scribbly first date type affair (continuation of my modern au stuff)

Miraculess Ladybug Salt AU: You Always Liked To Play With Fire ~ Blossoming Friendships???

I really hope you��re all enjoying this new series; I honestly just came up with the idea on a dime, and then after I started developing it, I knew I needed to share it with all of my fans.

Also, when I actually get around to including more characters from the movie, it’s gonna be fun giving them some personality traits. I can’t wait.

And er-… I may have accidently messed up with some off the names. Since I changed most off the names already, I then decided to change them for Barbara and Olympia, however I had forgotten that I’d already written their names down in the story. Opps. I thought this would’ve been better since I think I saw some people complain about the United Hero’s super names, so I changed them, as well as if I’m going to add in going to Gotham into the mix and there’s already a character called Barbara, I just know I’ll get hella confused for who I’m talking about. I don’t want people to get confused but maybe I should make a post off the names I’ve already changed to begin with, just to defer from canon. Well, here it is.

My OC: Rosaniline Keyne-Hill was Rosina Scoats

Soliane Rin was Crisono Tassa

Canon Counterparts: Jace Keyne was Jessica Keyne

Aveon Keyne-Hill was Aeon Hill

Medusa was Uncanny Valley

(I kept Olympia the same)

Nebula was Majestia

Brianna was Barbara

Eostrix was Night Owl

So, I might just change them when I can be bothered to.

This fanfic and its ideas were all made before season 4 came out, so if something doesn’t add up please don’t worry. That information wasn’t available then, and unless it fits into my story or I like it, I won’t include it in my story. Also, that new Miraculous wiki can get lost, I’m not putting any of that new information in here if they couldn’t even put it in the show. (Also, so far, I do not care for season 4 whatsoever so yeah, I may not include any of that in this work and the other.)

Word Count: 9435

Tags: @vixen-uchiha​ if you wish to be tagged all you have to do is say. Also, if you change your name please tell me, I don’t want to leave you out since you’ve asked to be tagged. I’m very sorry if I’ve missed anyone.

Well, I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Summary:

Note: This fic contains OOC scenes of Miraculous Ladybug as well as a ton of salt, so if you don't like that stuff you may scroll past and have a nice day.

In a world with no Miraculous, no Hawkmoth and no Ladybug, how does our little heroine do?

Well, it usually would be hanging out with her friends, as any other teenager would do...

But, of course, this wasn't normal.

This was reality. It was cold, hard and definitely not welcome.

So, when this girl wishes to have some kind of adventure in her boring, mundane life…

How long does it take for her to regret it?

***

Mlle Bustier had always believed her students were the best in the whole Collège.

In fact, she whole-heartedly believed that all her students could do no harm.

In her mind, they were at the peak of maturity, though they may be in their adolescence and had some seemingly petty dramas, they all prevailed to take whatever they wanted for themselves, when they saw opportunities, they rightfully took.

And Mlle Bustier only wanted the best for her students.

As much as Caline would never admit it to any of her work colleagues, she always knew her class was exceptional.

Kim, Alix, what with two of the sportiest people that were bound to succeed.

Max, A genius who was able to develop a fully functioning AI, when he was a teen no less. She could only imagine what other inventions her little Einstein could invent later on. The type of universities he’d get into, the job offers, oh the endless possibilities.

Ivan, Rose, Juleka, A lead vocalist, guitarist, and drummer in a popular rock band. Though she had heard there may have been a few mishaps in the band, she was sure they would be even better than before.

Mylène, A passionate environmentalist who only wanted to help the world become a cleaner place, and entered as many organisations as possible.

Nino, An inspiring DJ/filmmaker. She always wanted to help out by lending the classroom key afterschool, that way he could work on all of his works. Allowing everyone to take part even, it was truly one of her best rules.

Alya, A journalist's whose goal was to become bigger than Lois Lane.

Adrien, A model, the most famous teenage one by Parisian standards.

Chloé, The mayor's Daughter.

Sabrina, The head of police’s Daughter.

Nathaniel, an inspiring comic book artist that had gained a lot of attention online.

And Lila, a Daughter of an Italian diplomat.

Although she could admit to herself that not all of these aspirations were something that she could boast about, she could show off that all of her students had something they would work for or even show off.

And what did the others have?

Two weather girls and a writer? Caline would have to laugh, compare that with her class and you could clearly see who was at the top.

Although she hadn’t said a specific name for a reason.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng. The young fashion designer/baker’s girl.

For a while, that name had left a sour name in her mouth, whenever she had been forced to say it for the register, it only took her a few days for her to realise how much it annoyed her whenever said girl was late to her lesson. Honestly, did that girl not value punctuality? Nevermind in the workplace; what about her reputation as a teacher?

She was becoming a lot more reclused, gaining a disrespectful attitude towards her she had no recollection of when she had gained it, and became incredibly upset when she remembered every year on her birthday, the girl would give her a whole assortment of pastries and desserts.

Now, because she had somewhat highly encouraged her students to send gifts for a better grade, it was just a box of chocolates.

Just a small box of chocolates!?

How could she show off her gifts to the others now!?

And worst of all?

She refused to be the good little Class President anymore.

Her example?

Her Marinette off the world?

Did she not care about setting a good example? Or to be a role model to the class?

Really, to be so selfish, to all of her friends, how ungrateful.

She believed she had sorted this little problem when Chloé, in a fit off understandable jealousy, drew over her gift.

Marinette was unreasonably angry at the poor girl, and so Bustier had said how better it would be for her to rise up and become a beacon of light for Chloé instead of letting that hate and anger fester inside her.

To let go and help out everyone.

To not let your negative side take a hold of you and be positive around everyone in your vicinity.

After all, sharing and helping makes the world go round, and we do want to help the world, right?

She remembered those words she had spoken so fondly to her, as she was always someone anyone could come to for advice. It had always worked after all, after students were able to see the correct side, she’d be thanked which always left a small flutter of happiness around her.

Mendeleiev scared many students away, D’Argencourt with his eccentric personality, made students want to avoid being seen near him after lessons ended, and hardly anyone spent their time in the art club room.

Caline believed she was seen as a shining example of light by the other students, and knew she was seen as a Disney Princess by many, Rose had even called her that once.

However, getting back to the matter at hand, she was very pleased when Marinette had gone out of her way to make Chloé happy, of course, her attitude still remained mostly the same but Caline was smart enough to know it wouldn’t take one nice event to help the girl, so she was so proud when she carried on helping the poor girl out. Chloé was smiling more and even asking for a multitude of things from the blue-haired girl, and if she ever saw Marinette get unreasonably upset again, she’d send a very disappointing glare.

She knew being disappointed in students was a sure-fire way for them to do better and work harder, she knew how guilty her students would feel if they ever managed to get that gaze from their teacher, and… If the elder had done this a bit more on Marinette than anyone else… Well, she would just smile, telling them how much Marinette was able to accomplish, her trips for the class were so good, everyone was jealous. So, didn’t that seem good?

And even though she did see most of it going in the trash, she knew Chloé was just a little bit picky, she’d liked the interest in her, it was normal.

Her home life wasn’t something to be overlooked, she just knew the girl only wished for attention, and she was sure to be able to give it to her.

But then she… Stopped.

Caline had believed the girl had gotten wrongly impatient and told Marinette she shouldn’t be so extreme, but Marinette dared to fight back, against her?

She exclaimed that it wasn’t just Chloé anymore, how could she be expected to be nice to both her and Lila?

Bustier was confused, Lila? What did she have to do with this?

And so, the girl explained that she was just lying for attention, every breath that came out was just a lie. And she couldn’t stand it, she’d apparently turned her friends against her.

Now, normally, Bustier knew Marinette wouldn’t lie.

But, she also knew she couldn’t let this ‘lie’ be revealed.

It might harm her reputation.

She couldn’t have that happen.

So, she knew what she had to say.

That this was just girl drama that all teenagers had.

She couldn’t afford to let her empire fall so soon.

And for something like that.

The faces of the other teachers.

The gossip surrounding her.

“Looks like Caline’s not so good a teacher after all.”

No, she couldn’t bare it.

Who said a little white lie would hurt anyone?

In order to keep her class, exactly the same.

A few snips were made to maintain its image.

And if she had to snip her most prized student.

Then… So be it.

***

When she entered her classroom it was just like any other day.

Her students forming around a desk in the front of the room.

She always commended her students for such actions, she knew how sweet and silent the girl could be and loved how accommodating the class could be to her.

She couldn’t help the wondering gaze that looked upon the back row.

A certain seat was empty, but that was routine by now. And even though there was still 5 minutes till the bell, she still marked her late in her book.

Sometimes Caline had to think if at some points she had expected too much of this single girl… But only to remember that, no, in fact, when Marinette had a better attitude, she had expected too less. Back when she gained some confidence, she had always surpassed her expectations, her trips were the highlight off her job, her morning snacks were a welcomed surprise, her need to prove herself let her have as many responsibilities as possible, yes some were meant to be her own paperwork, but she’d never seen Marinette excel so much, it was a dream come true.

If she could just push her, just a little more… She was sure Marinette would go back to her obedient self, and it would make Bustier’s job a lot easier.

Although… The new student seemed like the perfect candidate as well, since Marinette may not follow her good example, she may be able to get a different example.

She could see just how sweet and pleasant the cherry haired girl was, she’d be perfect for the role. Sneaking a quick glance at the girl who was simply minding her business reading a book and keeping to herself. She did take note she had a bit of a limp for the past week, but didn’t bring it up just to not embarrass the girl in front of the whole class. She just knew if she was able to simply send her views her way, a new example would be made, hell she may even be able to have two if Rosaniline became such a good influence on Marinette she may even change again.

She also just knew Rosann would be good for Chloé, after all, they’d have so much to talk about, and coming from similar backgrounds she could make sure they could be paired together as much as possible.

Of course, only she knew about her family name, Monsieur Damocles had been informed by her residence that they’d prefer not to spread this information about, for it had been such a hinderance for her to make friends before.

Bustier frowned, she knew very well her students wouldn’t try to suck up to her, she almost felt insulted that she wouldn’t trust her students.

But the worst part was that she couldn’t brag about her new student to anyone, no one could find out or they’d all face some action from her Mother, she was very clear on that.

However Bustier tried to not let it bother her too much, after all she was sure she could give a gentle nudge in the right direction about trusting friends and not keeping secrets, to coax her out of her shell. She’d just have to be excruciatingly patient.

Clapping her hands was a symbol for them all to pay attention, she’d never raise her voice to them, not even a little, and she knew they would respect it and quieten down their chatter.

And just like that, the door opened to a fashionably late bluenette. Bustier would feign ignorance to the rather disappointing glares stares the girl was receiving, after all, she was giving one off her own.

She sheepishly walked to her seat just as the bell rang, honestly, she’d given her a lot of warnings before about her punctuality, did she really need to brief her Parents in about the situation?

“Well class, since all of you are here now, I can get on with the lesson” And so began her teaching.

It was fairly simple, she knew her students would be able to easily understand, after all, she knew they were the best, the smartest.

She had to explain the project they were bound to complete to a high standard, she just knew it was another to her list of student’s accomplishments she could brag about.

The project entailed 30% of coursework they must do in pairs in the span of 2 months. They could choose any topic so long as it followed the theme.

And this year’s theme was history, generally her students would groan at this topic, but considering they were able to decide on their personal preferences that should help encourage them to complete it to the best of their ability.

Plus, it helped towards their end of the year grade, and helped their teamwork skills. Of course, Mlle Bustier would always try to be as generous as she could, she wouldn’t remove marks from accidental mistakes unlike a purple haired teacher would, she just couldn’t bear to be so mean to them when she knew they were trying so hard to get all of their marks, she couldn’t punish them for that. Even if it was not necessarily the right thing to do, she couldn’t let there be any wrongful disappointment.

As long as they carried on being a great example, she could never fail them.

Besides everyone loved her projects, while having to be in pairs they always got to present it in any way they wanted, a science experiment, PowerPoint presentation to even a play, she was so very proud when Mylène did that play from last year, so impressive and she had gotten out of her shell. All she had to do was make them follow a simple rule before they could go all out. Her students loved the independence, and when they asked what type of ideas she had, she gleamed and expressed her own interest in the fairy tales. There was so much you could do with so many magical stories and elements, the possibilities were endless. She loved always talking about them in at least all of her lesson as she knew how many life lessons could come out of it.

And besides, in a sense, the other thing that made her the best teacher, she let them pick their own partners.

Of course, she had to make it seem like that.

It was always the same since kindergarten, everyone’s names would be placed in a bowl on a piece of paper, and one by one she’d pick a name up, when she read it out loud other people could raise their hands to ask to be their partner.

Normally it would be the first person to raise their hand, however, Caline wasn’t stupid, there were certain pairs she didn’t always want together.

Such as Alix and Kim, if it were a presentation about sports, she wouldn’t mind as much, knowing they would present a physical display of their athleticism… However, she knew if they were paired up for a slideshow presentation about let’s say, politics. She knew they would only start at the last minute, and include a very messily strown up slideshow. And with Marinette refusing to help out her classmates with even the simplest of matters, her hands were tied.

So, if they ever stuck their hand up for either of them, Bustier would wait to see who else would put their hand up, most of the time it was either Max or Nathaniel respectfully, and since they were all friends, no one had called her out for it.

And that’s how she got around it.

So, she started doing her routine, swirling her hand around the, she picked one up and began to read it aloud.

“Lila Rossi. And who would like to be her partner?” Immediately several hands shot up, bringing a smile on her face again, so many wanted to help this girl it filled her with pride and comfort.

And well, she always had to help by picking the most knowledgeable of students.

“Max, I believe I saw your hand up first” Some students moaned that they couldn’t be with Lila, but they knew that maybe next time they would get a shot.

“Ivan Bruel” Unsurprisingly Mylène’s hand shot up first followed by Juleka and Rose, now normally she wouldn’t let couples be together, but she couldn’t break them up, they did their work so well, so she let it slide.

Grabbing the next piece of paper Caline’s once bright smile, dropped as her eyes scanned over the name before sighing audibly, she didn’t need to hide it, everyone knew whose name it was.

.

.

.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng took a deep sigh.

As soon as Bustier told them about a presentation she was immediately filled with dread.

She could quite easily do it well, or at least get a well enough grade considering Bustier’s shady marking skills.

But her partners influence would be something she dreaded.

Best case scenario, they’ll be so repulsed to be in the same room with her that they’d work independently, and it would more or less seem like two separate presentations in one. Her grade was low.

Worst case scenario, she’d be subjected to either do it alone, or screamed about how much they don’t want to be near her. Her grade would be lowered.

Not theirs, hers.

Bustier would exclaim how she wanted the bluenette to rise above it all and forgive them, and until she was a better student in her eyes, she’d be punished for it.

It didn’t help that when her name was specifically called out, there would be a silence they’ll have to endure for what would seem like eternity.

It would either stop when someone so nobly sacrificed themselves to team up with her or Bustier would be forced to wait until the end for the last name to be picked out.

And she hated having to feel like this.

They were all friends, why did it have to be like this?

And well, just like this silence, it would last for a rather uncomfortable time, more than Marinette liked.

Her head rested on the desk, she at this point didn’t care about her appearance in front of the new girl. It had been a week already and at this point Marinette knew they’d be no point getting to know someone who was bound to abandon her.

It was a despairing truth she’d learn from experience, it was why no one hung around her, even from the other classes, they would be a target next.

Marinette couldn’t blame them, if the situations were reversed, she doubted she’d have enough courage to go out of her way to help.

So, she’d just sit, head on desk as time would pass.

.

.

-

“H-Hey! Why do you have your hand up, we told you how she was a bully, why would you want to be her partner!?”

???

Wait-

That wasn’t meant to happen.

Hesitantly, Marinette picked her head up, only to find her seatmate with an eager hand in the air.

She looked over to her face, a smile present as she glanced towards the teacher, waiting for her to say they would be paired together.

“I want to be Marinette’s partner, and I haven’t seen yet why I shouldn’t” Rosann’s head turned innocently to her classmates, she was radiating happiness as they stared in shock. A blond very much as he did want to be her partner when her name was called out, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

“Marinette! Did you threaten her as well, girl you’re unbelieva-”

“I’m afraid you are being mistaken Mlle Césaire, I wouldn’t willingly make a partnership with my enemy, now Mlle Bustier you may continue if you would please” Marinette gasped, she- she’d just put a target on her back. For her! This girl was crazy…

And yet, despite her cute appearance, she hadn’t seen someone look so confident and polite.

‘Wait did I say cute-’

Even though the girl had stated her answer, it wasn’t the answer the class was looking for.

“Mlle Bustier you can’t put their names down together” Someone protested. It sounded like Lila, she was always leading the class for this sort of thing.

“Yeah, put my name down for Rosaniline instead, we know she doesn’t mean it.” That was Alya.

“But I-” She felt guilty for the new girl, she really did, she would’ve warned her how you’ll never truly be able to say your opinion without everyone interfering or as she put it, butting in.

“She doesn’t know what’s she’s gotten herself into, the poor girl” Rose spoke, if Marinette wasn’t so used to it she’d flinch from the words Rose spoke about her.

What was bad, Rosann wasn’t able to speak.

What was worse, Bustier was very much considering it.

“I guess it would be for the best” Marinette couldn’t believe it. The one person who willingly decided to pair up with her, was being ignored to be partnered up with someone else.

Not that Marinette wanted them to be with someone else mind you, but it was their decision, why wasn’t she spared a thought and have people notice that maybe they didn’t have to decide for her?

What was crueller, was that Marinette found the one person that was on her side… Was the one person who was the first to make her clamper up.

“This is ridiculous absolutely ridiculous” Of all people, it had to be her to join in?

“How extremely hypocritical of you Mlle Bustier, if I couldn’t change my partner from the last project then neither does Dupain-Cheng in this one, isn’t this school meant to teach fairness. Well, the only fair thing I see is the fairly incompetent from this class” Of course the students didn’t take kindly to her words as Bustier sighed yet again.

She knew Chloé had a point, she’d tried to persuade Chloé to have a different partner than Sabrina a few times in previous projects, it would depend on the person, if Chloé didn’t mind, she’d moan but nothing else. If it was someone she didn’t like, she’d threaten to call the mayor, most of the times she wouldn’t considering out of all the teachers even Chloé would admit she liked Bustier the most, she’d never blame her for anything and she loved that about her, but she had a point none the less.

Besides, Bustier believed that maybe Rosaniline would prove to be a very good example to her previous one, and this could be a great place to start.

“Yes Chloé, I believe I understand now, it would be highly unfair if we didn’t let Rosaniline decide for herself” Marinette couldn’t help the somewhat annoyed glance she gave to the teacher for that comment.

“But Mlle-”

“No buts Alya, now why don’t we use the idea Chloé suggested?” The class all heard the snicker from Chloé, they couldn’t believe she could stoop so low like this.

And then it carried on like it had been, but Marinette couldn’t help but let her curiosity get the better of her and as the class was carrying on, Marinette swallowed the gulp that had formed in her throat and turned to the girl next to her.

“Err- Rosaniline?” She gently tapped the girl’s shoulder, she turned and showed she was listening.

“Yes?” Oh god Mari don’t lose confidence now.

“Why, why did you do that?” With that, she saw a smirk emerge from the girl.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious, but I am rather petty since I refuse to take the word of someone else before doing my own research” Oh. Somehow that wasn’t what she was expecting, but honestly it was better than pretending to care.

“Although… I should apologise, for how abrupt I was about it” Marinette widened her eyes, why- she didn’t do anything wrong?

“I would’ve preferred asking for your consent first, but seeing the opportunity I may have taken it rather quickly” She grasped one of her braids, a nervous habit maybe, Marinette couldn’t help but notice before giving her answer.

“N-No its fine, I-I don’t mind you being my partner, not like I’ve got anyone better- I mean- I didn’t mean it like that. I just- erm, I just. I’m glad you thought about me” If Marinette had been able to look past her hair, she would’ve noticed the small blush creep up on her cheeks.

“No problem”

***

Normally, a weekend would be extremely relaxing to the young designer.

She had as much time to sleep in, plus she started a late shift anyway, her Parents were the best when it came to that, since they knew how much trouble she had getting up on a school day, they knew they couldn’t ask her to get up early for work, especially since it was their workplace.

And she had completed other homework assignments a while ago, so surely there was no reason for why she should be pacing around in the living room so early for her.

Well, it may or may not have something to do with the new girl.

.

She really should stop calling her new girl, she gave her her name for god’s sake.

But she just felt so nervous.

She told her Parents about this new assignment, and how she actually volunteered to be her partner, and how Marinette in the spur of a moment offered to go to her place on Saturday to start it. And she couldn’t deny when she saw the relieved expression she had when she offered. But now…

She hadn’t had someone over in years, everyone else avoided this place like the plague, the Parents still came though, and although they were slightly informed of the situation, they also just believed it was teenage drama.

Her own Parents showed their own worry, they loved their girl, and they truly didn’t want her to ever be hurt like last time ever again, but they also knew if she never gave this girl a shot, she’d never know.

Was it better to know than to ponder it forever?

That was a phrase Marinette was all too familiar with. However, it still didn’t calm her nerves.

Her Parents had told her if she didn’t want Rosaniline to be around anymore, they’d be more than happy to just so happen have an event take place right at that moment that she would have to leave, even if Marinette hoped that wouldn’t happen.

So, as she continued to pace, she was able to see from her balcony the Parisians all around, her doorway was slightly ajar so she could hear the sound of birds chirping, cars passing, and a motorcycle coming to a stop.

The noise of a motorcycle made her come to a fond thought of her Nonna. She loved her very much, and her free spirit.

Whenever she came back from one of her grand trips, she’d always get Marinette some type of fabric that always made her determined to incorporate into some type of clothing.

It was somewhat why she always stayed in the path of fashion, not just because her Parents would be disappointed in seeing her so unmotivated, but because she still liked the challenge of turning fabric into something.

She giggled, besides that thing from last week, it was the only adventurous thing she had done.

The sound of steps interrupted her as she saw her Maman, she nodded before Marinette felt a slight drop in her stomach.

She was here, she just needed to calm down, it would be fine.

She’d just smile and brace for it.

Walking down the stairs to her bakery was the same as always, she could smell the fresh bread from the oven. She always appreciated this aspect, living in a bakery always meant the aroma was lovely.

Going through the door after her Maman she braced herself to see the ne- er, Rosaniline.

What she didn’t brace for was the little girl cuddling her leg as soon as she entered.

“Hi, my names Piper, can we go to your room now?” She had to compose herself so she wouldn’t fall over with the girl in tow, but she couldn’t help internally awwing at the little kids’ appearance.

Black hair tied back in a red bow, a pink leotard with a lighter coloured tutu skirt. And a short but worn-out blue cape. And to top it all off, sparkly pink shoes faded to orange.

“O-Oh, hi there.” She gave a little wave, still completely confused.

“I’m so sorry Mari, Piper was just too excited to meet you, I’m very sorry for the shock” She saw a concerned look coming from Rosaniline. She sure did fret a lot- ah, she knew she didn’t mean it as a bad thing she just, well, she was used to being quiet and observing.

“Its fine really, but how come you brought your… Sister here?” She was unsure if the guess was right but considering the nod from the other girl, she relaxed knowing she was right. And considering she had to ignore a comment made from her Parents about a nickname she was given, she could just ignore that.

“I’m so sorry for the late notice, it’s just, something came up and I couldn’t find anyone able to take care of her. I’m really sorry for not telling you before but I- I don’t have your phone number so I couldn’t tell you. Eheh. I promise she won’t cause any trouble. Right?” The smaller girl, now back at her Sister’s side, bounced and repeated yes several times.

She looked to her Parents, almost asking them if it was alright, this whole situation caught her slightly off guard, and she momentarily forgot the question was directed at her.

Luckily her Maman was ready.

“Of course its fine, my, your Sister is such a cutie. And what’s your name sweetie?” Her Mother crouched down to make eye level. The girl puffed her chest out before standing straight up.

“My name is Piper Keyne-Hill ma’am, and I am 6 years old” She held one hand up before she looked up.

“Did I do it right?” Rosaniline smiled before bending down to her level as well.

“Do you believe that is the right answer?” Her use of that caused attention to Piper’s hand as the little one looked back, she gasped before proudly extending another finger up.

“There you go” She ruffled her hair as Marinette saw her Mother continue talking with Piper.

And yet… She felt that dread from earlier flee away, seeing Rosaniline interacting with her Sister so fondly brought heat to her cheeks and inside. She just, felt so calm around her.

And that warm smile…

She, kinda wanted her to smile like that to her…

“Marinette?” That broke her out of her trance, she looked over at her Papa who had a confused look.

“Shouldn’t you two start working on the project?”

“Huh? Oh- oh yeah, yes of course the project… Eh, Rosaniline lets go, I’ve got some kid books to keep Piper company” She didn’t mind the weight on her arm, or the way her Parents smiled at her interactions with the cherry haired girl.

She just minded how heavy her heart was pounding for some reason.

.

Marinette never considered her room big, she always found it spacious, it might be due to her always misplacing at least something when she’s in a rush, but she knew where it would be.

Stepping over to her desk draw, she pulls out a bunch of child books, since Nadja always did spring a babysitting job on her, she figured there was no reason to place them somewhere that would be too much of a hassle to keep getting out. So, she kept them closer.

Turning back, she saw the two looking around her room, Piper held so much excitement as Rosaniline wore a smile.

“Woooooow, it’s so pink, Rosalee what type is it?” Tugging at her Sister’s cardigan the older girl smiled.

“There are many different types, so I doubt I know the exact one… But I’d say it was a coral pink” She pattered her head as she too looked over the room, a somewhat reminiscent expression as she takes it all in.

“Mari I’m so jealous, to be able to live in a bakery with all of those magnificent smells around every day, it must be like heaven” Marinette scratched her head, ok- this was all so different, no matter how much she wanted to go back to her usual self, there was always something holding her back. Almost like, if she fell in this trap again, she’d mess it up, before she could be comfortable.

There she goes again, over thinking the situation like before.

No wonder-

“Ahh- it’s a tiger, look look” Piper’s voice brought her out of it as she saw Piper sitting in Rosaniline’s legs.

“Mmhmmn, so, Mari should we get started?” Marinette could only nod before they pulled out some books to get started.

***

‘This was easier when I had to do it on my own’ The bluenette thought, now don’t get her wrong, they weren’t arguing or anything, they just couldn’t exactly agree on a subject together.

When Rosaniline suggested gory fairy tales, she had to physically force herself not to shudder, fortunately the girl opposite her said it was a mere jest, thinking it would’ve been funny to see the teachers face when they spoke about it, but maybe it would be too much.

Rosaniline even joked that they may not have anything in common at all, that did nothing to soothe the young girls’ nerves. She just knew this might not have been the best decision, if they couldn’t find a topic, she knew Bustier would blame her for it, and if Bustier blamed her no doubt the class would as well. And it would just be one more point for them as they’d slowly but surely turn Rosaniline away from her.

It’s not like she would be disappointed or anything, it’s just, she’d rather be right now than in the future with her hopes up.

But, it didn’t help that her feelings were so mixed about this. Why was it she wanted to get to know Rosaniline?

Knock knock.

“Girls, I think you’re due a break now, don’t you?” Marinette was relieved, surely after some food they’ll be able to come up with at least one idea.

“Yes, Mlle Dupain-Cheng, that would be lovely.”

“Now stop that, you can call me Sabine, aw such a polite child you are” She blushed as she rubbed the back of her head.

“Marinette dear, mind if you help me?” Her eyes were confused, her Maman would normally never ask for help, what was so different now?

But not wanting to cause a scene she nodded and proceeded to climb down, just as Piper was moving onto a different type of picture book.

Going over to the kitchen she saw that her Mother had prepared so much food it would’ve looked like a feast, but that was how she was, whenever guests came over you could see more food on a table than a table.

She hoped Rosaniline and Piper had an appetite.

“Is everything alright dear?” She felt her Maman’s hands on her shoulders, it was always reassuring that her Parents did so much to look out for her, even when she pretended to be just fine her Parents would give her time just to be by herself if she needed it and then be there if she wanted to talk.

“Yes Maman, she’s really nice… We just haven’t figured out what topic to do yet.” She laughed nervously as her Mother couldn’t help but give a somewhat serious expression.

“You know, if you at all feel uncomfortable, we can still make up an excuse-” She shook her head.

“No Maman its fine really, if anything we’ll just keep it to the school library… She’s- I don’t know, I can’t explain it, I just feel-”

“Relaxed?” Her Mother finished the sentence for her, she nodded as Sabine thought how glad this girl was making her feel.

“Alright, well then get back up there, you don’t want her thinking you abandoned her?” She nudged her cheek as Marinette pushed her hand gently. She gave her Mum a kiss on the cheek before making her way back up to her room.

She couldn’t explain the feeling much, it was like she was feeling peaceful, a smooth tranquillity around her.

It wasn’t a feeling she had around her older friends, it always seemed like whatever they did was rushed, no time to process it. Or they didn’t let her speak.

Rosaniline did, she let her speak, she listened to her, she made her- feel.

She didn’t want that feeling to go away.

“Piper- I know you like this book, but I don’t think you should be flicking through it.”

“But why? Marilee gave me these. And they look so pretty I want one.” The little one responded, she didn’t demand, she was raised better than that.

“Well, I don’t think she meant to give you this one.” She was confused, wait what book was it?

Her heart stopped as she saw a pink cover-

That- that was her commission book!

She was rushing too much to even notice that she’d given Piper that one book.

Oh god, she was going to see her secret, that she was starting her own commission blog, that she was MDC- that she could tell everyone at Collège Françoise Dupont, and it could ruin her career. That everyone could post lies about her, making nobody trust her and demand refunds, and maybe she’d get taken in by the police- be sent to jail and never have her dream job of-

“Mari? Hey, Mari can you hear me?” She felt warm hands wrap around her own. She could feel herself look up as silver concerned eyes looked back at hers.

She felt another tug at her skirt, looking down to see Piper with her own worried expression.

“Did I make Marilee upset?” It was a simple question that pulled at her heartstrings, she felt tears prickle at her eyes for her overthinking. But she didn’t mean for Piper to be upset, or for Rosaniline to be worried either.

There she went again, overthinking every little thing that she couldn’t account for, why did she have to be this way, why did she have to be so cynical and downright negative.

“Oh no, heavens no Piper, I just- er had something in my eye, yeah. You didn’t do anything Piper, I’m glad you like the books I gave you.” Piper smile grew as she proceeded to drag Marinette over to the books again.

She seemed to be putting on an act though, from what Rosaniline could see. She was panicking over something, why? She didn’t know, she did want to find out but didn’t want to push it. She had a habit of wanting to find out answers, it wasn’t a bad thing, she remembered her Mum say, it’s just sometimes she could be just a teeny bit insensitive about it.

Looking over the scene she saw her little Sister pointing excitedly at the pages of sketched clothing, her saying how much she loved them and all the colours that she used and said how the author was so creative.

Marinette laughed along, her tears faded as she enjoyed Piper’s enthusiasm, almost making a note to definitely make her something- and for Rosaniline of course, it’ll be weird to make it for one and not the other.

And then- an idea struck.

“I know, why don’t we do it about the history of fashion?” The dark-skinned girl spoke up. She saw two heads turn towards her as she grinned. Putting her hands together near her cheeks as she spiralled in her own thoughts.

“I’ve always wanted to learn more about it, to see the transformations going through all the ages. And this could be the perfect time. So, what do you think?” It was a question that seemed as if she could reject it, but it still felt like a trick.

What if she didn’t suggest this as a solution, but for convenience for herself, since now she knew she liked fashion and would make her do all the work, it’s not like it hadn’t happened before, so why did it hurt so much to have her do it?

Did she have any right to object, wouldn’t it seem like she was being way to fussy? They already saw her sketches before, so she couldn’t deny she was a good artist. But then what if the others thought it was her idea?

That she made Rosaniline chose this subject, and get told how selfish to have done so, a disappointing gaze from Bustier, a disapproving gaze from Adrien, she felt her chest tighten up again, oh god, she was overthinking again, why did she have to be like this?

“Hey- hey Mari, we don’t have to if you don’t want… I-er saw you liked videogames; we could always do it about that if you want?” But Mari felt so disappointed in herself, she was being so accommodating to her, why, why for her? She didn’t deserve this.

“B-But Marilee’s so good at drawing, she can really really really draw. I know you can do it.” Piper enthusiastically cheered, she would’ve smiled but couldn’t, not yet, she just had to think through it.

What could she do?

“Piper, not now” Rosaniline slightly scolded, she never liked doing it honestly, but besides her Mother she had the trademark glare that told her to pack it in.

Unfortunately, Piper never did look at her while she was in such an energetic mood.

What could she do?

“Rosalee she’s amazing, she’s the best in the world. Don’t do it about stupid video games.” She tried persuading her Sister to see some sense, in the short time that she had known Marilee, she was pretty much enarmed with her, she found another Sister that needed a confidence boost.

What. Could. She. Do!?

“Piper!- Look, sometimes not everyone wants to show their skills to other people, and we have to respect that, ok?” She crouched down to her level, kids felt less intimidated when you weren’t so tall, besides, Piper didn’t mean anything by it, she was always told to follow her heart, and if she was proud of something, she should show it off for the whole world to see.

What could-

Wait?

Could someone really be so accommodating? Could it really be true? Could all of this be true?

“Aww… Ok Rosalee, sorry Marilee” Piper hugged Marinette’s leg, and even though it felt like she was getting told off, she knew she wasn’t in real trouble.

Or was it a persona?

“I’ll do it.”

If this was a plan, a plan to make her do all the work, then she’ll go along with it. It felt so mean, so immature, so senseless that she still wasn’t trusting her, but she didn’t want to turn Rosaniline away without any evidence, besides, if this was all a trick, then surely it was better this way, she would’ve foreseen it and everything would go back to normal, she’d go off to join the class while she’d be alone once more, maybe they’ll have passing glances and memories of what could’ve been but she wouldn’t leave her here open and out to be in such a vulnerable position.

Not just for her, but for both, she didn’t know what would happen after another heartbreak.

“Huh?”

“I- I don’t mind if we do it about fashion, I mean, only if you want to, I don’t mind teaching you about it, I-I even had some books stored just for this, so I guess its lucky right” A nervous laughter evolved as she looked at anywhere but her.

However, the cherry haired girl wasn’t as convinced.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I guess little Piper just convinced me.” The little girl fist pumped to herself before running along back to her books before the bluenette felt soft hands on her shoulders.

“As long as you want to as well, I… Wouldn’t want to force you or anything” Quick, she had to ease the tension.

“-Psst- Don’t worry so much Rosaniline, c’mon I’ll see where I put those books, also how far do you wanna go back, if we go too far, we might not be able to cover everything. But if we go to a few years back our presentation would just be too small. Maybe we can just go halfway. That reminds me maybe we could have a physical element, I could throw together some pieces of old works together and show them of as we talk- or” Her shoulders were gently grabbed again as she looked at the close proximity she was in, it made her blush just a tad more than she thought she ever could.

“Maybe we could discuss that, over something to eat?” She quickly looked down and remembered the food on the ground, no doubt cold now. She felt guilt come in before seeing her passionate smile.

“Sorry, I just saw how passionate you were about this, I couldn’t bear to stop you, but then I got worried if you’d run out of air, Eheh. Think we can heat the food up?” She nodded, maybe it might be better to eat downstairs after all, now that Marinette knew what topic she- they were doing, they could crack on and complete it earlier than the deadline.

She’d have to get Rosaniline’s phone number of course, just in case they needed to discuss other things but that could wait.

Of course, it could wait.

She was just so happy in that moment, she- she may have really wanted to try and be her friend.

And maybe-

No- she just wanted to continue to be near her, to hold her hand when she’s upset, to help her when she’s had a bad day.

To be… Closer to her, to that warmth.

… Was it selfish of her to want to be near that warmth for longer?

***

Night had fallen upon Paris, but the lone girl on her balcony didn’t mind at all.

Ever since that day, a part of her wished something else would happen.

No- she didn’t want the hero to be hurt again, that’s by far too sadistic to even think about… But she was really excited by all of those events, when she was able to get a breather, there was a rush of adrenaline throwing through her veins, and even if she did want something else to happen, she’d prefer to be out here just to see if she could get a glimpse of the hero again.

It had been a week since it happened, and Marinette could only guess she must have been resting from her… Fight? Was that the right word? Oh well, she must’ve been resting since she hadn’t heard anything about her from the news for a while, she could only hope her wound would heal by professionals instead of her shoddy work. But- she had to realise that she had to hope for the hero’s survival.

For Soliane Rin’s survival.

… She may have read a bit more into her- but it was only out of curiosity, she wasn’t going to gain another obsessive crush over someone famous again, nope, nada, she wasn’t going to fall for those really amazing silver eyes the press had made sure to call grey, but she was sure they were silver.

Wait, no it wasn’t like she looked at them for particularly long or anything, she definitely didn’t get lost in them, she saw a poster of them! Ah- this wasn’t helping. She needed to change the subject immediately!

Clang.

She jumped up instantly, her commissions book that was resting on her lap was now flying through the air! Oh no, she was going to lose everything, crap! Her designs!

A figure, however, flew up to catch them before landing in front of the startled girl.

“I believe these books were trying to plan their escape from you mi Belle” It was her; it really was her! She was-

“You’re alright” Her happiness took over her before she could even register that she had leapt into the arms of the hero of Paris.

She was going to regret this so much.

With her cheeks rosying so much, she jumped back until she fell back onto her chair, apology after apology escaping the girl not daring to look at her face.

‘How embarrassing, how inappropriate, how childish. Why did she have to make a fool out of herself now? In front of the new hero no less? Again!’

“There’s no need for any embarrassment, I was unaware I’d caused you such panic over my recovery, if I’d known you were worried, I would’ve visited a lot sooner.” Ah- she was always so formal with her choice of words. It was great, she was great- wait what?

“But I- didn’t realise you’d wish to see me after my blunder from last time.” That made her perk up, what… What was she talking about?

Soliane’s gaze seemed to be fixated on the ground as she looked so- so frustrated with herself. Why?

“To have failed on the first day as a hero, to have troubled a civilian with help. I can’t thank you enough to have woken you at such a godly hour just for my sake” She bowed her head forward as Marinette couldn’t help but try to make her stop.

“It’s nothing really, I mean I’m sure anyone else would help out a hero like you. I-I mean maybe not everyone else since there are some bad people but I’m sure most will. Not that you don’t need it, I mean you do- don’t I- I’m sorry I’m rambling again” Soliane Rin didn’t appear to hear her as she carried on with her tirade.

“But to not even know who it was that harmed me. I-I don’t deserve to have my title as a hero.” Why? Why was she saying this? She- no she couldn’t be serious.

But that look made it all the more real, she’d seen it so much. Every time she ever looked in the mirror after crying for so long, regret, disappointment, anything and everything negative flashed through her mind and she could tell, see everything, all of it.

And knew it broke her, would break her.

Marinette knew she didn’t have any powers.

She couldn’t shoot lasers from her eyes.

She couldn’t fly.

She couldn’t control objects through her mind.

But- how Mother always said she had a talent for one thing.

Empathy.

She could be so understanding when her mind was so calm, when she wasn’t worrying about what others were thinking of her, when she could see, truly see inside their heart, all of their feelings out on display, and helping them, by being there for them.

For knowing exactly what to say…

It- may not always work, but no superhero comes out of every battle unscathed.

“Please stop” She looked up, but it was still such a pitying look. She could see through her smile, but it felt as if she wasn’t even trying to hide it, like there was no use concealing it.

“You can’t keep blaming yourself for a mistake like that, it’s not fair to you- or to me. Yes, I was scared when I saw you injured, but I’m so glad that you’re here now. You’re still standing. You still want to continue even when you were hurt. I’ve seen just how strong you are, how confident you can be when the world tried to throw its worse at you.” She stepped closer to her, having gotten up from her fallen position.

“So please don’t give up for one mistake,”

She stepped closer…

“Don’t give up when I know you have the strength in you to persist.” She wrapped her arms around her again, and this time she wasn’t so embarrassed about doing it.

She was crying…

She tried to use those words for someone else.

It hadn’t worked… So, she had to believe in anything and everything for it to succeed now, for her.

“You risk your life every day, and yet you never ask for anything. I want to thank you for all that you’ve done, on behalf of Paris, no, the whole world. You’re a real hero Soliane Rin. Please don’t doubt that.” She hugged a bit tighter; she hadn’t meant to get so emotional on her, but maybe that emotion wasn’t just for her.

.

.

It was silent.

Too silent.

Marinette had to hold her breath in anticipation, did- did she go too far? Did she overstep her boundaries again? Did she-

“Ah I see. Thank you, I-I mean, I appreciate your gratitude Marinette” When she looked back, she could see her cheeks were red, she could see her silver eyes look back at her before seeing her own cheeks reddening as well- wait, she was so close! Again!

She jumped back again, not falling this time, thanking the heavens that she wasn’t making a fool out herself as much as usual.

“I must commend your stubbornness my dear. I- I hadn’t imagined you’d have a positive opinion of me after that, I must apologise for making such a rash assumption about you, and for- eh snapping me out of that. I’m thankful to have met such a kind and respectable hero like you.” She bowed her head again as Marinette had to comprehend what had just happened.

It felt awkward, Soliane Rin was blushing a lot, Marinette was blushing like crazy as well.

“Me a hero, what no way. You’re just joking, don’t tell me you hit your head too?” She waved her hands in front of her. She recalled how clumsy she was, how often she’d trip on the stairs to Collège or even when she dropped her tray of pastries on the floor, that one was particularly embarrassing.

However, she was too late to see that Soliane had stopped her smile as Marinette began to panic again.

“No! I didn’t mean hit your head I meant did you crack it- no check it- no I mean, how can I ever be a hero to anything, I’m just me, Marinette. I don’t have any superpowers or anything I’m just an ordinary girl ehehehe” She felt her hand taken by the hero again, her heart stopping for a moment before jumping to x2, she couldn’t believe she was holding her hand again.

“Just because I wear a mask and costume doesn’t make me a hero. It’s my ideals and thoughts for the people. Marinette, you may not have powers, or a hero name. But you can be a hero still. After all, All that is needed for the prevail of malevolence is that individuals concede defeat.” Marinette was shocked, she just- wow, that was cool. And… So sweet. To say that, about anyone, about her. Even if she didn’t fully believe it at first, she’d be sure to keep those words very close to her heart.

The bluenette smiled back, before they both looked over her balcony and over Paris, they share a moment just looking out, the silence was comforting to them as some time passed.

There was a question that may have crossed her mind at one point, she felt guilty for taking so much time out of her day- night- schedule? Oh well, she had to ask just one little thing.

Marinette fiddling with her fingers, she took a deep breath.

“S-So do you have to do a patrol or-” Soliane looked up surprised before checking something around her wrist, she laughed nervously before turning back.

“Huh- oh yes, unfortunately I won’t be able to stay longer, however it would be even more unbefitting of me to avoid my job any further” She wanted to deny what she said was true, but saw her giggle so slightly, knowing it was a small joke, she lightened up as Soliane Rin bows again and flies off from her balcony railings bidding her adieu.

With her hand resting where her heart was beating, faster than usual, faster then whenever she was late for class. Faster than-

Oh

Oh

Oh no.

No no no! Not again, how did she not realise it sooner?

How!?

This familiar feeling.

Why did it come back?

And why did she want it to stay!?

***

I hope you enjoyed it.

Anyway, I’m willing to take a bunch off prompts for Rosann and Mari on date nights/doing couple things, whether you want some added salt from the class is up to each requester, I may turn a few away if I either feel uncomfortable or simply not able to write it, these prompts will come out randomly, I have no structure to anything. To submit, I’ll allow for the idea to be within any time frame, i.e. when they first meet, to being friends, to being a couple. I do love angst although I’ll be unsure how to make it work when it should be a ton off fluff stuff. If you have any questions don’t feel afraid to ask, I might have to clarify some points. I’ll be ordering the prompts, and stating when they come in the main story, what you would’ve need to have read before, if it contained any spoilers for certain chapters and any trigger warnings, although you may need to state what might be triggering as sometimes, I too get confused on what I need to state, if anyone can do that then that’s alright.)

Even though I like a Saltinette, sometimes I still wanna see a different perspective of her, an anxious, guilt-ridden, cautious, mess like this version. I just think it’ll be interesting to basically rewrite Marinette’s character. Instead of this sassy overconfident one in most fanfic’s I’ve now changed the status quo. Haha.

And I believe I’ve taken a somewhat realistic approach to Marinette trying to trust someone else, I didn’t want to just rush into it. However, I do think it’s a bit different with Soliane Rin because she is a hero, and I think Marinette could trust her a lot easier than Rosaniline.

Also did you know that Majestia’s quote was a straight rip off of Edmund Burke’s?

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing.

Yeah...

Cya next time.

Note: Please tell me if I should add anything else to the card, there will be one of these cards for all 15 chapters, however, because I have uni work all updates will be slower because I really need to focus on the uni stuff, then I might be able to upload quicker. They also may change in the future because I can never stop adding stuff.

HACKERS AND SPEAKING

No company, however successful, ever looks more than a pretty good bet a few months. Either way it sucks. We ask mainly out of politeness. If you think someone judging you will work hard to judge you correctly, there's usually some feeling they shouldn't have to express every program as the definition of new types. If investors can no longer rely on their herd instincts, they'll have to get a foot in the door. -Oriented programming generates a lot of new work is preferable to a proof that was difficult, but doesn't lead to future discoveries; in the sciences generally, citation is considered a rough indicator of merit. If startups are mobile, the best local talent will go to the real Silicon Valley, and all they'll get at the local one will be the people who get PhDs in CS don't go into research. They're the ones in a position of power. I'm still not sure whether he thought AI was nonsense and that majoring in something rigorous would cure me of such stupid ambitions. I have never had to talk. When you change the angle of someone's eye five degrees, no one will pay for. Umair Haque wrote recently that the reason there aren't more Googles is that most startups get bought before they can change the world, people don't start things till they're sure what they want, regardless of how many are started.

Startups will go to work anyway and sit in front of them, so the odds of getting this great deal are 1 in 300. On the other hand, startup investing is a very strange business. Even if your only goal is to get every distraction out of the closet and admit, at least by comparison, be called turmoil. Just two or three lifetimes ago, most people in what are now called industrialized countries lived by farming. But software companies don't hire students for the summer as a source of cheap labor. But if you're starting a startup. I worried? I said what they need to get good grades to get into elite colleges, and college students think they need to get good grades to impress future employers, students will try to undermine the VCs by acting faster, and the VCs will gradually figure out ways to make money from. How casual successful startup founders are.

I write software: I sit down and blow out a lame version 1 as fast as angels and super-angels themselves. We think of the techniques we're developing for dealing with detail. I know of schlep blindness is Stripe, or rather Stripe's idea. You're better off avoiding these. If so, your old tastes were not merely different, but worse. Why is it that research can be done by collaborators. I'd guess the most successful startups we've funded haven't launched their products yet, but are definitely launched as companies. Fortran because not surprisingly in a language where you have to design what the user needs, who is the user? You may dispute either of the premises, but if you get funded by Y Combinator. But it seems more dangerous to put stuff in that you've never needed because it's thought to be a promising experiment that's worth funding to see how it turns out.1 But the startup world for so long that it seems promising enough to worry that you might not be the best solution. In Kate's world, everything is still physical and expensive.

Only a few companies have been smart enough to realize this so far. It's not super hard to get into grad school or just be good at math to write Mathematica. Google is afflicted with this, apparently. It has always seemed to me the solution is to tackle the problem head-on, and that people should work for another company for a few years down the line. With so much at stake, they have to be big, and it frees conscious thought for the hard problems. Why do you think so? Whereas when they don't like you, they'll be out of business, lies in something very old-fashioned: face to face for three months—so closely in fact that we insist they move to where we are. A lot of them. They believe this because it really feels that way to them.2

That solves the problem if you get a real job after you graduate. Because depending on the meaning of the word 'is' is. As usual, by Demo Day about half the founders from that first summer, less than two years ago, are now rich, at least in the short term. It was a lot of institutionalized delays in startup funding: the multi-week mating dance with investors; the distinction between termsheets and deals; the fact that you're mainly interested in hacking shouldn't deter you from going to grad school, because very few people are quite at home in computer science, and it will seem to investors no more than superficial changes. It's not just because they were pulled into it by unscrupulous investment bankers. You're rolling the dice again, whether you want them as a cofounder. In the mid twentieth century there was a great deal of play in these numbers. When you're forced to be simple, you're forced to be simple, you're forced to face the real problem. They treat the words printed in the book the same way you'd deal with a cold swimming pool: just jump in. So when you find an idea you know is good but most people disagree with, you should get a job. Nowadays a lot of de facto control after a series A round needs to be a good time for startups to have traction before they put in significant money.

One of our goals with Y Combinator was to discover the lower bound on the age of startup founders.3 If taste is just personal preference is a good deal of fighting in being the public face of an organization. The biggest factor determining how a VC will feel about your startup is how other VCs feel about it. Your tastes will change. So unless their founders could pull off an IPO which would be difficult with Yahoo as a competitor, they had become extremely formidable. The mobility of seed-stage startups means that seed funding is a national business.4 The puffed-up companies that went public during the Bubble didn't do it just because they want you to be a really good deal.

Do you, er, want a printout of yesterday's news? I know many people who switched from math to painting. This essay is derived from talks at the 2007 Startup School and the Berkeley CSUA. As well as mattering less whether students get degrees, it will turn out worse. Some magazines may thrive by focusing on the magazine as a physical object. As long as it isn't floppy, consumers still perceive it as a period that would have been for two Google employees to focus on the wrong things for six months, and the super-angels were initially angels of the classic type. Should you take it? Maybe, though the list of acquirers is a lot less than most university departments like to admit. VCs do now. It's too late now to be Stripe, but there's usually some feeling they shouldn't have to—that their startup will be huge—and convincing anyone of something like that must obviously entail some wild feat of salesmanship. The other reason parents may be mistaken is that, like generals, they're always fighting the last war.

5% an offer of 6. How has your taste changed? I don't consider myself to be doing research on programming languages. So if you want to work for, they may start to focus on working with other students they want as cofounders. Even though Y Combinator is teach hackers about the inevitability of schleps. And that statistic is probably not an option for most magazines. The seriousness of signalling risk depends on how far along you are with other investors seems the complementary countermove. Over in the arts. I don't know yet what the new rules will be, but it has to be better if both were combined in one group, headed by someone with a PhD in computer science, and it has to double: if you can imagine someone surpassing you, you can predict fairly accurately what the next few years will be like, but I'm not too worried about it.

Notes

That's because the arrival of desktop publishing, given people the first year or two, because they need them to private schools that in Silicon Valley, but suburbs are so different from a startup is compress a lifetime's worth of work into a fancy restaurant in San Francisco. We could be done, she expresses it by smiling more. It would have been the first question is only half a religious one; there is one that did.

The ordering system, which is probably part of a heuristic for detecting whether you realize it yet or not, and this is also a second factor: startup founders is how much they lied to them. Give the founders are driven only by money—for example, being offered large bribes by the financial controls of World War II was in logic and zoology, both your lawyers should be taken into account, they mean. It may be whether what you build for them.

We invest small amounts of new inventions until they become so embedded that they don't make users register to try to write it all yourself. It's lame that VCs play such games, but more often than not what it would be possible to have balked at this, but he got killed in the US treat the poor worse than Japanese car companies, but have no idea what's happening as merely not-too-demanding environment, and this trick merely forces you to agree. You're not seeing fragmentation unless you see them much in their target market the shoplifters are also the 11% most susceptible to charisma. If an investor makes you a clean offer with no valuation cap is merely boring, we found they used it to the biggest winners, which was acquired for 50 million, and don't want to work like they worked together mostly at night.

Except text editors and compilers. Users dislike their new operating system.

Thanks to Dan Giffin, Jessica Livingston, Hutch Fishman, Sam Altman, Robert Morris, and Ron Conway for sparking my interest in this topic.

45 questions...now that endgame has commenced

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with?

Nope! She has no siblings and her mother’s gone up and left when she was young, so the closest she’s with is her father, whom of which she regrets not cherishing him enough before getting trapped in VR hell, so whoops! Sucks for you, Ai! (EDIT: I MISREAD THIS SLIGHTLY SO YOU GET EXTRA INFO ON AI’S THOUGHTS ABT HER DAD LOL) Speaking of mom…

What is/was your character’s relationship with their mother like?

Uhh not too well NOWADAYS, considering she left when Ai was young, but they spent time together watching TVs dramas and comedies and playing with Ai’s toys together and such, as Naoko (her mum’s name) was a stay-at-home mom. Nowadays Ai wonders how she is (in a bit of a more spiteful sense but…maybe it’s in a different sense now.) since she KNOWS her dad’s pretty lonely and a bit distraught for being left with her daughter (that resembles her a little too well, down to appearance, acrid tongue and drama love). …perhaps she’s forgotten about Ai and Yosuke by now. Speaking of THAAAT…

What is/was your character’s relationship with their father like?

Well, pretty distant and a bit one-sided, unfortunately. They were like any other cute father-daughter pair up until Naoko left, then Yosuke (dad’s name) became a bit distraught with being left a single dad. (He works as a nurse at a hospital!) Still, he took care of her nonetheless–then Ai started to become distant by middle school. Her working on her drawings and getting bullied and developing a bit of a sleazy, drama-loving personality and all–it REALLY started to hit by high school. Even if Ai was raking in cash with her manga and giving a portion of it to dad to help financially, she basically kept cooped up in her room and their interactions were mere greetings. Heck, she mostly ate meals in her room! A shame, really.

Edit: Regret. She…she feels regret.

Has your character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them? If so, does anyone else know?

THIS was a toughie. Perhaps one major thing was seeing Shoko Yazawa, the girl she indirectly gossiped about being a compensated dater, commit social suicide and basically disappear from Kameoka. She just…doesn’t feel comfy thinking about how she might actually be dead and how something that might have not even been true at ALL possibly cost her her social life. She may like drama, but she feels lies makes it…complicated? I can’t find the right word. Everything’s more authentic when it’s true and real, Ai feels.

EDIT: Cody’s deletion. It gave her the feeling that they very well may just be erased off the face of the Earth without feeling anything, in the blink of an eye. Mostly because, spoiler spoiler, Ai glitched out in the hospital space just like Cody but got spawned in a different area rather than deleted. So. Yeah. Scary.

EDIT 2: I GUESS DYING AND WHAT FOLLOWED AFTERWARD WAS AN EYE OPENER

On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets?

Out of game: strawberry gum/various candies, her phone, a spare pen/pencil or two just in case~! Not like she’d need to carry stuff in her pockets–she’s mostly a shut-in anyway!

In Telos Hell: Her ID, and…er, that’d…probably be it. I didn’t think this very through. In the case of what she often CARRIES (like, in her hands) it’d be snacks like pudding or candy and her sketchbook, I suppose.

Does your character have recurring themes in their dreams?

Erm…this took a while to answer since I never thought that Ai would have dreams–I lowkey imagined her to be one of those dreamless sleepers. Y’know, granted she doesn’t get much shut-eye in the first place? But I suppose her dreams often involve her being a shadow or a ghost of some sorts in a bit of a beat-up town, just watching the town go on (robberies, theft, murder, or just…regular things like a couple arguing or girls gossiping) as no one notices her.

Does your character have recurring themes in their nightmares?

This goes just as above, but I’ll list it out anyway: I feel something along the lines of all eyes and blinding lights always being on her wherever she tries to run, and all mouths (her classmates, her fans, her patrons her dad, her mom, Shoko) always speaking of her, revealing her gross nature in contrast to the mysterious but ladylike (??? I guess?) mangaka alias she pretends to be online. Maybe hands would be holding her down so she can’t run and has to face all the lights and all the people.

I figure she doesn’t have nightmares often, since, again, she doesn’t get much shuteye, but…ha

EDIT: Glitchy erasure has probably haunted her a few times nowadays.

Has your character ever fired a gun? If so, what was their first target?

Nope.

Is your character’s current socioeconomic status different than it was when they were growing up?

Pretty much! She didn’t grow up POOR but things were probably pretty tight at one point in her life, considering Yosuke soon became a single working dad in the middle of Ai’s childhood. As soon as she started raking in that Sweet Sweet Manga Cash, however, she was happy to set out a portion of her money for her dad, so they ended up okay and a little well off! (Not rich but u get what i mean, hopefully)

Does your character feel more comfortable with more clothing, or with less clothing?

More clothing–she just feels better that way.

In what situation was your character the most afraid they’ve ever been?

Hoo-wee. It’s…a liiittle hard to say.

Tora chapter 2 was a doozy, but she wasn’t as scared then as she was, say...witnessing Cody getting erased, or glitching out HERSELF way back in ch7 when she was in the hospital space. She just felt...terrified, feeling like she’d suddenly disappear without another word, AND without feeling anything.

In what situation was your character the most calm they’ve ever been?

Whenever she’s in her room, not disturbed by anyone, just browsing through social media idly with snacks on standby. Or asleep, considering … help this girl

Is your character bothered by the sight of blood? If so, in what way?

She really isn’t…at least, she thought she wasn’t. She’s gotten pretty used to the sight of blood as a kid, when she’d gotten the occasional bloody nose from bullying back in her school days, and ofc with her job revolving around illustrating violence and sometimes GORE, you get immune to it!

At least, you think you do. As quoted from what I put on that FE AU spreadsheet a longass while ago “Gore looks much…mushier than on paper.”

Ryouji’s dead corpse was a nice ‘ol REVELATION for Ai. Since the closest thing to shit like that was descriptions of shit from the hospital (thanks nurse dad) and anatomy charts and guro art she’s browsed, seeing a REAL corpse in such a situation was…a game changer.

At this point, Ai’s a bit immune to it lol. So many bodies, yanno? She’s now…scarily used to it. Of course, the nature and customization of the executions are…unnerving to her, sometimes. I’m talking to you, Ryouji, lmao (She’ll probably still be pretty unnerved if she…ever…wants to go back to drawing manga tho…I don’t think she will. She’ll take a longass break.)

Does your character remember names or faces easier?

Depends, I would think. Ingame: faces, but out of game, since she doesn’t really care for her classmates and real people and shit, she remembers names more. The internet is a far more vast place, after all.

Is your character preoccupied with money or material possession? Why or why not?

This is hard because I don’t think about this often myself

I guess she IS? She enjoys having things like snacks and desserts and tech around her, but she’s mostly just preoccupied with drama, relationships, fights and…people, I guess. I don’t have a good answer for this.

Which does your character idealize most: happiness or success?

I was about to say neither and point at “enjoyment”, but I guess…that could…sort of align with happiness? You can’t be a mangaka forever, and WHAT ELSE is she good for? Ha. She’d rather sit back and simply be able to enjoy a show rather than idealize shit like that. Life’s a show you can’t waste a minute to wake in!

…mm.

What was your character’s favorite toy as a child?

Dolls, probably. Y’know, er…the equivalent of Barbie dolls, I guess? I can’t go too into depth since I haven’t fleshed out her childhood all too much, but…dolls seem accurate for her. She’d like dressing them up, decorating the houses (if that was a thing…?) and sometimes even playing pretend with them, I’d imagine–and Naoko would honestly play along with her, I’d think!

Is your character more likely to admire wisdom, or ambition in others?

She admires the pettiness ambition of people around her, really. Just…seeing the lengths people would go for their goals, good or bad.

What is your character’s biggest relationship flaw? Has this flaw destroyed relationships for them before?

Like I said, she was literally alienated at the concept of people caring about her and her wellbeing.

Said alienation, initial refusal to accept praise of her, AND general nasty/careless/joking attitude, as well as her constant self-deprecation is a pretty fuckin’ big downer in relationships. Hell, part of her attitude already drives people away, she knows–might as well show she’s self-aware of it right?

…it’s definitely cost her potential friendships. Lots of ‘em.

In what ways does your character compare themselves to others? Do they do this for the sake of self-validation, or self-criticism?

Depends. …mostly the latter though. She knows she’s a piece of shit but occasionally she sees some people and goes “ok at least I’m not them tho lol”. Sorry Senji, Ryouji, some others I probably forgot to mention here. I still love you.

If something tragic or negative happens to your character, do they believe they may have caused or deserved it, or are they quick to blame others?

Oh hell yeah she thinks she deserves it. Karma, baby! Gotta love it.

What does your character like in other people?

Pettiness, wittiness, cunning, the ability to take a joke and make a joke–people who are laidback and careless enough to not be easily brought down. ok look masashi “hee-haw” oichi is a special case here, she thinks hee-haw is annoying but ill be damned if she doesnt eventually get used to it and admires masashi’s directness

What does your character dislike in other people?

Pettiness done WRONG to look like absolute immaturity…and on that note, people acting like loud immature brats in general, people who hold huge grudges over small and/or past events, haughtiness, tryhards (ok yes she can be a tad hypocritical but she’ll swear there’s a difference), people who (in her words, probs) have “sticks up their asses”…you surely get the gist.

How quick is your character to trust someone else?

LMAO NOT QUICK @ ALL (especially in a game like this) she can drop trust pretty quickly tho ;0

…once you do end up gaining her trust, though, it’s strong with just a liiitle bit of doubt. As soon as you break it tho, her trust in you AND others plummet down the fucking toilet so lol

EDIT: ok so i’ll be honest now that it’s endgame, the reason she seems more willing to believe lies in others than she probs should is that she believes in predictability and also me myself, the mun, am Fucking Dumbass and fall for the lies myself, so if i can’t see past them even if Ai in-characterly Can, then im sorry my dudes im Fucking Dumb :’O

How quick is your character to suspect someone else? Does this change if they are close with that person?

Pretty quick, but she won’t necessarily voice it until she has a good opportunity. If they’re close to her, and she trusts them, she won’t suspect them unless shit seriously starts pointing to them, then it starts getting 👀👀👀

How does your character behave around children?

[ai voice] i think the fuck not, goodbye

She doesn’t…handle children well.

How does your character normally deal with confrontation?

haha……………..she doesn’t (usually)

She literally watches drama from afar, you think she wanna get involved in shit?

…when she does deal with it, she replies as bluntly and honestly as possible so she can get it over with. confrontation? no thanks lol

…maybe she’ll add some sass when she finds a good opportunity if she wants to make the confronter feel like a dumbass or smth, or if it starts to piss her off.

How quick or slow is your character to resort to physical violence in a confrontation?

Ai…knows that violence in a losing battle for her. She’s weak. (….listen ryouji was already down in that one trial, ok) If a punch is thrown, she’ll either dodge and run, or take it and scuttle, tbh.

What did your character dream of being or doing as a child? Did that dream come true?

She didn’t really have those types of dreams as a kid, really?? But maybe her drawings as she grew up started to make her think of being an artist. And…well, it DID come true, right? …with, y’know, the cost of tons of potential friendships. And other shit. ha

What does your character find repulsive or disgusting?

Well, ONE thing is wasted opportunity, which is why, as you saw, Ai was PISSED at Ryouji when he was the chapter 6 culprit.

…okay, that’s very exaggerated for being listed and something “repulsive” to her, but…disgusting? ye.

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most comfortable.

Same spiel as the calm one, if you scroll up: in her room back at Kameoka, no one bothering her, the sound of rain and muffled thunder rumbles outside as she scrolls through the internet, snacks at her side while feeling cozy af in warm clothing/probably a blanket over her.

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most uncomfortable.

I can list a few, actually! A certain text conversation between Andrew and Ai during Chapter 6, CHPT4 MONOTHEATER IN TORA AND CHPT5 MONOTHEATER? IN TELOS I BELIEVE? Because there was a very down, depressed vibe goin’ on–mostly the reaction of the deaths and all that, and the feeling that…everyone’s in despair. And tense. It’s infectious, unfortunately.

…and also, er, tora chpt2 trial. You Know,

EDIT: Cody’s erasure lol

In the face of criticism, is your character defensive, self-deprecating, or willing to improve?

SELF-DEPRECATION, BABY ;0

Nowadays, thanks to the magic of Character Development, she’s starting to see that she can improve. So she does the third one more, now.

Is your character more likely to keep trying a solution/method that didn’t work the first time, or immediately move on to a different solution/method?

She’s definitely the type to keep trying a certain method a few times before moving on in frustration.

How does your character behave around people they like?

Laidback, and more open, with banter all around! If you’re someone she likes who has…made an impact on her (like Holly acting like a big sis for her, thanks holly ily) then she’ll still make jokes but not be as biting! She’ll try to be more lightheartedly jokey rather than have each joke be a diss.

How does your character behave around people they dislike?

Prepare for disses, eye rolls and snappy attitudes…or, er, just straight up disrespect and igonring.

Is your character more concerned with defending their honor, or protecting their status?

Protecting their status, most likely. She…has no honor, really.

Is your character more likely to remove a problem/threat, or remove themselves from a problem/threat?

*ahem*

abscond

Has your character ever been bitten by an animal? How were they affected (or unaffected)?

Nope! Never been bitten, and she certainly doesn’t plan to!

How does your character treat people in service jobs?

General respect and decency whenever she DOES go out for, say, groceries at 7/11 or something. She’d generally like to leave asap when she goes out though, so she does sometimes ask to, like, quicken the pace. What did the service job people ever do to her, anyhow, besides like, possibly make her wait? No disses here, thank god

Does your character feel that they deserve to have what they want, whether it be material or abstract, or do they feel they must earn it first?

Ai feels she doesn’t…deserve a lot of things she has, and definitely thinks that a lot of kids in Telos don’t deserve the shit they get thrown at them either (but, yes, there are some who she thinks do get what’s coming for them, but not many), so it’d be the latter, I suppose.

Has your character ever had a parental figure who was not related to them?

Nope. Easy answer.

Has your character ever had a dependent figure who was not related to them?

…not dependent, but…there’s one person who does a pretty good job trying to be one for her. (Spoiler alert it’s Holly, god bless this water polo player I love her so much get better soon athena ur great ily)

How easy or difficult is it for your character to say “I love you?” Can they say it without meaning it?

Pretty goddamn difficult. She thinks of it as a bit of a hard thing to say herself, but agrees it’s something thrown around way too much nowadays–which is, in part, why it’s hard for her to say. (Also she’s never really gotten it from anyone except her parents ha) Ai doesn’t and wouldn’t say it in general (unless it’s joking with friends but even THEN its rare bc Got Damn can’t have too much hypocricy) since it’s a bit overused in society and seems like a throwaway term w/o meaning. When she DOES wanna say it MEANINGFULLY, she’d really want to MEAN it, which is hard with…the kind of mindset she has on the word.

What does your character believe will happen to them after they die? Does this belief scare them?

She doesn’t know!

Which is exactly what scares her.

Not like she thinks about it often, though! (er…well…maybe she does now.)

Nor does she want to. :)

EDIT: this still goes unchanged but it goes to show, uh...what she might’ve thought when she was “dying” at the time.

Music and the Myth of Wholeness

This is the title of Tim Hodgkinson’s latest book. The book is ambitious and fairly abstract and as far as I can tell quite original. I want to approach its central theory via the writings of Andrew Hodges who is Dean of  Wadham College Oxford. He is a theoretical physicist but he also writes more mainstream stuff. He first came to my notice via his biography of Alan Turing. This was praised and when I got to read I totally agreed with those judgements. I was particularly interested that while still a student at Cambridge he went to Wittgenstein’s seminars on the foundations of mathematics but he also found his way to Princeton where he had discussions with Kurt Godel.

I have not long acquired a second AH book on the numbers one to nine. The element I want to highlight comes from his discussion of one. He looks at the idea that the number one links to our perception of ourselves as the slang use of the expression suggests. He goes beyond this suggesting that personhood involves I and You. In fact there may be a multiplicity.

He gets the multiplicity by an interesting route. If Zero is the Empty Set and One is the successor to Zero then he suggests that One contains Zero. But the Empty Set and the Number One are two things. This enumeration can be extended over and over. This trope is close to Russell s famous Paradox, much discussed since it was formulated over a century ago.

Badiou, the French philosopher, bases his metaphysics on set theory as set out in his Being and Event. I find this book impressive but hard work which is how I find his subsequent book, Number and Numbers. In this latter work he suggests that Russell’s Paradox shows a rupture between the world of concepts and the world of existence.

 Much the same could be said of Galen Strawson’s book on the Self. Strawson concludes that Hume’s scepticism about the oneness of self is valid. So that is further confirmation that one may not be a viable model of the first person. So my first conclusion is that Tim Hodgkinson may be onto something with Myth of Wholeness. It might be worth just mentioning the multiplicity in the Christian view of one God as three persons. Indeed as TH builds up his attack on wholeness as a musical concept he uses the Christian i dea of unchanging unity. He relates this to the textuality which undoubtedly is present in liturgical practice often.

As the discussion proceeds it is no surprise that Shostakovitch crops up:

‘Where art bends to social formation, makes itself nothing but of meaning, it compromises its nature and gives up whatever social force it might have deployed by virtue of its autonomy from meaning. Shostsakovich, facing  the unimaginable pressures of Stalin’s terror, no doubt produced some bad art as a matter of survival, but he managed to keep his integrity and autonomy as an artist.’ (p116)

TH develops an informational model of human perception of music.The way that humans build models of themselves using available technological models is complex and certainly goes back further than the introducing of metaphors such as ‘letting off steam’ and ‘blowing a gasket’. In my world one key source is H A Simon’s concept of bounded rationality. In essence this means that we are constantly faced by situations where some theories suggest the need for enormously complex deliberation. Economics has an account of shopping in a supermarket which is deeply implausible as a theory of how we actually think. In fact the new Behavioural Economics has made headway because it offers more effective ways of supporting human choice.

TH s stance can be summarised as suggesting that musical perception involves this kind of bounded rationality  and that we are not aware of some of the processes involved in air  vibrations becoming sound for us.

Reflecting on the promise and threat of AI and robotics I had come to a similar conclusion. As human beings we live with a host of autonomous and semi-autonomous systems which fundamentally keep us going. The boundary between intentional perception and these systems can and does shift. There may well be a tie in between this state of affairs and the failure of ‘one’ as a model of ourselves.

TH contrasts musical analysis in the sense of Schenker, Tovey and Forte with a cognitive account of how humans listen to music .In post war European composition there is typically a huge amount of analysable structure. Most people perhaps everyone won’t hear much of the structure. Schoenberg apparently said once that audiences shouldn't concentrate on how the music is made. They should listen to how its played. This was a neat turn of phrase and makes a good starting point. I don't think it’s the end of the matter.

TH uses the concept of recursivity to illuminate musical listening. Recursivity has an interesting history as a concept starting of course in maths and logic. Hofstadter wrote an epocal book, Godel, Escher and Bach which brought recursivity into more mainstream culture. Important clues in the title of course.  With recursion there is a process with an input and output which proceeds in cycles. On the first cycle an input become an output. On the next cycle the output from the previous cycle becomes the input for the current cycle. This can all go on and on. Whether the process repetition stops or could repeat indefinitely is a way to some interesting mathematics.

Iterative processing is a feature of modern AI techniques like deep learning based on the computer configuration termed neural networking. This is a kind of digital information where the output at one level becomes the input at next level. If we imagine patterns of sound waves via our eardrum becoming a pattern of impulses in our nervous system and moving through our brain then the supposition is that some similar recursive processing takes place. As far as I am aware this is a plausible hypothesis rather than scientific fact. Currently neural networks and I is the subject of a lot positive PR. I think it is best to think of it as a new way of doing pattern recognition. As such it could be part of processing sound waves into music, of course.

Neural networking can appear to be the definitive way of finding a pattern in data but this is misleading. Detailed aspects of neural networks have to be selected for each specific type of information processing and in practical terms, getting the best arrangement  requires experience and understanding.

There is an echo of this in Adam Harper’s book Infinite Music: Imagining the Next Millennium of Human Music-Making which I bought 5 years ago after hearing him speak at Café Oto. AH suggests that musical form is extremely variable. There are in indefinite number of parameters which might become central within a new kind of music. I am very sympathetic to this insight - as a student I argued something similar with the philosopher Bernard Williams in his rooms at KIngs. We were discussing whether we could conceive of circumstances in which Beethoven’s musical achievement was obvious and widely acknowledged. I could and BW couldn't.  Anyway, this open endness of musical form and neural network based pattern recognition emerges as supporting evidence  for TH s suggestion that musical wholeness is a myth.

The experimentation that free music undertook starting in the UK in the mid 60s can be seen as a validation of Harper’s ideas with musicians searching for new formal parameters and relations. The social practice of free improv provides an antedote to the consistency and other problems that the Private Language presents to the possibility of isolated attempts at formal innovation.

The composers discussed in Boring Formless Nonsense might also be brought in. I found BFN baffling at first and it was through the footnotes and references that I got most value out of it initially. One such is Christine Ross’s Aesthetics of Disengagement. She is a Professor of English at Stamford University

Ross seeks to root her analysis in available evidence and opts to  examine the contemporary epidemic of depression and the socially approved treatments. She suggests that contemporary art situates itself in the gap that has arisen between classic therapy via psychoanalysis and socially validated treatments such as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. Art opposes the cognitivist approach of CBT and consequently seeks to explore the subjective experience of art. Unfortunately in this subjective turn Ross believes it has abandoned key goals of modernity in emancipation and subversion. The result is that art has become an advocate for self absorption and the protection of the self from possible loss of the other. It elevates the equation of subjectivity and depression and follows a logic of disengagement. This all fits with subjectivity confronted by neo-liberalism. Ross gets to this position by examining fine art rather than music.

Tim H’s book appeared after the publication of Ross’s so we can only guess whether  she would endorse his approach given that he seeks to undermine any idea that music offers a route to personal wholen

au: emu is a computer whiz who meets sentient computer virus pallad one night on the web

oh boy this sounds a lot like a TOME au (animated webseries with an ai learning friendship) so im going to go off that basis. this is a quick write-up so capitalization may appear/disappear whenever.

emu is the brilliant lead programmer in a small team creating an interactive vr-based fighting game. it’s had several sections: people who want to fight, people who want to do arcade games and hang out, and people who want to do both.

the team has solved that with tsundere advice from taiga hanaya, affectionately nicknamed their marketing dept despite him A). never playing the game B). never planning on playing it C). always complaining abt it and his idiot friends to whoever he meets.

emu is in charge of the overall stuff, poppy is in charge of the music (obviously!), hiiro is in charge of the character designs but it’s mostly his gf saki who has the art skills for it. hiiro focuses on the weapons.? hey this actually works out rlly well w/ the “ex-aid cast as webmasters” thig.

anyway, kiriya does the scenery animations and coding, and emu develops the combat system in addition to every other odd job. their first test player is world-renowned gamer nico, aka taiga’s “annoyig” younger sister, who harrasses the other developers into letting her try it out. she then appoints herself as head of pr and begins blogging teasers for it.

one night when it’s late and everyone else has gone home emu is exploring the world he and his friends have created when he finds a grey cloud similar to old tv static. within it are tiny, dancing specks of magenta, yellow, and cyan. he walks over curiously. “hello?”

“who are you?”

“pallad. that’s a pretty name. my name is emu.” he reaches for the darkness, which swirls and manifests into a dark-haired figure with pixels for pants and hot pink sleeves that are way too long. a few cords are draped across their shoulders and their excitement is absolute.

they smile promisingly and then vanish.

emu tells the others abt this incident the next morning when they’re all hung over. no one believes him.

after the game is released dan kuroto, one of emu’s industry rivals, joins just to check out the competition. he’s made it his goal to be the best player there is, wanting the imaginary skill level title of “game master.” nico kills him on sight as she’s been grinding since before the official release.

emu meets pallad again, swinging on a vine that’s coded to be unswingable. he grins, happy to meet his friend again. “how are you enjoying the game’s release to the public?”

Emu laughs gently. “Yes, it sure is. I’ll tell you what, you can use that abandoned mansion whenever you want some peace and quiet.”

They slide down the vine to land right next to him. Their brown eyes burn with intensity from a new emotion. Emu finds himself pulled in by their curious and trusting nature. He also wants to protect them from prying gamers or the arrogant ones. He pulls out his custom-made weapon, the Gashacon Keyslasher, and holds it out to them.

Pallad looks back at him, tilding their head curiously.

“I… uh… want you to be able to protect yourself if you meet anyone that you don’t like.”

They don’t sound insulted, just… amused.

“Well, I want you to be able to protect yourself if I’m not around. I’m busy with the game sometimes-”

“I’m a game creator. I made this with my friends. Sometimes the maintenance gets in the way with talkingwith people.”

“Eh?”

“You helped make this?”

“Thank you for your help,” Emu murmurs, taking Pallad’s hand. Pallad nods, takes the sword, and looks intensely at him again. Emu nods and they vanish.

Nico tries to fight him after that with things designed to counterattack Emu’s special edition sword. She beats him up even more badly when he says he doesn’t actually have it. Then Poppy saves him asking why he doesn’t have it. He explains how he met Pallad again, and that he wanted them to have a place to go to have some quiet.

“Uhh. Dude,” Nico explsins, “Kiriya’s renovating that right now. You might want to go talk to him, and let this Pallad know if they do exist.”

“I’m not making them up! they do exist!” emu insists, glancing up as kiriya runs over.

“hey! how’s the long-term test going?” nico lands a hit on him before he jumps out of the way.

“it’s going well. hey, do you have any uses planned for that background mansion?”

“that old thing? no.” kiriya gives him a Look. “why?”

“i told pallad they can use it-”

“you’re still going on about that computer virus? look, emu, you hallucinated.”

“that was an excuse not to have to fight me flat-out!” nico crosses her arms, insulted. “i looked up to you as a gamer, and now you won’t even fight me?”

“he has a lot more roles to think about now than just as the gamer who could kick your ass,” kiriya says without thinking. he drags emu away while she’s processing that burn.

“HEY!!!!!!!! GET BACK HERE!!!####”

they go to the mansion, where kiriya unbars them from entering it. when they walk in, pallad is not there. emu tries not to feel disappointed, but kiriya is giving him The Tour. “when will it be made open to the public?”

“when we have 200 million users,” kiriya grins. emu gasps, clapping him on the back in-game.  "you think we can make it that far?“

"nico knows what she’s doing.” he sighs as they sit back-to-back on one of the couches. “i believe in her.”

“don’t undersell yourself, man.” kiriya elbows him. “your status has also set the ball in motion.”

“i know, it’s just…not something i count on regularly, since i’m not in the spotlight all the time.”

“you’ll figure something out,” kiriya murmurs with a yawn. emu sits up at that.

“…..are you TIRED?”

“emu-”

“are you?” he asks gently. kiriya sighs slowly.

“………yeah.”

“go to sleep.”

“i need the money,” the designer tries to insist.

“you can have my pay for the week. go get some rest.”

“emu-” from the tone of his voice kiriya knows he’s lost the argument.

“you program best when you’ve gotten enough rest. we’ll be here, once you’ve done that and come back.”

kiriya nods, and the lightness behind emu shows he’s logged the fuck out. he sighs, used to being alone, and decides to restore the protections to the mansion, since kiriya didn’t have time to.

a presence that makes all the hair on the back of his neck stand up appears, and the entire room is filled with faint tv static and tiny magenta, yellow, and cyan pixels. he grins. “Pallad?”

a pair of eyes, like the ones in perfect puzzle, appear right in the faint static. they ask dryly.

“What a relief. I thought Nico had challenged you already.”

You are.>

“…..I’m… very flattered.”

“You managed to follow her without being caught?” Emu fights off a yawn of his own. “You must have set the new stealth record.”

They pause for a while, unsure how to proceed until Emu yawns.

“I want my team to be at their best.”

“What about me?” Emu yawns while asking. He’s too worn out to guess.

“They can manage without me…” Emu mumbles, his eyes closing involuntarily.

His eyes snap open at their angery tone. I trust, too.>

Emu gazes in wonder at the pair of floating eyes in the static. This conversation is beginning to unnerve him quite a bit.

Pallad senses this and their static shrinks into their signature character. They walk over to Emu, their static spreading to surround both players. Pallad murmurs, lingering on his name.

In his own room, in his apartment, Emu fidgets nervously. “What are you going to do?”

“How?”

Pallad seems to hesitate after this.

“Is there… anything else?” Emu asks gently. Pallad and their static seem to shrink away.

“What is it? You can tell me,” Emu says earnestly.

The static was only surrounding Pallad now, and was flashing at half its original speed.

“Pallad… can you hear These Thoughts?” Pallad’s avatar glances up as Emu steps within their static again. Emu leans in to smile gently at them. “I think that sounds wonderful.”

What he wouldn’t give to be able to take off his VR headset and sleep for once.

Pallad’s static regains some of their original enthusiasm.

“Yes. You can read my mind right now.” He closes his eyes, and the tingling sensation returns.

Eveeything goes dark, until Hiiro shakes his shoulder. “Hey. Webmaster. Wake up.”

“Emu-kun…” Saki murmurs, pulling off his VR headset. He had somehow slept into the next day wihout crushing it in his sleep.

“Your work was all done flawlessly, how the hell did you manage to do that?” Hiiro asks. Emu sits up slowly, blinking.

“Would you believe me if I said the game themself did it?”

“No……….” Both other Netroyals stare at him with worry.

“I didn’t think so,” Emu murmurs.

Thank you, Pallad.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Broken Promises (4x09)

Alright, then. I can dig it. Things are heating up in various ways for our cast of characters. What I admired most about this episode was the chemistry between various pairs. Some were predictable, others were not.

Cons:

The plot may have been a little all over the place. Not enough to confuse me, but enough that this story might have benefited from being broken into separate episodes. The A-plot focuses on Aida going rogue, after the Darkhold. Mack, Yo-Yo, Fitz, Coulson, and May (the secret android look-alike, rather) all try and bring her down, and then succeed, only to reveal the plot twist: That was an earlier model of Aida. The current version is safe with Radcliffe, who has been the secret baddie for a couple of weeks now.

The other plot stayed with Mace, Daisy, and Simmons as they looked for Nadeer's brother Vijay. (Sidenote: I have been spelling Nadeer incorrectly as "Nadir" up to this point. I'm not going back to fix it in previous reviews, but I'll use the correct spelling from here on out). Anyway, Simmons helps to get Nadeer's location, and our S.H.I.E.L.D. team moves in. Nadeer ends up killing her brother because she believes all Inhumans are diseased and corrupted. We see in the end credit scene that Vijay might still be alive, as his corpse re-solidifies into stone as he lands at the bottom of a body of water.

So, why did I put the whole plot description in the "Cons" section? It's not a bad plot at all, and in fact I enjoyed several aspects of it. But like I said, things got a bit crowded. So many characters didn't get any real screen-time together. Like Fitz and Simmons, or Coulson and Daisy. Remember, Daisy has only just been brought back into the fold. Wouldn't it have been nice to have a bit of time to reflect on that?

On a more nitpicking note, there's this scene where Simmons gets to be a badass and fight with one of Nadeer's people (a Watchdog, possibly). I get the idea, but I don't really like Simmons punching people and fighting off a guy like that. I don't mean that she should be a damsel in distress, but it would have been more true to her character and skill-set if she'd taken him down with a quick taser shot or something. Not every character in this show needs to be a martial arts master. We've already got May and Daisy to give us that kind of female empowerment stuff. Simmons' gift is her brain.

Pros:

I don't much mind that the episode felt crowded, though, because the stuff it was crowded with was really amazing.

First off, that twist with Radcliffe. It's brilliant because at first you think - wait, has he been evil this whole time? But then, no... it turns out that the Darkhold has corrupted his mind. His affection for Fitz is actually genuine, and his original plans for Aida weren't evil or ambitious, necessarily. Radcliffe is a character that we, as the audience, perhaps began to trust a little too quickly. After all, he was working with Hive last season. I'm glad that Aida's not gone, although I'm not terribly surprised about that part of things. She's far too interesting to do away with. But the fact that our heroes now believe they've neutralized the threat? That's fascinating stuff!

Fitz and Radcliffe have a conversation about sentience and whether or not their quest to stop Aida should be considered murder. In some ways it's your standard AI plot point, but I liked the different levels to this. Fitz, despite himself, is actually fond of Aida as if she were a person. If he starts to buy into that fantasy, it makes him more susceptible to Radcliffe's way of thinking, which in turn positions him opposite the rest of his friends, including Simmons.

Coulson and May spend the episode tracking down the evil robot together, reminiscing about the past, and maybe hinting at a romantic future. This is super uncomfortable and super devastating, because of course as we know, that's not really May. This episode threw an interesting wrench into proceedings, though. Does "May" know she's an android? There's a moment when she and Aida confront each other. Coulson is unconscious and nobody else is watching, and yet "May" still opposes Aida, trying to stop her from getting to the Darkhold. Is this because she doesn't know that Radcliffe is still controlling Aida, and that they're both working toward a common goal? Or is this android in May's form actually doing what she can to help Coulson and S.H.I.E.L.D., having been programmed to act in the best interests of that organization to keep Radcliffe's cover strong? I really don't know, and that's fascinating.

Mack and Yo-Yo ended up being my favorite part of this episode, surprisingly. They provided comic relief while also making me understand them better as a couple. Throughout the whole hour, Mack and Yo-Yo discuss how stupid Radcliffe is for making artificial intelligence, citing as evidence all movies on the subject. The best exchange:

Yo-Yo: "Someone needs to make Radcliffe watch all the Terminator movies."

Mack: "Even Salvation?"

Yo-Yo: "He brought this onto himself."

I loved all the joking and the back-and-forth. It made me feel like these two could make a real go of it.

In fact, let's take a moment to highlight the comedy in this episode over all. It was at its cleverest, and really helped to cut through a lot of the darkness surrounding the larger plot. Some favorite lines:

Simmons: "You know how boys can be with their robots."

Daisy: Nods, then looks confused. "No, actually I don't."

Coulson, while looking for the run-away Aida: "I'm checking local APBs. Pointlessly." Ha!

Over in the subplot, stuff with Nadeer and her brother gets serious very quickly. Basically, the two of them had made a murder pact to kill each other if either one ever became Inhuman. But Vijay is displaying no signs of Inhuman skills, so the Senator hesitates to kill him. We find out that he does have powers, some sort of speed/sonic thing that isn't explained very well, but that lets him evade the grip of the Watchdogs. The moment at the end, when Nadeer really did shoot her brother was really emotionally affecting, despite the fact that it wasn't a big surprise. I liked seeing this development of Nadeer's character. She really does love her brother, and she's wrong to be working with the Watchdogs, but she has a set of principles, and she's adhering to them. There's something honorable in that, in a twisted way.

We also get a hint that there's somebody else pulling the strings over in this subplot: one of the Watchdogs refers to "the Superior." I don't know who that is - perhaps somebody we already know I'm anxious to find out!

The Odd Couple of the night was Daisy and Mace. They are both Inhuman, and they are both working for S.H.I.E.L.D., so they clearly have a ton of stuff in common. However, their reasons for distrusting each other are made all too clear by the events of the season up to this point. It makes for an interesting dynamic. We, the audience, know that Mace isn't totally on the up-and-up, but he's not lying about his objectives, either. I'll be interested to see how Daisy deals with this new authority figure in her life. It could be a fascinating way to look back at the way Daisy, then going by Skye, first interacted with Coulson, who later became a father figure to her.

I guess I'll stop there before I ramble on too long. In many ways, this episode was merely a setup for what's to come. I'll miss Robbie from the last half of the season, but Aida and Radcliffe make some formidable enemies, and I can't wait to see how the gang grapples with this fresh set of challenges!

8/10

10 Things You Should Know About SEO 2019

If you are usually tired of hearing the phrase SEO (search engine optimization) probably you ought focus on SMO. The Technical Audit Checklist Produced For Human Beings — Within this post by Distilled, a person will find a link in order to a Google sheet that provides an technical SEO audit register and links to resources upon how to complete each checkbox. Then each time the phrase SEO appears on your web site, it's automatically changed into the link you specified. Keyword Study for SEO: The Definitive Guidebook — This comprehensive guide simply by Brian Dean teaches you the number of strategies for locating keywords and determining intent intended for your target market. On-page and off-page SEO function together to improve your lookup engine rankings in complementary style; however, SEOs generally advise obtaining your on-page SEO ducks within a row before focusing as well much on off-page SEO. Within 2019, web-based businesses will follow more voice-to-text technology to boost engagement and search activity. There are many SEO sites suggesting that they can offer a service to make our own website LSI friendly, or fulfill ‘LSI requirements'. The particular art of web SEO is situated in focusing on how individuals search for things and knowing what type of results Search engines wants to (or will) screen to its users. Social mass media SEO would encourage your present customers to come back whilst helping you develop authority with regard to potential ones. He is an expert in SEO, Content Marketing, plus Pinterest Marketing. An SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION expert plays a huge part in helping companies build their particular businesses and attract new clients through website traffic. Screaming Frog SEO Index tool does it to suit your needs inside a few seconds, even with regard to larger websites. SEOs also used to believe that buying links was the valid method of link developing; however, Google will now punish you for buying links within an attempt to manipulate page rank. Ultimately, achievement in SEO in 2018 plus forward will depend on developing amazing content and making this as easy as possible intended for search engines like google in order to understand exactly what that articles is all about. Answer: When you focus upon SEO for voice search an individual need to create your content material around long tail keywords since people tend to use a great deal more words in voice search. SEO is the practice associated with increasing the search engine ratings of your webpages so that will they appear higher in lookup results, bringing more traffic in order to your website. In the particular previous example, Bob's home web page might have the title, "Bob's Soccer Store - Soccer Sneakers and Equipment. " The name is the most important component of SEO, since it shows the search engine exactly exactly what the page is all regarding. 47. When creating SEO articles, keep the social layer within your mind. In case you have time to get good search engine optimisation education, after that combine this knowledge with greatest practices and you are upon your way to become a good SEO expert. 46. Use SEO practices in order to optimize your social media content. 4. Mobile SEO plus Local Business: - As all of us mentioned before, users tend in order to search for local business upon the smartphones. Investing in high quality tactics which do take more but endure and are usually the ones which generate useful traffic is the best method to spend your time upon SEO. Some SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION specialists and bloggers say that will short URLs ranks better within Google. This technique is definitely sometimes known as SEO content” or SEO copywriting”. 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Once you've discovered your keywords, use another SEMrush tool, the SEO Content Design template, which is part of their particular Content Marketing Toolkit, to function out the best way in order to optimize your content. If a company is providing you all these services below one roof, climbing up the particular SEO ranking will not become an uphill task for your own business any more. Local SEO companies allows a person to position your business upon search engines like google plus other digital marketing platforms therefore you're seen by potential clients — on their terms. YouTube adds the particular nofollow” tag to their hyperlinks, so they don't really assist with SEO. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION isn't just about building lookup engine-friendly websites. The sooner you understand precisely why Google is sending you much less traffic than it did a year ago, the sooner you can clear it up and focus upon proactive SEO that starts to effect your rankings in a optimistic way. 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Blog posts, guides, whitepapers, situation studies, videos, and social articles all need to include the particular right keywords for social plus SEO. For even more detailed information on the make use of of keywords on your web site visit SEOcious to will discover many other important factors included in having your web web page in the top 10 entries on the search engines. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, search engine optimization is just about all about search engines, search motor result page (SERP), search position, online visibility, and quality visitors. If your internet site has about 5-10 niche key phrases that are extremely targeted yet not very competitive, your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION pricing is going to become quite less. 55 The difference from SEO is many simply depicted as the distinction between paid and unpaid concern ranking searching results. I get into much more detail in SEO Titles on pages: 15-Point Checklist for B2B and B2C Brands, which explains the right way to work in relevant keywords that will accurately reflect the page content material. Are good nevertheless SEO potential may be reduce in comparison to single links. The schooling behind our SEO expertise has been developed from years and many years of learning from mistakes marketing and advertising with our other businesses. Our own in-depth guide contains the most recent SEO best practices so a person can improve how your content articles appears in search results, plus get more traffic, leads, plus sales. Keyword study definitely belongs to the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION basics. I'll start by stating that social press and SEO are heavily linked to each other. Black head wear SEO attempts to improve search positions in ways that are disapproved of by search engines, or even involve deception. 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The job of a good SEO is to manage the particular optimization of websites to make sure they gain web site traffic from research engines such as Google and Bing. One great bit of content that will ranks well within the research results is its beginner's facts SEO. SEOs plus online marketing specialists in basic who are dealing with global websites or for online businesses thinking about going international will certainly certainly benefit from attending ISS. We might like to serve you in order to save money and your power by offering affordable SEO providers to increase link popularity. Work the key phrase into the SEO page name, content header, image, image oll text, etc. SEO equipment provide position monitoring, deep key phrase research, and crawling through easy to customize reports and analytics. Certainly, white hat SEO always integrated creating high quality, unique articles as a prerequisite for acquiring long-term quality results, this reality hasn't changed. Beyond compensated and organic, there are various other types of SEO and expertise and niches within search motor marketing.

Review of KPCB’s 2017 Internet & Tech Trends

Learnings from a product person’s perspective of a 350-page deck

I. Setting the Stage

At the pace the tech news goes these days, you’ve probably already forgotten all about Mary Meeker’s latest gem of a trends report. This year was a doozy. Over 350 pages. Analysts, get you some sleep.

The slides are embedded below to make this easier and so you can follow along with our comments of how to interpret these findings. Use this to build your own startup, innovate at the company you work at, or just to learn something new.

Knowledge is a tool that must continue to be sharpened.

http://ift.tt/2tQfhrR

II. Advertising & Retailing

p5: global internet users and smart phone growth has essentially stopped. We’ve reached the fat middle of the market in terms of spreading and have plugged in half the human species. The only thing that’s spread further is life support (oxygen, water, food) and electricity. New enablement technology diffused? Check.

p9: adults now spend nearly a full working day interacting with tech and digital media in the US. So, you’ve got your work job and now you’ve got your fun job. The convergence has already begun. Social media marketers isn’t just some joke job. It’s a skill of the new economy.

p13: this “time spent vs ad dollars spent” chart has been out of whack for years. It’s finally getting in sync. Which means its time for a new medium to get released. Only this time, it’s going to be so personalized, it’s basically a reflection of you.

p14: the internet is our new television, is our new radio, is our new book.

p15: if you’re buying ads, trying to target a certain demo to create a conversion into a sale, you basically only have one choice: Google or Facebook.

P16–25: ads is where almost all of the money is flowing in tech. You may find it boring, but don’t forget, boring = cash flow.

p27: I’ve never been a fan of interactive or dynamic ads. It makes the user do two things they hate: 1) sit through another damn ad, and 2) you’re not going to make me interact with it?! Oy, the best ad doesn’t look, feel, taste, or sound like an ad. It’s compelling content.

p32: Google is basically the digital world’s most pervasive and compelling product. Because it makes people pay to be next to the stuff you’re looking for. In the real world, that would be like some dude following you around a museum asking if you want to go buy this paint brush or eat at Denny’s next to a picture of food. Not knocking it, it’s an incredible business, but there’s a lesson here in that the digital world has different rules than the real one. Expect that lesson to keep playing itself out over the coming decades.

p35: future ads are going to be pics instead of text. Humans process pics way faster. Pinterest and Snap might have an opportunity against the Googs here, but the search habit is so embedded in the human populace that now it’s part of the web browser URL bar. Snap nor Pinterest has that level of OS access.

p39: retail and brands. It’s not about just showing your product in context anymore. We believe it’s about creating an experience around your product that customers want to come for. An example is throwing a music festival in the summer if you’re a bottled water company. You create the context and leave your product as the only option. That’s how you reach Millennials and Gen Z. And Amazon.com is how you reach adults with kids and no free time. It ain’t rocket science, it’s just execution.

p40: Will Smith saved us from aggressive aliens. We appreciate him. And he was a former math guy so, street credibility.

p44: AR is going to be interesting. Yet to be seen how pervasive it will become from a visual perspective until we have the glasses that don’t look like cell phones strapped to our heads. Or as I call them, “Noggin Boxes”.

p45: AI Assistants, to me, are the promise of truly invisible software. Many have talked about it, but you can’t just say what you want and have it work right all the time, as well people are very uncomfortable talking to a machine in public. It just feels weird. No amount of NLP or AI is going to change human behavior. It’s going to have to jump the shark in favor of neural laces where I think it and it happens.

p53: customer support survey where people tell you what they want. I’ve got a better solution. Make your product and service so great that it makes support obsolete. I know, easier said than done, but it’s a goal that means your business is around forever. Look at Vaynerchuck. He didn’t sell wine. He sold “I’ll drive to you in a blizzard with a power generator to keep your business open and house warm”. Then you never buy from another wine seller again. That’s extreme support.

P55: that little intercom chat window is freaking everywhere.

more retail stuff with a bunch of metrics and pipelines and yaddy yaddy

P66: apartment lobbies become storage facilities for packages. Boy can I attest to this in Cali as well as NYC. It’s a really smart notice by the folks who put this together. What it means is again: Amazon is your retail strategy. Forget store fronts, websites, apps, etc. Just drive traffic to Amazon pages. Get Affiliate commissions on top of it. Reduce friction, just get the damn sale. Your brand is in front of people when they get the product home. You don’t need to own the web experience.

p68: food delivery is a huge deal. We’re tired, we’re sick of cooking, and entire startup businesses have been created on the back of a grubhub page. It’s like amazon for real-time, hot food. It’s a big deal and will only get bigger. Cheap + Healthy + Filling. That’s your magic formula.

p71: AI for clothing design of the future. Don’t count it out.

p73: people don’t want to just try stuff on. They want to get it now to wear now. Real-time is the key to in-person experience. That’s the excitement, not to wait for it to be shipped. Not a fan of the “waiting” model.

p74: Wal-Mart’s in real trouble.

p75: meanwhile, Amazon Basics is a gold mine.

III. Interactive Gaming

p81: if you’re on the internet, it’s highly likely that you game. Play is built into human nature because it’s escapism.

p82: I used to watch a room full of developers talk about and watch online gaming while they coded. This was back in 2013. Cooperative esports is not a fad, but something that’s going to be around for some time. The new sports agent will be after these huge sponsorship dollars.

p84: people in Asia like video games. No secret here.

p85: pretty even split amongst all age groups on who games.

p88–97: there’s a reason gamification works. The problem is always around defining and designing a concept called “fun”. Just because you slap points on something doesn’t automatically make taking out the trash fun.

p99: Twitch ain’t goin nowhere. Level that up with Minecraft and then add in some cryptocurrency where it becomes your job and watch a new economy blossom in a digital universe completely outside the confines of governmental taxation, which means you get to keep 33% more of that money you spent time making.

p101: I’ve never played fantasy sports but all my friends have been playing since we were kids. Weird that it took until only recently for the likes of Fan Duel to show up.

p103: more game machanics. Understanding that they exist is the first step, the next step is applying them correctly. Easier said than done. Trust me from experience running a gamification product for brands to increase engagement via social media.

p114: gaming beats social in engagement. The problem is that you eventually master the game but not your social network. So more value is continually added to Facebook, Insta and Snap while the creators of FarmVille, Clash of Clans, and Angry Birds have to keep creating hits. And content is hard.

p120: tech and sports has been talked about for decades but there hasn’t really been a breakthrough killer product that everyone swears by. Maybe the bracelet / watch that tracks steps but that’s pretty low-grade in terms of information density.

p123: state of the art for sports platforms is just analytics dashboards with some gamification added on top. But does that really increase your performance? Sure it helps to know you did a few more steps than yesterday and that you’re on a streak for working out 3 days in a row, but you kind of already knew that intuitively didn’t you? Where’s the leverage? Much like the iPhone made computing pervasive, did the Apple Watch really make sports pervasive and higher performance? It seems there’s a big hole that still exists in this area until we start tracking automatically what food goes into our body, the digestion that takes place, how exercise and sitting affects that, alcohol, work and environmental factors, and then gives you suggestions for improving your health.

p129: gamification in industrial settings is highly important. It gets talked about too much in consumer and not enough in aerospace, automotive, surgery, military, industrial manufacturing, robotics, etc.

p132: the volume of digital information created is on a power law curve, we’re still just at the very beginning.

p133: Moore’s Law still isn’t coming to a close, regardless of how many people talk about it. Because there is always room to pay more for faster compute.

p138–145: esports is a big deal. It’s growing 40% every year now reaching half the population of the United States.

p150: do trends in gaming predict future product around all of tech, much like porn used to in the video production space?

IV. Media

Editor’s note: after years of experience building online video/audio platforms, media businesses, and social apps, we are undoubtedly going to have a biased view about this section so you can either take it as we know some inside baseball or we’re bat shit crazy. So all I can promise is the unvarnished truth from my perspective.

p153: music streaming is pretty simple — make sure you have the song I want to listen to, give me some new songs I’d like but haven’t found on my own, and then charge me a flat monthly fee like $10 for it. Execute on those 3 things and you’ve got yourself some good bacon. Of course, Amazon is the real wild card here because as a Prime member, you get music plus a whole host of other things.

p154: online video vs cable tv is also very simple — give me the channels I want to watch, new movies the moment they hit the theaters, and charge me a low monthly fee. High quality is the name of the game here. Hollywood blockbusters and some personal favorites (HGTV, ESPN, HBO, Science Channel, etc). That’s it. Everything else is window dressing and noise. Apple Music is getting into Hollywood with original content. Netflix is killing the game but their library aside from originals is waning. Amazon Prime is coming in hot, and watch out for Facebook’s wildcard of a movie in a text message.

p158: streaming music subs are growing because nobody needs to buy albums anymore. Truthfully it’s Apple Music (install base of devices) vs Spotify (the O-G-riginal).

p161: Netflix subs are also growing rapidly as they expand their service globally. But the only thing that matters is getting the latest Hollywood blockbusters on their service. If they can’t continue to do that, it’s going to be a long painful death. I’m talking Avengers, Star Wars, etc. Basically, Disney. Which isn’t going to happen because they have their own streaming service.

p163: recommendation engines. Oy, have I heard the pitch for this a million and one times. Again, we’re back to “Ok this title I’ve never heard of is interesting, but what’s the new Hollywood flick I can watch?”. That has nothing to do with recommendation engines and everything to do with high quality content licensing deals with the studios.

p165: it’s YouTube vs Facebook. The former gets longer form, the latter shorter form. They’ll both battle for movie/TV-grade content but that’s Netflix, Amazon, iTunes. So there’s your split. Facebook is quick-hit social, YouTube is UGC around 15 mins, Netflix is originals and TV shows with some movies, iTunes is your Hollywood rentals and purchases, and Amazon is just the everything all the time so maybe one day.

p167: interesting that every one of the social networks is growing at the exact same MAU rate.

p171: the older you are, the more you watch. Less of a social / eventful life?

p173: pay TV will never go away because it’s more economical to pay the $100 to $200 per month for the cable, internet, TV bundle and get all the channels than trying to buy only internet service and then pay for one off channels and then movies on top of it. The reality is a mixed bag approach. Some internet, some cable, some OTT.

p176: the goal is a personalized linear channel. You tune into one TV station, let it play all day every day, and it’s filled with everything you want when you want it. Social videos, educational stuff, movies, TV, etc. Disclosure: I’ve got a patent for inventing this and for mobile live streaming.

V. The Cloud

p181: might surprise you to see the public cloud really hasn’t taken much of the spend away from a traditional data center / private data center.

p182: but AWS is kicking everyone else’s ass, which is no big surprise.

p182: security is a big deal, and as cyber becomes ever more important in the global economy (i.e., digital transformation), expect some big exits in this space due to the sheer need to protect not just information, but money.

p184: at this point, most people are familiar with APIs where as recently as 5 years ago I did some research and could find only about 10,000 public APIs in existence. Today, containerization is in a similar space. One way to think of it is like a computer dedicated to one API. Also, edge computing could be the biggest boon to digitizing our world, but the problem is fitting something powerful enough in a small space that doesn’t suck in a lot of electricity. You need efficient chips and efficient AI (i.e., connectomics).

p187: boy have I spent a lot of time on enterprise software. SAAS-based cloud products. It’s the playbook played out across Silicon Valley and internal digital transformation teams everywhere, now.

p188: at this point it seems laughable to say Design Is Important for digital products. Though the requirements for usability is much less, considering the Snapchat generation grew up with this stuff and can reverse engineer a UI just by tapping it.

p190: we don’t hear enough about cybersecurity, mostly because it’s a tight-knit group of folks who prefer to remain anonymous and protected. But it’s a big deal, especially in closed door conversations. Interpolate this to our infrastructure systems like power, water, etc and you start to realize how incredibly important this becomes.

p191: spam’s up? I would call many ecommerce shopping emails spam but that’s not what we’re talking about here. Where’s the startups that lets you unsubscribe from everything with a push of a single button?

VI. China

p195: China has nearly 4x the number of people of America with an economy and excess cash flow growing at staggering rates. Personally, I feel they’re iterating faster than the US and Rest of World in key innovation areas like AI, Space, Manufacturing and a single mobile app for the entire country. Watch out when they launch their own cryptocurrency that lets them optimize their monetary policy in real-time. I’ll invest in that ICO.

p196: service output is going up and to the right.

p197: it’s no secret that private enterprise fuels growth. China just proved it in a huge way over the last decade.

p198: focusing on health care (large population) and IT (the future). Smart.

p200–203: almost everyone in the country is connected to the internet via mobile and they spend almost all their time on it. Hello WeChat.

p204: No surprise on WeChat, but look at Tencent’s share of time. Crazy. More than half of China’s internet time is spent on a Tencent property, with a bit more on Alibaba to buy stuff. That’s like Facebook + Amazon in the US.

p209: live is a big deal over there, and has become an economy in and of itself. People are supplementing their work income with 24x7 livestreaming of their lives and getting paid by viewers with stickers and weird emojis. It’s also the place where many big companies are investing their R&D dollars because gaming and live are providing higher returns than investing in their own businesses. Isn’t that crazy? I take the money I make from my business and invest in this app over here because I’m going to get more money back. At what point does it suck up a lion’s share of the entire economy?

p210: Live is money.

p213: bikes are big in China because they’re cheap, don’t take up space, and they can fit in small spaces.

p216: bikes as the last mile of the commute. Interesting that people take a portfolio approach to traveling from A to B.

p219: expect this to explode when China releases their cryptocurrency.

p223: this is a great roundup chart to see which monetary services are getting the most users across China. Payments and Wealth Management, of course.

p229: China’s ad market doesn’t seem as fervorous as America’s. I have a feeling because the economy is more about direct payments.

VII. India

p233: it’s as big of a population as China, but a much smaller economy as their main export is software engineers instead of manufactured goods. Be careful though, it could be a sleeping giant as the GDP growth rate is the same as China. The US, while big, is only growing about 1/4th as quickly.

p234: far fewer of India’s population is connected to the internet. Only about 1/3rd compared to about 3/4th in China and almost everyone in the US. Internet penetration is highly correlated to the wealth of a nation.

p235: Android’s big there.

P236: smartphone shipments have basically flatlined.

p237: getting access to the internet is expensive for the majority of the population, hence the drag on the economy.

p242: China is selling India their phones.

p246: China is also India’s most-used web browser.

p247: US, China, India dominate the Android app store.

p251: expect internet usage to continue to increase based on bringing costs down which will have a positive impact on India’s future economic prospects. Internet > Education > Skills > Compensation > Productivity > GDP

p252: we’re all just humans regardless of the (country’s) name on the door. So yah, streaming music and video is big in India too.

p254: India’s leadership is focused on the right thing, see p251 above.

p260: a singular digital ID is smart. What is it in the US? Driver’s license and Facebook. In China? WeChat profile.

p262: payments and infrastructure are being built now. What happens when it’s fully built out?

p266–267: mobile is where all the time spent and no surprise that half is on entertainment with 1/3rd on social. Regardless of nationality, we’re all still humans.

p270: a massive portion of India’s compensation is spent on health care. Decreasing this cost + increasing access to the internet are the main two levers to increasing economic well being.

p274: VCs are investing in startups, helping to drive growth, though it has flatlined in recent quarters.

p278–279: I know that India’s young population presents a large opportunity and know some big transportation companies looking to capture that market.

p281: oh god, are you still with me? If you’ve happened across this chart, I think we’ve lost you. My fingers just got tired looking at this one.

p284: the US leads in number of years of schooling, and India trails far behind. Internet = education because it shows what’s possible and gives you the resources for free to get started.

p286: females in India aren’t working.

VIII. Healthcare

p289: have a digital helper analyze, diagnose, and prevent issues with your health is the holy grail. We’re close to that future, but knowing how lagging the healthcare industry is with tech overall, it’s going to be an uphill battle unless individuals take matters into their own hands. For examples, CIOs at hospital systems are focused on reducing sepsis which directly saves lives, but moving medical records and software to the cloud is a painful, decades-long process.

p292: health IoT including wearables are likely to expand in the coming years. Eventually the whole nanobots in your blood helping cells fix themselves in real-time is a nice thought but we’re a long, long way off from that.

p293: more blood and health tests are now available through labs, which means diagnosis is cheaper, faster, and more accurate.

p294: pay attention to sensors that are included in wearables. Without a sensor, there’s no data to analyze. So, the most pervasive (an accelerometer) will only give you number of steps. Not very helpful in helping you manage your health but I suppose it’s something. Once we get into heart rate, blood sugar, metabolism, etc we will start to unlock some pretty cool stuff. Then it requires a highly efficient, but low-powered AI like Biologic Intelligence to understand it all and detect anomalies in real-time.

p295: I’d say Google through Verily and Apple with their Watch wearable are best positioned from the big tech companies. Interesting that Amazon doesn’t really have a health-centric product yet. Now that they own Whole Foods and are pushing into groceries and food, expect that trend to continue into personalized health as part of a Prime subscription.

p299: patient data is necessary for understanding someone’s health but the flip side is pre-existing conditions and the impact it might have on you getting health insurance coverage, the price of your premium, and getting services paid for. Double-edged sword, this.

p302: look at this crazy exponential curve in medical knowledge. And there’s not much out there on the impact food we ingest has on our health. Expect this trend to continue into the future as our population gets bigger and older.

p304: personalization isn’t just for targeted advertising campaigns, biomarkers from DNA sequencing can be used to target clinical trials to get you the help you need from new procedures, drugs, etc.

p305: data, it works.

p306: the young are paying attention earlier in life. They’re listening to their parents and grandparents ailments and stories.

p309: a friend founded a telepharm startup called, well, Telepharm. He was early on the trend, but when you can’t get all the way to the doctor in person, live streaming is a great second best alternative.

p311: back to the tech adoption curve that I linked to at the very top of this analysis, of course we expect health to be adopted quickly. As we like to say in tech circles, find a problem and offer a solution. Health, when it’s a problem, is all you care about and are price inelastic.

p313: costs are decreasing.

p314–318: number of genomes sequenced are increasing. Just wait until we start capturing people’s connectomes.

IX. Innovation

p320: I take issue with this statement. It assumes that innovation is all it takes to raise capital, get big, and sell product. It doesn’t. Even scientific invention isn’t enough. You need to have relationships. Lots and lots of relationships to get capital from investors, corporate coffers, and customers. Then and only then does a product matter that someone can buy.

p322–325: US and China are dominating tech. The question is who’s iterating faster. Because that’s the slope of the line. And whichever line is steeper, predicts the winner. I have a gut feeling I know who it is.

p329–331: IPO & VC, a confusing chart with way too much going on but I think the story is it’s been more or less steady for about a decade. M&A is about the same, even though it cuts the timeline in the chart in half. Be careful, your graph axes.

X. Macro

p336: in the US we pay about 1/3rd of our income to the government. The question is what is it spent on. Unsurprisingly, health care for older people, defense so nobody hurts us, and interest on all that debt because taxes don’t cover the spending.

p337: the USA is not a healthy business if you look at it like a startup. Look at all that red.

p338: debt is highest during war. But that money gets spent somewhere.

p340: the US has the highest debt level in the world. China doesn’t even make the list because they’re printing money doing all the world’s manufacturing.

p341: giving people money and services for doing nothing is a great way to get an entitlement mentality. That’s why they’re called Entitlements and that’s where a lot of America’s income is going. It does help people who want to do something for that income, but are physically or mentally unable. That’s part of what a government is for. To help those citizens who can’t help themselves. But the fact that it’s increasing so rapidly is troubling.

p344: debt is debt. Most Americans have a bunch of debt in houses. Second is student loans. So living and educating. Not a great sign if you want to grow.

p347–348: immigrants account for a lot of value creation.

p350: as a world, we’re better off than we were. That’s progress as a species and something to be positive about.

— Sean Everett

Read more than 750 current and emerging tech analyses on The Mission’s other publication, Humanizing Tech.

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from Stories by Sean Everett on Medium http://ift.tt/2uW190g

Ion Storm Austin’s Deus Ex was a critical and commercial success when it was released in the summer of 2000, laying the groundwork for an enduring franchise.

More importantly, it inspired a generation of game designers to dig into the nooks, crannies, and conveniently-placed ducts of what we now shorthand as “immersive sims”, those games that ask players to make interesting choices in how they want to confront or slip past obstacles in their path.

Shortly after the game shipped, game director Warren Spector wrote a broad postmortem of the project. Today at GDC, he revisisted the subject after 17 years to shed some fresh insight into how the groundbreaking game came to be.

“People always ask me which of my games are my favorite; don’t ever ask a game designer that,” said Spector. “The closest I ever get to answering is saying that the game I’m most proud of is Deus Ex.”

Spector acknowledges that a lot of what he's talking about is standard practice in the game industry now, but he reminds fellow devs that it absolutely was not common practice 20 years ago when the game was first conceived.

“Conceptually, I thought of Deus Ex as a genre-busting game, which let me say, really enamored us to the marketing folks. They loved that,” said Sepctor. “If you ever want to make a marketing perosn unhappy, mash some genres together.”

The game was envisioned as a mix of first-person shooter, adventure game, and RPG. But Spector traces the history of its development back to playing tabletop games, long before he became a game designer.

"I would not be here, you would not be here, if not for that game of Dungeons and Dragons”

“Let me tell you were it began -- this is going to get a little embarrassing,” said Spector. “It all began with Dungeons and Dragons.”

In 1978, to be precise, when he started playing D&D with a new Dungeon Master.

“I would not be here, you would not be here, if not for that game of Dungeons and Dragons,” said Spector.

The Dungeon Master of that game was “cyberpunk guru” Bruce Sterling, and Spector says the experiene was meaningful not because of the story being told, but because of how it was being told -- by Spector and his friends, under the guidance of Sterling.

“The story belonged to Bruce, but every detail belonged to us,” said Spector. “I was completely hooked; I played in that campaign for ten years.”

So how does that lead to Deus Ex? Spector says it inspired his entire career in game design, a long-running attempt on his part to try and recreate that experience he had playing D&D for the first time in ‘78.

“That’s been my life mission: to recreate that feeling,” he said. “Every game I’ve worked on, every single one, has been trying to engage players in the telling of the story. My only hope is to do it a little better every time.”

So Spector became a game designer, and joined Origin Systems in 1989 to work on games like Ultima Underworld. But at some point he got tired of making those games, and he decided to “Try and swing for the fences.”

“I was sick to death of making games about guys in plate armor swinging swords,” said Spector. He says he wanted to make what he saw as a “real-world role-playing game” in which the player’s choices would say more about the player themselves than their in-game avatar

“I don’t care about your puppet; I care about you,” he said.

He also wanted every player to get to the end of the story; he wanted to tell a story with players the way Sterling told a story with him and his friends back in the ‘70s.

At Origin Systems he pitched a game concept that allowed him to do all this: something called (Trouble)shooter, which was a sort of hard-boiled noir game. Electronic Arts and Origin weren’t interested at all, and Spector shelved the idea. A few years past, he left Origin and joined Looking Glass, where a game called Thief was being developed.

Spector says he had a moment while playing Thief: he hit a part that was too tough to sneak through, and impossible to fight through. So he asked the team to make the player character tougher, so he could fight his way through; but the team balked, saying that wasn’t the point of Thief. The game was about sneaking, after all; it wouldn’t make sense to let players smash through a roadblock.

That, says Spector, was when he got the idea to go back to (Trouble)shooter. So he left Looking Glass shortly before Thief shipped, and wound up nearly signing a contract with Electronic Arts to make a totally different game.

“That’s when John Romero called me and said don’t sign the contract; join me at Ion Storm and make the game of your dreams,” said Spector. “Who can say no to that?”

And so Ion Storm Austin was born, with the game that would become Deus Ex as its debut project. But before work got underway, devs may appreciate Spector's recollection of asking himself a series of questions he calls the 6 + 2 + 1 -- a vetting process he says he applies to all games he works on.

“Why I don’t call them the nine questions, I don’t know,” said Spector. “But if I can’t answer any of these questions I don’t make the game.”

What’s the core idea? Can you describe the core of the game in 2-3 sentences?

Why do this game?

What are the development challenges?

How well-suited to games is the idea?

What’s the player fantasy? (If the fantasy and goals aren’t there, it’s probably a bad idea)

What does the player do? (What are the “verbs” of the game?)

Has anyone done this before?

What’s the one new thing? (“You can always find one thing that hasn’t been done before [in games], even if you’re making a My Little Pony game.”)

Do you have something to say? (“In Deus Ex I wanted to explore all sorts of big issues,” said Spector. “And I wanted players to explore those things in ways that only games could do.”)

All of these questions were answerable for Deus Ex, so in 1997 work on the project got underway at Ion Storm Austin.

“If we were gonna plug into the real cultural zeitgesit, we had to play close attention to things in the real world,” said Spector. Things like mechanically-augmented soldiers, or the rising tide of terrorism.

“You didn’t have to be a genius, even in 1997, to see that the news was increasingly filled with reports of terrorism,” he added.

”And really interesting to us was the rise of nanotechnology; the dangers of that seemed fun to explore. But most importantly, everywhere you looked in 1997, it seemed like there was a conspiracy theory,” said Spector. “The world of Deus Ex was being created all around us; we didn’t have to make anything up. It was great!”

In short, Spector says the game was designed to answer five big questions:

What would happen if you mashed up the adventure game, shooter, and RPG genres?

What would happen if you dropped a secret agent into a world wih no black and white -- just shades of grey?

What if all conspiracy theories were true?

What does it mean to be human in world with augmentation?

How should the world be? Would the world be better off ruled by a secret cabal, a sentient AI that connected all humankind, or plunged into a new dark age?

“The game was going to have no bosses to kill; it was about deciding how the world should be,” said Spector. “You could answer those questions through your play choices.”

To explore these questions in a game, Spector says he established some “commandments” for the team to follow:

Ion Storm Austin Commandments (or, the Deus Ex rules of roleplaying)

Always show the goal. Players should always see what they’re trying to accomplish.

Problems, not puzzles. “It’s an obstacle course, not a jigsaw puzzle.”

No forced failures. “Failure’s not fun.”

It’s “role” not “roll” -- ie.. “It’s about playing a role, not rolling dice,” said Spector. “Why do we still have character classes and skill levels and die rolls?”

If there’s cool stuff happening, players should be doing it. Players do the cool stuff; NPCs watch the players do the cool stuff.

Lay out constant rewards to drive players onward.

As the player gets better, make the game harder.

Think 3D. “I believe 3D maps can’t be laid out on graph paper; if players aren’t looking up and down constantly, you may as well make a 2D game.”

Be connected. Tunnels from A to B aren’t interesting, says Spector; interconnected spaces are.

Every problem should have multiple solutions.

By the time the team moved from the concept phase to pre-production, the Ion Storm Austin team had grown from 6 to about 30 people. It was a “totally dysfunctional team,” according to Spector, and the team had “about sixish months” of pre-production. The design document was cut down to 270 pages (“which nobody read”) and the team entered full production.

“You don’t want to know how many times I was told to just make a shooter, and I said no,” said Spector.

“Then there was the day we hit pre-alpha and realized the game was not fun; that was a good one,” recalled Spector. By this time, September of 1999, Spector says the game had finally come together and the team found out it wasn’t fun.

“Luckily, Eidos saw the potential of the game and gave us more time,” said Spector. “By June of 2000 it was ready to ship. It was the game of my dreams.”

He seems to really mean this, too; Spector says at the start of every project he closes his eyes and envisions what a game will be. By the time Deus Ex had shipped, he looked at it and recalled that “every single detail had changed, but in spirit it was exactly the same. It was kind of amazing; it’s the only time that’s ever happened.”

So what positive lessons were learned from the experience that fellow devs might appreciate? As you might expect, Spector had a list:

Don’t give up

“The lesson here is that if there’s a game you have to make, never give up, because someone’s gonna be stupid enough to give you the money some day.”

Have clear goals

“We wanted players thinking about who they were in the world...we wanted players to think about how they wanted to behave in the world,” said Spector. “We wanted them to feel like they were actually in the world….everything in the game had to be based on something real.”

“If there’s anyone in the audience here who worked on deus ex, I’m sure you hate me,” added Spector.

Don’t skimp on pre-production

“You can always use more, but we did okay,” said Spector.

Keep your game design organic -- be open to change

“Our game systems didn’t work as well in reality as I thought they would on paper,” said Spector.

Always have a playable build

“We always knew where we were, even if that was painful,” said Spector, explaining that the team would build out envisioned missions early, in limited form, to test how they played. These “proto-missions” were small and ugly, but critical to the game’s production because it helped the team see things that didn’t work, early enough to do something meaningful about it.

Also, says Spector, make sure to playtest with real people

“Do not let your publisher know you’re doing this,” said Spector, recounting how Ion Storm Austin would bring folks in to do playtests without telling Eidos. “Listening to their responses, I called that particular milestone the ‘wow these missions suck’ milestone.”

License good tech

“That was something we did right; we licensed Unreal Tournament,” said Spector. “Adding what we needed was much easier than it could have been...3 programmers made Deus Ex. They were very overworked.”

So what went wrong? What should you know to avoid in your own game projects?

The team structure didn’t work

“I had two people qualified to be lead designers so instead of picking one, I gave them both roles as lead designers with design teams,” said Spector. “Don’t do that. I thought I could manage the tension between the teams, and I couldn’t...I had to call one of the design teams 1 and the other one team A, because neither would be team B or 2.”

However, Spector took pains to say one thing he did right was in choosing who to hire. “Those guys do not get enough credit for the creative aspects of the game, the fact that we shipped at all, and managing the team.”

Goals were too big and unrealistic

“Harvey Smith and another designer, Steve Powers, came to me one day and said ‘you cannot make this game. We cannot make this story,'” recalled Spector. “So we cut a bunch, and the game was better for it.”

He recommends you limit yourself in a kind of creative box, and ensure your entire team is operating within it.

More risks should have been frontloaded

Put simply: Spector says devs should prototype more systems earlier so you can iterate and make them better -- or throw out what doesn’t work.

Be careful about licensing tech

“This is something that I said we did right, but it’s also something we did wrong,” said Spector. “Unreal Tournament was not designed to have a deep sim and allow fighting, sneaking and talking...we had to layer all that stuff in on top. It worked, but….we ended up faking a lot of stuff, to be frank.”

He also added that the engine presented the team from being able to create the large, open areas they envisioned, and he feels it significantly impacted the game.

“It was a mistake to try and recreate the real world...in 1997,” said Spector.

Any publicity is not good publicity

“Ion Storm was not a quiet company; I don’t know how many of you remember this,” said Spector, pulling up an image of an ad for Ion Storm Dallas’ Daikatana, also released in 2000. He went on to mention Playboy shoots in the office, articles about pay rates at Ion Storm, and more, noting that “it’s hard for everyone on your team to be productive when everyone’s screaming about your company.”

But when the game finally released in 2000, Spector says the results were gratifying: it sold well, reviewed well, and most importantly (according to him) players got excited about the notion of making meaningful choices in the game.

“Be ready to define success for any game you make; if you can’t define success, you are not ready to make that game,” said Spector. “Conversation was my definition of success.”

He’s talking about the sort of conversations that are now a common goal in game design: the “what did you do? How did you get through this part? What ending did you choose?” conversations between players who are playing through the same game in different ways.

“That was what Deus Ex was all about. It wasn’t about what the development team thought they world should be, but what the player thought the world should be,” said Sterling. “Like Bruce Sterling and every other Dungeon Master, we provided the skeleton of the experience and the players put meat on the bones.”

“Here’s my final thought for all of you: I sincerely hope that everyone of you gets the opportunity o work on the game of your dreams some day,” said Spector. “And I hope every one of you gets to work on something that’s still relevant 17 years after you make it, and has a life beyond you.”