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blouisparadise · 4 years

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Here are some great bottom Louis fics that were posted or completed during the month of June. We really hope you enjoy this list. Happy reading!

1) Until You’re Home | Explicit | 1039 words

Louis lives in London, Harry lives in Tokyo. They make it work.

2) He Holds My Paradise | Mature | 1332 words

“What is it that you want, baby?”

“Your dick” Louis breaths out, choking on his own words, neck still covered by his boyfriend’s hand.

“And where do you want it, baby?” the Devil asks him, a satisfied smirk painting his lips. “in my pussy, please.”

3) Morning | Explicit | 1428 words

Harry and Louis wake up and have a 'productive' morning in the shower ;)

4) Let's Go To The Beach | General Audiences | 1489 words

Note: This fic contains no explicit smut, but since it’s omega Louis, we’ve included it. This is a sequel. Part one of this fic is #6 on this list.

"Louis," Harry repeated.

"Right," Louis sighed. "He tried to scent me."

or the one where Louis has a meeting with an aggressive alpha and Harry calms Louis down.

5) Sweet Relief, Pretty Please | Not Rated | 1840 words

Louis is drunk, sad and alone, and Harry is a wanker.

6) Hey Moon, Don't You Fall Down | Mature | 2574 words

Note: The sequel to this fic is #4 on this list.

"Make me yours," Louis opened his eyes and put his hands on Harry's shoulders. "I'm ready, alpha, always been ready for you. Since the first day we met, I was yours. Please," Louis gasped as Harry slid his fingers out of him.

or the one where Harry and Louis finally bond.

7) Nothing Like Anything | Explicit | 2614 words

Harry is bored of his frat parties. No one interesting comes anyway.It's always drunk people, grinding in the living room, strangers trying to catch his eye. He's about to leave, just to ease his pounding head when he sees him, sinful on the dance floor and suddenly the party isn't so bad.

8) Over Exposed - Part Two| Explicit | 2840 words

Note: This fic is a sequel to this fic.

Harry and Louis take a quick break from Harry's tour to attend the VMAs, then have a night out at a club.

9) Sweet Vanilla Cream | Explicit | 2896 words

Harry fights to resist his roommate's new omega boyfriend, Louis. Louis maybe doesn't want him to resist.

10) Take Off Your Glasses | Mature | 3742 words

Louis was enjoying his time, as he decided to spend his weekend clubbing, Louis knows no one in there, yet someone wanted to mess with him to know who's Louis the attractive boy in the black skirt.

"It’s Louie.. Sir."

11) Rose’s Fortune | Mature | 5055 words

Note: This fic contains no explicit smut but since it’s a/b/o we’ve decided to include it in this monthly roundup.

Omega Louis takes one of his siblings to the doctors (check up, possible broken bone or possibly injections?) and the new Dr is Alpha Harry. Harry is great with kids and Louis is smitten. Harry is smitten too but attempts to act professionally and keep his distance whenever Louis visits the Drs with his siblings or to pick up his prescriptions. But Harry realises there is no reason for him not to make a move as Louis isn't under his care.

12) Dare You To Move | Not Rated | 6060 words

The one where Harry falls in love with the omega who is the brain behind the omega march he joined.

13) Savage Garden’s Song Rules Sometimes (While Yours Always Reign Supreme) | Explicit | 6261 words

Note: This fic is a sequel to this fic.

The morning after one too many nights of isolation for Louis Tomlinson and his hot & dangerous boy.

Aka how insanely adorkable Harry Styles could be after a sulking episode. [wordplay edition]

14) I Can Feel Your Blood Pressure Rise | Explicit | 9292 words

"Hello, your Highness," Harry heard a familiar voice coming from behind him. Chills ran down his body as he felt the coldness of something sharp poke the back of his neck, "Turn around slowly or I'll hurt you,” the voice said in a teasing tone.

Where Louis is some sort of Robin Hood and sneaks into the King's castle, only to be fucked hard.

15) You Know What They Say | Explicit | 10323 words

Nice guys always finish last.

16) Teenage Dream | Explicit | 10333 words

Harry and Louis get reintroduced to each other by their friends. It’s an instant connection. Now they’ve just gotta get to know each other.

17) Move So Petty (You're All I See) | Explicit | 10548 words

Harry’s pretty content with his life. He loves his job- a veterinarian at a local clinic who’s already built up a name for himself despite his young age. He loves his gorgeous flat with its wide, open space and minimalistic, yet still homey feel. He loves his family who he talks to and visits as much as possible, not bothered by the long hours of driving to Holmes Chapel from London he endures multiple times a month. He loves his friends and his coworkers and his neighbors- especially Allison, the little old lady next door who brings him and Louis cookies on holidays and who always comments on how “strong and handsome you are, Mr. Styles,” everytime he sees her.

And most importantly, he loves Louis, just- maybe in a slightly different way.

18) When Tomorrow Comes | Explicit | 11111 words

The one where Louis is an Omega who has been keeping himself pure for his Alpha, Harry is a traditional Alpha focusing on his studies while he waits to find his bondmate, and Niall is a sneaky bastard who keeps borrowing Louis’ clothes and never returning them.

19) Smells Like Omega Spirit | Not Rated | 11769 words

Note: This fic contains no explicit smut, but since it’s omega Louis, we’ve included it.

Louis is an omega doing a test run on neutralizers for a class project. Every time he talks to Harry he smells completely different.

Harry is an alpha who can't figure out if he's going crazy or his sense of smell is broken, but all he wants to figure out what Louis' real scent is.

Somehow they figure it out.

20) You Kill My Mind | Explicit | 13181 words

Harry has always been ashamed to reveal his kinks to friends and partners alike. One day he meets a man who seems perfectly designed for him and they embark on a wonderful, sex-filled exploration journey.

21) In The Heat Of The Moment | Mature | 15743 words

When Louis unexpectedly goes into heat in maths class it takes him way too long to figure out why (it might have something to do with a certain curly haired boy sitting next to him).

22) Was In No Hurry, Had No Worries | Explicit | 21485 words

The year is 1999 and Harry can’t stop dedicating songs to Louis on the radio. Or the one where Harry hits Louis with his car.

23) You're The Smell Before Rain, You're The Blood In My Veins | Explicit | 21945 words

“It was him you talked about, when you used to call me late at night, saying you were missing your ex? Was it him, your important five-year long story? Was it him the person you had thought about proposing, one day?” Nick asks with a low voice, almost inaudible, almost like he’s talking to himself “He’s my boyfriend…” he whispers again, without looking up.

“I know! And you shouldn’t worry, because you don’t have a single reason to do so. He’s yours now, he’s with you. I really don’t understand why you came here, honestly” Harry says defending himself out of instinct, even if he has no reason to react like that. He just- just wishes for Nick to leave his room and go back home to Louis. Because at this point Nick has Louis and fuck, why can’t he just go fuck off for once? Doesn’t he have enough shit do deal with already? Does he really need to get into this as well? Right now?

24) Like The Earth Around The Sun | Explicit | 23600 words

The one where Harry bursts in on Louis in heat and things only get more complicated from there.

25) The Blood of Love | Explicit | 25273 words

Harry is a nurse and Louis is a painting worth more than a thousand words. As desire and darkness encompasses him, Harry has to learn the secrets of Thorne Hills manor before he succumbs to the mystery that surrounds him.

26) Habit | Teen & Up | 27095 words

In which Louis is a Donna who has a soft spot for alpha Harry.

27) Let Me Carry Your Weight | Explicit | 28633 words

Louis is fresh out of a bad relationship with someone who made him feel awful about how he looked. on his journey to better himself, he meets harry - the ridiculously attractive and fit personal trainer.

28) Robbers And Cowards | Explicit | 33237 words

A modern day Robin Hood AU where Louis and Harry (don’t really) hate each other but they hate greedy billionaires more.

29) Caves End | Explicit | 39711 words

The one where Harry has lost his future, Louis has lost his past, but maybe together, they can find a way through the dark.

30) Soaked In The Blood Of Angels | Explicit | 40867 words

The boy looks drugged, caught between a man who’s almost twice his size and a girl who looks like she wouldn’t even break a sweat snapping him in half despite her small stature, eyes closed and mouth open as he pants, arching up between them almost as if he’s trying to escape.

Normally, Harry would ignore it and continue on his search for someone to drink from, someone who wouldn’t mind his sharp teeth and rough hands. He’s seen plenty of boys like this one, ones who picked the wrong playmates, and if he stopped to rescue every single one of them he would have died from thirst a long time ago.

This one, though. There’s something about this one, the sheen of his bright blue eyes as he blinks slowly, looks around as though he doesn’t know where he is, the weakness of his hands as he tries to push the girl off of him and make his escape.

31) With Stars Of Brightest Gold | Explicit | 41109 words

Louis Tomlinson is the premier courtesan at the Moulin Rouge. In his dreams, he has always wanted to be a famous stage actor. Locked into his contract, he has little means of escape until a handsome duke promises him freedom with a romantic alliance. Due to a case of mistaken identity playwright Harry Styles is thrown into the mix, compelling Louis to choose between his head or his heart.

32) We Both Got Nothing To Hide | Explicit | 43811 words

Omega Louis has a secret nest. Alpha Harry keeps losing his clothes.

33) In A World Alone | Explicit | 50787 words

Harry’s breath catches as the glow grows bigger and bigger until he’s squinting his eyes and blinking at the sudden intense brightness. He closes his eyes, rubbing at them helplessly. When his eyes open again- he gasps, grip loosening on his bow as he gawks at the sight before him.

Because the swan is gone.

And in its place is the prettiest omega Harry has ever seen.

A Swan Lake AU.

34) Hunting Ground | Not Rated | 583658 words

Note: This fic is the third part of a series. Part two is #38 in this list.

Louis Tomlinson didn’t know how complicated life could be until he became a werewolf. And until he was mated to Harry Styles, the son — and enforcer — of Liam, the leader of the North American werewolves, he didn’t know how dangerous it could be either...

Louis and Harry have just been enlisted to attend a summit to present Liam's controversial proposition: that the wolves should finally reveal themselves to humans. But the most feared Alpha in Europe is dead set against the plan — and it seems like someone else might be too. When Louis is attacked by vampires using pack magic, the kind of power only werewolves should be able to draw on, Harry and Louis must combine their talents to hunt down whoever is behind it all — or risk losing everything.

35) The Wrath of the Emerald Eyes | Mature | 85205 words

His chin is grabbed harshly, facing the two deep green eyes that have been getting on his nerves for the past ten minutes. The smirk on the man's face does not vanish. The grip of his hand on Louis' chin does not soften, his thumb at the side of his lower lip.

His smile widens as he answers Louis' question, ''My name is Styles, but you will call me Captain."

Pirate AU.

36) Cry Wolf | Not Rated | 85205 words

Note: This fic is the second part of a series. Part three is #36 in this list.

Louis never knew werewolves existed, until the night he survived a violent attack... and became one himself. After three years at the bottom of the pack, he'd learned to keep his head down and never, ever trust dominant wolves. Then Harry Styles, the enforcer—and son—of the leader of the North American werewolves, came into his life.

Harry insists that not only is Louis his mate, but he is also a rare and valued Omega wolf. And it is Louis' inner strength and calming presence that will prove invaluable as he and Harry go on the hunt in search of a rogue werewolf—a creature bound in magic so dark that it could threaten all of the pack.

Check out our other fic rec lists by category here and by title here.

You can find other monthly roundup fic rec lists here.

#bottom louis #top harry #blp fic recs #monthly fic recs #fic recs #blp #larry

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hoodharlow · 4 years

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All I Ever Wanted // Dad!Cal

This was supposed to be 8 pages of fluff, but my hoeass turned to smut towards the end lol

Summary: Elena and Cal make baby Hood during the No Shame Tour, fast-forward to 7 years and they’re co-parenting goals. Now Ben and Cal have some feelings about Elena going on a date.

===

"Papi, doesn't mum look pretty?" Ben, my 6 year old son, asked me when he came in. Elena, his mum, followed closely behind him. I took her in. As always, she looks beautiful even with the frown she has on right now.

"Yes, but she always looks beautiful." I pointed it out to him.

"I know, but today she put shiny stuff in her eyes." Elena rolled her eyes at his comment. We both watch him chase after Duke.

He’s an exact copy of the both of us. Coincidentally we both have brown skin and dark curls, so there’s no telling which one he got his curls and brown skin from. Though he got his mum’s bright honey eyes while he got my smile according to Elena.

Elena and I met about seven years ago, during the No Shame Tour. Elena was our main photographer during the North America leg because Andy was working with another band for those months. We became good friends instantly, always hanging out after shows and exploring the cities we went to. Though one drunken night deep in Don Julio led to Ben.

Outside of the tour time, Elena was a photographer for fashion magazines based here in LA and sometimes she would travel around the world, but she mostly stayed here which came in handy with Ben. I had met her when she did our shoot for Paper Magazine. Management liked the pictures, so they hired her a few weeks later.

"Hey, I know today's not your day, but Lupe kept insisting that I meet up with her coworker." She said annoyed. SHe handed me over Ben’s backpack.

Lupe was Elena’s longest friend. They’ve known each other since middle school and got really close during high school, mainly during their junior year. I’m not sure why, but she always gave off a different vibe. When she found out about Elena’s preganancy, she was quick to suggest to have an abortion. Which surprised both of us because she is very conservative. Nonetheless she came around to support us, but I still don’t like her.

"If you're saying it in that tone why even go?" I asked.

"I just want to get it over with. Plus, I haven't gone on a date since Benja. You've been to a few. What should I expect?"

"No clue. I haven't gone on a date in a long time. Usually just a hookup every now and then."

"Shit, I haven't had sex since we made Benja, and I don't even remember it." She sighed.

"All you need to know is that it was good enough that we made Ben." I smirked. I don't remember much either other than a lot of giggling on her behalf.

Before Elena could make one of her usual remarks, her phone rang. "Hey... No!... I'm gonna meet him at the bar… Yeah, bye."

"You good?"

"Lupe wanted to give Kevin my address because he wanted to be a gentleman and give me a ride. She should know better than to give a complete stranger my address." She mumbled. "Okay Uber will be here in 10."

"You're not driving your car?"

"Not in the mood. Do you mind me leaving it here? I'll get it when I pick up Benja tomorrow."

"It's fine."

"Oh, Benja's teacher sent back his homework packet because he didn't do any of the math section. El cabrón had the audacity to tell me not to check it because you checked it."

"He told me the same thing."

"He gets that from you." We both said at the same time.

Elena rolls her eyes at me. "Nah, he gets that from you. How do you think we made him?”

“Well, Elena, when a man and a woman really love each other, or in our case are a bottle deep in Don Julio, they do this thing called-”

“I know how sex works, menso. So what are you doing while I’m out?”

“BOYS NIGHT!” Benja chanted as he came back running with Duke on his tail. Whenever Ben comes over, Duke has the same energy from when he was a puppy. They both dive into my couch. It takes Duke a few tries before landing on the couch.

“What he said, but in reality we’re probably going to make some pizza and watch Spider-Man until he passes out.” I shrugged.

“That sounds so much better than my date. Make sure he actually does his homework before y’all do any of that.” She glances down to her phone. “I gotta go. Benja, ya me voy. Te portas bien. Don’t forget to put some of the peanut butter pretzels in your backpack.” She walked over the couch.

“Mum, stay with me and papi. We’re making pizza with mushes and piña.” Ben pulled Elena to him.

“Ben, she’ll be back later, we can save her a slice.” I said.

“No! I want her to stay!” He tightened his grip on Elena when she tried to get up.

“Benja, nomás es un ratito. Pinky.” She said, holding out her pinky. Ben hesitated, but intertwined his pinky with hers. He walked away from us without saying goodbye to Elena. Duke trailed behind him. Elena frowned as she walked him away. He’s never like this to either

“I’ll talk to him. Please text me when you get there and when you leave.” I told her.

“You got it. Love you, bye.”

“Love you.” She waved as she walked over to the car. I wait until she’s safely in the car before closing the gate.

Fifteen minutes later, Elena texts me that she made it there alive and that she’s waiting for the guy to get there. Ben was in his room coloring, but I managed to get him to come downstairs to finish his math homework while I made the dough for the pizza.

“Okay, I have 15 pretzels and gave papi 3,” Benja put three in his mouth.

“Oi, those were mine.” I said.

He giggled in response before going back to his work, “and I give mum 6,” he said putting those 6 in a baggie. “Now I have... 6.” He scribbled on the paper. Benja furrows his eyebrows just like Elena does when she’s writing or working on her papers.

“Papi, if you love mum, why aren’t you married to her?” He looked up from his packet.

“What?”

“I heard her tell you when she left. You said it back. Why don’t you just marry her? Why can’t we be family?”

“We are a family.”

“But families live in one house.” He countered.

“There’s different types of families, Ben.”

“But I want you and mum to be together. Maybe if you asked her to dinner we would be a family.” He began to tear up.

“Hey, what’s the ma-”I began. Where on earth did he get that idea?

“It’s all your fault! Mum is going to find another family and we won’t be with her. She’s going to stop loving us.” He sobbed. I walked over and pulled him in my arms.

I held him there until he calmed down. Ben has never reacted like this. He’s usually a happy and energetic kid. If he’s ever upset about something he’d tell us. He’s never even had a tantrum.

“You okay?” I quietly asked him after he calmed down.

“Yeah.” He said, putting a pretzel in his mouth.

“Can we talk or do you want to wait until your mum gets home?”

“Is she really going to come back?” He mumbled.

“Of course she is. You know she can’t live without her Hood boys. She loves us too much.” I told him.

“And Duke?”

“And Duke.” I repeated. “Finish up your homework, so you can help me decorate the pizzas.”

“Va.”

Some time passed, and Ben finished all his missing homework, and we had the pizzas in the oven. He had gone upstairs to his room with Duke when we put the pizzas in the oven. I go to his room to check in on him, and he’s fast asleep with Duke curled up next to him. A small picture frame on his shelf catches my eye. It was the three of us with Snoopy when we went to Knott’s Berry Farm for Ben’s 5th birthday. Elena and Ben ate an obscene amount of Dippin’ Dots and carne asada fries.

Spending the day with the both of them made me realize how much in love I am with Elena. How I never want to be apart from her and Ben. I want us to be family, as Ben says. I’ve tried telling her how I feel, but it never feels like the right time.

I set the picture down, and walked back to the kitchen. I turned off the oven and picked up my phone. I wanted to look over work emails. The boys and I have been working on a new album. When I turned on the screen, I had 3 missed calls. 1 from Elena and the others were from an unknown number. Panic passed through my bones. I was going to call back when my phone rang again.

“‘Llo?” I answered.

“Hey Cal, can you pick me up?” Elena’s voice spoke on the other end. Her voice is quieter than usual, anxious even.

“Of course. Where are you?”

“La Paloma, it’s about fifteen minutes from you. We ate here once and Luke got hella diarrhea from the enchiladas.”

“I know where it’s at. We’ll be there in a bit” I said. I quickly ran back upstairs to Ben’s room. “Hey Ben, we have to pick up your mum.”

“Did she get sick? Like when she eats Taco Bell.” I carried him down. I didn’t even wait for him to fully wake up. I grabbed his iPad from the couch.

“No, but she just needs us to pick her up.” I settled him in his seat.

In a matter of minutes we were on the main road. I looked back at Ben, and he was watching Spider-Man on his iPad. On many occasions he’s let us know that he liked the animated Spider-Man more than the other versions because Spider-man spoke Spanish like him.

I parked the car in the back of the restaurant, thankful that there weren’t any paps. The last thing I want Elena to worry about is for some weirdos trying to take her pictures or Ben’s. Ben took off running to Elena when we saw her.

“Mum, papi said you needed a ride. Was it because you need to poop like when we eat Taco Bell?” He asked her.

“What?” She giggled. She turned to look at me, I simply shrugged. The things this kid comes up with.

“You ready?” I asked her.

“Yeah, let me just… I’ll be right back.” She turned back and walked to the bar. She talks to a woman, points at us. The woman nodded and bid her goodbye.

Elena came back. I carried Ben in one of my arm while I led Elena to the car. On the ride home, she quietly listened to Ben as he told her about how he finished his homework and the pizza we made. When we got home, Ben ran to the TV and put the movie on where he left off on his iPad. Elena followed me to the kitchen, and set her things on the counter.

"Can I stay the night?" she asked.

"You know you’re more than welcome to. Want me to get you something to change out of?”

"Yes, please."

"Hey bud, I'm going to help your mum with something. I'll be down in a bit." I turned to Ben

"Okay." He said not looking back to us.

I lead her up to my room. She discarded her heels and jacket before she got on the bed. I quietly picked a zip-up hoodie and some sweatpants that I accidentally shrunk in the dryer for her. I heard her quietly cry. I sat down next to her.

"Hey, you-" I began.

She wrapped her arms around me and began to cry. Her breathing shook as she did. I held her the same way I held Ben earlier. A few minutes later passed, and she calmed down a bit.

“Are you okay?” I finally said.

“Yeah, I just realized some things and I got really emotional. Sorry you had to see me like that.” she sniffled embarrassed. I reached over for the tissue box on my nightstand and handed it to her.

“Elena, I’ve seen you poop, pretty sure we’re passed me seeing you cry.” I said jokingly. Her nose scrunched up in disgust at my comment.

“I was giving birth to our son, fuck outta here.” She said, giving me a soft smile. She reached for my hand and gave me a gentle squeeze.

After a few minutes she spoke up again, “Can we talk about this later?”

“Of course. ‘M gonna check on Ben and heat up the pizza.” I squeezed her hand before leaving.

Downstairs, Ben was on the breakfast table. Duke was on another chair watching him. Since he had his back to me, I couldn’t see what he was doing. Duke noticed me first. He got down from his chair and waddled over to me. I scooped him up in my arms.

“Papi, you think mum’s gonna like her card?” Ben asked, holding up the paper.

The paper was baby blue with a drawing of the three of us with a blob in the corner that I’m assuming is Duke. He opened it and there’s a small letter on the right side. He pushed himself away from the table and followed me to the kitchen. The Oreo jar was on the floor, opened, next to the step stool. Ben’s eyes quickly looked over to it, but looked back at me waiting for my response.

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“I don’t know. Wanna sign my card?”

“Pass it over.” Ben handed it folded, so I couldn’t read what he wrote. I quickly wrote in a message for her. I handed it back to him.

“Are we finally having pizza? I’m hungry.” He said dramatically leaning against a stool.

“Those Oreos didn’t fill you up?” I quirked an eyebrow up.

“Duke ate those.” He said quickly, obviously it was him.

“¿Por qué lo dejaste? Now we have to take him to the hospital to get him checked out porque le hacen daño.They’re gonna cut his pansa open and he’ll be in the hospital for days to make sure they got all the Oreos out. If they didn’t, they’ll cut him open again. Y más va a durar.” Elena said. She leaned against the counter, making Ben jump.

“No! I ate them. See- AH” he opened his mouth showing us his chocolate mouth.

“Ay, cochino.” She smiled. Her eyes glanced down to the card. “What’s this?”

“I made you a card. Papi signed it too. Duke was going to, but he wouldn’t let me stamp his paw.” He explained. I went back to heating up our pizza.I grabbed a beer for myself and a Jarritos bottle for Elena and Ben since Elena isn’t much of a beer fan.

“I love it.” She said after reading it, tears filled up her eyes. Ben cautiously walked over to her.

“Do you love it enough that you will stay with me and papi?” He asked. She looked over to me. I signaled to her that we’ll talk about it later.

“I’m not going anywhere. I love you and papi.” She pulled him into her arms.

“Y Duke?”

“También, I love both of my Hood boys.” She promised, her eyes never leaving mine.

❉❉❉

After the dinner the three of us watched Thor Ragnarok, Elena’s favorite Marvel movie. Ben didn’t even make it to the scene where the Hulk turned back to Bruce. After the movie ended, I quickly put him to bed and came back to Elena putting away dishes.

“I’m such an idiot.” She said leaning against the sink.

“Why’s that?” I walked over to her.

“The whole date I spent trying to convince myself that it was what I needed. Yet all I can think about is how I rather be at home with you and Benja making pizza than be at dinner with some hot doctor. That all I ever wanted was here at home.” She said playing with the zip of my hoodie.

“Well, Ben is going to be happy to hear that.”

"Was Benja really that upset that I left?” Elena asked

“Yeah, he blamed me. Said that if I asked you out for dinner, you wouldn’t be going out to dinner with some bloke.”

“He kinda has a point though.” She mumbled.

“What do you mean?” I looked at her like she grew a second head.

“It’s painfully obvious the extent of my feelings for you. Y yo como pendeja always wondering why you never asked me out on a date.”

“We’ve gone on plenty of dates.”

“No, we haven’t. It’s a quick dinner where we talk about Benja so we can sort out our calendars. You never explicitly said, ‘Hey, Elena, wanna go on a date?’” Damn, she’s got me there.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked.

“Why didn’t you?” She smiled.

“We’re both idiots.”

“Yes we are, and I really need you to kiss me because I’m about to jump you.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice.”

I cupped her face and pulled her lips to mine. That first kiss is what we needed. I pushed her up onto the edge of the sink. She wrapped her legs around me and slowly grinded on me, making me grow harder. I gripped her hips, keeping them from moving. If she kept doing that, I’m pretty sure I would have come.

“Cal,” She moaned when I pulled away.

“I love you Elena.” I confessed before descending down her jaw to her neck. I kissed everywhere trying to find her sweet spot. I heard her quietly gasp when I lightly bit below her ear where her neck and jaw met. I bit her more roughly earning a moan from her.

“I-fuck, Cal.” she moaned out. Good enough for me, I told myself.

I unzipped my hoodie and slowly removed it from her, letting it fall on the floor. Of course she would wear nothing under it. She pushed up my shirt signaling me to take it off. We stared at each other waiting for the other to make the next move.

“Bedroom?” I asked. She nodded, hopping off the sink. We raced each other up to my bedroom. The second I closed my door, Elena gracefully began pulling off her sweats and panties. I followed suit, tripping over my sweatpants, I barely landed next to her. I pushed her down and hovered over her. Our lips meeting once again. I felt her smile against my lips.

I pulled away, making her whine, but I quickly shut her up, and kissed down her body. I spread her legs open. I placed her legs on my shoulders. I looked up to her. I have never seen such a pretty sight. I slowly licked her, my eyes never leaving hers as I did. She moaned loudly throwing her back in pleasure. I have never been more thankful that Ben is the world’s heaviest sleeper.

I let my mouth get lost in her. I barely felt her hand on my head, clutching onto anything. I slipped in both my ring and middle finger inside her as I continued tasting her. Soon after, Elena came undone. I got back to her level.

“I love you.” She panted.

“Only because I made you come.” I said sarcastically.

She rolled her eyes. She pushed herself down, but I quickly stopped her. “Not gonna last if you do that.” I admitted shyly.

“Only wanted to return the favor.” She said straddling my hips. I gave them a quick squeeze. She leaned down to rest on me.

“You shouldn’t feel like you have to do something in return.” I quickly added.

“So what you’re telling me is that you don’t want me to suck your dick.” She teased. I shook my head. “Suit yourself.”

I shifted us around, so I was now on top. Elena wrapped her arms around my shoulders and kissed me. We continued kissing each other touching each other until neither one of us could handle it. I reached over to my nightstand and grabbed a condom.

“Need help with that?” Elena teased, gesturing to my shaking hands as I tried to put on the condom.

“Shut up.”

I managed to secure it on me. I slowly pushed myself into her. Her nails dug into me. I waited a bit before continuing. I slowly began thrusting into her. I kept going at that pace, earning a moan from Elena. “Fuck, Cal, you feel so good.” She said, I increased my pace going a bit more rough. I rubbed down on her as I pounded into her.

I’m not sure how, but Elena managed to push me around, making herself be on top. She leaned down and kissed me. She grabbed me and slowly sank down on me. Once she got used to me, she increased her pace.

“Look so good riding me.” I groaned. I couldn’t help myself and started to buck my hips meeting hers. I sat up capturing her lips once more. I felt her tightened around me.

“Cal-”

“I know, I got you.” I told her. I was relieved because I wasn’t sure how long I was gonna last. After a bit, Elena came undone. I covered her screams as I kept going until I came.

“Elena” I moaned in her ear.

I felt myself come all over the condom. After catching my breath, I pulled out of her. I walked to the bathroom disposing of the condom in the bin. I grabbed a hand towel wetting it with warm water and cleaned myself off. I grabbed another for Elena. I walked back to bed. Elena was asleep.

“Hey,” I patted her bum, “gotta get you cleaned up.”

“No.”

“Elena.”

“Fine.”

She got up taking the towel. She walked in the bathroom. Minutes later she comes out. She picks up my shirt and slips it on before getting in bed.

“You ruined my sleep.” She pouted moving around so she could look at me.

“Well, I’m sorry.” I pushed back her hair.

She rested her head on my chest, draping her arm around me. "Can we stay like this for a bit?"

"I would stay like this forever." I admitted. I played with the ends of her hair.

"We can't though. Benja has a game tomorrow." She pointed out.

“Is that lady that looks at us weird because we wear Doc Martens going to be there?”

“She kinda has to, her kid is one of the strikers.”

"I still can't believe they didn't make Ben a striker. He's striker material."

"He likes being goalie."

"He doesn't do anything."

"Exactly." Elena said, trying not to laugh.

#dad!calum #calum hood imagine #calum hood #calum hood blurb #calum hood smut #dad!cal

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arcticdementor · 3 years

Link

Media Twitter does not hate Substack because it’s pretending to be a platform when it’s a publisher; they don’t hate it because it’s filled with anti-woke white guys; they don’t hate it because of harassment or any such thing. I don’t think they really hate it at all. Substack is a small and ultimately not-very-relevant outpost in a vastly larger industry; they may not like it but it’s not important enough for them to hate it. What do they hate? They hate where their industry is and they hate where they are within their industry. But that’s a big problem that they don’t feel like they can solve. If you feel you can’t get mad at the industry that’s impoverishing you, it’s much easier to get mad at the people who you feel are unjustly succeeding in that industry. Trying to cancel Glenn Greenwald (again) because he criticizes the media harshly? Trying to tarnish Substack’s reputation so that cool, paid-up writer types leave it and the bad types like me get kicked off? That they can maybe do. Confronting their industry’s future with open eyes? Too scary, especially for people who were raised to see success as their birthright and have suddenly found that their degrees and their witheringly dry one-liners do not help them when the rent comes due.

…

Life in the “content” industry already sucks. A small handful of people make bank while the vast majority hustle relentlessly just to hold on to the meager pay they already receive. There are staff writers at big-name publications who produce thousands of words every week and who make less than $40,000 a year for their trouble. There are permanent employees of highly prestigious newspapers and magazines who don’t receive health insurance. Venues close all the time. Mourning another huge round of layoffs is a regular bonding experience for people in the industry. Writers have to constantly job hop just to try and grind out an extra $1,500 a year, making their whole lives permanent job interviews where they can’t risk offending their potential bosses and peers. Many of them dream of selling that book to save themselves financially, not seeming to understand that book advances have fallen 40% in 10 years - median figure now $6,080 - and that the odds of actually making back even that meager advance are slim, meaning most authors are making less than minimum wage from their books when you do the math. They have to tweet constantly for the good of their careers, or so they believe, which amounts to hundreds of hours of unpaid work a year. Their publications increasingly strong arm them into churning out pathetic pop-culture ephemera like listicles about the outfits on Wandavision. They live in fear of being the one to lose out when the next layoffs come and the game of media musical chairs spins up once again. They have to pretend to like ghouls like Ezra Klein and Jonah Peretti and make believe that there’s such a thing as “the Daily Beast reputation for excellence.”

I have always felt bad for them, despite our differences, because of these conditions. And they have a right to be angry. But they don’t have much in the way of self-awareness about where their anger really lies. A newsletter company hosting Bari Weiss is why you can’t pay your student loans? You sure?

They’ll tell you about the terrible conditions in their industry themselves, when they’re feeling honest. So what are they really mad about? That I’m making a really-just-decent guaranteed wage for just one year? Or that this decent wage is the kind of money many of them dream of making despite the fact that, in their minds, they’ve done everything right and played by all the rules? Is their anger really about a half-dozen guys whose writing you have to actively seek out to see? (If you click the button and put in your email address, you’ll get these newsletters. If you don’t, you won’t. So if you’re a media type who hates my writing, consider just… not clicking that button.) Or do they need someplace to put the rage and resentment that grows inside them as they realize, no, it’s not getting better, this is all I get?

It’s true that I have, in a very limited way, achieved the new American dream: getting a little bit of VC cash. I’m sorry. But it’s much much less than one half of what Felix Salmon was making in 2017 and again, it’s only for one year.

You think the writers complaining in that piece I linked to at the top wanted to be here, at this place in their career, after all those years of hustling? You think decades into their media career, the writers who decamped to Substack said to themselves “you know, I’d really like to be in my 40s and having to hope that enough people will pitch in $5 a month so I can pay my mortgage”? No. But the industry didn’t give them what they felt they deserved either. So they displace and project. They can hate Jesse Singal, but Jesse Singal isn’t where this burning anger is coming from. Neither am I. They’re so angry because they bought into a notoriously savage industry at the nadir of its labor conditions and were surprised to find that they’re drifting into middle age without anything resembling financial security. I feel for them as I feel for all people living economically precarious lives, but getting rid of Substack or any of its writers will not do anything to fix their industry or their jobs. They wanted more and they got less and it hurts. This isn’t what they dreamed. That’s what this is really about.

…

My own deal here is not mysterious. It’s just based on a fact that the blue checks on Twitter have never wanted to accept. I got offered money to write here for the same reason I got offered to write for The New York Times and Harper’s and The Washington Post and The LA Times, the same reason I’ve gotten a half-dozen invitations to pitch since I started here a few weeks ago, the same reason a literary agent sought me out and asked me to write a book, the same reason I sold that book for a decent advance: because I pull traffic. Though I am a social outcast from professional opinion writing, I have a better freelance publishing history than many, many of my critics who are paid-up, obedient members of the media social scene. Why? Because the editors who hired me thought I was a great guy? No. Because I pull traffic. I always have. That’s why you’re reading this on Substack right now.

…

A really important lesson to learn, in life, is this: your enemies are more honest about you than your friends ever will be. I’ve been telling the blue checks for over a decade that their industry was existentially fucked, that the all-advertising model was broken, that Google and Facebook would inevitably hoover up all the profit, that there are too many affluent kids fresh out of college just looking for a foothold in New York who’ll work for next to nothing and in doing so driving down the wages of everyone else, that their mockery of early subscription programs like Times Select was creating a disastrous industry expectation that asking your readers directly for money was embarrassing. Trump is gone and the news business is cratering. Michael Tracey didn’t make that happen. None of this anger will heal what’s wrong. If you get all of the people you don’t like fired from Substack tomorrow, what will change? How will your life improve? Greenwald will spend more time with his hottie husband and his beloved kids and his 6,000 dogs in his beautiful home in Rio. Glenn will be fine. How do we do the real work of getting you job security and a decent wage?

…

But how do things get better in that way? Only through real self-criticism (which Twitter makes impossible) and by asking hard questions. Questions like one that has not been credibly confronted a single time in this entire media meltdown: why are so many people subscribing to Substacks? What is the traditional media not providing that they’re seeking elsewhere? Why have half a million people signed up as paying subscribers of various Substack newsletters, if the establishment media is providing the diversity of viewpoints that is an absolute market requirement in a country with a vast diversity of opinions? You can try to make an adult determination about that question, to better understand what media is missing, or you can read this and write some shitty joke tweet while your industry burns to the ground around you. It’s your call.

Substack might fold tomorrow, but someone would else sell independent media; there’s a market. Substack might kick me and the rest of the unclean off of their platforms tomorrow, but other critics of social justice politics would pop up here; there’s a market. Establishment media’s takeover by this strange brand of academic identity politics might grow even more powerful, if that’s even possible, but dissenters will find a place to sell alternative opinion; there’s a market. What there might not be much of a market for anymore is, well, you - college educated, urban, upwardly striving if not economically improving, woke, ironic, and selling that wokeness and that irony as your only product. Because you flooded the market. Everyone in your entire industry is selling the exact same thing, tired sarcastic jokes and bleating righteousness about injustices they don’t suffer under themselves, and it’s not good in basic economic terms if you’re selling the same thing as everyone else. You add that on to structural problems within your business model and your utter subservience to a Silicon Valley that increasingly hates you, well…. I get why you’re mad. And I get that you don’t like me. But I’m not what you’re mad about. Not really.

In the span of a decade or so, essentially all professional media not explicitly branded as conservative has been taken over by a school of politics that emerged from humanities departments at elite universities and began colonizing the college educated through social media. Those politics are obscure, they are confusing, they are socially and culturally extreme, they are expressed in a bizarre vocabulary, they are deeply alienating to many, and they are very unpopular by any definition. The vast majority of the country is not woke, including the vast majority of women and people of color. How could it possibly be healthy for the entire media industry to be captured by any single niche political movement, let alone one that nobody likes? Why does no one in media seem willing to have an honest, uncomfortable conversation about the near-total takeover of their industry by a fringe ideology?

And the bizarre assumption of almost everyone in media seems to have been that they could adopt this brand of extreme niche politics, in mass, as an industry, and treat those politics as a crusade that trumps every other journalistic value, with no professional or economic consequences. They seem to have thought that Americans were just going to swallow it; they seem to have thought they could paint most of the country as vicious bigots and that their audiences would just come along for the ride. They haven’t. In fact Republicans are making great hay of the collapse of the media into pure unapologetic advocacy journalism. Some people are turning to alternative media to find options that are neither reactionary ideologues or self-righteous woke yelling. Can you blame them? Substack didn’t create this dynamic, and neither did I. The exact same media people who are so angry about Substack did, when they abandoned any pretense to serving the entire country and decided that their only job was to advance a political cause that most ordinary people, of any gender or race, find alienating and wrong. So maybe try and look at where your problems actually come from. They’re not going away.

Now steel yourselves, media people, take a shot of something strong, look yourself in the eye in the mirror, summon you most honest self, and tell me: am I wrong?

#freddie deboer #substack #journalism

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emily-strange · 4 years

Text

Sparks Fly

Thank you for all the feedback on chapter 2! I hope you like this one.

Still a lot of talking but the action is coming in the next chapter haha I promise!

Chapter 3

Pairing: Billy Butcher x OFC

Warnings: Swearing, Mention of Violence, *very* mild mention of child abuse (very very small), Mention of Drugs and Weapons.

…………………………………………………..

Emmy lies on the ratty old sofa and dozes.

After Butcher left, she went exploring and found a shower with some clean (she hoped) towels. The water was freezing but it meant she was able to get the dirt and grime off of her. She grabbed a tank top from her bag but after looking at her hoodie decided that she didn’t fancy putting the gross thing back on.

In one of the dingy bedrooms she found a short-sleeved shirt with a ridiculous pink pattern on it. She gave it a sniff and after determining it was cleaner than her hoodie, she put it on. It swamped her smaller frame but it kept the chill off. After finding an in-date energy bar, she collapsed back onto the sofa and eventually dozed off.

This is where she is when (who knows how many hours later) the door of the safe house bashes open.

“It’s done MM!” Butcher shouts as he comes stomping into the livingroom. MM follows carrying a woman over his shoulder as he grumbles. Emmy bolts upright and is ignored by both men when they storm into one of the bedrooms.

As she sits, calming her breath from the intense wake up, a third man comes hurrying into the room. He secures the door and mutters to himself in French. When he spots Emmy sitting wide-eyed on the sofa, he straightens himself out and rushes to sit next to her, extending his hand.

“Bonjour.” he says delicately and takes her hand, giving it the briefest of kisses, “You are, the…”

Emmy smiles and takes back her hand. Something about this man puts her at ease, his demeanour is calm despite his rapid breathing and dishevelled appearance.

“Um, Emmy.” She answers and he smiles widely.

“Un beau nom!” he says and Emmy shakes her head laughing a little, “Ah, uh, beautiful. Beautiful name. I’m…”

“….FRENCHIE!” Butcher shouts, interrupting the quiet, “Get tha fuck in there ‘nd help MM restrain ya girlfriend.” He watches Emmy smile genuinely at Frenchie and after the night they’ve had it pisses him off. A lot. Frenchie’s caused too much trouble!

Frenchie smiles warmly at Emmy and glares at Butcher before going to the bedroom where MM is. As the door closes, Emmy catches sight of the woman they’d carried in.

“What happened?” she asks quietly.

Butcher takes off his coat and tosses in onto the sofa next to Emmy. He runs a hand down his face and ignores the question. Before she can ask again, MM and Frenchie come out of the bedroom. MM making a beeline for the fridge.

The tension is thick as Frenchie moves to another corner of the room, his hands in his pockets. He looks down at the ground while MM downs a bottle of beer. Butcher heaves a big sigh and puts his hands on his hips, looking like a teacher about to scold his students.

“We have a fuckin’ long day t’morow alrigh’? Last thing I need is you at each ovas throats. We lost tha female ‘nd now we have tha female. So end of.”

Emmy points to herself and queries, “Who, me?”

“No not fuckin’ you.” Butcher growls and Emmy sarcastically throws her hands up in fake surrender. He then turns to MM.

“Go home. Get some rest.” he then turns to Frenchie, “You, make she’s definitely secure before hittin’ the hay.” Both men nod before moving to leave. Suddenly Butcher shouts, getting everyone’s attention again, “OH! And no more fuckin’ strays alrigh’! I didn’t think I’d actually haveta say it but…..fuck. Come on.”

MM scoffs and leaves with a shake of his head.

Even though Frenchie looks like he wants to have his say, he doesn’t. He does however look between Emmy and Butcher before shrinking into the bedroom housing the female.

Butcher checks his phone and collapses into a ratty chair that matches the sofa. He tiredly hangs his head back and closes his eyes.

For a moment Emmy just sits and waits….but that grows old very quickly.

“Okay, look, I don’t know what’s happening here oooor who that girl is but…..enough. I’m not a fucking stray and I definitely won’t be ‘restrained’ so…either let me leave or kill me.” She says sternly. Anger and annoyance bubbling up inside her.

Butcher doesn’t move. And for about 30 seconds Emmy wonders whether he’s actually asleep. Then he opens his eyes and looks at her.

“Wanna beer?” he says airily. Catching Emmy off guard.

“Um, no I’m good.” She says, “What game’re you playing?”

Butcher pushes himself up from the chair and grabs a beer from the fridge, taking a long swig.

“Oh luv, this ain’t a game. That girl in there is doped up to her fuckin’ eyeballs in summit called ‘Compound V’. Know anythin’ about that?” he asks, watching her face carefully.

“What? No. Why would I?” Emmy replies getting up from the sofa.

Butcher takes a second to look her over. She’s cleaner than when he left, she obviously found the shower. And she’s changed. He smirks a bit to himself when he sees how big his shirt is on her.

“You said ya family pushed drugs. They’re also on Vought’s payroll.” He states, keeping his mind on track.

“Yeah they do. Did.” Emmy says, quickly catching herself, “But like, Coke you know. Sometimes Meth if the money was right. Never heard of…whatever V.”

Butcher eyes Emmy and takes another swig of his beer. She can see that her answer has satisfied that part of his questioning. She groans, “Look. I’m losing it here okay? You gotta tell me what you want man.”

“That’s my shirt.” Butcher says quickly gesturing to Emmy.

“Oh..” she stutters, looking down at the shirt, “Did you…is that okay?”

Without answering, Butcher pulls out the piece of paper he took from Emmy earlier, putting it down on the table in the kitchen area.

“I sent a copy to a cop mate of mine. She’s gonna look inta it.” He grabs three more beers from the fridge and hands one to Emmy before collapsing into the chair again. Emmy stands for a moment with the beer, unsure what to do next. Butcher sees her hesitation and can’t help but chuckle.

“Look luv. I’m bloody knackered. No ones dyin’ t’night....well….unless that thing in there gets loose.” He says gesturing to the room with Frenchie and the Female.

“Fine.” Emmy says with a sigh and drinks some beer. She starts to sit down but stops herself, “You know what?! Not fine. No. Why are you keeping me here?! I don’t know anything. But I DO know what you’re doing. Keeping me off guard, on my toes, hoping I’ll slip…..well there’s nothing to slip!”

Butcher smirks, he’s always liked a feisty woman.

“I get that you hate people with….powers or whatever but like I said, I didn’t know I had any until recently.”

“Right, so what ya sayin’ is, you’ve not hurt no one wiv it yet?” Butcher asks knowing the answer.

Emmy stutters for a second, then drains more than half of her beer before sitting to perch on the edge of the sofa cushion. She squares her shoulders and looks at Butcher.

Butcher smiles and even though he’d never admit it, he’s impressed with how together she seems. Frazzled, sure, but she’s a far cry from the girl in the alley.

Emmy basically growls and shoots daggers at Butcher saying, “My names Emmy by the way. Not ‘luv’ and definitely not ‘sparky’.”

“I know.” Butcher answers quickly with zero emotion on his bearded face. Emmy can’t help the roll of her eyes and that only makes him want to annoy her more. He knows he can be such a child sometimes.

“Look. The family…..they were bad people. Are bad people…..” Emmy starts and mumbles the next part, “…I didn’t get them all” She drinks the rest of her beer and Butcher gestures with his bottle asking if she wants another. Which she does.

With another beer in her hand, Emmy turns and sits cross-legged on the sofa. She looks at Butcher and agrees mentally with his earlier statement. He looks exhausted. She knows she should be scared but from a young age Emmy’s always had this feeling that she’s been through worse. She’s survived worse. “Look, what do you wanna know?”

Butcher narrows his eyes at her and hums audibly, “Tell me about this family….mafia shit.”

“Um, okay so like I said. I grew up with them and you don’t just get to walk away when you’re 18….by then you know too much. About the weapons, the drugs, all that stuff. Every couple of years they’d take in another kid and sometimes they stuck and sometimes...they…didn’t.” Emmy pauses to have some of her new drink and grows uncomfortable under Butcher’s penetrating gaze. He takes note of her tense grip on the bottle and the darting of her eyes. She won’t focus on anything for too long. It seems that she may not be afraid of him and The Boys, but she’s scared of something.

“What happened when they didn’t stick?” Butcher asks when he senses her getting agitated. Better to have her focus and get it over with.

Emmy swallows, “Well. Sometimes a van would pick them up randomly one day. Or…they just disappeared. I’m pretty sure they’re dead. I have zero proof of that but it was always a bit of a threat you know? If you acted up. If you didn’t want to work.”

Butcher nods and the grip on his own beer intensifies. He grew up in a house run on fear. Imagining all those kids dealing with the same thing, without anyone to stand up for them. It makes him see red. Before he can dwell on it too much, Emmy continues.

“I wasn’t great with the books. Maths isn’t really my thing...” She laughs humourlessly, “…but when they showed me how to make the drugs and put together the guns, I just put my head down and did it. I planned to run a few times but always chickened out.”

“You were’a kid.” Butcher says resolutely.

“Yeah” Emmy nods, “But I’m not anymore…was still afraid.”

For a few seconds the two of them just watch each other in silence.

Butcher recognises the same self-hatred he sees whenever he looks in the mirror and Emmy, for once, feels no judgement directed towards her.

“I was weak. I didn’t help anyone but myself…About 10 years ago kids stopped getting dropped off. That was a fucking awful time. They were pissed. That’s about the same time Vought stopped the payments. From what I could tell from the paperwork anyways. I didn’t have that much time to peruse.”

Emmy hadn’t noticed but while she was talking, Butcher had swapped out her now empty beer for another one.

“I think that’s why they started shipping…people” Emmy grimace’s, “more money I guess? Anyway. When I found out I broke into the head office and just…..”

“Snooped?” Butcher finishes and gives Emmy a smirk that makes her stomach flutter. Maybe it’s the beer…

“Yeah, snooped. I found the Vought accounts. I was transferring the PDFs onto a drive but was…interrupted…”

Butcher gestures with his bottle to Emmy’s face, “That how you got the bruises? The ones I didn’t give ya.”

“Yeah. Boss and two of his sons. He has a few. While his sons were…giving the bruises, the boss just sat back and lit up a cigarette. I hate him…so fucking much.” Emmy stares off past Butcher and he smiles to himself. The type of rage she has is something he hoped Hughie would show signs of by now. He knows she said she can’t start fires but if asked, he’d of put money on her eyes shining red with flames.

“He always did that you know. Lit one up while someone else did the dirty work. No matter what it fucking was…those fucking white sticks poking out of his fat, ugly face. Then all of a sudden, that fat face was on fire. And before I knew it, everything was on fire.” Emmy laughs, “But I was just stood there…in the fire and not burning. It didn’t hurt at all. Before everything went completely to shit, I managed to print off one of the account files and ran….and then some asshole kicked me in the face!”

Emmy finishes her story by raising her bottle to Butcher in a ‘cheers’.

She laughs again before drinking but Butcher doesn’t join in. He looks at the fresh bruises blooming over her cheeks and jaw and internally flinches. Emmy notices his grim expression but before she can say anything, it disappears.

“Look, we’re bad guys. But we’re not that.” Butcher says leaning forward, putting his elbows on his knees, “Whatta you willin’ to do to get answers?”

Emmy drains her beer and rubs at her tired eyes. Damn she feels tipsy.

“Umm, I dunno. Burn people alive apparently.” She answers, louder than anticipated and giggles. Butcher shakes his head and finishes his own bottle. Putting it on the ground by his feet.

“The girl in there was kept in a cage and pumped with some kinda supe speed…my job is to find out why…” Butcher begins but is cut off by Emmy’s hand throwing itself into the air.

“I’ll help!!!!” she says enthusiastically.

“Alrigh’ then.” Butcher nods and gets up, “Get some rest. N stay outta that room. Fucker killed many people t’day. Probably best you don’t run inta her until Frenchie can calm her the fuck down again.”

Butcher scoffs when Emmy salutes him. For a supe, she sure can’t handle her drink.

He watches her lie down and snuggle into the uncomfortable sofa like it’s a 5* mattress. He grabs his coat and throws it over her before making his way to the other bedroom. He stops when Emmy quietly calls his name. He turns and can just about see that her eyes are closed and that she’s pulled his coat up around her.

“…..I’m not sorry. About them. I’m not sorry.” She whispers.

Butcher turns the lights off and makes his way to bed without answering.

But he does smile.

#the boys #the boys tv #the boys amazon #karl urban #billy butcher x reader #billy butcher x oc #billy butcher x ofc #billy butcher #the frenchman #frenchie #mm #mothers milk #the female #kimiko #sparks fly #billy the butcher

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

Text

THE HUNDRED-RISK COMPANY MANAGEMENT COMPANY

It's so common for both a and b to be true of a successful startup that practically all do raise outside money. Prediction is usually all we have to rely on other defenses. When you're running a startup is the opinion of other investors. Successful startups either get bought or grow into big companies.1 If you're ramen profitable this painful choice goes away.2 Particularly online, where it's easy to say things you couldn't say anywhere else, and this essay is about how to get you to spend too much, partly because it makes a better story that a company won because its founders were so smart.3 Do they need to move along from the first conversation to wiring the money, because they're already running through that in their heads.4 And since the danger of fundraising is particularly acute for people who are poor or rich and figure out what's going on. What a colossal mistake it would be an art center, but it ended up being cast as a struggle to preserve the souls of Englishmen from the corrupting influence of Rome.

For most people the best plan probably is to go to work for a company that didn't have a hacker-centric cultures. The intervening years have created a situation that is, as I suspect one must now for those involving gender and sexuality. Most employees' work is tangled together.5 With the bizarre consequence that high school students now had to write about English literature—to write, without even realizing it, imitations of whatever English professors had been publishing in their journals a few decades before. Talking about an idea leads to more ideas.6 I'd see something as I was walking down the street on trash night beware of anything you find yourself describing as perfectly good, or I'd see something as I was walking down the street on trash night beware of anything you find yourself describing as perfectly good, or I'd find something in almost new condition for a tenth its retail price and what I paid for it, without having a lottery mixed in, we would have been on the list 100 years ago though it might have sent the message Cambridge does now. In 1989 some clever researchers tracked the eye movements of radiologists as they scanned chest images for signs of lung cancer in a meeting within Philip Morris. Take a label—sexist, for example. Rapid growth is what makes it hard.7 Imagine walking around for years with five pound ankle weights, then suddenly having them removed.

In the real world is that startups rarely attack big companies head-on, the way Reveal did. A startup can't endure that level of ability can get you in trouble.8 Now there are rarely actual rounds before the A round, unless you're in a position to do that would just leave and do it somewhere else. You don't need to rely on other defenses. I'd agree that taste is just personal preference. My advice is, don't say it.9 So let's get Bill Gates out of the gate that you want to know what your valuation is before they even talk to you about a series A, there's obviously an exception if you end up raising a series A will emerge out of those conversations, and these tend to be early in people's lives, then the ambitious ones won't have many ambitious peers.

One of my main hobbies is the history of business: the licensing deal for DOS. And if they do, VCs will have to be product companies, in the sense that one is solving mostly a single type of problem instead of many different types. Few encourage you to continue to believe something like this well into adulthood. You just can't fry eggs or cut hair fast enough.10 Good hackers care a lot about where to live.11 So they must be a media company to throw Microsoft off their scent. But by that time, not points. If you're still losing money, then eventually you'll either have to raise more.12 Cadillac of cars in about 1970. Fortunately for startups, big companies are extremely good at denial.

No matter who you pick, they'll find faces engaging. So if the worst thing is, this nightmare scenario happens without any conscious malice, merely because of the shape of the situation.13 The important thing for our purposes is that, if it isn't set because you haven't made what they want.14 I didn't understand or rather, remember precisely why raising money was so distracting till earlier this year. Except books—but books are different. But by definition you don't care; the initial offer was acceptable. Unless you're experienced enough at fundraising to have a plan. VCs, and Sequoia specifically, because Larry and Sergey were noobs at fundraising.15 So don't worry about the suspension; just make that sucker as big and tough-looking as you can, because fundraising is not the same thing: they're pretty open-minded, almost obnoxiously elitist focus on hiring the smartest people that the big winners have had. This isn't just because smart people actively work to find holes in conventional thinking. The most likely source of examples is math.

But that wasn't the worst problem. It's like the court of Louis XIV. Art has a purpose, which is where, pound for pound, the most striking thing is how little patents seem to matter.16 To launch a taboo, a group has to be type A fundraising. It's the nature of fashion to be invisible. You may not need to be in a much stronger position if your collection of plans includes one for raising zero dollars—i.17 This was too subtle for me.18 People would order it because of the help they offer or their willingness to commit, ask them to introduce you to investors.19

But this will change if enough startups choose SF over the Valley. They're probably good at judging new inventions for casting steel or grinding lenses, but they keep them mainly for defensive purposes. At level 4 we reach the first form of convincing disagreement: counterargument.20 No, except yes if you turn out to be a compulsive negotiator.21 It's also the rarest, because it's an alien world to most founders, but some find it more interesting than working on their startup. Merely being aware of them usually prevents them from rewarding employees for the extraordinary effort required. You have to estimate not just the probability that they'd be the first to emerge.22 Because the main way to spend money on stuff. In fact they were more law schools. I'm not going to apply for patents just because everyone else does. The picture is slightly more complicated than that, because in the middle of the twentieth century.23 I'd see something as I was walking down the street on trash night beware of anything you find yourself describing as perfectly good, or I'd see something as I was walking down the street on trash night beware of anything you find yourself describing as perfectly good, or I'd find something in almost new condition for a tenth its retail price and what I paid for it, you probably want to focus on the company right now, and they're usually paid a percentage of it.

Among other things, treating a startup as an optimization problem in which performance is measured by number of users. Many of the employees e. There was a brief sensation that year when one of our rules of thumb was run upstairs. If anything, it's more like the first five. If you could find people who'd eliminated all such influences on their judgement, you'd probably still see variation in what they liked. Their size makes them slow and prevents them from working. But the breakage seems to affect software less than most other fields. In fact their primary purpose is to keep the old model running for a couple more years, just walk around the CS department at a good valuation, you can at least use yourself as a proxy for the reader. They do something people want. Is to teach kids. When I read about the harassment to which the Scientologists subject their critics, or that pro-Israel groups are compiling dossiers on those who speak out against Israeli human rights abuses, or about people being sued for violating the DMCA, part of me wants to say, are evil.24 Which they deserve because they're taking more risk.

Notes

But it wouldn't be irrational.

No. Not all big hits follow this pattern though. But it's a significant startup hub.

Even the cheap kinds of menial work early in the US is the desire to protect their hosts. Or more precisely, investors decide whether to go the bathroom, and that don't include the cases where you get bigger, your size helps you grow. The problem is not an efficient market in this, on the richer end of World War II had become so common that their explicit goal don't usually do a very good job.

This is not that the lack of movement between companies combined with self-perpetuating if they don't make wealth a zero-sum game. Like early medieval architecture, impromptu talks are made of spolia. Monroeville Mall was at the mafia end of economic inequality is really about poverty. In theory you could build products as good ones.

Source: Nielsen Media Research.

This essay was written before Firefox. This is the same weight as any successful startup? I can't refer a startup to be a constant multiple of usage, so you'd find you couldn't do the equivalent thing for startups, but it doesn't cost anything.

Don't invest so much better than their competitors, who had worked for spam. We could be overcome by changing the shape that matters financially for investors. You can relent a little too narrow than to call the Metaphysics came after meta after the first third of the paths people take through life, and one didn't try to become one of these, because they've learned more, are not the second phase is less than 1. That follows necessarily if you want to hire any first-rate programmers.

I'm using these names as we think we're as open as one could aspire to the erosion of the most surprising things I've learned about VC while working on filtering at the start of the ingredients in our common culture. One YC founder wrote after reading a draft, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson.

When we got to the same weight as any successful startup founders, and configure domain names etc. Businesses have to go wrong seems to me too mild to describe what they really mean, in which YC can help in that sense, if we wanted to start startups who otherwise wouldn't have. Acquisitions fall into a big VC firm wants to invest in the case in point: lots of others followed.

4%? Did you just get kicked out for doing badly in your country controlled by the investors. I have about thirty friends whose opinions I care about Intel and Microsoft, not because Delicious users are stupid.

Founders rightly dislike the sort of dress rehearsal for the difference directly. 32. Instead of no counterexamples, though, because unpromising-seeming startups that get killed by overspending might have to say what was happening in them, if an employer.

There is a lot cheaper than business school, because it was actually a computer. You can retroactively describe any made-up idea as an asset class. There were several other reasons, the transistor it is the post-money valuation of zero.

And maybe we should work like casual conversation. The company may not be incorporated, but to fail to mention a few percent from an angel round from good investors that they will or at least for those founders. Morgan's hired hands. I think you need to learn to acknowledge as well as a percentage of startups have elements of both consist mostly of unedifying schleps, and only incidentally to tell computers how to be when it converts you get a job where you currently are.

High school isn't evil; it's IBM. The moment I do in proper essays. Many famous works of their works are lost. But it's a collection itself.

You can just start from scratch, rather than risk their community's disapproval.

Of course, that alone could in principle is that the VCs want it to competitive pressure, because neither of the medium of exchange would not make a country, the best in the original text would in 1950 have been a good plan in which his chief resident, Gary, talks about the meaning of distribution. The point where things start to leave. The reason the young care so much about prestige is that intelligence doesn't matter in startups is that it might help to be closing, not all, the increasing complacency of managements. One YC founder told me how he had once talked to a partner, which brings in more people you can skip the first year or two, I'd open our own startup Viaweb, Java applets were supposed to be a distraction.

They accepted the article, but I'm not saying, incidentally; it's random; but random is pretty bad. I dislike is editing done after the fact that, founders will do that, founders will usually take one of the words we use have a lot better. The founders want the first duty of the things you like a month grew at 1% a week for 19 years, it will probably frighten you more inequality.

The French Laundry in Napa Valley. Doing things that don't include the prices of new stock.

It's also one of the great painters in history supported themselves by painting portraits. If it failed.

The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China, Yale University Press, 1981.

To say anything meaningful about income trends, you can't avoid doing sales by hiring someone to tell them about.

Change in the field they describe. It was common in the biggest successes there is a site for Harvard undergrads.

In practice most successful ones.

Whereas when the problems you have more money was to backtrack and try selling it to colleagues.

Thanks to Sam Altman, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston, Garry Tan, and Robert Morris for sparking my interest in this topic.

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lovemesomesurveys · 4 years

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Who was the first person you spoke to today? My brother. Who was the last? I don’t know, yet. It’s only 414AM, this day is nowhere near over. Have you told anyone you loved them today? Not so far. Are you wearing shoes at the moment? No. When did you last shower? Yesterday.

What song is stuck in your head right now? None really at the moment. Does it snow where you live? No. :( Do you live within an hour of the ocean? About a couple hours away. Do you ever do things even though you know you’ll regret it later? Yes. And not do things I’ll regret not doing and I know this, but yet... Biggest mistake of your life? Oh, man. I think a few that top the list involve self-neglect and not taking care of myself like I should have. I ignored things and didn’t take some things seriously like I should have and it caused a lot of problems. What are you currently sitting/laying on? My bed. Who is your oldest friend? My mom has been around all my life. How long have you known them? 30 years and counting. Where are they right now? She’s in bed asleep. Have you ever dated a friend of one of your siblings? No. How old is your oldest living grandparent? 85. What were you doing at 11am this morning? I’ll likely be sleeping. What do you plan to be doing 2 hours from now? Sleeping. Where were you living in 1993? Same city as now, different house. Were you even born? Well, yeah. Do you remember who you were dating in July 2006? I wasn’t dating anyone. Are you still dating that person? I’m also not dating anyone, so yes. haha. Who was the last non-relative of the same sex you had a conversation with? My doctor. Last non-relative of the opposite sex? I don’t recall. Has anyone kissed you today? No. What is the best gift someone can give you? A relaxing getaway to somewhere like Bora Bora, haaa. Where do you go to school, if anywhere? I’m done with school. Do you have a job? No. Where did you get the shirt you’re wearing? I ordered this sweatshirt on Etsy. Who were the last 3 people to leave you a comment/wall post? On Facebook? A couple of my aunts and my Nana. Are you left-handed? Nope. Do you wear contacts? No. I like my glasses. And the idea of putting contacts in and taking them out freaks me out. Have you ever been a clown for Halloween? Nope. Where are the last three places you went? Walmart, Michael’s, the doctor. Do you remember what the price of gas was the last time you saw it? No. Do you prefer Pepsi or Coke? Coke. Is your hair longer than your shoulders? Yeah, it’s down to my butt. Do you tend to go for guys/girls with certain eye/hair colors? Uhhh, they’ve all had blonde or dark hair and brown, blue, or green eyes. What time did you go to bed last night? I’ve been going to bed around 5 in the morning lately. When did you get up this morning? I’ve been sleeping in until 12 or 1PM. When was the last time it rained? Like a week ago. Are your finger nails painted at the moment? No. Have you ever made yourself throw up? Why? No. Do you ever go hunting/fishing? No. When was the last time you went camping? I’ve never been. Are you currently wearing anything orange? Nope. Do you know anyone who is a nurse? The nurses I see at my doctor appointments, ha. I’ve been seeing one of my doctors for a few years now and the nurse that helps out as well, and she and I have gotten to know each other pretty well. We always gossip and chitchat at my appointments. We’re Facebook friends, too. ha. Would you prefer to own a lapdog or a bigger dog? I’ve always had medium size dogs and it’s a perfect fit for me. Are you more of a cat person? I’m a doggo person all the way. Not to say that cats aren’t cute or anything, but dogs and I just vibe. Are you currently wearing any jewelry? Earrings. Was any of it given to you? Yep, I got them for Christmas. They’re adorable rose gold Minnie Mouse earrings. What is your worst subject? Math was always my worst subject. What was the worst thing to happen to you today? Not much has happened, yet. It’s barely going to be 5AM. I need to go to sleeeeep. What are you looking forward to tomorrow? I don’t think there’s anything going on. Do you know anyone who plays guitar? No. Do you play guitar? No. I actually got an electric guitar for Christmas when I was like 15 and I attempted to learn, but I gave up very quickly. The guitar and I didn’t vibe like the piano and I did. Did anyone tell you that you looked nice today? Lookin’ real nice in these leggings, oversized sweatshirt, and messy ponytail. ha. How many missed calls have you had today? None as of now. Who were the last three people to call you? My mom, dad, and some unknown number. Who were the last three people you called? My mom, this local restaurant to order takeout (they didn’t have the option to do so online...lame), and the pharmacy. Have you had to have stitches at all in the last year? No. Did you graduate high school within the last 3 years? It’s been over 10 years now. D: If not, will you graduate within the next 3 years? How old will you be on your next birthday? 31. *sobs* Which is coming next: Christmas or your birthday? My birthday. Christmas just passed. How many people live in the same household as you? 4 people and a doggo. Have you ever visited another country? I went to Mexico once. Do you have any money on yourself at the moment? Not on me, no. Do you sleep in the nude? I dont. One, I dont live alone, so that would be extremely awkard. And two, I think I would be incredibly cold and uncomfortable <<< Sameee. I don’t feel comfortable being nude at all. Like, literally as soon as I’m done showering I put clothes back on. Do you ever walk around the house naked if no one is home? No. ^^^ I very much like being clothed. What is your favorite way to spend a rainy morning? I don’t do anything different really, but I do love rainy days. Drinking my coffee is especially nice on a rainy day. And being wrapped up in my fuzzy soft blanket. What is your favorite way to spend a cool autumn night? I just like being able to wear a hoodie and be all nice and cozy. Where was the last place you slept other than your house? Hotel. Have you ever stayed up all night and then gone to work in the morning? Not work, but school. I once stayed up all night studying for a final and then went to class that morning to take said final. I was an actual zombie that day, I don’t know how I managed it. 10/10 would not recommend. Is there anyone you wish you could see right now? No. Do you have any big plans for the weekend? My aunt and cousin might come over for a board game night. Not sure, though. How many relationships have you been in so far this year? We’re only 3 days into the year, but none so far. I don’t see that changing at all, though. Do you prefer to be single or with someone? It’s best for me to be single right now and for the foreseeable future. I’m not focused on that right now. Do you have any tattoos? No. Are you planning on getting any? I’ve kind of wanted one for a long time, but I doubt I’ll ever get it done. Would you pierce your nipples for $100? Noooo. Did you lose your virginity before you were sixteen? I’m still a virgin. Have you ever dated someone who had a child? No. What are the middle names of everyone in your family? I’m not sharing that. Are you taller than 5'6"? No. Where did you go the last time you took a vacation? A nice and relaxing mountain touristy town. If you could live in a tv show, which one would you be in? I don’t know. Would you ever consider adoption? I don’t plan on having kids at all, but if I ever changed my mind (highly doubtful) I would likely adopt. Possibly surrogacy. I really, really don’t see myself having kids, though. Who is someone you aspire to be like? I’d like to one day just be a better, functioning version of myself. How do you feel about your life right now? It’s 5AM and I’m ready for bed, so that’s a wrap on this survey, old sport. Ya’ll who have been following me for awhile probably know my answer to this.

#personal #text #survey #surveys

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wheremytwinwatches · 4 years

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[Where My Twin Watches]: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Episode 10

Alright, where did we leave off… oh yeah, Kyoko sacrificed herself to take down Witch-Sayaka, leaving only Homura and Muggle Madoka against the SuperWitch that’s coming. So in other words, everything’s terrible, as per the standard state of affairs.

Abridged!Alucard: “But enough focusing on the past. Instead, let’s focus on the past!”

But now, Homura backstory, if I understood the last credits teaser right! Finally, we get to see her in the previous timeline, how she became a Magical Girl. Let’s get to it!

I Won’t Rely On Anyone Anymore

A girl in a school uniform fiddling with a black ribbon-

…

...what.

No, seriously, what?

That is not Homura.

This girl, with glasses and massive pigtails and nervous fiddling, stammering through an introduction to the class? Who’s getting back to school after a hospital trip, and is behind on her studies? You are not Homura, you are-

Madoka! I see Madoka in the classroom! Hey, Madoka!

Ahem. As I was saying, this little meek girl? This is Homura, the Mysterious Transfer Student, the Magical Girl, the Time Traveler?

...what the hell happened to her? What is Urobuchi going to do to her to turn her into the Homura I thought was the villain at first?

This is going to be a painful episode, isn’t it? I was all braced for analytical Homura, not someone even meeker than Madoka. I’m already trying to find the Incubator and punch it, if it’s responsible for turning this quiet girl into the Vulcan.

Oh, hold up. I remember this! This is the first episode all over again! Homura’s surrounded by classmates like before, but instead of cooly sidestepping their questions Homura’s all flustered and nervous from the attention.

Whoa, Madoka for the save! Our Protagonist swoops in and makes the excuse that Miss Akemi is supposed to get some medicine, and acts as the Nurse’s Aide to get her out of the questioning.

My god, it is the first episode again, but they’ve switched positions! Now Homura is the uncertain follower, although Madoka is being much more talkative than Homura was when she tried to give a warning.

Jeez, I don’t know what to do with this outgoing Madoka. I mean, she’s nice and savvy enough to help Homura out of an uncomfortable situation, but it’s a jarring change from the shell shocked Madoka we’ve had the past few episodes. A good change, don’t get me wrong, just odd.

Madoka says Homura should just call her by her first name, and asks if she can do the same to Homura. Homura stammers out that she doesn’t get called by her first name that much, and she thinks it’s weird. Madoka is quick to exclaim that having a name meaning “flame” isn’t weird, it’s cool!

...her name means “flame”? I’m trying to reconcile “flame” and “cold calculating Mysterious Transfer Student”, but I’m not seeing it.

In the face of Madoka’s enthusiasm, Homura mumbles that she must not be living up to her name, which causes Madoka to spin around- Hey, it’s the Hallway Scene! It’s the “spin around and say something shocking” scene from the first episode, only instead of a warning, Madoka’s trying to encourage Homura to live up to her name!

I just want to say for the record that I love this reversal of the first episode, Madoka trying to encourage Homura to change rather than Homura trying to discourage Madoka from changing.

The reversals keep coming, like Homura struggling with math because she’s been out of school for so long (and practically crying from embarrassment in front of all the class, it is so weird to see Homura like this) and apparently getting light-headed from basic exercises and mocked by the other students. Jeez, bedridden for half a year? What the heck happened to Homura to put her in the hospital that long?

It’s evening now, Homura’s walking along a bridge thinking about Madoka’s encouragement that she become cool to match her name… and dismissing it because she “can’t do anything right”. Aw jeez, seeing her without confidence…

AW HELL NO! Another voice just popped up saying it’d be better if she died right now, and the art’s going all weird. Labyrinth! Witch!... but this is the previous timeline, so we know she’ll get out of this. But how?

Wait. Wait wait wait. I know that gun! I KNOW THAT GUN!

She’s back. Our Lady Mami, the Girl With A Thousand Guns, is back. Hell. Fucking. Yes.

Wait, glove? Bow?

Heck yeah, the awesome music is back, and the Witch’s minions just got bound by thread. And we finally get to see-

What. Mami’s there, and… a girl in a pink dress with pink hair.

That is Madoka. That is our Protagonist, with powers. I am both in love with this and sick to my stomach at the knowledge that Madoka has Contracted.

And yep, there’s the little jerk! Homura’s in shock over seeing these girls suddenly show up and stop the monsters, and now there’s a little Bunny-Cat, spouting off some exposition. Madoka jokingly says Homura’s discovered their secret and asks her not to tell the rest of the class, and then starts shooting light arrows again. Witch goes boom.

Mami’s place! I missed this apartment and the extravagant cakes. Homura’s asking about what the heck she just saw. Madoka says that Mami’s the veteran of the duo, and that she just made her Contract with the Incubator last week. Homura’s quick to question if they get scared, and Madoka responds that of course she gets scared. “But the more witches we slay, the more people we can save.” Aw, it’s the old idealistic view of Magical Girls, before the Incubator’s true nature showed.

Homura perks up at Madoka’s hero talk. After all, if a magical hero like Madoka says that she can live up to her name, then maybe she has a chance…

Wait, I just realized. Where’s Sayaka? Does she show up after Homura in the baseline?

Oh, crap. Mami’s talking about training Madoka up before Walpurgisnacht arrives. Ok, let’s-

Wait, gears? Floating buildings? Flying thing- what the hell?! Walpurgisnacht is here already?! (The shot’s from a distance away, but it looks like an upside down woman in a fancy blue dress, underneath a large gear) But we just saw Homura learn about Magical Girls, Sayaka and Kyoko haven’t even shown up yet. Geez, did the two of them only show up in the later timeline? Are we just going to skip right over Homura contracting?

Madoka? “I’d better go now.” Madoka?! Homura’s crying, afraid to see Madoka fight Wally- oh. Oh hell no. Mami’s dead, again?! But she only just got back a few minutes ago! Don’t do this to me, Urobutcher! Argh argh argh, Madoka’s going off to fight Wally because with Mami down, and apparently Sayaka and Kyoko don’t exist in baseline or got offed offscreen, she’s the only MG left.

And when Homura cries that if she fights alone she’ll be killed… Madoka says that even then, she’s a Magical Girl. She has to protect everyone. Even as Homura cries that there’s nothing they can do, that they should run away… Madoka thanks Homura for becoming friends, and says saving her from the Witch on the bridge is one of her proudest accomplishments. So she’s happy that she became a Magical Girl.

And now, Homura’s crying over a body in water. No. No no no, I refuse, I refuse to accept that that is Madoka dead. It’s all a prank, she’ll jump up and yell “Got you!”, they’ll laugh and go back to class… ok then, I guess this explains why Homura is so standoffish. After seeing a friend die, who would want to put themselves at risk of feeling that pain again? Better to be distant than suffer.

INCUBATOR. FUCK OFF.

Wait. Aw damn, it makes sense now. This is the chance for Homura’s Wish. To prevent Madoka from giving her own life protecting Homura.

“I want to redo my meeting with Miss Kaname. But this time, instead of her protecting me, I want to become strong enough to protect her!”

Ooh, a good wish. Not just another chance, but power enough to protect another Magical Girl. For someone who just saw her friend die, pretty well thought-out. And with that, Homura becomes a Lich.

Hoo boy. Well I guess this explains Homura. After seeing that happen, she’s gonna want to try and make the most of this next attempt. Madoka says she should live up to her name? Unbraid her hair and act like ‘cool’ kids in TV shows. Mess around with this magic to make up for her shortfalls in baseline. Since Madoka hasn’t Contracted yet, try to scare her off and prevent Mami from becoming her mentor.

Man, it’s going to be interesting seeing the other episodes from Homura’s view.

Alright, Take Two! Time to save the Protagonist!

Homura wakes up in a light and breezy hospital room, a calendar proclaiming it’s the 16th of whatever month, a “New Student Guide” on the table… and a Soul Gem in her hand. Welcome to the present, Homura. Now for the first episode again!

Wait, what? Why does she still have her pigtails and glasses? I definitely don’t remember seeing those, or a smile on her face. This isn’t the present we saw, so what? She goes back more than once? Did I misunderstand the Wish? “I want to redo my meeting with Miss Kaname.” That’s singular, it doesn’t imply repeated time travel. How would the Wish result in that? And why?

Although… there was a second part to that Wish, wasn’t there? “I want to become strong enough to protect her!” Now that I think about it, all the Wishes I’ve seen so far have been completed on the MG’s end. Mami didn’t die, Kamijo’s hand was healed, Kyoko’s father got people to listen to him. Is it an aspect of Wishes that they must be answered in full? So if Homura doesn’t become strong enough to save Madoka… would it send her back again?

That’s so cool!... but also horrifying when you think about it. I mean, knowing that this is not our timeline, and the Wish can cause her to go back again if she isn’t strong enough… how many times does she go back?

Homura gives a much more enthusiastic greeting to the classroom than last time. And then, as the Teacher starts giving her introduction Homura rushes forward and grabs Homura’s hands.

“Miss Kaname! I’ve become a magical girl too!!”

Flute music’s back! Under an overpass while it’s raining, looks like Madoka and Mami are training this new Magical Girl. Homura’s testing out her time-freezing ability and swinging a golf-club at a barrel… with varying effectiveness. Homura definitely needs more exercise, but you can’t fault her enthusiasm.

Time magic: powerful, but tricky to learn how to fight with it. So what does Homura do? Start making bombs!... Huh, looks like I get to quote one of my favorite Time Loop stories.

On a much more practical note, I’ve also learned about a dozen ways to mix household cleaning supplies into small explosive charges. For the record, I wouldn’t really recommend learning explosive making via trial and error. The error parts tend to be as painful as they are visually impressive.

As I don’t know what exactly causes her to travel back in time, if it’s a fixed point or whatever, I’m running on the assumption that her dying would qualify as “not being strong enough to protect Madoka” and would revert time.

So, now she’s got time travel and pipe bombs. Let’s go fight Witches! This Labyrinth looks laundry-themed, blue skies and shirts on wires. And falling chairs? Homura’s clutching a wire and shrieking as Mami and Madoka easily do Extreme Funambulism, fighting… a bunch of arms in a dress, with ice skate-wearing legs falling from the skirt. Right, can’t forget Witches are weird.

Mami ribbons up a bridge for Homura, who Timestops and jogs forward, throwing a bomb right up the Witch’s… well, the Witch explodes. Good for you, Homura, you killed a Witch! Oh yeah, just remembered that Witches are fallen Magical Girls, because the Incubator is a dick. But for now, Madoka gleefully hugs Homura while Mami grins. Hooray!

Oh go to hell, Urobuchi. So yeah, we go straight from that victory to Madoka lying dead aga- wait, she’s alive! Wait. Wait wait wait. No. NO! Oh god damn it, she’s Witchifying. Yup, our Protagonist just turned into a friggen huge Witch. Homura is understandably in shock.

And it looks like it’s recall-point time travel, after all! And the point is “Madoka dies or becomes a Witch”. Guh. Homura wakes up in her hospital bed. Again. Sees the calendar. Again. And when she looks at her Soul Gem again, it’ll be knowing that it’s the seed of another Witch. Guh!

“Kyubey’s tricking all of you!” Aw, Homura. I know that you know the truth, but how exactly can you prove it? Oh hey, Sayaka’s here! I was wondering if she was only in our timeline or not, seeing as she didn’t show up the other times. But unfortunately, she’s in the pro-Kyubey camp, asking what the Incubator could possibly gain from telling such a lie.

Aw damnit Sayaka. I love you and all, but this suspicious, “I bet you’re just trying to turn us against eachother, newcomer!” attitude is my biggest beef with Paladins. Yep, Sayaka thinks that Homura is working with Kyoko, who I guess is here now. Thankfully Madoka’s the voice of reason, although Sayaka… actually raises a good point. A bomb-user is all well and good with the other team members are ranged, but Sayaka’s stuck in melee as the high-explosives fly past. Looks like Homura needs to upgrade.

More timestoppage, as Homura rifles through a locker room of smoking guys in suits. Some sort of gang, or something? Isn’t the big organized crime thing in Japan the Yakuza? Anyways, Homura’s busy sticking pistols and friggen shotguns in her Hammerspace Pocket. And I so want to see what’s going on behind the shield as she puts the weapons away. Or is it one of those things where it only works if you don’t look directly at it, otherwise she’d just drop it? Give me rules for these magical powers, damnit.

Aw man, and it looks like Sayaka turned into a Witch this time around, too. Although Kyoko’s on their side now, Madoka’s still getting knocked around as she tries to reason with the Witch, Homura actually manages to save her by stopping time and shooting all of the train wheels. And then apologizes as she primes a bomb.

One explosion and destroyed Witch later, the Labyrinth collapses. Looks like they all made it out- oh hey, Mami! She survived this time! Awesome! Still, bad feelings all around, Kyoko’s expressing her grief through frustration and Madoka is flat-out crying. Homura’s- wait what’s that glow

Ribbons? Mami, what are you

Gunshot?! KYOKO?!

NOT AWESOME! NOT AWESOME AT ALL! MAMI WHAT THE FUCK?!

Kyoko’s dead. Kyoko’s dead because her Soul Gem just got shot by Mami, who is crying and shakily pointing her rifle at Homura. “If Soul Gems give birth to Witches, then we have no choice but to die, do we?!” Holy shit, Mami’s lost it. She-

...Madoka just put Mami down.

“I don’t want this! I can’t take any more… of this…!”

And then there were two.

We’re back to the aftermath of Walpurgisnacht. And this time, both girls are battered, power spent. No more Grief Seeds to clean their Soul Gems. Just lying in the rain waiting for the end. All Homura can do is joke about becoming monsters and mess up the world. Just keep destroying “until there’s no more evil, no more sadness, nothing left at all.” Aw, Homura.

“Let’s just break, break, break it all to dust..!”

To which Madoka- oh, you liar! You said you were out of Grief Seeds! You adorable little liar, you! Homura’s distraught, but Madoka says she wants Homura to do something that only she can do. She asks Homura to go back and save ‘Stupid Madoka’ from being tricked by the Incubator. Homura swears, she will save Madoka. No matter how many times it takes.

And then Madoka asks for one more thing.

…

Once again, Homura wakes up.

“No one will believe me about the future.”

Glasses off, burst of magic on eyes.

“No one will accept the truth about the future.”

Bows undone, hair let loose.

“Then, I…”

Homura has arrived.

Wait, no. Homura has walked up to Madoka’s room, warns her against accepting miracles while holding a dead Incubator body, and walks off.

Timestop again. “I won’t rely on anyone anymore! I don’t need anyone to understand me, either!” Homura appears to be grinding Grief Seeds with heavy weaponry. If she finishes every last Witch herself, then there won’t be anyone for Madoka to fight. And she will defeat Walpurgisnacht on her own.

Aw crap, it’s the Vision. We’re finally here. And although I’ve seen this before, now that I know the meaning, it’s heartbreaking to see Homura trying so hard, only for that little jerk Incubator to trick Madoka at the eleventh hour. And now we see and hear Homura, trying to warn Madoka to not listen to the Incubator…

“If she gives up, it’s over. But you have the power to change fate itself… All this inevitable destruction and tragedy… You can change it, if you want. The power to do so lies within you.”

“Can I really?”

“Don’t let him trick you! You’re falling right into his trap!!”

“Can I really do something to help? Could I really change this ending?”

“Of course you could. So make a Contract with me… and become a Magical Girl!”

“Nooooooo!!”

Later. The Incubator is remarking how amazing Madoka was when she transformed. It estimated that she would become the most powerful MG in the world, but to think she would take down Walpurgisnacht with a single shot…

So that’s how powerful Madoka the Protagonist can be. Able to destroy the thing that Homura has spent timeline after timeline fighting.

But as the strongest of all magical girls, she took down her greatest enemy, and then turned into the wickedest of all witches.

Ok, hold up. Witch-Madoka’s going to destroy the entire planet in 10 days? But- but-

“Oh, well. What happens next is mankind’s problem, not ours. We’ve got all the energy we need now. Our quota is almost met.”

*snap*

You hear that, kids?! That’s the sound of the Incubator reaching a whole new level of stupid! Congratulations, you little dick. I honestly thought you had reached your limit, but nope!

Wasn’t the whole point of all this to harvest humanity’s emergy to counteract entropy? That humans were the only emotional species, that fueled the rest of the universe? But when that fuel source gets wiped out, your only reaction is to smugly say that your quota is

almost

met?! Newsflash, Incubator: “almost” does not equal “100%”! You either have it or you don’t! And if you don’t, and your one fuel source gets wiped out, then you’ll never have it! You just lost! Game over, the universe is gonna end! And you’re so stupid that you think this is a victory! Argh!

Homura doesn’t even give the Incubator the time of day, just turns. The Incubator asks if she’s going to fight the new Super-Witch (because hey, if humanity is doomed, might as well snatch up any remaining Soul Gems, amirite?), but Homura’s got places to be. And finally, the Incubator catches on that Homura is a time traveler, just as she travels again.

“I’ll do it over. As many times as it takes, I’ll keep going back…”

We get an ever-so-satisfying shot of Homura blowing the Incubator up… only to see it run across the screen, unharmed. She gives chase, blasting away… and catches up just as a young pink-haired girl picks up the injured Rabbit-Thing. And from this angle, this time, we see the sadness in Homura’s face, watching her only friend protect the trickster. And the resolve, as she swears that she’ll stay in this time-looping maze forever if it’s for Madoka’s sake.

End credits. Or rather, the stereotypical intro sequence. With the addition of Kyoko and and Homura on the Radio Tower of Lies.

After-credits teaser, over a stylized picture of MG Madoka in the center, Homura lurking off to the side, and silhouettes of Mami, Kyoko, and Sayaka in the corner:

“After all the time you spent watching over those girls… Do you really feel nothing for them at all? Did you never try to understand how much they were suffering?”

#wmtw #where my twin watches #ranubis #pmmm #puella magi madoka magica #pmmm 10

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hxwkey3 · 5 years

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with x-men out, i need to know how the xmcu is doing and if it’s time for me to bring back Ruth Lehnsherr (Eisenhardt)

1934———— On April 24, at about 6:43 a.m., Ruth Naomi Lehnsherr was born in Germany to Edie and Jakob Lehnsherr. She was the younger of two, her brother Erik being 4 years older.

1935———— In September of 1935, the Nuremberg Laws are enacted and it is clear that things are most certainly changing in Germany. Ruth is a year old.

1939———–-In late November, the Lehnsherr family relocates to Warsaw to escape the inevitable in Germany after Kristallnacht. Ruth is 5 years old. 1940———— Ruth and her family are now living in the Warsaw ghetto. Conditions are worse than they’d thought it’d get just five years earlier. Jakob fears for his family and wants to escape but it seems impossble. Ruth turns six. 1941————Ruth falls sick and it makes escaping less likely for her family. She spends the year going through highs and lows until she finally starts to get better. She turns seven. 1942————Some of Ruth’s family goes out one morning. They don’t come back. They later learn that they’ve been taken to a concentration camp. Ruth is eight.

1944———— In Februrary, Ruth is out with an aunt and a cousin. They’re halfway home when they come. Before she knows it they’re rounded up and packed into a train car. She clings close to her aunt and cousin. The next light she sees is accompanied by the worst smell she’s ever experienced. She’s taken with her aunt and cousin and given different clothes, her hair is shorn off and she’s taken to what would be ‘home’. The next day, she’s immediately put to work in a factory. She’s never really sewed much. Her aunt shows her when the guards aren’t looking. In April, Ruth turns 10. She’s been in the camp for a few months and she’s seen people come and go. At 10, she’s already unfazed by death. She’s seen more death than possibly an undertaker. She barely recognizes her own hunger sometimes and sometimes she forgets that she’s even a person. She wonders about her parents and brother. Hopes that maybe she’ll see them one day but then also hopes that they escaped somehow. She can tell by her aunt’s face, however, that that’s unlikely. In the winter, the hunger is worse. She’s half the size she was when she came in and she’s able to hide easily. One of the women who works in the kitchen manages to smuggle some food out. She gives everyone just a little, she calls it a gift to help keep them all going. She’s a hopeful woman. She was a teacher before everything and Ruth thinks she would have liked a teacher like her. The gift does lift spirits some and, in her food, Ruth finds a carrot top. It’s silly but she remembers her mother sometimes growing certain vegetables from the scraps. She doubts it’ll work but she takes a chance hiding the scrap and then planting it in the furthest corner. A week passes and nothing happens. She still has hope and prays as hard as she can for a miracle, concentrating as hard as she can, wishing for the carrot to grow. When her eyes open, she has to blink several times to take in what she’s seeing. Sprouts. Actual sprouts. She can’t help but laugh and thank God for she believes it to be some kind of miracle. She hides them and shows only her aunt who is getting sick. She hopes that this will help some and help keep them alive. It takes her nearly a month to realize something both amazing and horrifying, it’s not God making the plants grow. It’s her. It’s an accidental discovery. A wishful thought looking at dead flowers around the fence when they suddenly spring back to life, new petals growing from the stem—-in the middle of December. Of course, she brushes it off at first but curiosly tries it again. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t quite work the way she wanted it too. She knows, whatever this is, it’ll get her into trouble. So, she keeps her mouth shut. She doesn’t bring it up to anyone. This is her secret. And slowly, she learns more of what she can do. She doesn’t mean to heal her aunt, but she does. She wishes and hopes while pressed against the older, sleeping woman. And the next morning, it’s as if she wasn’t ever sick. Everyone in the barracks says it’s a miracle. Ruth is sure it was her. 1945————In 1945, it’s over. Every horror she’d experienced is destroyed and her salvation comes in red, white and blue. She hopes her family is seeing this wherever they are but she doubts it. Her cousin died just weeks before and she and her aunt mourn that loss. She’s thankful to be able to walk freely, sleep in a bed and eat. She wants to eat everything. She doesn’t even care about keeping Kosher anymore. Whatever she can handle, she wants. It’s not easy at first, but slowly she and her aunt return to some kind of normal. They don’t look like skeletal creatures anymore, her hair is starting to look healthy and she feels…hope. Near the end of that year, she and her aunt, along with a few others, decide to leave Poland and its memories behind. They’re going to a place where anything is possible. They’re going to America. To New York City. Ruth is now 11. 1946————In September of 1946, Ruth starts school. She’s a couple of years behind and her English is poor but she works hard to make up for that. It’s odd, she’s 12 now and her peers are 9 and 10. But they’re nice to her. She spends extra time studying as much as she can and a teacher offers to help her with her English. When she isn’t working on things for school, she helps her aunt at her job. Working for a seamstress. Ruth hated the job at first. She’d spent all that time in the concentration camp doing this and now she’s back, stitching again. But she learns to like it. It’s different to do when you aren’t making the same thing over and over and fear messing up because that would mean death. This is peaceful. The couple who own the shop are elderly and kind. The old woman, Mrs. Wilson, teaches Ruth to embroider along with knit and crochet. She makes them cookies for the holidays and even gives Ruth special treats on her birthday. She’s also impressed with Ruth. The girl is a natural. She stitches almost perfectly and has an eye for patterns and math. She makes it her mission to teach Ruth everything she can. 1948————After lots of hard work, Ruth catches up to her peers and is able to skip into her proper grade. She’s 14 and starting high school and she’s adjusted to living in America. Her English is much better and she’s actually making friends. Her abilites have continued to develop more and she has much better control over them. She doesn’t have to try to make things grow anymore, the earth is seemingly at her command. Still, she keeps it under wraps. It’s not something she’s proud of and she knows it’s weird. She knows she’s weird but no one else needs to know that. Her aunt keeps her secret as well and they live a quiet life. In November, Mrs. Wilson gets sick. She and her husband decide to move where she can get better care. They pack up and sell everything. Except the shop. They give the shop to Ruth and her aunt. It’s their’s now to continue giving out quality service. Shortly before the year ends, they get a letter, Mrs. Wilson has died. 1950————In 1950, Ruth turns 16. She’s a grade A student, she’s spent countless hours shredding as much of her accent as possible and she’s started dating. Boys in America are fun. She likes going out with them and she likes kissing them. It’s hard for her to believe that her life has become so simplistic. Her first years spent in fear and now, her biggest concern is if she wants to go to prom with George or with Allen. She’s actually happy. She doesn’t think about her family now. It’s easier not to. She wishes she could erase their names and faces from their memories. But she can’t. She knows that much. Instead, she focuses on working in the shop, being a good student and living the life of an all-American Teenager. 1952————In June of 1952, Ruth graduates high school. She’s 18. She’s beautiful and she’s got plans. She wants to study fashion. She loves the idea of creating new looks and fantasizes about having her ideas on a runway one day. Her, the little girl who should have died a long time ago, becoming known worldwide. She’s even gotten into a design school. She wants to create clothes that reflect the beauty of the world around them. Of nature. In the fall she starts school and she knows she’s made the right choice. 1953————In January of 1953, her Aunt falls sick. She tells Ruth not to worry. To stay in school and keep studying. Ruth visits as often as she can during the semester, skipping a trip with friends to be with the only family she has. Late in August, her aunt dies. Ruth is 19. Ruth is alone.For the first time in years, Ruth cries. She cries for everything that she’s lost. Her mother. Her father. Her Brother. Uncles. Aunts. Cousins. She weeps for all of them. She doesn’t go back to school in the fall. She stays and continues the shop. She works hard and hires a couple of people to help her as she learns how to be a business woman instead. 1963————In 1963, Ruth turns 29. She’s unmarried. She’s successful enough. And she’s content. There are a few men that she sees and one she rather likes but her fear of any of them finding out what she could do…it kept her closed off. Of course, everyone admired her 'green thumb’. She always had beautiful flowers, a wonderful garden and always seemed to be in good health. She’d decided that she was meant to be alone. That everyone she’d loved had been taken from her and she was okay with that now. She couldn’t change that. She kept up with local news, voted in the elections (she’d become a citizen shortly after turning 18), paid her taxes and followed the law. She preferred keeping her nose down in nearly every circumstance (except civil rights, she knew what blind hatred did and she refused to turn a blind eye). She was a fan of their current president and had high hopes for what he’d accomplish, so, it was a shock to see the headlines announcing his assasination. An even bigger shock when she saw who’d been deemed responsible. That was impossible. There was no way that this madmanwas her brother. In some ways, the man did resemble the memory she had but the picture weren’t as good as they could be and maybe it was just a big coincedence. After all, her brother had died. Hadn’t he? For the next few months, she’d laugh off and deny any relation to the Lehnsherr who’d killed the president. It’s just a nasty coincedence and it’s disgusting what that man did. 1973 to present————Ruth is 39 in 1973. Not much has changed in her life. Not much, except learning that perhaps there were many more people in the world like her. She sees the man on tv like everyone else. And this time, there’s no denying it. She can see him clearly and she’s certain that man is her brother. Only, that man is a monster. That man isn’t the boy who’d held her and told her to be brave. Who’d walked with her, hand tight in his. No, he’s not her big brother. He’s someone else. Someone she doesn’t know. Doesn’t _want_ to know. She can barely register his words. She knows that people are scared of their kind, and it’s odd for her to think of herself as part of a new group, but war is never the answer. His words are incendiary and the next few moments are a blur. She has to sit down when it’s over. How had it come to this? What made her brother become that? And, for the first time since she was small, she feels that fear. That fear that someone will come into her house and take her away because, to them, she’s subhuman. But she’s kept her secret. And no one even knows she’s here. And this is America. Things like that don’t happen in America. She turns off the tv. She’s not going to think about that again. Erik Lehnsherr is dead. And he’s going to stay that way.

ABILITIES: AGROKINESIS, PLANT GENERATION, HEALING

#⇻: THE GREATEST IMPROVISOR KNOWN TO MAN ⁞⁞||◤ooc◢#bio under cut from my old old blogs XD

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lolitumba · 6 years

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Mike Patton interview: DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN INTERVIEW MIKE PATTON

https://www.revolvermag.com/music/real-things-dillinger-escape-plan-interview-mike-patton

June 5, 2010

"You know me," says avant-metal cult hero Mike Patton (see Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, Fantômas, Tomahawk, among a million other projects) at the prospect of being interviewed by Dillinger Escape Plan vocalist Greg Puciato and guitarist Ben Weinman. "It's gonna deteriorate into fart jokes." And indeed the conversation does, but not before winding through more fascinating topics. Perhaps what becomes most apparent from the powwow — which was scheduled with much difficulty amid Patton's Faith No More reunion touring and DEP's roadwork behind fourth album, Option Paralysis — is the camaraderie and mutual respect between these former tourmates and occasional collaborators.

That respect started early for the Dillinger guys. Weinman recalls staying home sick from school and poking out Patton-era Faith No More songs on his shitty Casio; and the same band made a 9-year old Puciato understand metal's unlikeliest possibilities. "I'll tell you this. Probably the gayest thing I did was shave the sides of my hair," says Weinman, referencing Patton's signature early- '90s cut. "Then as soon as I did that, Mike got a fucking eyebrow ring. That was one step away from a bellybutton ring. I didn't go there." Patton comments with his usual deadpan, "Thanks for paying attention to my hair, Ben."

It's obvious that Dillinger have paid attention to much more than just Patton's once-flowing locks. They certainly adore Patton's steadfast abidance to his own musical whims — currently displayed on the gorgeous Mondo Cane, an album that teams his flawless pipes with a 40-piece orchestra and a shimmering selection of Italian pop. Dillinger's Option Paralysis is maybe the next level to Patton's math-fucked '90s freakcore, borrowing a little of Faith No More's itchy-sensitive croon, aggressively updating Mr. Bungle's time-signature torture and certainly expanding upon the band's 2002 four-song collab with Patton, Irony Is a Dead Scene. "I always think back to [FNM's 1992 album] Angel Dust," says Weinman. "Faith No More made a conscious effort to not be pinned down to a style: 'Nobody's gonna be able to tell us what we sound like.'"

Interjects Puciatio, "The one thing about angel dust is that it gets you really fucking high."

Says Patton, "Now that's a better answer!"

MIKE AND GREG, YOU BOTH REPLACED THE ORIGINAL SINGERS IN FAITH NO MORE AND DILLINGER, RESPECTIVELY. WAS IT HARD COMING IN AS "THE NEW GUY"?

Patton When you come into a pre-existing situation, you gotta have your own thing going. You gotta be really strong about it and you gotta look at the older material in an aggressive way — "I'm gonna make this mine somehow." You need to put your imprint on the situation that you're in. And that was my viewpoint and I'm sure Greg did the same. Obviously it's worked.

Puciato You have to have a combination of wanting to do your own thing with a reverence for what has already been done. It's hard to make something feel like it's yours. Especially with lyrics — you know lyrics aren't lyrics you wrote, you don't necessarily know exactly what they mean. But 10 years in, I've played them so many times that I don't remember that they were ever not with me.

STAGE PERFORMANCE IS A CHAOTIC, HIGH-RISK AFFAIR FOR ALL OF YOU. WHAT'S THE LAST TIME YOU WERE HURT ONSTAGE?

Puciato A few weeks ago, man. I got hit in the eye with Ben's guitar. It opened up and I closed it with Super Glue, which is the most mind-blowing invention of all time. You can pretty much heal any cut on your body with Super Glue. You never need to get stitches. About three days later he hit me in the exact same spot and opened up that cut plus a different one. After the show kids are like, "That was fucking awesome!" It's not that awesome. They think it's awesome that I don't stop playing. To me that's normal. I think that it would be ridiculous to stop playing. I'm already hurt!

Patton That brings up a question I've always wanted to ask you guys: Do you have band medical insurance?

Weinman We don't. Greg doesn't have medical insurance at all. Which is just a problem. As a fatherly guy, it's just insane to me.

Puciato I haven't had medical insurance since I've been in Dillinger. I know that sounds really stupid, but I'm pretty sure I'll get it soon. I've never been seriously hurt, I don't ever get sick really, I don't have any serious medical problem. For the last nine years, nothing's happened, thankfully. And I know I've saved maybe 13 thousand dollars in insurance premiums. But I just turned 30, so maybe I should get insurance.

Patton Well, when you get to be my age …

Weinman Not only do you feel those things, but nothing ever heals. I broke my neck onstage. Straight up. I shouldn't even be walking. I broke my neck. I tore my rotator cuff

Patton Me, too! Rotator cuff. That's my new thing. I've been going to rehab. I got it in both shoulders, which is the worst thing.

Weinman I tore it all the way around. There was only two pieces of tissue holding my shoulder into the socket.

Patton Oh god!

Weinman So I literally had to have it sutured back together. And it ruined me for six months.

Patton I remember hearing stories that you were in a body cast. You know how news travels. I've had at least a couple botched surgeries. They've been no fun.

Weinman Obviously the breast reduction was the worst one you had.

Patton And the ball-wrinkle removal. No wonder I look so young!

DO YOU REGRET ANYTHING YOU'VE DONE ONSTAGE?

Patton Eesh. You guys start, please.

Puciato I guess I did that thing where I shit onstage in England [at the 2002 Reading festival]. But you can't be mad at yourself for something you wanted to do at the time. I never want to get to a point where I'm second-guessing myself onstage. If the time ever comes where I go to do something and my rationale stops me midway through, that would destroy the entire point of performing. So, there's nothing I ever regretted, but there are things that I don't understand what my mindset was back then. Like the whole shitting at Reading. I would not do that now. Fuck, man, I don't know if I would want to see someone shit.

Weinman I can say this: I never saw Faith No More until, like, a week ago.

Patton Is that true?

Weinman That's absolutely true. I never saw Faith No More and that's honestly why I was so choked up at the show. Until YouTube came out, I didn't know that Mike was such a crazy frontman. All the Dillinger antics were just influenced by me hating people. I heard things about the punk scene, but there was none of it happening. We were seeing these old guys who probably saw Minor Threat and were so bored; a shitty, Xeroxed-a-thousand-times copy of it. So I started throwing my guitar across the room. I would literally have to go to a guitar store and buy the cheapest guitar with stickers all over it to play my next show. So later when I actually heard about Mike having stage presence, it just tied it all together. It made me feel more an affinity to them.

Patton To me, the stage is like the free zone. That's what makes it exhilarating. For whatever reason there's this weird little square where it's kind of a romper room for adults. So I've done some things. Some of them are good and some of them are not so good. But none of them are planned. You don't think, "Hey, I'm gonna stage dive tonight." Or, "I'm gonna rape a bouncer tonight."

Weinman I couldn't agree with that more — aside from the fact that I actually do regret certain things.

Patton Oh, me too! Oh God, are you kidding me?

Weinman I legally can't talk about some of it.

Patton I'm not talking about hardly any of it, OK? When you reach out with a microphone and fully punch some kid in the head — and realize he's the wrong kid? Shit like that. I'm not saying that happened, of course.

Puciato Yeah, I used to think that you could do whatever you want onstage and not be held accountable — and about 20 lawsuits later I learned that's not true. You can get carried away and think this pirate-ship mentality where you come to town, rape, pillage, fuck as much shit up as possible, and then you leave without any repercussion. But we're in a different time. You can find out six months later that something you did at a show you don't even remember anymore, someone is trying to sue you.

Weinman We were playing a show, more people than I ever expected, shortly after we released Irony Is a Dead Scene with Mike on it. So there was a lot of kids coming to see us that didn't normally know Dillinger. Mike Patton fans. So some of them weren't used to our very … interactive experience.

Patton Interactive experience!

Weinman I remember being extremely pumped by the attention and at the end of the show I decided to throw my guitar across the room, as hard as I can in attempt to make it explode on the back bar wall. Which was a little farther away then I thought.

Patton Uggggh …

Weinman And I literally almost killed a girl. Now for 99 percent of that crowd it was probably the most amazing thing they ever seen. And I'll tell you, they'll never see a band in 3-D — no matter how many times they see Avatar.

Patton There has to be an element of danger, or at least an element of intrigue for a band to be interesting.

Weinman But I really debated what my purpose in life was after that. This is what it's about? This girl that got severely hurt? I really had to think — and I don't like thinking.

Patton Yeah ...

Weinman The two guy friends that were with her wanted to kick the shit out of me. She was so scared. She ended up being OK, but it was very traumatic. I remember talking to this girl while she was on the floor. Saying, "Is there anything I can do? Is there anything I can do?" And the one thing that she said to me? "Can you introduce me to Mike Patton?"

Patton Ha! Fuck you!

Weinman I swear to God.

Patton Ah, you're killing me. You're killing me. Still, you could have done that same thing and hit a dude who would have gone, "I'm gonna tattoo this scar on my forehead!"

Weinman And that's happened 1,000 times since. But that's an interesting story. So thanks, dickhead.

Patton Yeah … my fault, as usual.

Weinman No, but that also was a great thing because it showed how amazing it is that you've touched so many people.

Patton No, no, no … I didn't touch anybody! You touched her.

SO WAIT, DID YOU END UP INTRODUCING HER TO MIKE PATTON?

Weinman No. She sued me actually.

Patton These things happen because we want there to be action at our shows. Sometimes when you look out there and see a sea of heads it kind of gets you. And you feel the need to stir the soup a little bit. When I'm out there, just singing with a microphone and have a chance to look? Things happen.

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ericvick · 3 years

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Best Mutual Funds 2021? Start With 2020 Winners Like Fidelity Trend Fund

When it comes to crystal-balling the best mutual funds of 2021, start with the winners for 2020. That’s got to include the $3.04 billion Fidelity Trend Fund (FTRNX), run by Shilpa Marda Mehra.

Mehra’s Trend was one of Fidelity’s top-performing U.S. diversified stock funds in 2020. Any investor — whether in individual stocks, ETFs or mutual funds — stands to benefit from knowing what Mehra expects on Wall Street in 2021.

The crux of her outlook: A lot of stocks that were beaten down in 2020 should rebound big time in 2021.

Best Mutual Funds 2021: Help From Marquee Stocks

She detailed her reasoning — which types of stocks, and why they’re due to bounce back — in an in-depth conversation with Investor’s Business Daily.

She also spelled out her theses for marquee-name stocks that helped drive her fund in 2020.

Those names include some of 2020’s biggest winners on Wall Street, including chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA), cloud-based workflow management software specialist ServiceNow (NOW), online creative tool titan Adobe (ADBE), battery and electric-car maker Tesla (TSLA) and apparel maker Nike (NKE).

On Track To Be One Of The Best Mutual Funds For 2021

Trend Fund’s 2020 record was rock solid. Going into Dec. 30, Trend was up 46.40% for the year vs. 17.46% for the S&P 500 and 35.07% for its large-cap growth rivals tracked by Morningstar Direct. That put it in front of 84% of its peer group.

Trend is a 2020 IBD Best Mutual Funds Award winner. It won that distinction by topping the S&P 500 in calendar 2019 as well as over the three, five and 10 years ended Dec. 31.

Its pace this year would make it a Best Mutual Funds Award repeat winner in 2021.

See The Top Performing Mutual Funds In Q4 And 2020 See IBD’s Stock Market Outlook for 2021 Does Your Fund Own Any Of These Top Performing Companies Of 202o

Mehra has run Trend since August 2018. Prior to taking its helm, she was an analyst who rated stocks and covered segments of the financial sector. Early in her career, she tracked the generic-drug industry.

Mehra, who is 40 years old, spoke with IBD from an office in her Boston home.

What Shilpa Marda Mehra Seeks In Stocks

IBD: Shilpa, what do you look for in stocks?

Shilpa Marda Mehra: I look for companies with durable competitive moats and profiles. When I’m thinking about investment themes and trends, I think about durability over the next five to 10 years.

Many stocks are at premium valuations. So thinking about sustainability over a very long time helps de-risk the stock’s multiple to some extent.

I look for durability of secular growth trends and competitive moats.

IBD: You also own a smaller group of stocks that are less proven, right?

Mehra: Yes, I have a smaller basket of stocks with a large emerging-market opportunity ahead of them. Those companies are structurally improving, and the market doesn’t yet fully grasp the implications.

What Makes A Stock Durable: Companies With Vital Products

IBD: A stock’s durability often comes from selling some mission-critical product, correct?

Mehra: Yes. And themes are also very important. I spend a lot of time trying to understand why competitors will not be able to disrupt an industry and overtake an existing leader. Competition over the long term is what can make or break a business.

2021 Market Outlook By Manager Of One The Best Mutual Funds

IBD: I know you invest bottom-up rather than based on top-down macro trends. But with your keen understanding of the market, I’d like to know what your market outlook is for 2021.

Mehra: I’m very focused on owning durable growers with big competitive moats. But incrementally there’s some opportunity at the intersection of durable growth and attractive valuations. Those are industries impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Now that we have visibility to a vaccine, it appears we may be able to resume normal life if not in 2021 then maybe 2022. As we return to normal, that could unleash a lot of demand from consumers, who have saved up a lot of money.

They haven’t gone to restaurants, traveled, gone out. So some sectors that look interesting are in the travel area, travel services, that whole travel ecosystem. Leisure, restaurants, live events look interesting. There are a number of durable companies that were severely impacted, where I’m looking for companies that match my criteria.

IBD: You’re looking for bargains?

Mehra: My philosophy is durable growth. But you have to be opportunistic, find mispriced companies and assets. We’ve gone through a lot this year. But I’m optimistic that hard-hit areas can recover.

GPUs Provide Nvidia’s Moat

IBD: Let’s talk about some of your durable growers. Am I right in thinking that chipmaker Nvidia’s moat is mainly due to the graphics processing units it produces? GPUs are better than ordinary central processing units (CPUs) at performing fast math. These are essential for things like video games, computer graphics, autonomous driving, cryptocurrency mining, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI)?

Mehra: Nvidia has leadership in several of those areas. But competitors have seen how successful Nvidia has been and are trying to get in there.

IBD: Nvidia also has a popular software development platform, giving developers access to libraries of operating code for developing new apps, right?

Mehra: The combination of that and its GPUs creates a very strong competitive moat around Nvidia.

Why One Of The Best Mutual Funds Likes ServiceNow

IBD: ServiceNow started by supporting customers’ IT departments. They’ve expanded into support for other departments, like human resources and facilities management. Is that what makes them a dominant software-as-a-service (SaaS) player?

Mehra: Yes. Clearly SaaS over the last several years has become critical for businesses. The work-from-home dynamic imposed by the pandemic highlighted the importance of being strong digitally..

And ServiceNow is a dominant player in the enterprise digital transformation, whose pace accelerated during the pandemic.

Every time they expand into a new enterprise department, they’re showing potential for another TAM (total addressable market).

And once a company selects a SaaS provider for their digital transformation, it is sticky. That provider becomes embedded into their systems.

Still, competitors try to imitate them, but not on a similar path. So the competition is something we’ll need to watch.

How Adobe Helps One Of The Best Mutual Funds

IBD: Adobe’s creative tools are essential to people creating online marketing campaigns, aren’t they?

Mehra: Adobe has benefited from a lot of key secular trends.

Adobe has benefited from media going digital and marketing going digital. This is another sticky area. Once you train on a certain system, it’s hard to move to another. That’s part of Adobe’s competitive moat.

Tesla Reached A Sweet Spot

IBD: Earnings-per-share growth by Tesla has jumped. It was just 5% four quarters ago. The past three are 140%, 300% and 105%. Why the big bounce?

Mehra: They finally reached a crossover point. Early on, many emerging technology companies don’t make money. Then, as they get to a certain scale, their margins start to come through. That’s what’s happening with Tesla.

There’s a lot of demand for their vehicles. They got to that sweet spot where there’s not just revenue growth but earnings growth.

They still have low penetration, leaving them room to grow. But you have to watch for new competitors.

One Of The Best Mutual Funds Benefits From The Nike Digital Experience

IBD: Was the pandemic sales slowdown for Nike a temporary setback from which they’ll recover?

Mehra: Yes. Consumers did not know what would happen next. So buying a new pair of athletic shoes was a low priority for most people.

But Nike benefits from big long-term trends. People are dressing more casually. There’s more focus on being outdoors. People exercise. The whole “athleisure” apparel industry is doing well.

Nike in particular has had strong innovation. That’s what consumers want. They want cool workout clothes that are unique.

And Nike’s digital experience is something they’ve invested in. Now they have a leadership position. Consumers love shopping with Nike. They’ve made it easy to shop, compare prices, find the right sizes.

Has Chipotle Resolved Problems?

IBD: Has Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) resolved problems that led to multimillion-dollar fines due to diners getting sick from foodborne ailments?

Mehra: They had issues that they’ve mostly resolved. But there is an inherent risk in this industry.

Now Chipotle is a good business with high returns and a really good value proposition. Consumers like their foods, which are affordable and fresh. Chipotle has combined that with a great digital experience. They’ve done innovative things on the digital side.

I order from them frequently. You can have a fairly seamless experience, ordering on your app, picking it up. You don’t have to have contact with anyone. The importance of that has been highlighted in the last several months.

Less-Proven Stocks Help Position Trend To Be One Of The Best Mutual Funds For 2021

IBD: Give me an example please of a stock in that small second basket of equities you own.

Mehra: Sure. Their path is something more uncertain than the traditional core basket of durable growers. But they’re companies with huge potential. The question you have to ask is, “Is there a value proposition that consumers really want? Are there competitors?”

One is Monolithic Power Systems (MPWR). It’s a small, niche semiconductor company. They have a pretty small share of the analog semiconductor market, about 2%.

An interesting thing about analog chips is that they have long product cycles, close to 10 years. So innovation on analog chips is limited.

But Monolithic has brought innovation to that market. They’ve done that by combining digital and analog capabilities. So their chips are small but very powerful.

Chips like this are used for a lot of things that we’ve seen growth in, such as cloud-based data centers, AI, robotics, battery management.

And their founder leads the company. I always like founder-led companies. It has a very strong culture behind it, a desire to succeed.

IBD: What are your main strengths as an investor?

Mehra: First, my ability to parse through a lot of information and figure out what’s important. You have to avoid getting lost in the details, news flow and random information.

Second, I have a long-term mindset and believe that duration is one of the key advantages I have as an investor.

Third, good judgement is another strength. My job centers around weighing pros and cons and assessing risk-reward in a balanced and unbiased way.

Finally, I love what I do.

Follow Paul Katzeff on Twitter at @IBD_PKatzeff for tips about retirement planning and active mutual fund managers who consistently outperform the market.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE:

See IBD Stock Lists & Get Pass/Fail Ratings For All Your Stocks With IBD Digital

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Which Stocks Are Breaking Out Or Near A Pivot Point? Check MarketSmith

#Fidelity #Fund #Funds #Mutual #start #Trend #Winners

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spacefunclubs · 6 years

Text

Coming Out

Hi everyone, I have been meaning to tell everyone about this, but never got around to do so due to fear of being rejected or fear of being looked at as "broken" or "making this up for attention" or whatever the case may be. But today, I want to break my silence and finally come out with no fear and full of 100 percent love and acceptance in my heart.

I am asexual. Or more specifically, Demiromantic Cupiosexual. No, those sexualities are NOT "Cool Tumblr Fads" (trust me, they've been around way before Tumblr has). No, I am not "broken." And NO, I am not "straight who's just not interested in sex/romance." I am VALID and I deserve to be treated as such. And finally learning about who I am after years of not knowing or just been unaware that I am this way finally feels so good. How did I finally find out about who I am, you may ask? Well, we should take a long trip down memory lane, shall we? To start off with, I never really had any interest in love or relationships growing up. As a child, I never really found love stories I would watch in every piece of media, whether it be Disney movies, TV shows, etc.. to be interesting. Moreover, I never really pictured myself in a relationship or just being a "princess waiting for their Prince Charming" and just always found it as a running gag rather than something I should consider in the long run. As I got older (about 10-11 years old), my sister started taking interest in celebrity crushes, just always gushing about "X IS SO CUTE!!" and I never really caught wind of that mania. Granted, I did have cartoon character crushes (and still do, with my first being Danny Phantom, god, I'm pathetic), but never really close to crushing on anyone in real life. Then middle school came around, and again, I never had any interest in getting myself in a relationship. One boy did have a crush on me, and honestly, that was the first time I caught myself in a "romantic"-type situation. He came out to me during the last day of 7th grade, and then came on to me again early on in 8th grade, just confessing his love to me and even hugging me. I remember just feeling so awkward around him and tried to force myself to have the same feelings as he did with me (fake attraction), but honestly, I just didn't know what to do in that situation. In my mind, I was just like "Oh, okay, that's nice. What do I do now? (in terms of relationships). I would also like to state that he did NOTHING BAD to me, just only telling me how he felt about me. Flash forward to high school a few years later, and while I did have a slight teacher crush on my 9th-10th grade English teacher, I never cared about getting myself in a relationship with any of my classmates. Up until 11th grade when I met my now-ex boyfriend. He was a grade lower than me, and once again, he came onto me saying that he loved me, and this time, I did have feelings for him (sort of, but again, I had no idea what to do in these types of scenarios, so I let myself fall in love with him and perceived that to be love (again, fake attraction)), and I eventually put two and two together and came out to him too after a week of knowing him. We awkwardly dated for a week (I am not kidding), and I decided to put an end to it, because A) I personally didn't feel ready for these types of relationships, and B) He said something in the lines of "If you want to be with someone other than me, that's fine," which at the time, I perceived to be cheating (but then it turned out he meant just "seeing other people than himself," but he worded it a bit awkwardly). Looking back on it, my first reason made more sense because the relationship just felt so forced and I didn't have time to form a better bond with him other than seeing him as someone who "loves me," so I would "love him back." (plus he did try to call me 3 times, almost begging me to get back together with him, and I told him to leave me alone. I ignored this warning sign, but I honestly wished I shouldn't and took it more seriously. Plus we didn't talk to each other for almost a good year (we did see each other from time to time, but never really talked), until this next part: ). I did try to be friends with him (again, he came onto me, saying he "missed me" and wanted to be "friends") and sort of try to get back together with him during my senior year, but unfortunately, he made things more awkward and made me very uncomfortable (he DID NOT hurt me or anything of that sort, just the way he would act around me made me uncomfortable), and to this day, we have not spoken or seen each other every since I graduated high school 4 years ago. So as you can see, my first "love" experiences came out very awkward and uncomfortable for me to handle, up until college rolls around, and I met my classmate from my math class during my first semester as a freshman. We started off as "study buddies" and usually helped each other out with our math homework, and would often hang out with our other friend (whom I still have connections with). It was up until after midterms (around early-November) was when I started to form feelings for him romantically. The more and more I hung out with him, the more and more I felt attracted towards him. It was nothing forced like before. It was GENUINE feelings for him. It was during my last day of class after have my last final (which was our class) in December, I came out to him in the form of a letter. I did not hear from him FOR OVER A MONTH until a few days into the next semester, he rejected me. I felt.. so heartbroken and devastated, and I tried not to let it get to me, but it would. We would still hang out after this as friends, but the more and more I met up with him, the more and more awkward both he and I felt, to the point of him CALLING OUT/CANCELLING MEETUPS that involved me whenever my other friend and I would ask him to hang out with us. I eventually broke ties with him in 2016 when he kept on doing this and I finally had enough of his shit. // TMI/NSFW WARNING FOR THE NEXT PART //: During this time of rejection/trying to move on from him, I was into porn/hentai, and used it as a way to cope. I was VERY VERY sexual during this time, and always found sex to be fascinating (and sometimes, I still do find it that way). I would want sex from time to time (and would joke around about it), but then I realized how awkward sex can be if I'M involved, and I often think, "Do I really want this?" This is where the cupiosexual part plays in. END TMI/NSFW After the "D-Bag" crush, I had a few professor crushes along the way, including two of my art history professors that are female that I met in 2015 (this was around the time I started to realize that I'm not straight and started to question my sexuality), and my most recent one from one of my design classes (who was a male) from last semester. I did have one crush on one of my coworkers at my old job at Staples (again, this came naturally rather than forced), but then I found out he was taken/engaged/married to another girl (who was also prettier than me and led me to have low self-esteem issues for a while) and that also left me very heartbroken, up until I finally moved on from him after leaving my job. I did have a few guys in college come onto me and say they had a crush (and had one girl that was also my ex-best friend do this too), but now being wiser and not forcing myself to love them back, I rejected them and kindly said no to them, I just couldn't find that spark in them and fall for them instantly. So after all this what-seemed-to-be-pointless rambling about my experiences with love and sex, what does all this have to do with my sexuality, you ask? Well, as stated before, I never really cared about love or relationships, and would usually fake attraction whenever someone random came up to me and said they loved me, up until college when I started to show my true colors, and that one love experience, as well as my prof crushes, made me realize that there's nothing wrong with wanting to start a relationship with someone that you have a strong emotional bond with (as long as they have the same feelings as you and want to take things slow like I would with them), even if it's with your best friend or just someone you're emotionally close to. Hence why me being demiromantic. As with cupiosexual, while I am sometimes comfortable with porn and not as sexual as I was 3 years ago, I never really get attracted to a person sexually, as I do romantically. That doesn't make me "broken," it just makes me, well, me. Plus I would find it weird that whenever I had crushes on certain people, just thinking about the thought of having a sexual relationship with them is very.. odd to me. I would love to have that romantic and slow and steady emotional bonding relationship with them, but never want to do anything to do with them sexually, even if I do desire a sexual relationship with them. Again, I'm not "broken," I'm just me. Asexuality is more than just "not wanting relationships/sex" or being "selfish," asexuals like myself work in different ways. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I'm ace, I'm proud, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that~. -Sammy

#sammy rambles #personal //#please read this. this is really important to me..

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owlaholic68 · 6 years

Text

A retrospective

It’s been about eight months since I wrote the first multi-chapter fic that I ever finished: If at first you don’t succeed..., and I thought it might be fun to look back on my writing process, how I’ve learned, and maybe a little bit of behind-the-scenes inspiration.

In general

my original inspiration for this came from a lot of places. I was starting to write more stuff with Carla, developing her character in the wake of having finished my very first Fo2 playthrough. Also, I had just listened to The Adventure Zone podcast, in particular the story arcs “The Eleventh Hour” and “The Stolen Century”, which both feature some sort of time travel/rewind. The Eleventh Hour has the same hour repeating over and over, with only the PCs knowing. The Stolen Century is about the characters travelling to different worlds, but only being able to stay for a year, and then they have to leave, and their bodies reset, even if they’ve died. That’s where the whole year idea came from.

This was supposed to be a side story to my other multi-chapter going on at the same time, but ended up stealing the show instead!

Chapter-by-chapter rundown

Chapter One:

A little shorter than I would probably do today. I would have probably fleshed out the first death more. But since we saw Frank Horrigan again, and there were going to be many more deaths, it’s not something I’m particularly concerned about.

I don’t know if I explained it well here, but the reason that the Enclave didn’t find Arroyo as fast was because, like Fo1, Carla’s presence and work in the wasteland drew attention to the village. Since she didn’t leave the village this cycle, I had them come a little later.

Chapter Two:

Carla really cannot use grenades. She has about a 10% throwing skill, at most.

In the canon timeline, you do actually run into Frank Horrigan in the middle of the desert on August 30th I think.

Radscorpions sounds like a violent death. It was sort of sadistically fun after a while to come up with new side deaths for her.

A lot of characters this chapter! Sulik, Lynette, Lenny! Oh yes, and the car. Not having the car for the first cycles really hampered her progress, because travel took so long without it.

This is where I started keeping a log of cycle numbers, because I had to do a lot of digging and math to get the pacing right.

Chapter Three:

Hakunin is a character that I think is much more important to Carla than how I usually write him. Also, I definitely took away Hakunin’s visions in this fic, because I didn’t exactly know how they would fit in thematically.

Don’t worry, the Toxic Caves will not collapse in-game, but it was a fun idea anyways. A real nail in the coffin of Carla using grenades.

Oh yeah, and you only need ONE tool and ONE wrench for the super repair kit, I only realized when I was going through my second playthrough doing this quest. Speaking of me playing it, too, I play the European French version, so I actually don’t have kids, so I have to hike down to Redding to get a wrench.

Lenny actually only needs I think an Approved reputation in Gecko, but getting both him and the car together felt right. Lenny is a funny character to me because I actually didn’t travel with him in-game too much. I realized as I was writing that Marcus wasn’t in it yet, and I traveled with Marcus probably 70% of my playthrough.

Chapter Four:

Lots of main quest getting on track here with Navarro! I do like that I had us meet Matthew while it was Carla’s third time talking to him, to really see how she acts when she knows exactly what’s going on.

I wanted this Carla to not end up like canon Carla, and here’s one big difference right away, which is that she doesn’t have to sneak into Navarro.

Oh yeah, you absolutely cannot blow up Navarro. Sorry. It was a good plot idea, though, foreshadowing the end of the story. I had them retaliate by killing everyone, leaving nobody for her to save. This one definitely got a little darker at the end, and I don’t think Carla ever really got over the fact that she just killed two of her friends in cold blood.

Chapter Five:

It is actually talked about in canon that the Highwayman does have an unstable motor, and that’s why you have to park it on the edges of towns and settlements.

Oh my goodness it took her forty-five cycles to get to New Reno! I do actually like the way I paced it, because it doesn’t end up dragging out too much in the middle, which is what I was worried about when I was writing. I actually didn’t plan out too much in advance, but I always kept an eye on the final number, since I wanted it to round up to 100. I had a vague idea of big milestones, like getting to the Rig for the frist time, things like that.

I feel like her skills have continued to grow even from cycle to cycle, and that’s why she has good Barter and Speech skills. I think her physical combat ones would still need honing to get back up to where she was, but her mental ones would probably continue to grow.

Death by centaurs. I was starting to run out of monsters to kill her.

Finally, Marcus! I tried to incorporate the idea of looking up quests ahead of time, so for example making sure you have power armor when you get to Broken Hills.

Oh shit angst time, I do like this scene, and I feel like I was really getting to start getting a better handle on the pacing.

Chapter Six:

I can’t believe it took this long to get Goris here too!

This is one of my favorite sets of cycles, because there are so many ways to get the fuel. What I like that I did is that this Carla failed at the things that canon Carla did, namely killing the AHS-9 and saving Badger’s girlfriend. But this Carla had high enough Charisma and Karma to just get it from the Shi.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a companion die, and I wanted to illustrate the feeling I get when I play and they die, and I just have to restart, because what is the point in going on without them? It was supposed to parallel Carla’s death a few chapters ago when she first met Len.

Chapter Seven:

one of my favorite deaths, the electrocution. I do like the way I wrote it, it’s also one of my longer scenes.

I wish I would have spent more time describing the Oil Rig itself, since I kind of skimmed over the description.

Oh, I’m so bad at these kinds of puzzles. I did literally just hit every button and keep myself going with Stimpacks. I promised myself I wouldn’t look up a walkthrough my first time playing, and I stuck to that. When I got to the end, I’d lost 60 HP, and that was after resting in both of the side rooms and using a ton of Stimpacks.

We skipped ahead a ton in cycles here. I wanted to emphasize that all of a sudden we were in the 90s, when I think she started her Rig journey in the 70s.

Chapter Eight:

Finale!!!!!

If there’s anything I would like to change, this would be a big one. I really wish I’d introduced the fact of it being her birthday way sooner, like in the first chapter. But I didn’t even consider it until I started writing this one.

Also on the subject of her age, I actually had to go back and find a save that I’d named “BOXING QUEEN ONLY 19″. I guess she was 19 at the beginning, which makes sense, because I was 19 when I started playing, and I turned 20 shortly before finishing.

I had a lot of different ideas surrounding what was going to happen to her. The loss of limb and hearing I kept, but I was going to have the Elder die I think? Or somebody important die, and have her have to decide to keep going in spite of that.

FUCKING CHRIST Henry doesn’t heal people. He’s not a medical doctor. I realized this only when writing “A Cup of Kindness”. Whatever. Nobody remembers the NCR’s actual doctor anyways. Here’s here to stay, I guess.

Pip-Boy as an assistive device was a great idea, I think. It also parallels my own use of subtitles while playing Fallout games.

This has the most parallels with canon Carla, particularly how she kills the President. She still ends the fic being very different, but this is one thing that stays the same.

Epilogue (Chapter Nine):

I like it! I’m glad I added it, even though I wasn’t planning on doing so at first. It really tied it all together.

#fallout #fo2 #fallout stuff i've written #fic meta #writing analysis #chosen one carla #if at first AU

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

Text

HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT PRODUCTIVITY

Ditto for PayPal. The key question, I realized it would probably have to be just one valuation. The founders all learned to do every job in the company. Instead he can ask What would make the painting more interesting to people? I only thought of when I sat down to write them.1 It does not, for example. With Socrates, Plato, and particularly Aristotle, this tradition turned a corner.

Among them was Frederick's of Hollywood, which gave us valuable experience dealing with heavy loads on our servers. Few were sufficiently correct that people have forgotten who discovered what they discovered.2 It means these ideas are invisible to most people your age, others that will appeal to most people because it only recently became feasible. Economist J.3 2, because that also seems to be to start with good people, to make something customers want. It's often mistakenly believed that medieval universities were mostly seminaries. Technical tweaks may also help them to grasp what's special about your technology.

It was impressive even to ask the questions they asked were new to them, or cut them off.4 Will I ever read it?5 There is room for a new search engine, when there were already about 10, and they did it. Popular magazines made the period between the spread of literacy and the arrival of TV the golden age of the essay. It's not for the discovery that most previous philosophy was a waste of time?6 Those hours after the phone stops ringing are by far the best for getting work done. If you're curious about something, trust your instincts. Meaning everyone within this world was expected to seem more or less the same.

When they appeared it seemed as if search was a mature market, dominated by big players who'd spent millions to build their brands: Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, Infoseek, Altavista, Inktomi. Instead of trying to discover them because they're useful.7 Whatever you make will have to be disciplined about not letting your hypotheses harden into anything more. In the humanities you can either avoid drawing any definite conclusions e. Those whose jobs require them to judge art, like curators, mostly resort to euphemisms like significant or important or getting dangerously close realized. At this stage, all most investors expect is a brief description of what you plan to do and how you're going to replace email.8 I answered twenty, I could see at the time, a lot of valuable advice about business, and also did all the legal work of getting us set up as a company. When people sit down to watch a show, they want to live in the suburbs.

If you go to see Silicon Valley, what you'll see are buildings.9 Design by committee is a synonym for bad design. Will I ever read it?10 Customers loved us. And they each have.11 That may seem a frivolous reason to choose one language over another. Restaurants with great food seem to prosper no matter what you do. Like most startups, we changed our plan on the fly.

When you're just typing expressions into the toplevel, you want to invest in them.12 Writing was one of the founders we funded asked me why we started Y Combinator is neither selfish nor virtuous. If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything, and that's likely to be done with levers and cams and gears are now done with loops and trees and closures.13 The only place to look was in the tradition of skateboards or bicycles rather than medical devices. They've applied for a lot of investors hated the idea, but the overall experience is much better than the soul-crushing suburban sprawl. If a nonprofit or government organization had started a project to index the web, Google at year 1 is the limit of what they'd have produced. Among them were Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, who went on to found Intel, and Eugene Kleiner, who founded the VC firm Kleiner Perkins. Aristotle's goal was to find one angel to act as the lead investor.

Partly because, as components of oligopolies themselves, the corporations knew they could safely pass the cost on to their customers, because their competitors would have to as well.14 So it is with design.15 The real problem is that you look smug. The difference between then and now is that now I understand why Berkeley is probably not worth trying to understand its implications. It would have been better off; not only wouldn't these guys have broken anything, they'd have gotten a lot more done. It would be a curious state of affairs if you could get to the same spot. So if you're developing technology for money, you're probably not going to use TCP/IP just because everyone else does. In the old days, you could create a situation indistinguishable from you being that manufacturer, at least working on problems of minor importance.

That will tend to produce results that annoy people: there's no use in telling people things they already believe, and people answering it often aren't clear in their own mind how much is deliberate.16 Curiously enough, what got Segway into this problem was that customers didn't want the product. At the time it seemed the future.17 There's nothing more valuable than the advice of someone whose judgement you trust. It didn't shake itself free till a couple decades ago, geography was destiny for cities.18 Arguably it's an interesting failed experiment. The American way is to make money by creating wealth, you're always going to be fighting a losing battle against increasing variation in productivity.19 So there could be other ways to attract them, but they were only a little more out of their sales channels. The result was that I wrote it. Not any more.

Notes

I remember are famous flops like the intrusive ads popular on Delicious, but explain that's what they campaign for. But you're not allowed to ask, what you call the market. These two regions were the case. It will seem more interesting than random marks would be very promising, because the proportion of the Web was closely tied to the Pall Mall Gazette.

I'm not saying it's impossible to write your dissertation in the time 1992 the entire West Coast that still requires jackets: The Duty of Genius, Penguin, 1991, p. As Secretary of Labor Statistics, the big winners are all about hitting outliers, are better college candidates. Bad math is merely an upper bound on a weekend and sit alone and think.

Gary and I don't know of one investor who for some students to get elected with a company. That way most reach the stage where they're sufficiently convincing well before Demo Day. I was not just the local builders built everything in exactly the opposite: when we were quite sore from VCs attempting to probe our nonexistent database orifice.

And it would not know his name. It's conceivable that a skilled vine-dresser was worth about 125 to 150 drachmae.

So 80 years sounds to me like someone adding a few that are only doing angel deals to generate everything else in the next round is high, so it may have been seen mentioning the site was about bands.

This phenomenon may account for a long thread are rarely seen, when we created pets. This point is that the highest returns, it's implicit that this was hard to avoid using it, whether you have to be spread out geographically.

So where do we draw the line that philosophy is nonsense. You also have to resort to raising money. Most of the reasons angels like to invest at a public company CEOs were J.

Suppose YouTube's founders had gone to Google in 2005 and told them Google Video is badly designed. I replace the url with that of whatever they copied. Even as late as Newton's time it takes forever.

Digg is notorious for its lack of results achieved by alchemy and saying its value was as much as people in any case, because they are to be a quiet contentment.

An investor who invested earlier had been trained that anything hung on a hard technical problem. One sign of a handful of lame investors first, and b not allow them to tell them everything. Algorithms that use it are called naive Bayesian. Xxvii.

You're investing your own morale, you need a higher growth rate to impress are not mutually exclusive. This essay was written before Firefox. Google's site.

Founders also worry that taking time to come up with elaborate rationalizations. Words we use for good and bad technological progress is accelerating, so they made more that year from stock options, of course. The two 10 minuteses have 3 weeks between them.

A more accurate or at least once for that reason. This is one of a handful of consulting firms that rent out big pools of foreign programmers they bring in on H1-B visas.

Confucius claimed proudly that he transformed the field they describe. There is archaeological evidence for large settlements earlier, but one by one they die and their hands.

If you wanted to go to work with founders create a great idea as something you need to be actively curious.

The facts about Apple's early history are from an angel-round board, consisting of two founders and one of the biggest discoveries in any case, because you couldn't do the opposite: when we got to the World Bank, Doing Business in 2006, http://doingbusiness. Acquisitions fall into in the room, and the super-angels hate to match.

Is what we need to go to grad school you always see when restrictive laws are removed. It would be unfortunate.

People were more dependent on banks for capital for expansion.

What they forget is that the web and enables a new Lisp dialect called Arc that is not so much control, and the exercise of stock the VCs I encountered when we were working on what you have to be about 200 to send a million dollars out of the canonical could you build for them, if you get stock as if you'd invested at a 3 million cap, but they seem like a month might to an adult. But Goldin and Margo think market forces in the 1960s, leaving less room for startups that are or feel weak. Sometimes a competitor will deliberately affect more interest than they expected and they hope will be the fact by someone who doesn't understand what you're working on your thesis. Even in Confucius's time it filters down to you.

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raventons · 6 years

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99 q/a for 2017

1. What’s the toughest decision you made today? To get out of bed after a 3 hour nap.

2. What’s the toughest decision you made this year? I would say turning around at the airport, not going to Moscow, deciding my mental health is more important than that trip. However, I was just following my fear, which is quite an easy feeling to follow. And I have not once found myself second guessing that call. I am not one to dwell too much on decisions like that. I honestly contemplate more about what I’m having for dinner, or what underwear to buy – and I always end up regretting or celebrating those decisions more.

3. What’s the toughest decision you ever made? Once I spent over an hour deciding if I wanted carbonara or caciatora. I went with caciatora, and that day I learned that if you are in doubt, you should always go with what your dinner company orders. My dad got carbonara, and it was out of this world. If you order the same thing as your date, it might still be the lesser option, but at least you will not know what you are missing. As an intellectual, this is one of the conclusions I’m the most proud of.

4. What have you forgotten? Almost all the math I was taught in high school.

5. If you were guaranteed the answer to one question, what would it be? I would love to know who is answering me, and how they got the ability to answer any question ever.

6. What’s it like being you right now? Better than it has been. A lot better. I’d say good.

7. What makes you nostalgic? Lenny Kravitz, long car rides, the soundtrack of midsummer murders and the smell of old Swedish cabin in a Småland forest (we all know that smell).

8. If you had two hours left on earth what would you do? Sit close to my parents, and talk about our life together. And tell them how grateful I am and how happy they’ve made me.

9. What’s the most beautiful word in the world? The Swedish Blockchoklad or the Russian Nemnoga

10. Who makes you laugh more than anyone? Alex, no doubt.

11. What did your father teach you? How to show affection, how to make people laugh, how to interact with strangers, how to put together a good outfit, how to cook and pretty much everything I know on economy and religion. And how much it means to have amazing parents that never, not even once, let you down.

12. What did your mother teach you? How to not give a shit about anyone’s opinion, how to appreciate simplicity, how to be a storyteller, how to calm down when afraid, how to love without giving yourself up, how to be badass and pretty much everything I know on literature, self-esteem and really bad British crime stories. And how much it means to have amazing parents that never, not even once, let you down.

13. What’s the best gift you’ve ever given? An orange moose I gave to my dad. It was really cheap and dumb, but he had just been diagnosed with a chronical disease (he is much better now) and everything just seemed to fall apart. So I did what any good daughter would do, I bought him a stuffed animal. It made him smile. And he still keeps it by his bedside. It’s called the vomit moose, since that was the most… obvious symptom at the time.

14. Best gift you ever received? My friend Lin gave me a card once with pictures and drawings of us. I love it and still have it ten years later.

15. How many times a day do you look in the mirror? Way too many.

16. What do you bring most to a friendship? I’d like to think I am funny. I talk too much, and always about the wrong and often quite strange things, but when I’m in the right mood and they’re in the right mood; I’d say I am funny.

17. If 100 people in your age group were selected randomly, how many do you think they’d find leading a happier life than you? Very few if we are talking happy as in privileged. I am so very lucky and have had so many fortunate turns in my life.

18. What is or was your best subject in school? Social science.

19. What activity do you do that makes you feel most like yourself? Writing.

20. What makes you feel supported? I do. (Wow, I am actually quite proud of that answer, but it is true. Sometimes I look for help or motivation in others, but confidence and shit I truthfully only find in myself).

21. Whom do you secretly admire? Secretly? No one. I admire a lot of people, and I think I make sure to tell them.

22. What time of the day do you feel the most energetic and what do you usually do in those moments? Noon. Usually waste that energy on procrastination.

23. What’s something you never leave home without? Pants.

24. What’s a recurring dream you have? Teeth falling out. Or organs. I quite often have nightmares about some stuff that is supposed to be inside or attached to my body suddenly isn’t.

25. What makes you feel safe? Blankets and tea.

26. What’s the best thing that ever happened to you? Discovering international law as my field of work.

27. What do you want people to say about you once you’re gone? That I was smart.

28. What’s the coolest thing about science? Well… let’s go with nature science, because my field of research is not cool at all. I think it’s about the fact that nature is there. It’s not something we invent or solve, it’s something we discover. It’s all written, all the answers are out there somewhere. All the equations, all the numbers, they all correspond to a reality we only see fragments of. It’s like humanity is reading a book together, and the physicists and biologists flip the pages. And for each chapter we find out more and more about how the world around us works.

29. What’s the best money you ever spent? My skinny, black jeans.

30. What’s a bad habit you have? Listening to bad music. I don’t want to support sexist or racist producers. Still here I am, having my playlists filled with pop about grabbing pussies. I’m also weirdly addicted to marzipan.

31. What are you grateful for? My professors and a free education.

32. Whom are you envious of? Almost everyone. But it varies, passes and comes back. It depends on the day. Or the hour.

33. What’s an image you’ll never forget? Well, I have to go with a few summers ago when me and a former classmate ended up skinny dipping in a sunset down at Österlen. But actually, the first thing that came to mind was the real holocaust footage that was included in the TV-show The Promise. I had to leave the room, could not finish the series and I still think about it quite often.

34. Describe a near-death experience. My brain thinks I have one daily, but I don’t think I’ve ever had one. Once I got my luggage lost in Russia, and we had to drive around downtown St Petersburg for hours in a shady cab. It was all fine and no hostile environment what so ever, but when I tell the story it really sounds quite near-death.

35. If you had a clone, what would you have the clone do? Dishes.

36. What’s your idea of Heaven? A lot of cozy spots by windows with rain outside. Good food, good tea and good conversation. A book shelf would be nice too.

37. What’s your idea Hell? Bad food, bad tea and bad conversation.

38. When did you know? Did I ever?

39. What can you do better? I could be more structured. I literally have no routines at all.

40. When are you most yourself? When I am alone, covered in loud music.

41. What superpower would you most like to have? Time travelling but without all the complicated world-war-shit to come with it.

42. If you were granted three wishes, what would you do with the second wish? Fix up the UN.

43. What is your actual superpower? I am very, very analytic. I am also amazing at app games.

44. If you won 100 million dollars, what would you buy first? I would love to own a goat. But well, that’s more of a management problem than an actual money problem.

45. What's the best sound in the world? Waves. Or someone biting in chocolate.

46. What’s perfect about your life? My parents. And Amanda. She is a wonderful person.

47. What song do you sing only when you’re alone and what memory does it bring back? Min Kärlek av Shirley Clamp. And there is no memories connected, it’s just fucking brilliant.

48. Describe a moment you were so embarrassed you wanted to disappear. When I was 8 we had a quiz in class, and I answered cow instead of turtle (I will NOT tell you the question).

49. How many times a day do you think about money? Every time I use it.

50. Who has been the biggest influence on you in your relationship to money? My parents.

51. What's one thing you're certain of? Cows don’t have shells.

52. Describe one of your colossal failures. I think I just did.

53. What makes you cringe? People trying to make memes a thing you can refer to in real life.

54. What does your inner voice tell you? To shut up. I tell it the same.

55. What crime have you considered committing? I don’t even bike without a helmet. I am a pussy.

56. What's great about your mom? Her hair is amazing.

57. What’s great about your dad? His hair is not so very amazing (and I inherited it) but he has other good qualities. He collects post-cards for example. That’s pretty cool.

58. Which day would you gladly re-live? The day in third grade when I won the egg-cracking championship at our school.

59. What are you awesome at? Egg-cracking, obviously.

60. What do you want people you meet for the first time to think about you? That I seem decent.

61. When were you most afraid? Berlin, 2014.

62. What are you terrible at but love to do anyway? Sex, probably.

63. What weapon would you carry during the Zombie Apocalypse? An axe or a sword. Or a nuke, if bad goes to worse.

64. Which of your five senses would you keep if you could only keep one? I would like to hear shit.

65. What’s something you love to make? Pancakes.

66. What do you cook better than anyone? This weird ass pasta with butter. It’s unhealthy but so damn good.

67. What do you wish you’d invented? The airplane. Or well… the flying machine or whatever it was called when it was invented.

68. What would you like to invent? A new UN system.

69. Out of 100 random people, where would you rank yourself in terms of your intelligence? Pretty high.

70. Where do you want to be right now? Venice.

71. If you could be someone else for a day who would it be and why? Graham Norton. He seems so happy. And he is funny and smart and his job seems to be really cool.

72. What makes you feel powerful? My Hans Zimmer playlist.

73. What’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said? Considering how empty my brain is right now, I think it has done quite some work on supressing those memories.

74. What’s the meanest thing someone has ever said to you? Actually, most people are nice. I don’t think anyone has ever been really mean to me. Sometimes I get hurt, when people say I am pretentious or annoying. But the only reason they say that (and the only reason it hurts) is it’s true.

75. What three words would you have on your grave stone? Let me sleep.

76. What’s your first thought when you wake up? Let me sleep.

77. What’s one thing you wake up to in the middle of the night worrying about? Usually if I have cancer in the prostate since I need to pee ALL the time. But then I remember I am a female.

78. If you could tell someone something anonymously, what would it be? I would tell my cousin Johan to never be insecure about anything. He is probably the most awesome, complete and admirable person in the world.

79. Whom would you like to forgive and forget? The people who made two and a half men.

80. If you could get rid of one of your responsibilities today, what would it be? Dishes.

81. What type of person angers you the most? Extreme right wingers who grew up in a place where they had a choice. Of course you can’t blame people for reacting to the environment around them, and get affected by their culture – but people who grow up with access to information and without oppression – how on earth did you make those conclusions?

82. What is your greatest strength? I’m confident about my intellect.

83. What is your worst weakness? I’m insecure about pretty much everything else.

84. How do you show your love for others? Tiny surprises. It can be buying them flowers, cleaning their apartment or just answering a two years old text and apologize for forgetting their existence.

85. Why are you here in this room right now? It’s 10 degrees minus outside.

86. When is a time you forgave someone or were forgiven for something? I forgave myself for not doing the dishes. It felt good.

87. What’s the biggest mistake you ever made? Talking too much. I always talk too much. It’s not one big mistake at one certain event. But it keeps on happening and I never fucking learn.

88. What are you hiding? Nothing.

89. What’s your unanswerable question--the question you seem to always be asking yourself? Can there be true objectivity?

90. What are you ashamed of? My fetishes.

91. What is stopping you? Panic attacks. Or walls, mostly.

92. What’s a secret you have? I really have no idea what I am going to do with my life.

93. How do you secretly manipulate people to get your way? I don’t do this on purpose, but I’ve noticed it happening without actively thinking about it. I usually express a will to rely on people, and come across as weak and fragile, making them think I need their help and protection – when I am really just better of on my own.

94. When was the last time you apologized? This morning.

95. What is the biggest lie you tell yourself? That I am a cool and mysterious person that people look up to.

96. What’s the moment you left childhood behind? Probably when I moved out from home and went grocery shopping for the first time. Deciding if I needed milk or not was my first ever adult decision.

97. What's missing from your life? Structure. And home cooked meals.

98. Do you believe in a higher power? No.

99. What are you ready to let go of? About half my closet and my fear of flying.

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thewaysofexlie · 6 years

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Albums of the Year

I really can’t be having Tumblr anymore, but I wrote this so I may as well post it here too.

Here’s a like to my wordpress page were formatting isn’t just punching yourself in the balls.

https://thewaysofexile.wordpress.com/2017/12/11/albums-of-the-year-2107/

As I said in my other post, this has been an incredible year for music and it’s the first year in a very long time I have a tie for my number one album.

Even more amazing is that I hadn’t heard either of these bands before July.

But enough preamble, in no particular order, apart for the number one albums…

Slowdive

Blah, blah, First album in 22 years. Blah, Blah, N.M.E were wankers, blah, blah, blah.

Is it any good?

Happily, fuck yes.

Out of all the come backs over the last decade, this is easily one of the best, able to stand proudly beside the rest of the band’s discography. This is just a great album, shoegaze or otherwise, catchy songs, great production and the new material sounds amazing live.

Job done.

Couldn’t ask for more.

It’s strange but I’m really proud of a bunch of people I don’t know, because they really deserve all the praise they’re getting after the shit they went through the first time.

https://youtu.be/BxwAPBxc0lU

Blanck Mass

Once you know Blanck Mass is a Fuck Buttons side project, you know what you’re in for. There will be fully on, almost power electronics (No pun intended) but where this works better than any of the other two Blanck Mass albums is that this is catchy. Rhesus negative could be played in a club, it’d have to be a Techno club but it would work, while other tracks, like Please are more chilled head nodders. It works better than it has any right too and it may have surpassed Fuck Buttons.

https://youtu.be/Afymin3h1mI

Junius

It’s not a great sign when your guitar and bass player leave the band as you start writing your new album, but being the main songwriter, Martinez didn’t let it stop him.

What we got was Junius’s heaviest album to date. It sounds amazing, the production is impeccable, the riffs crunch and the bottom end fills the songs, giving a warm sound. They get called post metal but this is just amazing alternative rock, well worth a listen of you’re a Deftones fan. A perfect mix of beauty, spirituality and anger.

https://youtu.be/6l8ZdSe6VLg

Granddaddy

Where do start to talk about this? This is a warm hug of an album, mixing simple keyboards with indie rock but filled with the usual sense of slacker Americana that Grandaddy do so well.

Even though they broke up over 10 years ago, Last Place is business as usual, and to be honest, that’s no bad thing.

Granddaddy do understated melancholy better than most. They have such an enveloping sound that it’s just glorious to be able to wrap yourself in some new music by them.

Unfortunately, it’s all overshadowed by the bass player dying at the age of 41, from a stroke, so we may never get another Granddaddy album again, but we can certainty enjoy the ones we have.

https://youtu.be/jRC1gwIdCe4

Mogwai

I nearly didn’t put the ‘gwai on this list, I thought it hadn’t made much of an impression on me, but once I had a look at my Last FM I saw just how much I’d been listening to it, I knew it'd had gotten it's hooks in to me.

Yes, they’re not breaking new ground any more but they have perfected their sound. It’s an album that’s perfectly sequenced, Coolverine is chilled out Mogwai at their best. Party in the Dark is the indie rock song that they’ve been trying to perfect for over a decade and finally have here. The album has a nice chilled start but just as you’re beginning to miss the noise, the tone shifts on the fantastically named “Don’t believe the Fife” and slowly the album slides into the wall of guitars we all know and love, leading to a much heavier back end to the album.

It’s a bit brilliant.

https://youtu.be/8ZocDT3TmAE

Public Service Broadcasting

For what should be a novelty band, PSB can really pack a lot of emotion into what are mostly instrumental songs with vocal samples. There is also no way a concept album about the fall of Welsh mining should work but somehow, it does.

The album starts off in an almost jaunty style, celebrating the peak of Welsh mining but starts to darken as the album progresses. By the track “All Out” it descends to rage. A Mogwai-esque face melter, it really sets the mood. A sample from a middle-aged woman very calmly saying “I was brought up to respect the police.” “I don’t respect them now”, leads into the track break to amazing effect.

It’s rarely loud guitars though, “They gave me a lamp” is a feminist rallying cry and You + Me is a surprisingly sweet love song, but by the time the album ends with a Welsh Choir they leave you with pins and needles, their story well told.

https://youtu.be/FWvK7Uffmts

Daughter

Daughter play the kind of full sounding indie music that I didn’t think people made anymore. This was a band I was waiting for and didn’t know it. Sounding like an indie band with touches of the XX’s electronica and the guitars of a shoegazing band, they making it their own thing, breathing life and fire into what could very easily become dinner party music.

Elena Tonra’s voice swings between strong and ethereal effortlessly, going from the anger of Burn It Down to the floating background vocal of Flaws.

This is a soundtrack, so there are a few more instrumental tracks than you’d normally find on a Daughter album, it’s a bit more post rock than their last (and even better album) but that was never something that was going to put me off. Daughter are easily one of my finds of the year.

https://youtu.be/-XIRj_Iq3cw

Paradise Lost

PL have really re-embraced their metal sound. Their last album was great, leaning to their older sound, where this album just runs straight back to it. Using the tone from their Gothic album they’ve beefed the album up, with the singer using his metal growl a lot more than he has since Shades of God back in ’92! Shockingly I would have preferred more clean vocal on this, I think I’m going soft or something.

The tracks Fearless Sky and Blood and Chaos just showcase what PL do better than everyone else in the metal world. My favourite track is the bonus track, Symbolic Virtue, a clean sung track that just has the best hook on the album.

It’s amazing to see The Lost have the resurgence they’re having 29 years into their career.

https://youtu.be/5AXXzM-Z0Ow

And the winners are:

Arcane Roots

I really have no idea how to describe this lot. They were a math/prog, post hardcore band who have pissed off most of their fans by selling out and making a mostly electronica heavy, indie album. Most of the vocals are clean but there is a bit of screaming here and there and in places, it’s still as heavy as hell.

Now, how the fuck do you sell that to people?

But it is brilliant.

The album is mostly just emotive music, sung in an unusually high register, mixing electronic and rock effortlessly with songs that really let rip every now and again.

It also sounds like no other band I’ve heard. Well, may be a touch of Muse, but not in a bad way.

Whatever, just listen to the song, it’s fantastic.

https://youtu.be/4U-WoT9IAuU

Eyre Llew

Eyre Llew are a much easier band to describe.

Vocal post rock.

The can call themselves an ambient rock band all they want they’re not fooling anyone.

Clearly influenced by Sigur Ros, Eyre Llew soar, it really is the only way to describe their sound. And while I say clearly influenced, it’s more in spirit, they are much more focused than SR and don’t lapse into whale noises at any point.

Massive sounding and clear, it avoids the claustrophobic sound most post rock bands go for. They write a good towering chorus and even when using the full wall of sound, it still sounds bright and clear, never falling into sonic mush.

It’s strange, but for me it’s easier to describe them visually than as sound. This music is begging to be used on something like Planet Earth, sound tracking some wildly dramatic Artic vistas.

It’s also amazing a three piece can make something that sounds this huge, I can’t wait to see if they can reproduce this live.

https://youtu.be/Bifur0AniV0

youtube

#slowdive #grandaddy #mogwai #eyre llew #arcane roots #blanck mass #junius #Paradise Lost #public service broadcasting #daughter

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