finburg. He’s Nightwish’s North American tour manager, and if you’re from North America and have seen Nightwish or various others before, he runs the ticket ordering service Enter the Vault. And, much like his ticket ordering service, John Finburg is terrible. Horribly misogynistic and racist. I don’t want to get too much into it here (or why people use him), but my point is that he’s a scummy human being and I hate him with a passion.

I don’t know why, but as we were walking back to the car, I mentioned this to Plamen. He turned back to me and looked sort of angry, and I was afraid I had said something bad, but I was wrong. I will never forget what he said next:

“John Finburg is a giant piece of shit. The way he treats women-- I told him, if you lay a hand on any one of the girls, I will kill you.”

Needless to say, Plamen and I got along swimmingly after that.

We got back into the car and drove for a while after that.The above picture is the very far edge of the Meadows of Heaven, which is apparently an actual place and not just a metaphor in a song (which I had always assumed). I wish I had a better picture, but they were on the left and Plamen’s head was in the way, but essentially it’s just this huuuuge open meadow, dark pine trees behind it, lake just barely visible in the distance. It was covered in snow because of the time of year, and Plamen said it was absolutely beautiful in summer, filled with wildflowers and the like.I don’t know, I thought it was pretty with the snow on it.

All the while Plamen chatted, giving interesting tidbits about Finland, which I found fascinating but isn’t worth relaying here. But, once we had bonded over our mutual hatred of John Finburg (or something), he also started to talk about other Nightwish things, especially Tuomas. About how he had once had to pull a girl off Tuomas and then talk her down. About that girl who had tried to get Tuomas to sign a marriage certificate. And how Tuomas had had to set up security around his house, because of people figuring out where he lived then going there (???). I asked if my belief was correct, that Tuomas is just a quiet Finnish man who would just like to write music in peace. The answer to that is yes.

Oh, and also, Plamen loves Floor. Obviously he had a special connection with Tarja, and he liked Anette, but he was on my page that Floor is a perfect fit for the band.

“Before with the other two, they were always a band and a soloist, a band and a soloist,” he said. “Now, with Floor, they’re just a band.”

Eventually, we stopped and got out of the car at the above house. Plamen explained that it was the Holopai’s house, Tuomas’ parents, and that they weren’t home at the time otherwise they would probably love to come out and meet me (Tuomas’ uncle/godfather lives in the red house to the side, hence the footprints). So I was like okay, cool, Tuomas grew up really really far from everything. We were about 10km from the Russian border, in pretty much the middle of nowhere.

Then Plamen lead me down a little path that went to the edge of the lake, looking out over the quiet, frozen emptiness.

“Over there, on that island,” he said,

“was where the idea for Nightwish was born.”

I took the picture, the sun (kindly) cooperating with me, and then I just... stood there. I stood there and stared for a long time. Plamen silently smoked a cigarette behind me, letting me be all weird and caught up in the mythos of it all. Do I really believe that Nightwish started there? I’m not sure. But it’s a nice story, and that’s what Nightwish is all about, right?

After a while, Plamen came back to stand by me again. Some dogs had started barking in the distance, and Plamen asked me if I knew what that meant. I said no.

“Wolves,” he said simply.

It was a few more senconds, and then there was the distinctive howl of a wolf, silencing all the dogs. It was one of the oddest things I had ever experienced. Absolutely eerie.

We stopped a few other places, but nowhere particularly worth noting in this already very long post. As I said, my train didn’t arrive for several more hours, and Plamen had some afternoon commitments, so we drove to the supermarket parking lot and he dropped me off. I said I was okay to just wander around a few hours, that I was used to the cold. He told me that if anything came up, I was supposed to go into the pizzeria and say “puhelin Plamen” (which means “telephone Plamen,” but like it’s being said by a child who doesn’t understand grammar). I agreed, and he drove off.

So then I had several hours to kill in a town that only had one road. I went into the supermarket to get some food, because it was around lunch time. For some reason, this supermarket had a music section, and so I waltzed on in and looked at some of the titles. Normal stuff, mostly-- all the Nightwish CDs-- and all organised in alphabetical order, like normal.

Except when I got to the letter “T”, I found this:

I don’t know why I found this little thing so strange, but I did. That CD should not have been classed under “T”, it should be under “H” for Holopainen. And yet it most definitely was not. I didn’t take a picture in the store, but I did stand there for a long while, thinking to myself how weird it was. Tuomas was so normal in that town, it would have been unusual to put his own album under his last name.

I didn’t own Life and Times of Scrooge, so I bought it along with my weird bagel things* and some hummus, and then set back out into the day, not really knowing what I was going to do.

It wasn’t a cold day at all, compared to some of those I’ve experienced in Montreal. Still, it was hovering around -4 C, and I didn’t have my proper winter gear with me, so it was a bit chilly. Plus, the minute I left the store, it started to snow as well, which was not helped by the fact that none of my clothes were waterproof. But it wasn’t wholly unpleasant, as far as days go, especially given December in Finland. Plus I was eager to explore.

As mentioned, Kitee “downtown” is just one street, so I decided it best to go out into the “outskirts” a bit. Being a proper wannabe goth (tm), the first place this lead me to was a series of graveyards. For a town of so few, Kitee has A LOT of graveyards, and you can make of that what you will with regards to Nightwish.

Next order of business was weird abandoned mill thing. Look, I have no idea, I had time to kill, and have a terrible sense of self preservation. I went through some of the outbuildings, with most everything being too dark to photograph and I just... I don’t know what this place was, really. One of the places seemed like a house, abandoned and with its door gaping open, with snow blowing in. Like nobody cared.

However, when I reached the far edge of the mill-area, I realised that there was, in fact, an occupied building on the property, and that there were lights on in it. I was fairly certain that I wasn’t supposed to be there. If I got caught I doubted I’d be able to explain myself, and I was too far from the pizzeria for me to emergency call Plamen for Finnish help.

So I bolted into the woods.

This was, perhaps, a mistake.

Now you see, the entirety of Kitee is surrounded by forest on the edge of a lake, so I knew that is I kept the lake in my sights I would be able to find my way back into the town. This is an excellent theory. However, as I mentioned, I didn’t have proper snow gear, and while my boots were okay and I had tucked my socks correctly, there was probably 8 inches of the snow on the ground in the forest, beautiful and pristine and utterly impossible to walk through.

But I had committed, and I didn’t really want to turn back and risk having anyone ask me questions. So I set off again, this time slogging through the woods.

I was never lost, per se, but I didn’t really know where I was going. I always kept the lake at my side, and knew I would get there eventually. At one point I ended up alongside a freeway before going back into the woods. It would snow, then stop, then snow again. Things were starting to melt onto me.

But I didn’t really care. As I walked along-- sometimes finding paths, sometimes through the woods-- it was the weirdest feeling. Like I was just suuuper aware of my surroundings, of the silence, of everything, and it was all... pleasant. Like when you’re warm and cozy in bed with the knowledge you don’t have to be anywhere for a little bit. I don’t like to bandy about words like magical, but that’s the closest I can come to describing it.

There would sometimes be weird little bits of life left behind in the woods, like this chimney with nothing else still visible around it. Sometimes there would be things like the freeway or a house. But for the most part, it was just trees, and snow, and views like the picture above this one, of a vast, frozen lake.

It may sound boring, the way I’ve described it. Snow and trees and ruined structures. But that’s not how I felt, and I think the most telling thing was that I didn’t listen to anything. Ever since I got my first iPod nearing on ten years ago, I’ve had headphones in constantly. I probably listen to about 5 hours of music a day, on average. It’s a compulsion, and has to do with some mental health issues that I won’t get into, but suffice it to say that I usually get very stressed if I’m out and not listening to music.

But walking through those woods, for pretty much the first time since I was 12, I didn’t feel the need to listen to music. Not Nightwish, not anything. Actually, at one point I put my headphones in, then took them out again, because it felt so wrong.

It sounds sort of silly, all typed out. “Kitee cured my anxiety,” or whatever. But it felt real at the time, and I swear to god, there something weird about that place. Maybe it was all in my head, but hey, so is the music, in the end.

I did eventually make it back to town, crossing through a metal pipe under the freeway (?) and eventually seeing the main stretch. It was pretty dark at that point, too, so I was pretty glad when I saw the entrance to town and the glow of the ABC minimart/gas station in the distance.

(don’t forget to rake your tits)

Plamen had suggested that if I got too cold I could go into the minimart to wait for him, and I felt like that was just what I needed. I went, got a coffee, and sat at a table in a far corner. There was wifi, so I made this post, and checked some stuff, but mostly I just wrote all of this down, everything that had happened, but mostly about how fucking weird I felt.

I listening to old men play slot machines and teenagers fuck around two tables over from me. I watched as cars drove by in the dark. Life went on while I was having a very small existential crisis with some mediocre coffee in a gas station.

As such, I managed to accidentally miss the time that I was supposed to meet Plamen back in the supermarket parking lot, and had to run to get back there. I was only a few minutes late, but he was extremely worried about me, even though I had plenty of time before my train.

Anyway, his son Nikolai had for some reason tagged along to drive me back to the station, but honestly I was very glad for the company. Things seemed more normal with them there, and we talked and laughed about languages, and Canada and Finland, and metal and circus. They told me to come back again anytime, but especially in the summer, as that was when things got really beautiful. I thanked Plamen and said goodbye to Nikolai, and got out to wait for my now-late train.

The lake wasn’t frozen over back up in Joensuu. I don’t know why. The next day I was back to listening to music again, exploring Joensuu and the woods there, but it wasn’t quite the same. Nothing was quite the same, and part of me doubts that I’ll ever find anything else that is.

There’s something weird about Kitee, and it’s not just Nightwish. And I really, really like it.

*if ANYONE knows what the weird bagel things are, I will love you forever. They’re more like rings of dough, so the hole in the centre is huge, and they’re a lot sweeter than normal bagels. I think I ate about 4 a day when I was in Joensuu, but I cannot for the life of me remember what they are called.

#personal #nightwish #kitee #long post #shit yeah originally i didn't have it under a cut but that would be... excessive #too many pictures #anyway this was really nice to write #it's been like... 8 months but as i mentioned i wrote down everything after it happened #so this is as accurate as i can assume anything is that happened in that town #seriously did i like temporarily step through a wormhole to some other dimension?#like ok this romanticises it a bit but... that's what it felt like #and i romanticise like nothing #and the music thing may seem small but you've got to realise that that is one of the weirdest things i've ever experienced #not wanting to listen to music #also i wanted to post a picture of my signature on the wall (i'm standing in front of it in the picture)#but it's defs my full name #and i ain't doing that #uh anyway if you're even in that neck of the woods 10/10 go visit kitee #and go through plamen #i can provide introduction if anyone needs #man there's so much more stuff but like this post is forever long #and here i am just rambling in the tags #wait later addition to tags #just because i feel like i need to make a note of something #that these pictures are not necessarily in the order i took them in #i just matched them to where they fit best in the story #all of them are mine and from kitee though #with the exception of the second to last one which is actually joensuu

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mirkwoodshewolf · 7 years

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I’ll always support you no matter what; Tony Stark x teen reader

Hey guys well this was my first Tony Stark oneshot that I had ever done and it was all came from after watching the Janet Jackson’s music video of “Rhythm Nation”. I feel like Tony even though loving that his child is a mini-genius like him, he would always support their dreams no matter if they wanted to go into the same line of work in math/science or do something completely far out from it like dancing or teaching or whatever. No matter what you do in life, never doubt that your parents aren’t gonna be there for you because they will no matter what it is. Be warned of swear words and mean comments.

_______________________________________________

“And so if you take f(x) and divide it by the square root of two you get—” then the bell rang signaling that our instruction was over. “Okay we’ll pick this lesson up first thing Thursday, and don’t forget to bring in a full advanced statistics equation of your choice for another fellow competitor to solve”. Our coach Professor Gooden said.

I packed up my stuff and put up the lab coats and just before I was about to leave, Professor Gooden stopped me and said,

“Hold on Miss. Stark, could I have a word with you?”

“Umm, now’s not a really good time, I’ve got somewhere else to be right now”. The man spoke for so long way ahead of normal class time I only had about 10 minutes left.

“No, no this needs to be said now, it won’t take long”.

“Yeah right”. I muttered under my breath as I walked up to him and removed my bag from my shoulder and set it down beside me.

“Miss Stark, lately I haven’t been seeing you coming to our decathlon meetings, just recently last week you showed up and missed every single lesson and exercise we’re planning to do at the Regional’s a few weeks ago. Is there something going on at home? Or anything like that?”

“No sir, everything is fine bye!” I quickly raced out of the building and got into my motorcycle and drove off as fast as I could to the studio.

Just in the nick of time, I raced inside the building, ran up the stairs and made it to the studio level. I signed in and got changed quickly and met with a few friends of mine.

“Ohh sorry I’m late I hope I didn’t miss anything!”

“Nope, right on time Stark” my friend (f/f/n) said.

“Yeah, Dirga’s not even here yet, so you’re all good” (m/f/n) said. I tied my dancing shoes and began stretching out with them and catching up on some things since last week.

“So sorry I’m late everyone traffic was murder out there, but I’m here now so let’s begin”. Our dance coach Dirga proclaimed making us all cheer.

I think now would be a good time to explain myself. My name is (y/n) Stark, yep daughter of the Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, Tony Stark aka Iron Man and Pepper Potts. I’m 19 years old with my dad’s brains and my mom’s looks. I graduated high school when I was 13 and college by the time I was 15 and received many degrees just like my dad. Which brings me to my current dilemma, for about 2 years now my dad had me part of the New York state decathlon team competing in almost all fields of math and science. I’ve helped New York win in almost every championship prize except the World wide champion because we always get beat out by China.

Not to complain or anything but being a scientist like my dad wants me to be isn’t working out anymore because I’ve always had another secret passion ever since I was a little girl.

Dancing.

It was a few months ago that I came across auditions for dancers at this Dance studio, and without my parents or my aunt and uncles knowing it, I auditioned and got in and now we’re getting ready to compete in the State finals.

As much as I love doing what my dad does, I just want to be my own person and follow my own dreams, I don’t want to follow in my dad’s shadow anymore and be known as Miss Stark the mini-genius, I want to be my own person and become the ultimate dancer and tour with the best dancers in the world. The problem is I don’t know how to tell my dad the news, I’m afraid if I tell him he’ll write me off as his daughter and throw me out.

I love my dad and yeah he can be annoying and stupid sometimes but he’s my dad and he’s always been there for me, even if he has to go on a mission the same day as one of my decathlon competitions, he would go see me whip another people’s minds and butts with my fast thinking and superior mind.

I wouldn’t ask for another dad in the whole world.

But I wish he would understand that I don’t want to become a scientist like him, but a professional dancer.

“Okay everyone! Circle up!” Dirga cried out. We all gathered around her and she continued, “Okay, we’ve won the Regional’s. Now we need to get into the State’s so that we’ll have a spot on for the State finals. Now we need a song that can help us get there, anyone got any ideas?”

“Oh how about Talk Dirty by Jason Derulo?” annoying slutty Brooke suggested (A/N! If there are any Brooke’s out there I am SORRY!! Just change the name to another girls name)

“Too slutty Brooke! We can’t just win with bodies alone. We need more than that”. Me and my group of friends laughed quietly.

“What about a mix of several songs?” Becca suggested.

“Can’t have remix! I checked the rules this time they’re being very strict about what type of songs are allowed and how far remixing a song goes. Come on guys think we need to send them a preview of our song in a couple of days! Now think!”

We all remained quiet and all tried to think of a good song to do. When suddenly, it hit me

.“Janet Jackson Rhythm Nation” I muttered.

“What was that Stark?” Dirga asked.

“Rhythm Nation by Janet Jackson, it’s powerful. Unison choreography, and it’s a classic song that no one could hate”. Dirga smiled then said.

“Excellent choice Stark, and for thinking of it you’ll be our Janet Jackson!”

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa hold on Coach I’ve always been lead dancer! Why are you letting this nerd become lead dancer over me!” Brooke sneered.

“Because Stark here in brilliant, she knows her dancing styles, and frankly Brooke she knows not to come in her underwear to my class”. All of us wooed then Brooke let out a pathetic growl of jealousy and stomped out like a spoiled little brat as everyone clapped and cheered for Brooke’s farewell and my place as lead dancer.

As the day went on, Dirga submitted our song to the State judges hoping that our song would get approved and just within a few minutes the judges responded back.

They approved it.

Then Dirga rolled out the small TV which sat on top of a wheeled bookcase and put in a disc which had the actual Rhythm Nation music video. As it played, we took notes out loud suggesting what we could do, how many solos people would get on the interlude of the song, whether we should get the actual costumes to pull off the look even more (which everyone agreed to) all that other stuff.

For the remainder of class, we all decided to go over just beginning the formation of our rows, how much space everyone had and just went over the first part of the dance before the beginning of the first chorus. We went over it several times over and over and over again till everyone could do it in sync with each other then soon Coach Dirga called it a day and said she would email us a schedule for the next several weeks on how many rehearsals we would have.

I got on my motorcycle and drove back to Avengers Tower hoping that my dad wasn’t too suspicious about my being gone for so long since I was technically suppose to be back 2 hours ago. As I reached the main level, I took notice that no one was currently in the lobby.

Good news for me.

I quietly and quickly headed for the stairs when.

“And just where have you been young lady?” I flinched and froze in place. I slowly turned around to see my parents with their arms crossed over their chests tapping their feet with faces demanding to know where I was and to make it even more tense, the rest of the Avengers were behind them giving me the same look.

“Well (y/n) (y/m/n) Stark?” My mom asked.

“Okay, okay, the team and I left after class to get some lunch together then we hit the mall but I just looked around since there really wasn’t anything I liked or that I already owned”. Some of the Avengers (my dad, Bruce, Thor, and War Machine) believed my story but the others (my mom, aunt Nat, Clint, Steve, the Maximoff twins, Sam Wilson, and Loki *yeah that’s right after his dept to society he was converted to an Avenger*) didn’t believe me for a second.

“Well, okay. Just next time shoot me a text about where you go. I was worried something bad had happened to you” my dad said as he walked up to me and cupped my cheek stroking them with his thumbs gingerly.

“I’m sorry dad, it won’t happen again”.

“Good”. He leaned forward and kissed my forehead and said, “hey if you want wanna come help me and Brucie here down at the lab? I could really use my little assistant”

“Umm, no thanks dad, I’ve got quite a bit of homework Professor Gooden gave us, plus I need to make up an advanced Statistic equation for my lab partner to complete”. I then ran up the stairs without another word leaving everyone suspicious and confused.

So far for the next couple of weeks I managed to keep my dancing rehearsals a secret and play off my dad with lies about staying after the decathlons to do more studying when truthfully I quit the decathlon team the night I came home late weeks ago. But it’s hard to keep a secret like this when you not only feel guilty about hiding something like this from your smart father who wants you to be more like him, but I’ve got the feeling that a certain number of the team is onto me and it’s only a matter of time before I’m caught.

Sometimes when I walk too and from the dance studio, I always get this feeling that I’m being followed, which is why I always have to sneak out wearing a large hoodie and sunglasses to hide myself. I just hope this is just my guilty mind playing tricks on me and not actually true, but other than that I’ve got more important things to think about right now.

We now had the full routine down and just needed to finally put the whole dance together with the song. As Coach Dirga had her phone playing the Janet Jackson speaking intro playing through the speakers, we readied for our first mark to prepare the dance. When we stood straight and tall once again we all began the countdown and finally broke out into the dance. Dirga would call out certain people who were slower or going faster than everyone else because we needed this dance to be completely in sync one motion and one body doing the same thing, and if even one of us is either behind or ahead, it ruins the whole illusion.

At the end of the whole song, we all clapped and cheered at an okay rehearsal.

“Not bad kids, not bad at all, just the few of you work on your speed but everyone else, great job. Now before you all leave, I have one announcement to make,” Coach Dirga then went to the hallway and pulled in a cart filled with small boxes. “The uniform sizes I had all of you guys fill out for your costumes have finally arrived.” We all cheered and clapped at the news before Dirga whistled for us to be quiet. “Now when I call your name, come up and get your costumes. Don’t wash them just let them air dry for a few hours over night and they’ll be fine. I expect you all to start bringing them to rehearsals starting tomorrow”. She then began calling us by name to collect our box with every piece of costume worn in the real Rhythm Nation video down to the last buckle and leather design.

Once we all got our stuff, Dirga dismissed us and said that the next rehearsal would be 10am sharp. I packed up my stuff up and headed out from the dance studio onto my bike and drove back to Avengers Tower.

Again, I felt that creepy feeling that I was being followed. This time it felt more than real because it felt like three people were stalking me. I quickly picked up on gas and weaved through traffic safely and turned onto an alleyway hoping that I would lose whatever or whoever it was that was following me. Suddenly my bike stopped and I was flung off of it and just when I thought I was about to skid across the ground, I was caught into a pair of strong arms when I opened my eyes to see who it was that caught me I quickly took notice of the long blue sleeves with muscles just tightening up against the fabric of the sleeves.

I knew right away who it was that had saved me and who probably caused my bike to suddenly stop.

The Maximoff twins.

Wanda with her telekinetic mind powers forced my bike to make an immediate halt and when I was flung off which probably wasn’t part of their plan, Pietro quickly used his speed to catch me before I could get hurt.

That’s the price yet reward I get for looking at the twins as kinda like my older brother and sister.

“Thanks for the save Pietro”.

“No problem, are you okay? We didn’t mean for you to go flying off of your bike”. Pietro said as he put me down.

“Yeah I’m good, you hear that Wanda, I’m fine!” It was then out of the darkness Wanda came out with a guilty look on her face. I walked up to her and embraced her in a warm hug and said again, “it’s alright, you’re lucky your brother has super speed other wise I would’ve gotten hurt of even worse. I don’t blame you, okay?” She nodded and embraced me back.

After awhile we separated then I asked them as I got my dance bag.

“What are you guys doing here this late?”

“We were hoping you could tell us that yourself (y/n)”. I tensed up knowing whose voice that belong to and out of the darkness was the man of green and gold, the god who once attacked and tried to take over my world but failed thanks to my dad and his team, the God now trusted enough to join the Avengers after paying his dept to society and my surrogate uncle in a ways, Loki the God of Mischief.

“Hello Loki, I should’ve expected that the twins didn’t think on this one alone”.

“Perceptive as always Miss Stark, but we have more important things to discuss”.

“Like what exactly?” I sassed.

“Like what exactly it is that you’ve been doing the past few weeks. Your father maybe dense enough to believe your lies but as you know very well I’m not. If it’s something horrible then I have the right to know!” Loki snapped.

“Oh my god. Do you honestly think I’m doing drugs? Or getting involved with gangs? God Loki you can be such an fool sometimes!”

“I maybe a fool but I’m not the one whose lying about what I do now!” Wanda then stepped up and placed her hand on the God’s shoulder to calm him down and she said.

“Please (y/n), ve’re all really vorried about you, just please tell us vhat it is zhat you’ve been doing and ve’ll walk away and never speak of this again”.

“Unless it’s somezhing bad, zhen ve vill continue to talk about it,” Pietro said. Then in a flash of blue he swiped my dance bag from my hands and I tried to get it back but Wanda held me back with her powers.

“No! No guys please don’t look inside it I’m begging you!”

“This sounds bad, open it Pietro!” Loki ordered.

“Pietro I swear to God if you open that bag up I’ll kill you!” But it was too late. Pietro opened up the bag and they saw my Janet Jackson dance costume and I fell to my knees in defeat. “This is it?”

“All zhat’s in here is some sort of costume”. Wanda said.They all turned to me seeing me now on my knees with my shoulders shaking as I tried to hold in my sobs knowing that now that my secret was out, they’ll tell dad and I’ll be kicked out of the Stark family for not wanting to be a super genius.

“(Y/n)?” Loki’s voice said as he knelt down beside me. I could see him trying to reach out for me but I brushed him off angrily and turned away. “Hey, hey, calm down. Calm down now,” his arms slowly wrapped around me and I choked out my sobs into his chest. “Shhh, shh, shh. Calm down, breathe”. I tried to calm myself down and as I did I could feel the twins now coming up to me with Wanda stroking through my hair and Pietro soothingly rubbing my back.

“(Y/n), talk to us”. After my short breakdown, I finally came clean and told them everything.

“I’ve—I’ve been taking dance class at Dirga’s studio for the past few months now. I quit the decathlon because I’m tired of being the smart daughter of the great Tony Stark. I don’t even want to become a scientist or a famous Mathematician or even an expert on anything revolving on what my dad and Bruce do. I just wanna dance. It makes me feel free and alive, I make friends who don’t look at me the way all the other smart people do. They look at me like I’m my own person, and not the daughter of Tony Stark”.

“And what’s wrong with that?” asked Pietro.

“Because I know for a fact that if my dad found out that I wanted to waste my life being a silly dancer instead of taking over Stark industries and becoming his equal IQ of smart, he’ll write me off as his daughter and kick me out leaving me homeless and regretful”.

“Now I know for a fact that that is not true”. Said Loki.

“How would you know?”

“Because Stark maybe arrogant, pushy, annoying and selfish at times but he loves you more than the world itself. He would gladly give up Stark industries if it meant spending more time with you”.

“I doubt that”.

“No, he’s right. (Y/n), Stark always talks about you, not just of how smart you are but how you’ve brightened up his life for zhe past 19 years. He loves you (y/n) and I bet if you tell him, he’ll understand. And if for some reason he doesn’t, then it’s his loss. We’ll still love and support you”. Wanda said as she brushed a strand of hair away from my face and gently fingered my cheek wiping away a tear.

I softly smiled knowing I still had the support and love from my sister, brother and uncle. After a few minutes and getting the comfort I’ve been dying to have for awhile now, Loki transported us all back into the Tower and I got ready for bed hoping that soon I could work up the courage and tell my dad the truth of what I really want to do with my life and how I want to live it.

The next morning, I woke up and build up my confidence to finally tell my dad what I really want to do with my life. I stood in my bathroom in front of my mirror and muttered.

“Okay, okay come on Stark. You can do this, just tell him the truth. He’ll understand. But what if he doesn’t? What if this is a bad idea? No, no, no, no! You must think positive. He’ll love you no matter what. Just go down there and tell him. Okay, okay. Let’s do this”. I then walked out of my room and headed down towards the lab where I know my dad and Godfather Bruce would be.

When I reached the lab, low and behold there were my dad and godfather working on some new Ironman suits and when my dad saw me he said.

“Hey, there’s my little super genius, come over here and help Green man and I work on these new suits”.

“I could do without the Green man remark Stark” Bruce muttered as he kept working. I walked up to my dad and helped him adjusted some of the parts and I said.

“Hey dad, I’ve been meaning to tell you this—”

“Hold on sweetie, could you pass me that ¾ wrench?” I quickly picked it up and handed it to dad who thanked me before tightening up some screws into the suit.

“Dad, what I’m about to say is sorta crazy and I hope you’ll understand it but I’m—”

“Oh speaking of which baby, I’ve got something to tell you,” he stopped working and removed his goggles and said as he placed his hands on my arms, “for the next decathlon competition, I’ve managed to bring in the top scientists from SHIELD besides Banner and me, to observe your skills and if you impress them you’ll be able to work with SHIELD as an apprentice for the Head of SHIELD’s science department. Isn’t that great?”

Oh boy.

This just got a whole lot harder to tell him the truth. The decathlon was a month away, the same time as the State competition for dance class. If I don’t show up there, my dad’s gonna look like a fool for leading the top SHIELD scientists to an event that I’m no longer in anymore.

“(Y/n)? Sweetie you okay?” asked dad. I put on a fake smile and said.

“Wow, an apprentice for SHIELD’s science department. Thanks dad”.

“I knew you’d be psyched! Oh man when those guys see you. They might as well just make you Head of SHIELD’s science department”. My dad embraced me lovingly but now my face could slowly break down but I hugged my dad back as to not show him that something was bothering me or what he said was wrong.

We separated and he asked,

“Now what is that you wanted to tell me?” Oh crap. Say something. Say anything stupid!

“Just—can’t wait to wow the SHIELD scientists next month”.

“That’s my girl! Now let’s get back to work on these suits, and maybe we can finally build you one”. As we worked, I mentally kicked the shit out of myself for saying that to him and being a coward for saying yes to this.

A month later, it was time.

I obviously was at NYU for the dance State competition, I was in my dressing room in full Janet Jackson costume with my hair up and makeup put on. You could hear the sounds of the audience cheering from above and sound checks being made, my whole team would be gathering backstage by now with Coach Dirga giving us a final pep-talk.

But I was shaking like a leaf.

Right now I could just imagine my dad at the Community center with the SHIELD scientists waiting for my team to come out and when they see I’m not with them, my dad will be a laughing stock at SHIELD and then when he finds out that I lied to him, I’ll get worse than just a grounding, I’ll be kicked out of the tower, I’ll have no family because Tony will make sure that none of the Avengers ever speak to me, and I’ll have no place to go.

I’ll be a disgrace to the Stark name.

Panicked, I finally decided to call quits and bail on my dance team to make my dad proud. I grabbed my bag and snuck out of my dressing room, anytime security came, I hid then took off running to try and find the exit. As I ran through the labyrinth of backstage, I accidentally bumped into someone with full force knocking us both down and when I went to apologize I was shocked to see who it was that I had ran into.

My dad.

“Dad? Wha—what are you doing here?”

“Well first things first I’m just expecting Pietro to come back and say that dumb catchphrase of his because that was too fast to be you”.

“Hey!” He chuckled then continued,

“Second, I came to see why I didn’t see my daughter at the community center with the decathlon just for Professor Gooden to tell me that you quit the squad and haven’t really been participating for months even when you were there”. Oh no, here it comes. The guilt conversation and then punishment after. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?” I took a deep breath and said.

“Okay, okay you caught me. I—”

“Don’t worry, Loki told me everything just now as soon as he and the twins brought me and the rest of the team here. At first I didn’t want to believe him well for obvious reasons but then the twins backed him up, as did some of the others who had suspected of you for sneaking off”.

“What? They told you!? Damnit I’ll kill those three!”

“Hey language young lady, don’t make me get the Cap here”. He warned. I rolled my eyes then he continued this time in a more sincere tone, “baby girl why did you lie to me?”

“Because I was scared, okay? I—I didn’t want you to be mad at me because I wanted to be a dancer and not a scientist like you, or become Head of Stark Industries after you. I was going to tell you last month in the lab, but then you told me about the apprenticeship at SHIELD, and that made me even more scared to tell you, because you were saying you were so proud of me and……I didn’t wanna let you down. Please don’t hate me”. I sniffled and tried to stop my tears from falling that’s when dad finally said.

“Hey, c’mere munchkin,” he embraced me comfortingly and adjusted me into his lap just like when I was a little girl. I sobbed into his shoulder and he rocked me back and forth stroking my hair and rubbing my back in soothing circles. “I don’t hate you (n/n), I could never hate you. You’re my best buddy, my pal, my sidekick. And I will always love and support you, no matter what”.

“Really?” I whimpered.

“Of course, look,” he separated from me and continued, “If anyone should be apologizing here it’s me. I was too ignorant to truly see that while you loved doing science and helping me out in the lab, that it wasn’t what you wanted to do. I was too busy telling you what to do that I wasn’t listening to how you felt. I’m sorry I made you feel like I was against you, I would never be against you”.

“I know”. I nodded and whimpered.

“I love you so much!”

“I love you too!” Dad and I embraced each other tightly and I breathed in full relief. “I’m glad my guilt vision didn’t come true”.

“That’ll never happen”. After a few minutes of embracing each other, we separated and I wiped my tears away and we walked back towards my dressing room for sometime alone. I cleaned off my face and reapplied my makeup and said.

“I guess I must’ve freaked everyone out for not showing up backstage. I better go apologize and explain to Coach Dirga what happened”.

“Yeah, well I better head back to my seat, don’t wanna miss my baby girl in her true colors. Knock em dead kiddo, and your mother and I along with the team will be cheering you on”.

“Thanks dad”. He kissed my cheek before leaving my dressing room. I took one final look in the mirror and then left to meet up with my team. When I reached them, I explained everything to them and that now everything was all good and now it was our turn.

The stage went pitch black and Janet’s opening monologue echoed throughout the room and the stage lights flickered just so the audience could see us getting into place. Suddenly one single light shined on all of us and we opened up the dance with a quick one machine dance then did the countdown.

Then as the music picked up, our routine began. Everyone cheered loudly knowing this song and the routine. We wowed the entire audience with our in-sync coordination and not one of us messed up the routine by going either too fast or too slow. We all were together like one machine and I had a feeling Coach Dirga couldn’t be more prouder of her students for making her proud.

At the end of the song and our last dance outbreak, the lights immediately shut down and the room went crazy in applause. We even got a standing ovation and none were more prouder than my dad and the Avengers.

“Who is that lead dancer?” A man asked.

“Yeah she was really powerful in leading her team!” His buddy asked.

“She’s more than just that! She’s my daughter!” My dad answered to them then he whistled and cried out my name as loud as he could as my team and I took a final bow and walked off the stage.

A couple of hours later after the last group went, it was time to find out who would move onto the State finals and who would not. All groups came on stage waiting for the judges to make their statements, then the announcer was given the card saying the teams competing in the State Finals.

“Okay, the judges have made their decisions; In third place and first team going to the Finals is—Queen B Group!” A dance team from a community college did “Crazy in Love” by Beyonce and called themselves the Queen B Group in honor of the Queen B herself. We all clapped for them for they were good. “In second place and moving onto the finals is—Car Wash Mania!” Another dance studio runned by Dirga’s old friend since High school did the song “Car Wash” by Christina Aguilera ft. Missy Elliot, they were done up in casual car wash clothes and worked with props so they deserved second place because they were good and we have done some collaborating dancing between the two of us in the past.

Now it all came down to the last group. There were 13 groups competing in States but only 3 can move onto the finals. My group and I all joined hands and huddled together hoping and praying that we would get in, but if not then we did our best and still kicked butt on finally dancing as one unit to a very difficult song.

“And the winners of the State Competition and the last group advancing to the finals is—” The spotlight grew on the announcer, drum roll sound effect came out as he proclaimed. “DIRGA’S RHYTHM NATION!!!!!!!” We all screamed and jumped up and down and the entire audience stood up in applause and of course my whole family was going crazy as my team’s name was called out.

Dirga and all of us went up to the announcer and he gave us our trophy and congratulated us on a job well done to a very difficult song.

Dirga, my team and I each had a hand on the trophy as we raised it high in the air and the crowd once again stood up and loudly cheered.

Later that night in celebration, Avengers Tower was having a party for my dance team for getting into the State Finals. The parents, coach Dirga, and my whole team was there dancing, eating and talking with one another about the moments we’ve had doing this. As I was sitting with my 2 best friends from my team (f/f/n) and (m/f/n) along with the Maximoff twins, Aunt Nat and my two uncles Loki and Bucky a voice echoed on a microphone.

“Attention everyone may I have your attention for just a second?” Everyone then turned to face my dad who was standing next to my mom with champagne glasses in hand. “Now we all know why we’re here. To congratulate Dirga’s dance team on winning a spot at State finals, you kids were awesome let’s give one more applause for them!” The families and friends all cheered for my team then my dad continued to say, “I’d also like this time to praise my daughter (Y/n) (y/m/n) Stark. She’s shown me that she’s more than just a little mini-me,” at this moment the crowd softly chuckled as my dad proceeded to say, “She’s shown me that she’s a free spirit too. Now I never really got much of a choice growing up on what I wanted to do, and I’m afraid that I’ve pushed the same onto her, but tonight she’s shown me what she truly wants to do and I can tell that she enjoys it completely. (Y/n) sweetheart, you be your own person not just because of me, but because of you and what you want. I will always support you no matter what, and never doubt that I love you”. The crowd awed at us then dad raised his glass and said. “To (y/n) Stark and her wonderful dance team!”

“To (y/n) and her dance team!” The rest of the people said as they too raised their glasses even members of my team and Coach Dirga raised their glasses to me.

The party lasted most of the night filled with food, drinks, and dancing. My dad and I even got the dance floor to ourselves for a slow dance and as we danced together, I leaned up against my dad’s chest next to his arc reactor and muttered.

“Thanks dad”.

“Anything for you kiddo, love you always my little Dancing Queen”. I smiled softly knowing that now I no longer needed to be afraid of who I wanted to be. My dad would always have my back and pick me up when I fall, he’ll always be my rock just like I’ve always been his, he would and forever will love and support me, no matter what I choose.

And forever it will always be.

#tony stark x reader #father!tony #daddy!tony #father-daughter #avengers fanfiction #avengers fandom #tony stark x teen reader #fluff

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vanquisher2099 · 5 years

Text

Part Eight: A Commander Walks into a Basement

John’s head was pounding as he came to. His first instinct was to see if he could see (he could) and whether or not he could move at all (he couldn’t). There was a surprising amount of light in the room, and as he slowly gathered his wits he noticed a pool table, sofa, and giant screen mounted on the wall. There was a soft carpet on the floor, which had a few bloodstains which, judging from the way his head felt, might have come from him. He was, at this point in his career, somewhat used to being tied to chairs, which was why he was a little surprised at the quality of the job. Someone who tied people to chairs on a professional basis, he thought.

A heavy tread was making its way down a set of stairs he couldn’t see, and he craned his head to try to see behind him. His efforts rewarded him with a wave of dizziness and not much else. It was moot, anyway, as the footsteps continued down the stairs and then proceeded across the carpet to behind him.

“You know,” he said, conversationally, “typically you blindfold someone when you knock them out, or put a bag over their head. Otherwise you give them too much of a chance to find a way out, or gain intel on your place.”

“That’s only a problem when you give a shit about what your prisoner knows.” The figure walked in front of John, revealing a broad-shouldered woman with her black hair in a military cut and a ragged scar across her cheek. “I, on the other hand, could not give less of a shit.”

John raised an eyebrow. “So you’re gonna just kill me, huh? Except if you were going to do that, I feel like you’d already have done it. Which means there is something you want me to tell you, at least a little.”

The woman crouched down, grinning broadly. “Look at the brain on this one! I’d tousle your hair condescendingly, but I don’t want to make your headache worse.”

“That’s awfully nice of you. I mean, I’m not going to tell you whatever you want to know out of principle, but still. I appreciate it.”

“You misunderstand me, John,” the woman said, not bothering to acknowledge the way that John’s eyes briefly widened at the use of his name, “You were right about our not killing you, of course. But I – we – don’t need any information from you. It doesn’t matter why you’re here, or what you were hoping to accomplish. All that matters is where you decide to go from here.”

John pondered her words for a moment, formulating a response. He was, of course, pleased to know his life was not in any immediate danger, but he didn’t like not knowing why his life was not in any immediate danger. “Well, to be honest with you, my plans are sort of directly tied to whatever you decide to do with me. I’m sure I could wriggle my way out of these ropes eventually, but it might be easier if you do it for me.”

“Fair enough. Allow me to give you a brief summary of the situation you’re in, John. This particular neighborhood is, for all intents and purposes, no longer an official neighborhood. It is under threat of wildfires and, therefore, unfit for habitation by its residents.” There was a self-satisfied smirk on the woman’s face. “This is, as you’ve probably guessed, not entirely true.”

“Hell of a fabrication.”

“It’s not really a complete fabrication, if I’m being honest. This is one of the hotspots for fires, sitting as it does in this narrow corridor featuring high winds and dry weather – to say nothing of an electrical infrastructure which is, put politely, a little out of date. It didn’t take a lot of convincing.”

“But they’ll eventually wonder why they’ve never gotten an all-clear, won’t they? Or a call from their insurance companies telling them ‘hey sorry your stuff is all gone?’”

“You’re not from around here, huh? There’s official evacuations in effect from two years ago. We’ve got plenty of time to enjoy the place before we have to worry about moving on. But I’m getting carried away here – the point is, there’s very little point in pulling off a trick like this if someone goes out and gives the game away.”

“So you want me to stay quiet about this whole thing?”

“Not quite. I want you to join us.”

John couldn’t stop the derisive snort that escaped him. “Don’t be ridiculous. Your plan was to tie me to a chair, tell me you’re squatting in a neighborhood you tricked into evacuating, and then tell me ‘hey by the way do you want to join us?’ You haven’t even told me who you are.”

The woman ran a hand through her hair, grinning a little ruefully. “Yeah, I know. It’s a ridiculous idea, right? But then again, you’re tied to a chair and haven’t had a real look around, so I can forgive that. As for my name, I’m Gabriella. Formerly Captain Gabriella Dominguez of the US Cyberwarfare Division, Special Operations Section, but I have, obviously, left that particular life behind me.” She walked behind the chair, and John felt his bindings loosen. “There, now you can take the tour with me.”

John stood up, a little unsteadily, and probed the lump on his head gingerly. There had been a little blood after all, as it turned out, but it hadn’t been serious. He felt more or less fit, although he was fairly certain that if he tried to run or fight he’d come out on the wrong end pretty quick. There seemed to be nothing to do now but play along and look for an escape, so he turned to face Gabriella, nodded his thanks, and said “Lead on, then.”

The two walked up the stairs and exited into a richly-appointed kitchen. A few men who also looked to be military as far as John could tell were leaned against an island in the center, drinking coffee. Both saluted at the sight of Gabriella, who sighed heavily and waved them off. “We’re not military anymore, you don’t have to salute. Christ, it’s been two years. Y’all are killing me with this shit.”

“Sorry Captain! Force of habit, Captain!”

“You don’t have to call me – nevermind. I’m giving our guest the grand tour. Any problems I should know about?”

“All quiet, Captain. The gardens reported trouble with deer eating the crops, but no signs of any further outsiders.”

Gabriella turned to John with a look on her face that seemed to say “see what I have to deal with?” John shrugged.

“Gardens?”

“Yeah, we’ve converted most of the landscaping around here to grow food. It doesn’t bring in a lot, but we’re not that big of an operation and it takes some of the pressure off our scavenging parties.”

“So you’ve what, started some kind of commune? Are you all ex-military, or is that just you and your friends back there?”

“Nah, most of us never really had any kind of formal training or employment. We just happened to run into them one day and figured we’d help.”

“Them?”

“The refugees out of San Francisco.”

John’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “I thought they all were resettled.”

“The people who had housing, sure. But the ones who were already homeless? They had nowhere to go – the closest cities were swarming with police all too happy to beat them for sleeping on the streets, and it’s not as if prison’s a particularly attractive option. We started out with a group of about ten, plus me and my two buddies back there, but as we went on we kept running into more refugees.” She paused to wave and exchange a good morning with a few passers-by headed in the opposite direction. “Moira! Settling in okay? Be sure to see the doc when you get a chance, alright?”

Moira, a thin-looking girl who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, nodded. “Thanks, Captain. He said he could see me today.”

“Tell him he still owes me an inventory of his stock by the end of the day, would you? The old bastard’s getting forgetful. Or he’s just lazy. And don’t call me Captain!”

Moira nodded, gave a curious look to John, and headed off. Gabriella turned back to John. “She wandered in a few days ago. She and her girlfriend’d been out on their own for a month before they met one of our scavenging parties on a run downtown.”

John nodded, beginning to understand. “So you’re just… helping all these people find a place to live?”

“Nobody else was. This way, we at least get a few good years before we have to move somewhere else. Everyone who can pitch in, pitches in. Those that can’t we take care of anyway.”

“What happens if you get more people?”

“Sixty all told. Of that, about fifteen aren’t able to contribute due to age or illness, but we’ve got enough supplies for twice that.” Gabriella wasn’t bothering to keep the pride out of her voice. “If we get bigger, well, we’ve got some ideas about splitting into separate groups. Sort of keep things from getting too noticeable.”

“Huh.” John considered this for a while as they continued to tour the neighborhood. “So you’re offering me a place here?”

Gabriella shrugged. “I’m offering you a job here. Except it wouldn’t be… here, necessarily.”

“I’d love to, but I’ve already got a job. Speaking of, I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen this lady before?” John fished in his pocket and produced the photo.

Gabriella ignored the photo entirely. “I’m well aware of your current employment situation, John. That’s why I’m offering you a job instead of giving you the usual ‘you can stay here if you want’ talk.”

“You want to hire me for something.”

“Yep. In return, you leave us free and clear and we trust you not to blab about us rather than planting a subdermal mic and tracker on you to make sure we don’t have to kill you later.” There was a casualness to Gabriella’s tone that indicated she was not lying about the last part.

John coughed, suddenly deeply uncomfortable. “Well uh, that’s certainly generous of you. What’s the job?”

“Pretty normal: we need you to find someone. This someone, as it happens.” Gabriella pulled a photo out of her jacket and handed it over. “One of our residents out doing some basic reconnaissance – looking for some other potential spots for us in case we have to move quickly. She didn’t report in as scheduled, and frankly my people are a lot of things but investigators aren’t one of them.”

It seemed to John that there was some other thing Gabriella wasn’t mentioning, but he didn’t feel like he was really in much of a position to argue. He took the photo, looked at it, and somehow managed to not drop the photo in shock.vHe glanced up at Gabriella again, keeping his voice businesslike. “Your resident have a name?”

“Charlie. She never gave a last name, but we uh, don’t really ask questions.”

John nodded, and looked down at the photo of the girl whose death he’d been hired to inform her parents of. “Alright,” he said, after a moment’s consideration, “I’ll take the case, I guess.”

Part Seven

Part Nine

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raitchparker · 7 years

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Monday, January 23, 2017

History will address the tidal wave of anxiety that the country grappled with in the last couple of weeks far better than I can here. It happened on Friday. President Tangerine Baggy Eyes was sworn in and we, for the most part, watched. Historically few of us attended in person, which was a small relief, but it was also cold comfort. It felt as much a psychic blow as traumatizing as 9/11, to me at any rate. We are all seated, like anxious jackrabbits, waiting for the backhand of his horrid decisions now.

On Saturday, though, we took it to the streets. I joined about 20,000 people in St. Louis, not three miles from my house, in front of our old Union Station. I went alone. I spoke to many, and befriended a lovely (black) woman from Belleville, IL. I would take her to be about my age (she has a grown daughter and grandchildren and a baby face that defies her age). It was, she said, her first protest. She joined a conversation I was having with two women, and we stuck together for most of the march.

She was far from the first protester I saw there that day. In the 90s and in the anti-war marches I participated in during the Iraq War, there were moments where I felt like I was part of a mostly-silenced clique of lefties. You’d see many of the same faces. Anarchists would battle with Greens. The movement in the 90s fractured because, let’s face it, there was a lot that needed tending to.

I stopped going towards the middle of the first decade of the 00s because, well, the news did, too. I continued to do what I could (albeit, not nearly enough) with money, with letters, with phone calls. I started to feel like showing up in person had become the stuff of a South Park joke. My friend Steve who lives in L.A. said that he got rid of his weekend apartment in Malibu because, in his words, he wasn’t really getting out of town. “It was the same assholes,” he said, preferring instead to hide away in calmer, far less 1% Palm Springs.

While I wouldn’t call any leftie an asshole, that is how I grew to feel about the progressive protests I mostly went to. The same people, the same faces, the same chants, preaching to each other in the absence of an effective, engaged media who gave us no attention. We were nothing more than large swaths of the converted.

That was not the case on Saturday. I walked, for a while, next to a woman in her 80s who had also come on her own, on public transportation. Her granddaughter was in DC, and so, she said, she had her daughter look up information for her on the Internet (something this woman joked about not understanding how to use) and there she was. A young man, either just north or south of 30, admitted it was his first protest.

“Not your last, I hope,” I said. He nodded. How could it be.

Hope lives in small, dark corners always. I would argue that Occupy lit a spark that for a time, gave way to a steady blaze. I’ve felt those embers, still there, ever hot, since. Those embers gave way to Bernie, to Black Lives Matter, to the Women’s March. You can blow out a flame, Peter Gabriel sings, but you can’t blow out a fire.

Of course it’s not so simple as that and we all have to accept that we are going to lose things. We don’t know what yet but, at very least, we’ve probably already lost much of our nation’s dignity (precarious as that was). I’m doing what I can not to look too far into the inky black midnight of the future. There is no point of speculation. There will be enough daily horrors to occupy all of us.

My favorite sign from Saturday’s protest in St. Louis.

Herbert and I are existing on the fumes of the exhilaration of owning a new home. As I type this, a lovely man from the Container Store is performing a grass roots revolution in our closet that will add some dozens of square feet of shelving and racks. These are small things, and we are privileged to have them. Cass and I ferreted out a reasonably priced sectional sofa at Macy’s which I plan on ordering this week.

The movers lost a few things. The shelves to our insanely heavy steel Sapien-ripoff bookcases are gone. There are pianos that weigh less than those shelves. My heart goes out to the household where those carefully wrapped, bubble rapped, multi-hundred pound bundles ended up. I’m also down an absurdly expensive Italian designed stepladder for which I had a dumb amount of affection. I’d bought it right after I moved into my loft in L.A. Flush with cash and short on storage room (I had none) everything had to do double duty as art and function. I hope whoever is now in possession of my (I won’t say how much because it’s just too white of me) ladder appreciates that it is a glorious piece of design. You know. For a step stool.

The family has been in and out helping us when and where they can. Deb and Curt Parker disinfected the kitchen the day we moved in. There are surgical theaters that have more germs than our kitchen cabinets did after that afternoon. Deb cheerfully cut shelf liner, eviscerated the contents of any box labeled “kitchen,” and within 3 hours, the place was newly inhabitable.

Cass was here the moment I realized the shelves were gone. I don’t like those bookcases that much anymore. They were ideal for the skinny hallway in which they used to sit and, frankly, they looked silly here. However, the moment I realized that we couldn’t unpack our boxes of books, I let out a long, and sorrowful, “fuck,” and stood defiantly in our unpacked basement.

Cass was there, arm around my shoulders. “Smoke a bowl,” she said. “It’s all going to be okay.” The empty and now useless spines of the bookcases are standing as a signal of utter Western greed and futility in our basement now, a reminder that I should have followed my instincts and sold them or given them away when we were still in L.A.

So, we need new shelves. Herbert and I made the obligatory IKEA run yesterday which resulted in our taking home the things that always somehow vanish or need to be replaced in a house move: lampshades (hey, can we work on a design that maybe doesn’t guarantee utter disintegration of a lampshade in less than a decade?), bathroom rugs, dish towels, oven mitts, hooks, “Do we need a spice rack? What did we do with our spices in L.A.? Were they in a drawer? Why did we have the fucking spices in a drawer?”, and a new garbage can for the kitchen and, yes, an idea for the shelves which we plan on buying soon.

He was scarfing down the rest of the air in his nearly empty tank by the end. They should have marriage counselors staffed throughout IKEA stores. I mean, we made it through okay, by the skin of our teeth, mostly because our needs there were simple. I overheard so many “Well, I’m just answering your question” arguments about shower curtains and bed frames. IKEA is where fractured relationships go to die.

We are in love with our new castle. It’s lovelier than anything I deserve. Our neighborhood is quiet and, outside from the NRA sticker festooned Jeep Cherokee that keeps taking its half out of the middle in our narrow parking garage (I had to leave a note; I hate leaving notes, especially in Trump’s America), our neighbors also seem quiet and lovely.

Then, there’s this: Herbert is going to start taking a new drug soon. The paperwork is long and demanding, and the saintly nurses at Barnes are taking care of that. This medication without insurance copays would cost us $96,000 a year. With copays: $3,000 per quarter, or about $12k annually. There is a copay program for which Herbert thinks he will qualify. In other countries, this medication, at most, costs between $100-$200 per month.

The Senate had a moment last week where Americans could have started to purchase drugs from Canadian pharmacies. It was good, hardworking Sanders who put it up. These are the Democrats who voted it down:

Bennet (D-CO) Booker (D-NJ) Cantwell (D-WA) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Coons (D-DE) Donnelly (D-IN) Heinrich (D-NM) Heitkamp (D-ND) Menendez (D-NJ) Murray (D-WA) Tester (D-MT) Warner (D-VA)

Even with insurance (our plan, in terms of copays, is excellent) if we were making more income, say if Herbert was working, I’d be spending over 10 grand a year on a medicine for which there is no generic. If we weren’t down to a single income, I have no idea what we’d do. If we don’t get approved for the copay, I still have no idea what we will do. I suppose, at that point, my only recourse is to be grateful for America’s Bankruptcy laws?

I’ve been back to writing for money, which has taken a clear hit on my writing for sanity. Moving and Trump have been disruptive, but, like I did when we got a little settled at my dad’s house, I feel like some calm could be returning to our lives. The calm will calm, despite Herbert’s health, provided that I don’t have to sell the car to buy his drugs.

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thequirkybooknerd · 5 years

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I’m so excited to officially be a Book of the Month YA affiliate! I’ve been subscribed to the adult BOTM box for around a year and have absolutely loved it, so I’m incredibly happy that I get this chance to help spread the word about the YA boxes!

Every month you get to pick one book from a selection of five newly released YA novels to receive in your box for the month (spoiler alert: their book choices are always fantastic!). You can also add on up to two extra choices from the selections for the current month and any of the previous months. In my time using Book of the Month, I’ve always found it to be a really fun, budget-friendly subscription box. And the deals we get on the add-on books are music to my wallet! ❤

Here’s what you get with your membership:

A book of your choice for $14.99 / month

Add up to two extra books to your shipment for $9.99 each

Skip any month you want, and you won’t be charged

Free shipping, always

This month, get your first book for just $9.99 by using the code GROW.

If you’re interested in signing up (and supporting my blog in the process), check them out by using my affiliate link. I do get a small commission from every new sign-up using this link that will always be put toward further building my blog. So if you do use it, thank you so much! You can also use the regular link to sign up!

Now, let’s get into a bit more of the specifics!

How It Works:

Book of the Month YA gives you one book of your choice (from a selection of five) for $14.99 per month and always with free shipping! You can add up to two extra books to your shipment for only $9.99 each. These extra books can be selected from the current and any of the previous months selections. If there’s a month where none of the selections appeal to you, you can skip any month you want, and you won’t be charged. I wholeheartedly love this subscription box and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

This month they are featuring one of the biggest new YA releases of fall, Frankly in Love! You can get your copy TODAY from BOTM YA (@yasofthemonth) for just $9.99 with code GROW.

Here’s a look at all the selections for this month!

September 2019 Book Selections:

The Girl the Sea Gave Back by Adrienne Young

For as long as she can remember, Tova has lived among the Svell, the people who found her washed ashore as a child and use her for her gift as a Truthtongue. Her own home and clan are long-faded memories, but the sacred symbols and staves inked over every inch of her skin mark her as one who can cast the rune stones and see into the future. She has found a fragile place among those who fear her, but when two clans to the east bury their age-old blood feud and join together as one, her world is dangerously close to collapse.

For the first time in generations, the leaders of the Svell are divided. Should they maintain peace or go to war with the allied clans to protect their newfound power? And when their chieftain looks to Tova to cast the stones, she sets into motion a series of events that will not only change the landscape of the mainland forever but will give her something she believed she could never have again—a home.

Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi

After a year of college, Pablo is working at his local twenty-four-hour deli, selling overpriced snacks to brownstone yuppies. He’s dodging calls from the student loan office and he has no idea what his next move is.

Leanna Smart’s life so far has been nothing but success. Age eight: Disney Mouseketeer; Age fifteen: first #1 single on the US pop chart; Age seventeen, *tenth* #1 single; and now, at Age nineteen…life is a queasy blur of private planes, weird hotel rooms, and strangers asking for selfies on the street.

When Leanna and Pab randomly meet at 4:00 a.m. in the middle of a snowstorm in Brooklyn, they both know they can’t be together forever. So, they keep things on the down-low and off Instagram for as long as they can. But it takes about three seconds before the world finds out…

Frankly in Love by David Yoon

High school senior Frank Li is a Limbo–his term for Korean-American kids who find themselves caught between their parents’ traditional expectations and their own Southern California upbringing. His parents have one rule when it comes to romance–“Date Korean”–which proves complicated when Frank falls for Brit Means, who is smart, beautiful–and white. Fellow Limbo Joy Song is in a similar predicament, and so they make a pact: they’ll pretend to date each other in order to gain their freedom. Frank thinks it’s the perfect plan, but in the end, Frank and Joy’s fake-dating maneuver leaves him wondering if he ever really understood love–or himself–at all.

The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus

Told in two distinct and irresistible voices, Junauda Petrus’s bold and lyrical debut is the story of two black girls from very different backgrounds finding love and happiness in a world that seems determined to deny them both.

Trinidad. Sixteen-year-old Audre is despondent, having just found out she’s going to be sent to live in America with her father because her strictly religious mother caught her with her secret girlfriend, the pastor’s daughter. Audre’s grandmother Queenie (a former dancer who drives a white convertible Cadillac and who has a few secrets of her own) tries to reassure her granddaughter that she won’t lose her roots, not even in some place called Minneapolis. “America have dey spirits too, believe me,” she tells Audre.

Minneapolis. Sixteen-year-old Mabel is lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out why she feels the way she feels–about her ex Terrell, about her girl Jada and that moment they had in the woods, and about the vague feeling of illness that’s plagued her all summer. Mabel’s reverie is cut short when her father announces that his best friend and his just-arrived-from-Trinidad daughter are coming for dinner.

Mabel quickly falls hard for Audre and is determined to take care of her as she tries to navigate an American high school. But their romance takes a turn when test results reveal exactly why Mabel has been feeling low-key sick all summer and suddenly it’s Audre who is caring for Mabel as she faces a deeply uncertain future.

Junauda Petrus’s debut brilliantly captures the distinctly lush and lyrical voices of Mabel and Audre as they conjure a love that is stronger than hatred, prison, and death and as vast as the blackness between the stars.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

In the early 1900s, a young woman embarks on a fantastical journey of self-discovery after finding a mysterious book in this captivating and lyrical debut.

In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.

Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.

Lush and richly imagined, a tale of impossible journeys, unforgettable love, and the enduring power of stories awaits in Alix E. Harrow’s spellbinding debut–step inside and discover its magic.

To give you even more of an idea of what the options typically look like each month, here are the August 2019 selections! And you guys will be finding out my picks for both August and September (as well as my thoughts on them) very soon, so keep an eye out! 😀

If you do sign up or are already a Book of the Month YA member, make sure to let me know what your book choice for September is in the comments!

Follow me: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

Book of the Month YA – September 2019 I'm so excited to officially be a Book of the Month YA affiliate! I’ve been subscribed to the adult BOTM box for around a year and have absolutely loved it, so I’m incredibly happy that I get this chance to help spread the word about the YA boxes!

#affiliate #book blog #Book of the Month #Book of the Month YA #BOTM #BOTMYA #subscription box #The Quirky Book Nerd #YA subscription box #yasofthemonth

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foxhenki-blog · 6 years

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Alchemy and the Aleph

FRONT MATTER

Practice takes a number of forms. If I’ve learned anything the past year and a half of consistent engagement with the world of magic, it is that.

I was given a primary lesson in this fact by, those greatest of teachers, children. If you follow along week to week, you will know that I’ve been engaging in some heavy, consistent productivity and wealth magic in an attempt to bend the probability spectrum towards an even better job. If we are to discount all first-world problems, I have a great job currently, but it isn’t ‘the’ job by a number of factors, money, location, and enrichment. Last week I cast some short-term sigils and one of them came to pass, the phone interview went well and I’ve been invited to a second phone interview with the hiring manager. To recap, I cast the sigil last Thursday after extended invocations to Jupiter and my growing team of saints. I charged them (casting and charging are proving to be two distinct activities [the first is tied to ritual, the second is tied to emotional output] in my practice) right before the call and, feeling not terrified by the spirits of the waterways in my area after some communication attempts, I released the sigils (is this a third stage?) into the Milwaukee River - and proceeded with the first call.

Now, I am pretty darn good at what I do, but to recap the context of this job, I asked for a fairly large salary (even for the city it is located in) and my cover letter was perfunctory and very upfront about some of the things that bother me about the modern business place that I should have really left out or lied about. They called anyway. Twice. I’m counting that as a sigilmancy success and, as is the way of Chaos, documenting the procedure.

In fact, I had every intention of repeating the procedure this past Thursday, an excellent day astrologically on top of being related to who I am swiftly beginning to think is my primary celestial patron, Jupiter, in an effort to influence this second call scheduled for next week. That’s where the micro-embodiment-of-a-Zen-crack-to-the-bowed-head-with-a-bamboo-rod that is my two-year old stepped in. I was beginning my ten-count breath meditation, you know, getting in the mood, when I heard a cry. I opened my eyes with a start to find my groggy wife holding our LO, whom she swiftly deposited in my much-more awake lap, and stumbled back to bed.

Praxis Interruptus

Now, I’d much rather spend time with our LO than anything else, so I wasn’t miffed, but I still felt some allegiance and communication was due. So, holding the now slumbering child, I embarked on some journeying. Departing from ritual has always caused me anxiety because it feels so very new-agey, so very ‘my spirit animal told me to invest in a new tarot deck over brunch’ kind of new-agey when I (or anyone) takes the rigor out of magic. This morning though, I learned, or rather, I leaned in the opposite direction. My kid always falls into a deep sleep when I’m holding him if I start meditative breathing, so I doubled-down on the ten count breath and moved directly into visualizing my patron and my team of saints. Without ritual to, well, hide behind is a close keyphrase, without ritual I was forced to speak to the spirits, or my Redbook-y mental incarnations of them, in a more direct way.

And that is the breakthrough.

You see, a long time ago, and I’ve written about this in the past, I lost the ability to have faith in the spirit world. Tainted by a Lutheran upbringing, devoid of ritual, and a focus on a creator deity with no interest in my young-self, my mind turned outward and began to explain the world to itself in materialist terms. One of the features of animism that has escaped me up to this point, has been that faith component required to speak to the spirit world in the same way that I speak to my neighbor (well, not my neighbor, I hate him, someone I like). Is magical ritual the gateway drug into developing a more direct connection to the spirit world? It seems so, because it didn’t feel false. I spoke to everyone in turn; Jupiter, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saints Cyprian, Barbara, Philomena, Francis, and I even threw in Saint Roch, because my daughter desperately wants a dog.

Saint Roch was interesting, actually, because adding him in revealed a bit of tech to me. I was able to immediately call him up, after only a cursory glance at images depicting him a week or more ago, by first envisioning the wound on his thigh. I think that the stigmata and the wounds that saints bear are, among other things, very effective at conjuring? invoking? opening up communication with the saint. This is a theory I’ll have to test out, and in a way, add some new hypothetical rigor to the journeying process.

The barrier to practice, just good old fashioned life getting in the way, opened up an old barrier that I had encountered decades ago. Peering through the crack left by the oaken portal, I can see into a life where the communication between myself and the spirit world is as natural as walking down a forest path and listening to spring-drunk birds sing.

IMBRICATIONS

Our first imbrication is really quite nice, I’ve never heard of Karyn Crisis before, it appears that she is a metal artist and working medium that is, in her own words, ‘Working… towards reclamation of pre-pagan feminine shamanism of Italy and Old Europe’s ancient past.’ and goes further to call out her own personal X-(wo)man team; ‘My partnership with this Goddess team of Cibele, Iside, Diana, and Aradia, focuses on: anthropological documentation of living women in Italy who are part of Lineage practices, from a spiritual insider perspective’. She paints tarot cards, fronts a metal group, preserves feminine shaman life ways in an authentic and non-appropriative manner, shit, yeah, I’ll sign up for that newsletter.

This week’s Lovecraft tale features what amounts to a Boogie Man that shadows the steps of the protagonist and his family throughout the centuries. Let’s dial up the hellbilly with The Hellfreaks and their track about this shadowy figure.

Looks like we have a theme here, celebrating the women of metal along with connecting to our tale for the week’s threads. Let’s round it out with this frankly amazing offering from the immortal Wendy O Williams and The Plasmatics;/ The Damned. They don’t make punks like this anymore.

ON THE ALCHEMY OF THE SAINTS

Coming down off of the Rune Soup Saints course, I find that I can no longer disconnect the Saints as spirit entities from my worldview or my interior space for that matter. This week’s Lovecraft tale is one of his earliest, The Alchemist, and to help put it into a more robust context, I cracked opened Aaron Cheak’s Alchemical Traditions again, but this time around, the Saints bled into the essays and the wider explanation of the tale.

Beginning with Cheak’s essay, INTERZONE, we find a text and an archetype of the Alchemist that would have been the first encountered by budding European Alche-mites:

“the text that describes the introduction of alchemy to pre-Islamic Arabia is also the same text that was translated into Latin centuries later in order to introduce alchemy to the European West… The Epistle of Maryanus, Hermit and Philosopher, to Prince Khalid ibn Yazid…”

The alchemist as a hermit fits easily with Lovecraft’s tale. In his essay, Cheak offers us the origin of the term alchemy in Europe as well, as mansplained by some cat named Robert of Chester:

“Robert of Chester explicitly introduces the term alchymia…

‘Hermes the philosopher and others who came after him, defined the word in such a way: alchymia is a corporeal substance composed from the One and through the One… joining the most precious things together through relationship and effect, and naturally converting the same things by a natural comixture and by the best artifices.’

alchemy refers to a catalytic substance… capable of effecting the transmutation of bodies (whether metalurgical, biological, or spiritual)… alchemy is not concerned with random mutation, but with a transmutation that brings about… harmonic relations…”

I interpret this placing those that are in opposition to alchemy, the Comte as protagonist in our tale for instance, on the side of entropy, a degradation of harmony, a separation of wholes into fragmented parts. Alchemy, in a way, is the opposite of a post-modern materialist aesthetic. Cheak’s Interzone then moves into a space that finds cohabitation with the very special dead:

“Shaik Ahmad Ahsai… highlights the face that the physical body has a ‘hidden, invisible element,’ or ‘innerness’ that survives the death of the perishable corpse:

‘this is the spiritual body […], which is not formed of the sublunar Elements, but from the four Elements of the world… which are seventy times nobler and more precious than the Elements of the terrestrial world.’

This higher elemental or spiritual body may be understood as the form that determines the different states of ordinary bodies… the transmutation of material bodies is effectively an initiation into the laws or principles by which the mortal human body may be resolved into its primordial, immortal form; the resurrection body…

‘it is the configuration of the thing ‘which returns,’ it is not the thing itself… the matter is the same, but the form is different…”

The matter is the same, but the form is different. Let’s try and deconstruct this phrase, the meaning of ‘matter’ as a physical substance began in the early 14c., and thus, very likely, post dates the usage in this quote. A closer hit would be *dmateria from the proto Indo European root *dem, which means something closer to the source, the mother, or if we are to view it through a Borgesian lens, the Aleph. Form is a cognate with the Greek morphe, and is thus related to Morpheus, it means beauty and could be further qualified as the beauty of a dream. The matter is the same for the alchemist’s spiritual body, but the form is different. The source, the Aleph, is unchanging, but its manifestations follow the logic and aesthetic of dreams. The Saints, as I have begun to understand them through the static-y HAM Radio signal I’ve been able to tune in, communicate from this source but also have form, a beauty or aesthetic that touches us in this world.

Moving on to another essay in Alchemical Traditions; The Alchemical Khiasmos, we encounter a new concept that helps clarify our occult ‘What If’ comic:

“The word Khiasmos (chiasmus) comes from the Greek word chiazo, ‘to shape like the letter x’… At the heart of the chiasmus is thus a paradox — two opposite conditions are placed in seeming contradiction — yet both are integral to each other’s truth…

Mortals are Immortals are immortals mortals \ / / \ Living in Dying the mortal’s immortal’s death life

the chiasmus must be perceived as a continuous process”]

The chiasmus can be used to understand the cycle of form and matter, the movement between the source, or the Aleph, and manifestations of form within the language and aesthetics of the dream. ‘Mortals are immortals’ means that ourselves, as it is understood that our form exists within a dream, will return from the dream to the source. ‘Immortals are mortals’ points to the consistency of form when within the source. The Aleph is made of all things, all experiences, but those forms do not become formless when they join the source. ‘Living in a mortal’s death’ is embodied by Lovecraft’s tale, The Alchemist. The source choosing to live within the form - this is an embodiment of free will and the magician’s power over probability. And finally, ’Dying the immortal’s life’ is the suffering of existence, unable to escape form even when at one with the source (which cannot exist without all composite forms) is a form of endless and perpetual death. This spiritual alchemy, and Lovecraft’s archetypal alchemist, Charles le Sorcier, can easily be overlaid as a magical Augmented Reality screen over the lives and manifestations of the saints.

We begin our exploration of this short tale in familiar territory:

“High up, crowing the grassy summit of a swelling mound whose sides are wooded near the base with the gnarled trees of the primeval forest, stands the old chateau of my ancestors… These ancient turrets, stained by the storms of generations… formed in the ages of feudalism one of the most dreaded and formidable fortresses in all France”

The archetype of the fading ancestral home and a lineage once wealthy and now poor began early (1908) for Lovecraft and, like the Tower, is seen throughout his later work. France, however, is a location for Lovecraftian magic that I have not yet encountered in this exercise, and a somewhat welcome respite from New England.

Lovecraft wrote this tale prior to withdrawing from high school, around the age of seventeen. We can catch a glimpse of his youthful self projecting forward in time in the guise of The Alchemist’s protagonist:

“Upon my twenty-first birthday [my guardian] gave to me a family document which he said had for many generations been handed down from father to son… The paper carried me back to the days of the thirteenth century… It told of a certain ancient man who had once dwelt on our estates… Michel… Mauvais, the Evil… He had studied beyond the custom of his kind, seeking such things as the Philosopher’s Stone… and was reputed wise in the terrible secrets of Black Magic and Alchemy.”

He had yet to see the medieval-like plague of Typhoid Fever hit his corner of the Americas and was, as much as he ever could be, an innocent. His grasp at the age of seventeen in the year of 1908 of the largely accurate particulars of Renaissance magic are pretty astounding to my modern perception. Perhaps these things, the aesthetic of Renaissance magic, was more commonly distributed than it was when I was a young man. Where, at this age, was his source for research materials? His grandfather, Whipple Van Buren Phillips, would have passed away four years prior, and with his demise, his library would have passed out of Lovecraft’s grasp.

The antagonist of The Alchemist is one Charles Le Sorcier - A magician bent on the revenge of the murder of his father by the narrator’s ancestral line. This is a tale of the persecution of magic and magicians, the wrongly accused, the stigma attached to this most ancient form of spirituality by elites. The last in the line of C., finally turns to the Dominant of Witchcraft as a last resort, in order to defend himself from the family curse that kills all of his forebears at the age of thirty-two. We find the Comte wandering about his faded lineage’s home:

“Isolated as I was, modern science had produced no impression upon me, and I laboured as in the Middle Ages, as wrapt as had been old Michel and young Charles themselves in the acquisition of daemonological and alchemical learning… I had spent the better part of the morning in climbing up and down half-ruined staircases in one of the most dilapidated of the ancient turrets… I sought the lower levels… As I slowly traversed the nirtre-encrusted passageway at the foot of the last staircase, the paving became very damp… my eye fell upon a small trap-door with a ring, which lay directly beneath my feet…”

This is a match for the Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, a trap door with a ring, the protagonist moving up and down the stairs of yet another tower… and a chthonic quest… This image of the trapdoor with a ring in connection with the tower appearing so early in Lovecraft’s oeuvre marks it as a sort of primal image for the mythos and Lovecraftian magic, as well as the stone steps descending into blackness beyond the trap door:

“disclosing in the unsteady glare the top of a flight of stone steps… I commenced my descent. The steps were many, and led to a narrow stone-flagged passage which I knew must be far underground. The passage proved of great length, and terminated in a massive oaken door…”

The Oak Door as a barrier is another trope that we see in Lovecraft often, beyond the door is always a world where, once crossed, the hero is forever changed by madness, evil, and chaos. The Alchemist is no different, as we see what lies beyond the door:

“There in the ancient Gothic doorway stood a human figure… a man in a skull-cap and long medieval tunic… His long hair and flowing beard were of a terrible and intense black hue… strangest of all were his eyes; twin caves of abysmal blackness… inhuman in degree of wickedness.”

And it is here that we re-encounter the chiasmus:

Mortals are Immortals are immortals mortals \ / / \ Living in Dying the mortal’s immortal’s death life

On one side of the door we have the Comte, a mortal most concerned with his lineage and mortality. On the other side we have Charles le Sorcier, The Alchemist, a living corpse, six hundred years old, forever dying. The final scene is pregnant with symbolism. The witch, the magician, exists in the underground and society will burn it away when it is found, but magic continues to prosper, like The Alchemist, through the years, in its underground state, untouched by those that would burn it from the earth. As magicians and witches, we are all Charles Le Sorcier, continuations of traditions that extend back to the beginning of the human race. We also see the le sorcier as the living relic, grasping at the all to human Comte, identifying himself at last.

Inside his chamber, before the final sentences, the Comte briefly explores the Alchemist’s laboratory, briefly taking not of a shining pile of gold. Lovecraft is so clever here, as he is showing us both the spiritual alchemy of le Sorcier in his state of living death, or dying immortality, as well as showing us the other side, that of physical alchemy. Lead into gold as well as eternal life, both gifts of the Philosopher’s Stone and reflections, or metaphors, of each other.

Now watch closely, for this next bit is no less than pure magic. It is no secret now that I divine for the matching archetype in the tarot for these tales. I don’t possess an encyclopedic knowledge of the tarot and the multitudinous esoteric meanings applied to each card through the centuries. I invoke Saint Zachariah, I ask the deck to produce the right archetype, and once it does I set it aside, so that my choices are ever dwindling as I move through Lovecraft’s oeuvre. I look at it as a type of ‘walking the tarot’. This week, I divined for the right archetype for the story, The Alchemist, and was rewarded with the Five of Wands.

Ettiella’s number for this card is 31, the last full year of life for anyone in the protagonist’s line. The key words are Process and Ore. The primary occupation of physical alchemy and the metaphor for refining one’s spiritual self, distilling it down to the source, while maintaining its unique characteristics. Deconstructing the keywords, we find that proces, in Old French, means ‘a journey’ and is pulled from the Latin processus, ‘a going forward’. Ore is a cognate for many types of metal, but its oldest (and Frenchiest) form comes from Proto-Indo-European *aus-, which means gold. Moving forward on an alternate timeline, we can connect ore to aureate, which has a figurative meaning of being splendid or brilliant.

A journey towards a splendid goal, towards the brilliance of the Aleph.

When we look at the Sola-Busca version of the card, we see a man burdened with five staves, carrying a gourd.

and here is where you lose track of my hands as I produce out of thin air…

The gourd is the taoist symbol for alchemy.

The ‘elixir of immortality’ can be produced through the distillation of red cinnabar through the upper chamber of the gourd, and placing mercury beneath.

The Dragon above, and Hermes below, the marriage of wealth and wisdom.

Looping back to the original goal of my practice this year, a layering of Jupiterean invocations and sigils for wealth on top of the wisdom and peace provided by the saints, the result, this hopeful Alchemical Aleph, shall work as a Philosopher's Stone providing the dual probability augment needed for a comfortable and happy life.

#saints #philosophers stone #sorcerer

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flauntpage · 6 years

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Your Thursday Morning Roundup

With the new NFL league year beginning at 4 PM yesterday, the Eagles are officially the defending Super Bowl champions. That still feels weird to say.

The Birds were relatively quiet with the exception of re-signing Nigel Bradham to a five-year, $40 million deal. The team also pushed back Michael Bennett’s roster bonus. Just this morning, they restructured Zach Ertz’s contract. Does that mean Vinny Curry and Mychal Kendricks might stay?

Eagles created $5.407M in cap space in 2018 by converting $7.21M of TE Zach Ertz's $8M base salary into a fully guaranteed roster bonus, per @FieldYates.

Broncos created $12.375M in 2018 cap space by converting $16M of LB Von Miller’s $18.5M base salary into a signing bonus.

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) March 15, 2018

The biggest surprise of the day came with cornerback Patrick Robinson, who appeared to be staying with the Eagles, but signed a four-year, $20 million deal with the New Orleans Saints. Even though the Eagles reportedly offered more overall money, the Saints offered more guaranteed money.

The #Eagles and Patrick Robinson got close on a contract extension on Monday. Then stalled. … then his window opened. And the #Saints jumped in and locked him down. He’s a former #Saints first round pick.

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) March 14, 2018

Meanwhile, there’s more decisions to be made with some current players. Vinny Curry might have to restructure his deal or be let go, while Mychal Kendricks appears to be getting shopped around once again. But the most interesting nugget involved Nick Foles:

Good nugget from @MikeGarafolo — Arizona Cardinals made a call to Philadelphia about Nick Foles. Obviously, didn't go far.

— Peter Schrager (@PSchrags) March 14, 2018

Arizona later signed Sam Bradford and Mike Glennon. Good luck with those two QBs. And will Buffalo signing AJ McCarron, it seem more and more likely Foles will stay in Philadelphia for the upcoming season.

As for free agents, Beau Allen signed with Tampa Bay and LeGarrette Blount will meet with the Detroit Lions on Friday.

Elsewhere, the Giants signed Nate Solder, the Cardinals released Tyrann Mathieu, Ndamukong Suh and Julius Thomas were released by the Dolphins, Trevor Siemian was traded to Minnesota to serve as Kirk Cousins’ backup, and Joe Thomas announced his retirement.

The Roundup:

Recapping Tuesday’s tough home loss to the Indiana Pacers.

How big of an impact is Robert Covington making on defense?

Victor Oladipo believes Markelle Fultz will be an impact player when he returns to the court:

“Everybody’s path is different,” he said. “Everything happens for a reason. What he’s going through is only going to make him stronger and better as a man and a person. … His time is coming.”

The Indiana all-star finished with 11 points Tuesday in a 101-98 victory over the Sixers at the Wells Fargo Center. One gets the sense that he anticipates playing against Fultz, if not in the playoffs then in future seasons.

Sixers coach Brett Brown said it hasn’t been determined if Fultz will return this season. However, there’s a good chance that he will do so and soon. Fultz’s shooting form has been looking close to normal in recent workouts.

“His time is coming,” Oladipo said. “I know he’ll be ready for it, because I know he puts the work in.”

Six players Sixers fans should watch as the NCAA Tournament begins this afternoon.

The Sixers also have a game tonight, as they take on the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden. Tip off is scheduled for 7:30 PM on NBC Sports Philadelphia +.

The Flyers have a big game tonight against Columbus at 7 PM on NBC Sports Philadelphia. One player that looks to finally make an impact in the scoring department is rookie Oskar Lindblom:

When he hasn’t had the puck on his stick, Lindblom has been diligent about providing back pressure. A regular all-situations player (including penalty killing duties) during his time in the American Hockey League with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, Lindblom prides himself on his two-way abilities.

While hockey is a bottom-line business in which results needs to follow process at a certain point, the coaches and organizational decision-makers gain insight into a player, especially a “skills guy” whose role includes expectations of relatively frequent point-production, by how he handles dry spells. Does he let it drag down other facets of his game? Does he start to force ill-advised plays that only compound the lack of points?

In Lindblom’s case, the young player has shown considerable mental toughness while continuing to push for his first NHL point.

“Quite frankly, that’s why a guy like that stays up [in the NHL] versus maybe another guy who’s not producing and turns pucks over. Oskar’s going to break through at some point,”Flyers general manager Ron Hextall said.

Good news for Jake Arrieta: Not only did he get his #49 from Ben Lively (in exchange for a boat), he’s already thrown his first bullpen session with the Phillies:

For Arrieta, it was just a minor test, a necessary hurdle to pass before being ready to start the season. For the crowd, it was a happening.

“He looks great to me,” Kranitz said. “He always stays in shape. There’s no question about that. What I was looking for today was how the ball was coming out of his hand — it was coming out great. I didn’t expect anything different, but it’s always great to get eyes on him.

Arrieta plans to pitch Saturday in a minor-league game at the Carpenter Complex. He threw roughly 40 pitches Wednesday and should throw 50 on Saturday. He would then have time to pitch in two Grapefruit League games before the team leaves Florida. Arrieta is confident he will be ready to start the season on time despite not signing until a month into spring training.

“I don’t think there’s going to be any issue with getting extended quickly,” Arrieta said. “I was able to build up throughout the offseason to a point where I feel like I could slide in and be ready for the start of the season. That’s the game plan for right now, and I plan for that to go very well.”

Meanwhile on the field, the Phillies fell to the Atlanta Braves 5-3. Jorge Alfaro hit a home run in the second inning.

Buster Olney thinks the Phillies could compete in the Bryce Harper sweepstakes:

“I would bet the family farm that Bryce Harper winds up with the Phillies or back with the Washington Nationals.”

There’ll be some new food at Citizens Bank Park, including edible cookie dough, which is actually crap.

Phillies take on Detroit today at 1:05 PM.

Both Philly-area NCAA Tournament teams are in action today. First up, 16th seed Penn takes on Kansas at 2 PM on TBS. The Quakers got a welcoming surprise at their open practice yesterday:

Kansas University is about a 2 1/2-hour drive from Wichita and many of the Jayhawks fans were in attendance Wednesday. But unlike some fan bases that might boo the opponent, this one greeted Penn enthusiastically.

A large portion of the fan base was schoolchildren bused in for the event. That’s how big basketball is in Kansas. Each team had a 40-minute open workout. After Penn came North Carolina State and then Kansas.

“I didn’t expect this,” Penn point guard Darnell Foreman said. “First of all, having so many kids come, that was pretty cool and all the Kansas fans intrigued about who you are and still waiting for their team. That fan base is crazy.”

The attention caught Penn a little off-guard, in a positive way.

“It was awesome,” said Penn leading scorer Ryan Betley, averaging 14.5 points. “We didn’t expect this.”

Meanwhile, No. 1 seed Villanova takes on Radford at 6:40 PM on TNT. Nova’s freshmen are ready for their first taste of March Madness:

“I don’t really think I’ll have nerves,” Gillespie said. “I’ve played for so long at this point, I really don’t have butterflies anymore. It’s just basketball to me, and just another game that we have to focus on defending and rebounding and playing together.”

“I don’t think I will be nervous or anything because I’ll be focusing on what I can do for my teammates,” said Cosby-Roundtree. “I try to just be focused, dialed in on what we have to do so that I won’t have to feel nervous.”

The older players have talked to the younger players this week about coping with distractions, but there were some signs of nerves Tuesday at the Wildcats’ practice at nearby Duquesne.

“I kind of sensed it at practice,” coach Jay Wright said. “Collin Gillespie wasn’t being his normal self, which is rare, nothing bad. I just thought they were a little distracted. I tell the older guys, keep an eye on them, keep talking to them.

“But I think the only remedy is they’ve got to get in a game. Once you get in an NCAA game, you get in there, it is really different than any other experience. You get in there, you feel it. Then I think when you come out of the game and you go back in the second time, you’re good. But you’ve got to get in there and feel it.”

Meanwhile in the NIT, Temple fell to Penn State 63-57 thanks to a 15-3 Nittany Lion run late in the game up in Happy Valley. The tournament also experimented with four quarters and a three-point line that was nearly two feet further than current college rules.

In other sports news, Syracuse held off Arizona State in their First Four matchup 60-56, while Texas Southern crushed NC Central for their first ever tournament win 64-46.

Minor League Baseball announced new pace-of-play rules for the upcoming season. They include a limit on mound visits, a pitch clock, and having a runner begin at second base in extra innings.

Aaron Judge jokingly tried to recruit Manny Machado to come to the Yankees next season, but MLB wasn’t having any of that.

Former Patriots cornerback Malcolm Butler still doesn’t know why he was benched for Super Bowl LII.

UFC fighters Kevin Lee and Edson Barboza promoted their April 21 fight in Atlantic City by visiting a ton of spots in Philadelphia.

In the news, Meek Mill could be set free while he appeals his probation sentence, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

Toys R Us will close or sell all of their stores after 70 years.

iHeartMedia has filed for bankruptcy.

Your Thursday Morning Roundup published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

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sublimedeal · 6 years

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Kyle Tully – High Value Client Express published first on http://ift.tt/2qxBbOD

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douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years

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BUT I EXPECT THEM TO BE WRITTEN AS THIN ENOUGH SKINS THAT USERS CAN SEE THE RESULTS IN ORDER OF HOW MUCH ADVERTISERS BID AS OVERTURE DID BUT IN ORDER OF HOW MUCH ADVERTISERS BID AS OVERTURE DID BUT IN ORDER OF HOW MUCH ADVERTISERS BID AS OVERTURE DID BUT IN ORDER OF THE BID TIMES THE NUMBER OF SUCH DOMAINS IS SO LARGE THAT YOU CAN FIND JUST ONE USER WHO REALLY NEEDS SOMETHING AND CAN ACT ON THAT NEED, YOU'VE GOT A TOEHOLD IN MAKING SOMETHING PEOPLE WANT

The Fortran branch, for example. And they don't; they've made sure of that. When the thing we want is something we want to be in a place where there was infrastructure for startups, accumulated knowledge about how to cure it. Part of the reason I just explained: startups take over your life for a lot of time on them before realizing they're bad. Except in special kinds of applications, parallelism won't pervade the programs that are written in a hundred years will have languages that can span most of it.1 Err on the side of speaking slowly. To a scientist, at least de facto, expected to prepare them for their careers. You can be a really good deal. But perhaps the biggest thing preventing founders from realizing how attentive they could be to their users is that they've never experienced such attention themselves. Perhaps it's in the sweet spot midway between.2

The reason is not just a permissible technique for getting growth rolling. Their tactics in pushing you down that slope are usually fairly brutal. Among other things, there will be demand for a cheaper alternative to something popular, if you did a really good job, you could make a language that makes programmers do needless work. Instead of having both lists and strings, have just lists, with some way to give the compiler optimization advice that will allow it to lay out strings as contiguous bytes if necessary. Some say it's impossible, others say it's obvious. But cluttered sites are bad anyway, so perhaps you should use this opportunity to make your design simpler.3 In software, especially, you often find yourself working on stuff you don't really like, and grad school is thus synonymous with procrastination. Perfectionism is often an excuse for procrastination, and in any case your initial model of users is always inaccurate, even if you're one of them the top one shockingly inefficient, and the market picks the winners. But don't spend more than a way to play chicken with the future. Things are different now, of course. And I admit that it is, if you preserve the qualities that made it popular.

I can remember taking all the spaces out of my Basic programs so they would fit into the memory of a 4K TRS-80.4 A lot of the change was due to legislation, of course. The average teenage kid has a pretty much infinite capacity for talking to their friends. Consider libraries: they're reusable because they're language, whether they're written in an object-oriented programming in the 1980s, and no amount of evidence to the contrary seems to be a good founder.5 The need to do more than chat and seem smart and reasonable. There are two reasons founders resist going out and engaging in person with users made the difference between the people who'd been out in the world for a while and had presented to groups, and those who hadn't. I've met a lot of words on a slide, people just skip reading it. But now that I've realized what's going on, perhaps there's a third option: to write something explaining the two types of schedule. Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas.

Don't worry if your company is doing. We'll increasingly be defined by what we say no to. If someone were creating an Internet-based TV company from scratch now, they might have some plan for shows aimed at specific regions, but it is true that there are a handful of writers who can get away with refusing to debate. There are only two things you need initially: an idea and cofounders. Even one sentence of this would raise eyebrows in conversation. In the unlikely case that you're 20 and one of your most powerful weapons, I think you might be able to resist, or at least postpone, turning into managers, just as they will ignore advantages to be got from specific representations of data. If I met an undergrad who knew all about convertible notes and employee agreements and God forbid class FF stock, I wouldn't think here is someone who is way ahead of their peers. The third reason computers won is piracy. But that prescription, though sufficient, is too narrow.

Back when hardware startups had to rely on investors for money, you had to get over to start a startup one day, what should you do in college is learn powerful things. The feedback you get from engaging directly with your earliest users will be the best you ever get. You can meet someone just to get to know one another.6 Inevitably, the people running the networks will take the easy route and try to keep the old model running for a couple more years, just as newspapers that put their stories online still seem to believe that a partnership with a big company, any number of random factors could sink you before you can finish. In theory this is possible for species too, but it's close enough that you're better off aiming for the solid target of brevity than the fuzzy, nearby one of least work.7 Practically every successful startup, including stars like Google, that will push the stuff you want investors to remember out of their way to make viewers watch TV synchronously instead of watching recorded shows when it suited them. The word essay comes from the city's prudent Yankee character. Facebook all got started.8 You can't look a big problem too directly in the eye. Will we replace hash tables themselves with lists?9

I can offer is the hopelessly question-begging advice that if you wanted to you could stop thinking about it at that point. The way to come up with good startup ideas is to take a step back. Clinton just seemed more dynamic. What founders have a hard time grasping and Steve himself might have had trouble. Perfectionism is often an excuse for procrastination, and in every single case the founders say the same thing. Most powerful people are on the manager's schedule. But unless you've had a very strange life you haven't done much that was like being a startup founder.

These two senses are already quite far apart. The manager's schedule is that they understand the cost. Happens all the time they spent on it will be at the end of a long and unbelievably distracting process.10 The more of your software will be reusable. The reason it pays to put off even those errands is that real work needs two things errands don't: big chunks of time are at the end of my day these meetings are never an interruption. Obviously it has to be for multiple millions of dollars, if possible. And I know Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia didn't feel like they were en route to the big time as they were then called, but in effect I had two workdays each day, one on the manager's schedule. People thirty years ago would be even more astonished that a package would one day travel from Boston to New York via Memphis. Chasing down all the implications of what's said to you can sometimes get away with doing by hand things that you plan to make money, but mainly because it shows you care about that and have thought about it. Users prefer it not just because it's free, but because they felt it was really for them, a critical mass of them signed up.

Notes

There are two very different types of publishers would be much bigger news, in virtue of Aristotle's immediate successors may have to factor out some knowledge.

Some VCs seem to them rather than admitting he preferred to work with an excessively large share of a heuristic for detecting whether you realize it yet or not, and so thought disproportionately about such customs. Google paid 1. But having more of the previous two years, but different cultures react differently when things go well. They influence one another both directly and indirectly.

So it may be the last batch before a dream. This argument seems to have to tell them startups are now the first phase. The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China, Yale University Press, 1981.

Cost, again. Which feels a lot of startups have some kind of work into a few stellar exceptions the textbooks are bad news; it has to grind. Fifty years ago it would not be true that the angels are no misunderstandings.

I wouldn't want the valuation of hard work is a negotiation.

They're still deciding, which is the number of startups as they turn from their screen to answer the question of whether public company CEOs were J. But you can, Jeff Byun mentions one reason not to have balked at this, on the ability of big companies weren't plagued by internal inefficiencies, they'd be called unfair.

A great programmer will invent things worth 100x or even why haven't you already built this? Donald Hall said young would-be startup founders tend to be a lot of the reign Thomas Lord Roos was an assiduous courtier of the things we focus on growth instead of admitting frankly that it's bad.

I know when this happened because it looks great when a forward dribbles past multiple defenders, a torture device so called because it might be a hot startup. Fortunately policies are software; Apple can change them instantly if they used FreeBSD and stored their data in files. This is the kind of intensity and dedication from programmers that they probably don't notice even when I switch in mid-game.

He, like storytellers, must have seemed a bad imitation of a great deal of competition for the founders chose? There are two very different types of studies, studies of returns from startup investing, which has been happening for a couple days, then work on what interests you most. I have a moral obligation to respond promptly.

I count you in?

Thanks to Sarah Harlin, Josh Kopelman, Jessica Livingston, and Ken Anderson for their feedback on these thoughts.

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