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dhcucuivi · 2 years

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Your poor, poor father. How could one man be so trusting and have his trust so misplaced?

But then again, he had no reason to doubt either of you. Jason Sudeikis was your dad’s lifelong best friend, someone he had known even longer than he had known your mother.

And you were his daughter. His sweet, chaste, innocent little girl who couldn’t possibly harbour any feelings for Jason, a man almost twice your age.

The painful truth boiled down to the fact that your father hadn’t noticed. He hadn’t noticed anything. Not the glances you and Jason shared over the dinner table when he came over, nor the way you watched Jason while he worked out, hot and sweaty, muscle bulging under taut, tanned skin.

You could’ve called your infatuation a harmless crush, but your father also hadn’t noticed how Jason watched you back. You’d seen him taking in the sight of you in your little shorts, lounging in your garden without a care in the world, baking under the hot sun. You looked like a picture straight out of a sexy magazine or a naughty calendar he would’ve hung up in his college dorm room but you weren’t. You were a living, breathing, beautiful young woman, stretched out in front of him, looking so breathtaking it made him twitch in his jeans.

So he watched. Who could blame him? You watched too. It wasn’t creepy or unwanted, this was just the dance the two of you had become used to. Dangling yourself the other in the hopes that one of you would eventually snap. Give in to temptation. You were in your 20s now, nothing made you strictly off limits, except the fact you absolutely shouldn’t want each other.

You weren’t even all that excited for the vacation until you had heard Jason would be coming, truth be told.

In all honesty, hearing Jason was going was all that inspired you to agree in the first place.

How bad could it be? A week with your parents and Jason in some All Inclusive resort somewhere in the sun.

You knew Jason’s eyes would be on you, his gaze would be hungry, drinking you in like he owned you, fists clenched, holding himself back from taking what he really wanted. What you really wanted to give to him. Oh, it would be interesting by the end of the week. That is, if you both lasted that long.

“Hope you packed your swimsuit, honey.” Jason teased quietly, his voice low and sultry, as the four of you made your way past the pool in the blistering, boarder line oppressive heat to the hotel reception area. He had been kind enough to carry your bag, as well as his own, eyes sparkling with mischief in the summer sun while families splashed happily in the water.

“Oh shit! I think I forgot it!” You gasped dramatically, clearly messing with him.

“Oh yeah? That would be a shame.” Did that confident, sexy drawl count as flirting? Or was it just more friendly banter? More of the same. Little notions planted in your head, leading to thoughts you couldn’t shake.

“If you wanna see me naked, you only gotta ask.” Your words were hardly more than a whisper. Jason didn’t retort so you assumed he’d missed it.

The reception area was quiet, cooler than outside given that they had the air conditioning cranked up, your father chatting at the desk while your mother and Jason sat beside you in the lobby.

“Okay so the hotel is running behind and checkin isn’t for another few hours. Seems they’re really busy this week but that’s okay! We can get changed and hit the pool, that nice lady at reception offered to keep our bags safe.” Your dad was in full blown holiday mode. Nothing could bother him apparently, pressing a kiss to your mom’s forehead, his smile never faltering. Despite how tired you were from the journey, the thought of heading down to the pool to sun yourself really did sound quite appealing, especially with your family in such great spirits.

So that was it decided, you got your favourite tiny little bikini fished out from your bag, along with a towel and some UV protect oil, running off to the bathroom to change.

The four of you hit the pool together, managing to find two free sun loungers beside each other.

Jason felt like he was holding his breath in the crisp heat, hardly even daring to breathe. Seeing you with so little on while feeling so damn exposed in only his swim trunks was getting to him. Badly. Your body was a work of art in his eyes, no matter whether you saw it or not.

God he longed to be buried between your thighs, kissing at the soft skin, working you up until he was able to slip a finger into what would undoubtedly be the sweetest pussy he had ever tasted but he couldn’t afford to let himself dwell on that thought for too long, wondering instead if this vacation had actually been a huge mistake on his part.

You were finding yourself in the same, rapidly sinking boat, not even knowing where to look now that Jason was wearing so little, feeling like heat was just radiating off his body. He was in fantastic shape, there wasn’t a single part of his body where the muscles were less defined than the rest. A real testament to his resolve, his patience and his dedication in the gym.

But then your parents bid their goodbyes, offering to be the first to dip in the pool and shit, you were alone together.

“Well honey, jus’ you and I now.” He smiled, hands tucked under his head, leaning back at a full stretch on the creaking plastic chair beneath him.

“Looks like it.” You laughed quietly, taking a seat beside him. Shifting your hair you uncapped the bottle of UV protecting oil.

Jason’s heart leapt in panic. Shit. You weren’t actually going to oil yourself up right in front of him? But yes, you damn well were, applying some first to your arms, then down your legs, over your tummy and chest and he’d be damned if he wasn’t already half hard, stealing glances at you behind his sunglasses. Perky tits, oiled up and delicious, whole body slick and begging to be worshipped but then you started on your own ass.

Jason told himself it wasn’t obvious. That you couldn’t possibly have heard the groan that slipped from him while you massaged oil onto your own ass cheeks, moving the skimpy little bikini up to ensure you covered as much of your skin as possible, right in front of his face.

“You wanna do me a favour.” You asked, turning around and biting your bottom lip. You could feel his eyes on you, even though he thought you couldn’t possibly have noticed behind the tinted glasses.

“Sure honey, what’d’ya need?”

“Do my back for me, would you?” Alarm bells rang in his head but clearly, no one had told his dick this was a bad idea. He could feel himself hardening just at the thought. He’d never actually touched you like that before but he sure wasn’t letting an opportunity like that pass him by.

Before he could even respond, you had plonked yourself down on his sun lounger, his legs shifted out of the way so you could nestle between them and it was now or never. He shuffled up to bracket your legs in his, strong, thick thighs lined up beside yours, your back practically pressed to his chest.

The little bottle of oil was passed back into his hand.

‘Please God, no’ seemed to be the only coherent thought Jason could manage when you reached behind you, tugging on the little string of the bow holding your bikini together until it fucking unravelled. The cups were still held against your skin by your hands but that added security of the straps was now gone.

“Just making sure you don’t miss anywhere.” You knew exactly what you had done and although Jason couldn’t see you, your bottom lip was still being nibbled on by your teeth.

You thought you had pushed him too far, thought that maybe this last request was just a little too much. Maybe he wasn’t actually into you like you were into him. What if this had all been some terrible misjudgement and Jason was just being friendly these past few months.

But then the cap popped once more and you breathed a sigh of relief, Jason shuffling behind you, rubbing the oil between his hands to warm it up.

And then his huge hands landed on your skin, beginning to spread the slick, slippy substance over the expanse of your back. A tiny moan escaped you at just how good his hands felt, sliding first over your shoulders and the back of your neck, oil dripping down over your spine and landing on your sweet little ass.

“Couldn’t’a brought your boyfriend? He should be doin’ this shit for you.” Jason was doing his best to sound agitated, he really really tried but nothing could’ve hid his growing arousal, no matter how far back he tried to shuffle.

“Don’t have a boyfriend Jason. Thought dad told you? We broke up a while ago.” Jason hated how his first thought was overwhelming excitement followed quickly by a sinking feeling, recognising how badly he wanted this. How much he needed to get this out of his system. But how do you have a one night stand with your best friend’s daughter? Especially if you felt the way he imagined you would.

“Oh God angel, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.” How had he managed to even convince himself that he was being sincere but deep down he’d been hoping you two wouldn’t last. He wasn’t right for you. Anyone could see that.

“Don’t worry Buck, I’m over it.” You laughed happily, chewing on your lip when Jason’s hands moved lower down your back. Jason chuckled in response, hot breath hitting the back of your neck, sending a tingle down your spine.

“Well I’m glad to hear that.” He grinned. Did that count as flirting? And how often were you going to ask yourself if Jason was flirting over the course of the vacation.

“Gotta say, I’ve never oiled a beautiful woman up like this before. Not with innocent intentions anyway.” Shit, did he really just say that?

“And why do you only have innocent intentions?” Shit, did you really just say that? Somehow this was all so much easier when you didn’t have to look him in the eye and say it. He hands never ceased, working oil into your skin like there was nothing he would rather be doing.

“Oh, it wouldn’t be right to have any other intentions angel. You’re too young for me, far too sweet. And your dad would probably kill me in my sleep.” He breathed out a little laugh, knowing your dad definitely would kill him.

“Doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it though.” His voice was so quiet you almost missed it. Want shot through your body, making you tingle pleasantly in the burning sun, a throb settling between your legs.

“You don’t mean th-“ you began, more flustered than ever before you were interrupted by your parents making their way back from the pool towards you, dripping wet and laughing heartily together.

“Meant every word baby.” Jason whispered sweetly, taking the straps of your bikini and tying it back up quickly before your parents reached you, shuffling onto the free sun lounger.

Jason’s words sunk in while you lounged in the hot sun, your body not taking the time to unwind and relax. How could you with Jason offering you the one thing you had dreamt of most since shortly after you turned 18? And here he was, lying two feet away, wearing practically nothing.

It didn’t take long for the receptionist to fetch you, letting you know the rooms were ready so the four of you gathered up quickly, following after her.

“These two are yours.” She smiled happily, handing over the room keys to your father who opened the first door finding a double bed inside. The second room had the same. Shit.

“I’m so sorry, we needed one of the rooms with two single beds.” Your father had turned to talk to the receptionist but she was already gone.

“It’s okay I guess, I’ll room with Jason.” Your dad offered.

“I’m not splitting you and your wife up on vacation for God’s sake. I’ll take the bath. Won’t make a difference to me.” Jason was so damn nonchalant, setting his bag through the door before there was a chance for any more argument. Shit, this just kept getting better and better.

————

Dinner was lovely, the evening heat keeping you warm in your cute little dress, all four of you laughing and reminiscing happily together over a beautifully cooked meal.

You and Jason left early, opting for a shower and an early night after a long day of travelling and your parents didn’t even question it. Thank god for that misplaced trust.

“You take the first shower sweetheart, I don’t mind.” Jason offered happily, leaping onto the bed, lying back at full stretch. You weren’t going to argue, fishing out your pyjamas and a towel before heading into the bathroom, the door locking behind you.

The cold water felt like heaven on your skin, hoping it would wash away all the terribly inappropriate thoughts you were harbouring for the man just outside the door. Thoughts of him joining you, his chest to your back, his hands running over your body, fingernails digging in, desperate for purchase in your soft skin, rutting into you gently. You couldn’t think like that. You shouldn’t. You wouldn’t make it through the week if you did.

Turning the shower off, you stepped out and dried quickly, pulling your little thin cotton pyjamas on before brushing through your hair.

“Your turn Buck.” You smiled quietly, stepping out, chuckling at how he bounced off the bed and into the bathroom past you.

He seemed to take ages, far longer than you did but when he finally emerged, holy shit. He hadn’t dried himself at all, broad, toned chest and shoulders glistening with dripping beads of water, hair messy and abs tight. It did nothing at all to stifle the need growing between your legs. His towel was sitting so low on his narrow hips you thought you might just melt.

“You’re starin’ honey.” Jason laughed cheekily, rummaging in his bag for some damn underwear. “It’s not like I’m wearing any less than you were earlier. That little bikini didn’t leave much to the imagination.” It was starting already.

“Coulda taken it off for you if you wanted.” You offered, his mouth watering at the thought. “Coulda oiled all of me up. Your hands felt so good.” You shouldn’t have been encouraging this but here you were. The heat had got to you. That was it. Sunstroke maybe? Either way, you shouldn’t have been this forward so soon.

“Careful honey, we’re stuck in this room together for a week. You don’t wanna know how good my hands could make you feel.” The worst part was, you didn’t doubt Jason could back his confidence up.

“And what if I did?” You asked quietly, his head pulling from his bag to look at you.

“Wouldn’t be right honey. Your parents are next door.” Was that really his only objection?

“Guess you’re right Buck.”

————

The evening was more relaxed after that, Jason dressed in a thin T-shirt and boxers, busying himself on his phone while you watched some mindless hotel TV.

At around 10, Jason pulled himself up, taking his pillows with him.

“What are you doing?” You laughed incredulously.

“Jus’ makin’ up the bath angel, ‘s been a long day.” He did sound drained, exhausted between the travelling and the excessive heat.

“Jason don’t be silly, you’re not breaking your back in the bath. Sleep in the bed. It’ll be fine.” He wasn’t even sure if he could trust himself. Could he really sleep beside you and not give in to the temptation? But his body was sore, achy and in need of somewhere comfortable to sleep so he gave in without argument.

You lay in silence when the lights turned off, side by side, staring at the ceiling.

“So goddamn warm.” Jason sighed softly after a few moments.

“So warm.” You agreed. “If you wanna sleep naked, I won’t stop you.” You were only teasing but when he pulled his shirt off your heart fluttered.

“I’ll take the rest off if you do. Won’t look, promise. Jus’ cant sleep in this heat.” You could tell his head was turned towards you despite it being dark, eyes probably trained on you.

“Yeah, sounds fair.” You were gasping for it. You couldn’t help how your pussy throbbed just at the thought of being naked in bed beside Jason.

Wordlessly, you both undressed, skimpy bed clothes discarded.

“Fuck honey, I don’t think the heat was the problem.” Jason practically groaned after a few minutes of trying to get comfy. “I’m gonna have to go to the bath, ‘m sorry, this is so wrong.” He pulled himself up, making sure the duvet still covered him, hands running over his face in an effort to calm down.

“What’s wrong Buck?” You asked quietly, leaning over to turn on the little bedside light, keeping yourself covered.

“ ‘m fuckin’ hard. Can’t… can’t sleep beside you like this, not when the only thought in my head is burying myself deep in your little pussy.” He sounded boarder-line distraught. The thoughts had been in his head too long.

“Don’t go.” You whispered, noticing that he turned around to look at you. “I’ll take care of it for you, you don’t need to go.”

“Baby, don’t offer me shit like that. No idea how bad I want it.” You could see his eyes flitting over your face in the dim light. Studying you. Searching for any indication you weren’t serious.

“We don’t need to have sex, jus’ lemme take care of it for you.” How could he say no? Leaning back on bed, his head hit the pillow with a soft crinkle of the sheets.

“You sure you’re okay with this?” He asked quietly, pressing a little kiss to your forehead, loving how you hummed your approval. Your hands wandered, meeting the soft, hairy skin of his thighs, drifting upwards until they met Jason’s length. The tiny groan that left Jason sent a shiver running through your body, delicious little grunts escaping him as you stroked him from base to tip, flicking your wrist to concentrate on his tip.

“Oh Jesus fuckin’ -ah- don’t know who taught you that angel but I gotta thank ‘em some day.” Jason’s eyes were squeezed tightly shut, a lazy smile plastered on his beautiful face while your tiny hand continued.

“Fuck sugar, you mind if I watch? Can’t miss this.” His cheeks were blazing, eyes burning with lust and how could you say no? After your little nod, Jason pulled the covers back, exposing his aching cock in your hand.

“Looks good there doesn’t it? Looks even bigger in my tiny hand than it does in yours.” Your teasing had him groaning, trying to drink in every little squeeze and stroke without so much as blinking. He didn’t want to miss a single second.

“Fuck, feels so good. This isn’t fair angel, I’m havin’ all the fun.” His eyes reluctantly tore themselves away from your hand, looking instead into your eyes.

“Then touch me Buck.” Such a simple command almost made him cum on the spot. Your voice was far too innocent, hearing you finally ask for something he had waited so long for.

He couldn’t waste a second, fingers itching to touch you exactly how he had longed to earlier. Oh fuck. Earlier. The thought of your oiled up skin, slick and shiny and so begging to be kissed. The reason this had all started.

It didn’t take him long for his fingers to find the apex of your thighs, your hand never relenting on his cock. A heavy gasp dragged from both of your throats just feeling how wet you were. Pretty thighs coated with evidence of your lust and that’s when Jason lost it completely.

“Oh baby, you need me that badly already? You even know how wet you are? Fuck, bet I’ve got your tight little cunt throbbin’ don’t I? Thought I was horny but damn, you’re more worked up than I thought. Dumb little girl just loves playin’ with a big cock so much you’re practically creamin’ on my fingers.” You weren’t sure if his words were making your insides twist or if it was the way his fingers found your clit effortlessly, even with your body still covered by the sheets. Tight, rough circles rubbed over your sensitive bundle of nerves before dipping further, sinking into your hole in one fluid motion.

“Ah Buck, Jesus.” Somehow through your own pleasure, you had the capacity to keep stroking him, precum beading nicely on his tip, beginning to run down his swollen head.

“God, you’re so tight, grippin’ my fingers. How the fuck’m I s’pposed to sleep this week knowin’ I’m sleepin’ beside the best pussy I’m not even gonna getta feel.”

“Oh Jason, please. I’m close. So close.” You couldn’t help rolling closer towards him, one leg hitched over the top of his so you’d be more comfortable.

“Hardly even touched you angel, can’t believe a sweet little thing like you comes apart so easily. Would be embarrassing if it wasn’t so damn hot for me. Makin’ you cum in just a few minutes. Anyone ever done that for you before baby?” His gruff little whisper you painfully sexy, watching your face now instead of your hand on his cock.

“N-no Buck. Haven’t even cum this fast by myself before, fuck, rub my clit again, please.” You were whining, back arching off the bed and trying to fuck yourself down on his fingers all at once.

“Love when a woman isn’t scared to ask for what she wants.” His little chuckle was so sexy but he did as you asked, his fingers slipping from you, despite how your body tried to pull him back in. In less than a second, they were back on your clit, the little flicks of his fingertips over your sensitive bundle of nerves making you mewl and whimper. That knot tightening in your tummy couldn’t take much more, the pressure building, your walls clenching around nothing until oh.

Your body released, spasming and twitching, Jason’s free hand clapped over your mouth to silence your filthy cries of pleasure.

“Baby you make such pretty fuckin’ noises when you cum but your parents are right next door. Can’t get caught. As much as I want this whole damn resort to know who’s makin’ this pretty pussy gush like that.”

Your orgasm subsided but the fire inside you hadn’t. Jason removed his hand and almost the second he did you were on him, your lips on his for the first time, hot and electric. His hands grabbed at you the way he had always imagined they would. Eventually they settled on your hips, pulling you on top to straddle him, wet, aching core meeting his throbbing length. Both of you hissed at the contact.

“You still need more baby? That pretty pussy not had enough yet? You know we shouldn’t do this angel. Helpin’ each other out is one thing but I don’t know if we can come back from havin’ sex.” Shit, he was right. How could you possibly look at him again if you had sex now? How would your family dinners ever be the same again? How would you ever find someone that filled you the way you knew he could?

“Okay…. No sex. Just lemme…” You both needed something and this would just have to do. Reaching between your bodies, you pressed his cock flat to his tummy, settling yourself on top of the length, your slick folds parted so he was rubbing against the silkiest part of your core, not letting him inside, just using his girth to get yourself off.

“Oh, oh what the fuck. How does that feel so good.” Jason was amazed, his body almost tricking itself into thinking he was inside you.

“Ah that’s perfect, right fucking there.” Your whimper came out breathy and blissed out, the head of his cock nudging your clit each time you rocked on him and damn, you hadn’t expected it to feel so breathtaking.

Speeding up, you could feel his cock drag over your hole with each little grind of your hips and shit, everything was perfect until the head started to catch on the rim of your little hole, your body begging for him to fill you. Jason was lost in the feeling, one hand gripping your hips, the other gripping the sheets, focusing on not blowing his load too soon.

“You feel that Buck? Fuck, you’re so close to bein’ inside me, can feel my pussy trying to pull you in.” Every little catch of his head on the rim of your hole was fresh torture. “Fuck it Buck, I can’t. Need you ‘nside me.” Your whimpers were killing him.

“Ahh, baby we can’t. Please, I won’t be able to handle it.” You weren’t sure how Jason had been reduced to such a mess but in truth, you weren’t far behind him. “Don’t wanna hurt you, I won’t be able to hold back, fuck, shit, ‘m almost inside you. Baby please.” Jason didn’t know whether to stop this now or just thrust up into you. One grind of his hips would solve it all, he could be buried to the hilt inside you within a second if he could just let himself give in.

On the next grind, the drag of your rim on his head was just unbearable, the slick tip of his cock slipping in, barely more than an inch, both of you gasping at once.

“Oh yes, fuck baby, yes,” Jason’s eyes were rolling back in his head, body almost trembling feeling the tight wet clench of your walls around him, taking all of him in one movement.

“Jason, Jason, ah please.” You couldn’t even hold it together anymore.

“Baby, you’re made for me, shit, tightest pussy I’ve ever felt.” He groaned so loudly before you lifted yourself up, falling back down quickly in a way that had you both crying out, keening against each other.

Your rhythm was slow and sensual, his cock spearing that sweet spot inside you with every fall of your hips.

“I can’t baby, ‘m not gonna last. You think you could cum for me, please baby.” He was so gone, hardly able to focus, determined to make you cum before he had to pull out. Your nod sent his two fingers back to your clit, rubbing with ease while you kept fucking him, building the uncontrollable need inside you back up again.

“Hurry up baby, ‘m gonna cum.” His little groan nearly finished you then and there but you weren’t just ready yet.

“Jason please, jus’ cum in me. Needa feel it.” Your little plea shook him to his core, balls emptying into you with a loud cry. The force of Jason’s release encouraged your own, his fingers not relenting on your abused clit, dragging you over the edge into blinding pleasure with a high cry.

“Oh God baby, shouldn’t’a cum in you. I’m so sorry, holy shit.” Jason had finally come to his senses, helping you off him and onto the bed, ready to start Googling for a pharmacy to get the morning after pill.

“Jason relax, I’m protected.” Your laugh calmed him deep in his soul, relief washing over his face when he realised you weren’t actually in trouble.

“Thank god.” He gasped. “Your dad would kill me.”

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agl03 · 4 years

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Daisy's behaviour this episode really bothered me. The whole "kill freddy to prevent hydra's foundation" thing, kind of brought back the s5 "kill one persone to save many" debate (like when yoyo killed ruby) but, while back then she was firmly against yoyo actions, she doesn't even esitate now in front of the possibility of killing someone in cold blood. Not to mention that she asked deke to do it, openly against mack's orders and everyone elses opinion. I hope this is addressed at some point

Hey Everyone!

Well. Daisy was a pretty hot topic after the episode last night so I decided to combine them all into one mega ask response as to not totally spam your dashes more than I already do because many of these questions all pull off of each other.

I was very surprised by Daisy’s actions last night but in retrospect I shouldn’t have when you sit and really look back at her actions. Her doing something like that in the first few eps of the season is even a given pretty much at this point. This was a case of me wanting to see evidence for a theory start to show up and instead said theory was pretty much blown to bits.

Where she goes from here is going to come down to what Mack does, IE does he punish her for trying to completely alter the history of the world, bench one of their strongest assets. Or does he just look the other way like Coulson did for so many years. Even if Daisy had been Director, killing Freddie was the wrong call. Even worse was how she tried to make it happen via an inexperienced and confused Deke.

So starting with the OG ask above. I have struggled with Daisy’s impulsive decisions for the entire series. It happens every season where she ignores orders, does what she wants, and even betrayed the team. Those decisions have serious consequences for the team, some worse than others. Season 5 was one of the worst for me, drove me bonkers with her double standards, with how she treated Fitz and Elena yet talked to Hale about recruiting and training Ruby fresh off Ruby cutting off Elena’s arms, Torturing Talbot, and going for the destroyer machine while torturing Fitzsimmons in the process. Also had she listened to Fitz about the target in the first place they would have been there long before the Superior was stopping the loop there without losing anyone.

But its never been really formally addressed by her superiors with the exception of Season 1 when they put that computer blocker on her wrist for Running to the Rising Tide. Mack needs to do something about it and do something now, before it gets worse. This was only the first test and she failed. Disregarding everyone else and history and throwing out the butterfly effect that she saw full force in the Framework with just May’s regret did and AIDA warped it even more.

Ideally Mack would sit her down, have it out, and pretty much put her on a time out until he can trust and she can prove she can handle the mission again. The issue here is with May.....questionable right now though she is in protect my team mode, and I suspect that Elena has lost her powers, Daisy is one of their biggest assets and they will need her in a fight.

Anonymous said:

Who would you see becoming director of shield if Mack dies and knowing that Daisy is clearly not ready? I would have said May but after this episode not anymore and LMD Coulson is happy being a agent and I don’t think he wants to be director again so except Simmons I don’t see anyone being ready to take over if necessary.

I agree that Daisy isn’t remotely close to being ready and I don’t know if they have the real estate to get her there in 11 episodes now. Not with knowing some of her biggest tests are yet to come (Afterlife). I mean if the writers really want to get her there they will but its going to take some massive leaps and even will feel unearned to me after how last night went down.

I think we could see May heal and get better as the season progresses. She’s got a lot to process right now and needs to have Jemma properly look her over and then have it out with who she needs to have it out with over Robo Coulson. I can see her staying on if Mack falls out of a sense of duty but it would be a band aid kind of thing, only until someone else can be found and vetted.

I don’t see Fitzsimmons as an option, I’m pretty sure they are out either in another time or just out for their Scottage.

Elena and Deke won’t have enough experience or overall Shield knowledge to do it.

The get rid of the DIrector thing all together and start leading with some sort of Council?

Maria Hill comes in out of freaking no where.

So I’m going to throw out a very very out there option. Enoch. Last night he established himself with Koenig, he’s going to be with Shield now as it grows. I’ll bet that Koenig’s bar is the one above the Playground. And not only does he have ample knowledge of Shield history but earths history and a lot of the baddies that are lurking out there in the Universe as well. Because he is a Chronicom he’s calm and level headed....and it would be one heck of a twist there at the end.

Getting long so under the thing.

Anonymous said:

They just completely throw Daisy character development trough the window this episode. Like if they really wanted her to become director at the end of the season they wouldn’t have done that. I feel like she is going to keep going against the other and the mission and she is going to put someone from the team in danger or something

Unpopular opinion here. No, they didn’t throw away any development with Daisy. She does something like that every single season. There is a situation where she doesn’t agree with the higher ups and forges ahead with what she feels is the best coarse of action. And yes people do get hurt.

While we are a year removed from the Season 6 finale for the team its like hours. Hours from she and May going against the others, trusting that Coulson was somewhere in Sarge, and took him right to where he needed to be. Then he killed May, Elena almost died and has possibly lost her powers, and the evil Zombie Army nearly took over the world.

Just hours after that she’s ready to totally take out Hydra and do who knows what to the timeline. Even worse she tried to get Deke to do it by not giving him the whole story.

I think what scares me and many others is that this was mission one and she was ready to make a tidal wave. And next time she’s ready to screw history I want to fix this we don’t know who gets caught in the collateral damage.

Anonymous said:

It was unnerving to see Daisy almost make it happen for the Chronicoms just because of her personal issues with Malicks. After all Gideon was the one who brought Hive back and it led to death of Lincoln and Malicks were involved in helping Whitehall which destroyed her family. It was too personal and she doesn’t deal with that well. This is why Mack is the Director.

Yes, Daisy realized in Season 5 that her emotions were getting the better of her and handed it off to Mack. However, it only works if she follows his orders now that she has.

Yes, Malick hurt Daisy a lot, no question. But he also did a number of Fitzsimmons with the whole 4722 hours on a deserted hell planet thanks to his monolith then being kidnapped and tortured to force Fitz to take Ward over to pick up Hive, Fitz the sacrifice to him. Because of Malick Rosalind died and set off that lovely Darth Coulson arc. May lost Lashdrew. The team lost Bobbi and Hunter. So she wasn’t the only one hurt by him but she was the only one who was ready to change history about it.

Anonymous said:

This episode proves that Daisy is still not ready to become director

See Above.

Anonymous said:

Daisy is definitely going to continue to want to do whatever she/they can to stop HYDRA. She’s got a big personal stake there; and I don’t think she cares about their present all that much.

Unfortunately I do agree but its not just Hydra. We know Afterlife is in play and there is an insanely good chance that they come across her mother there and that is on massive emotional can of worms and one of the biggest temptations to fix. To try to tell herself that what all would it hurt if I did.......

I do think what will finally stop her is she is going to make too big of a wave and it is going to have some serious repercussions and have major fallout. Be it we see history changed or someone dies as a result of her actions.

#aos spoilers #prepares to dodge rotten fruit #I stand by this #no regrets

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eddieeatsass · 5 years

Text

Pavlov’s Do(n)g

Summary: Richie had trained his dick to respond to darkness. He never thought it would get him in trouble, until he found himself in the middle of a blackout with his best friend, and a very well trained dong. Pairing: Reddie Rating: E Warnings: Smut, explicit language

Read on AO3

“If you ever listened to me and actually cleaned your fucking room, we wouldn’t be in this- OW!”

There was a loud clatter as Eddie stumbled over a pile of clothes and fell chest first into Richie’s dresser.

“Even if I cleaned my room, that still wouldn’t mean we’d find anything-”

“Everything should have its place!” Eddie interrupted sternly.

“Not everyone is as neurotic as you, Eds.” Richie rolled his eyes, a gesture gone unnoticed in the darkness of his dorm room.

The power had gone out minutes ago while the two were in the middle of a Fortnight tournament. Eddie had immediately switched into survival mode and began rummaging around Richie’s tiny room for a flashlight, even though Richie had insisted he didn’t own one.

Eddie kept his hands on the dresser after righting himself again, using it to feel his way back to Richie’s bed. He felt the soft cotton graze his leg and sunk down next to Richie with a sigh of defeat.

“Do you at least have any power on your phone?” Eddie asked, pulling his own phone out of his pocket to check.

He felt Richie rustle beside him and heard the telltale click of a button, but no light illuminated the space.

“Nope, dead as a doorknob.” Richie responded, chucking his phone in the direction of his nightstand. A thud announced that it hit the floor instead.

“Why do they say that anyway? Dead as a doorknob? I mean, it doesn’t make any sense. Something can’t be dead if it was never alive, right? Unless dead is just a synonym for inanimate, in which case, are dead people just inanimate ob-”

Eddie tuned him out as Richie continued to ramble. His own phone reflected back at him with only 12% battery. He cursed himself for being too distracted by video games to plug in his phone when he’d needed to. He quickly switched his phone to power saving mode and tucked it away. When he zoned back in, Richie was still ranting.

“- and in that case, does it hurt when we use them? Like, when we squeeze a doorknob, are we actually squeezing its nose?”

Eddie blinked back at Richie’s vague outline with incredulity, before his sigh dissolved into giggles.

“You totally just ripped off Alice in Wonderland.”

“What? No I didn’t?” Richie defended confidently.

“You’re thinking of that scene at the beginning of the movie where Alice finds a talking door and she squeezes it’s knob-nose.”

Richie was silent for a moment.

“Whatever, Walt Disney can suck my dick.”

The pair laughed for a bit before settling into silence, which was particularly deafening during a blackout. The only sound that could be heard were the passing cars outside the dorm, and the slow drip of the faucet in Richie’s bathroom that he’d been refusing to fix for three months now.

Richie’s leg began bouncing anxiously, the complete lack of stimulation already eating away at his nerves.

“This suuuuuccckkssss.” Richie whined.

“Hey, at least you’re not alone.” Eddie offered.

“It’d be better if I was alone!”

“Okay, Ouch.”

“Then I could just beat my meat until the power came back.”

“Ugh, Rich-”

“But now I’m just bored.”

“Hmm, poor you.”

Richie sighed. “I’m sorry Eds, I just get restless when I’m not doing something with my hands.”

“I know.” Eddie conceded; Richie’s ADHD could sometimes be an overwhelming feat for him to handle on his own.

He reached over to put a comforting hand on Richie’s jiggling leg, but the darkness had a way of throwing one’s coordination off.

Both boys froze as Eddie’s hand touched down on Richie’s crotch. Richie’s crotch, which was hard. Wait, why was Richie hard?

“I… uh…” Richie stammered while Eddie hastily pulled his hand away.

“I’m, uh, fuck, sorry.” Richie continued to stumble over his words as Eddie’s face flared hotter by the second.

“My roommate’s like, always here. He never fucking leaves, so I have to wait until he’s asleep to like, you know, have little Richie time, and now he just responds to darkness on his own. I swear to god, it’s like… fucking Pavlov’s dog. PAVLOV’S DICK! I PAVLOV’S DOG’D MY DICK!”

It took Eddie a minute for the words to truly sink in. The silence that stretched between them nearly became suffocating, and Richie was gearing up to begin rambling again, if for no other reason than to just drown out the quiet, when suddenly Eddie was laughing. Not just small titters, but full-blown belly laughs. He fell to his side, curling in on himself, laughter pooling all around him as he struggled to breathe.

“It’s not funny!” Richie protested with an almost indistinguishable lilt of humor in his tone.

“It’s… SO… funny!” Eddie wheezed between giggles.

Richie’s chuckles finally joined Eddie’s as the absurdity of the situation settled in.

Their laughter was interspersed with shouted puns, only half thought out and bordering on nonsense, but as they threw back and forth terms like ‘Pavlov’s Do(n)g’ or ‘Cock-turnal’, their tension bled away.

“Screw saving power, I need to tell the group chat about this.” Eddie grabbed his phone out of his pocket and began unlocking it with mischievous intent.

“Edward Spaghedward, I will kill you!” Richie yelled as he flung his body on top of Eddies to knock the phone out of his hand.

Eddie wrestled under Richie’s weight for a moment, struggling to reach for his phone now laying amongst the mess of Richie’s room. He could feel the laughter rumble through Richie’s chest, now pressed against his own which mimicked the same sound. Once Richie pinned his arms to the bed, he realized he couldn’t break free. Eddie let himself go limp, a sound of discontent accompanying a pout.

“Well, way to go Rich, my phone is now lost forever in the sea of your filth.” Eddie joked.

“It’s not that bad.” Richie objected.

“We still haven’t found Ben’s history text book and it’s been three months.”

“In my defense, there’s no evidence that Ben actually lost it in here.��

“You two were studying when he lost it.”

“…I plead the fifth.”

Eddie tried to laugh but struggled under the bulk of Richie’s body.

“Are you gonna move any time soon? You’re crushing my ribs.”

Richie shimmied a little bit while making a humming noise.

“Mmmm nope, don’t think so.”

“You asshole.” Eddie mumbled. He began to wriggle aggressively, trying to slide Richie off him enough to escape. What escaped instead was a barely audible moan from Richie’s mouth.

For the second time that evening they both froze again, going rigid under the pressure of an untold explanation. Eddie moved again, mimicking his actions from before, but this time slower. Richie hissed through his teeth and tightened his grip on Eddie’s wrists.

“Mind not moving around so much, Eds?” Richie tried to joke, his voice giving way to nerves instead.

That’s when Eddie felt it, the unmistakable outline of Richie’s erection straining against his leg. In all their joking around, they had both forgotten about Richie’s circumstance.

Eddie’s not sure why, blame it on the anonymity of darkness if you will, but his hips began to move again. Another swivel, even slower than the last, and much more calculated. He waited with baited breath, listening closely for a sign from Richie.

It came moments later in a shaky exhale. Eddie felt Richie’s hair tickle his cheek as he lowered his head to Eddie’s shoulder.

“Eddie…” Richie cautioned. “What are you doing.”

“Solving your problem…” Eddie braved, another swivel of his hips.

Richie let go of Eddie’s wrists then, sending panic into Eddie’s swimming thoughts. He’d already begun constructing his apology when he felt Richie’s hands resettle themselves on his hips.

His grip was softer, hesitant, as if he feared being burned. Eddie stayed as still as possible, inviting his touch with patience.

The next move had them both groaning, as Richie held down Eddie’s hips and ground into him.

Richie’s cock was noticeably harder than before, the subtle friction enough to get him from half to fully erect, but Eddie was following embarrassingly close behind.

Richie’s head was still tucked into the crook of Eddie’s neck, his sped-up breath leaving trails of heat along Eddie’s collarbone.

The first kiss was unexpected. Eddie’s full body shivered as Richie continued to place kisses along the column of his neck, his hips now settled into a slow rhythm against Eddie’s own. It amplified a growing need in Eddie that had only begun to rear its head mere minutes ago.

With shaky hands, Eddie reached out to tangle his fingers in familiar black curls, pulling Richie a little closer. His mouth had moved to Eddie’s jaw, nipping at the sharp angles of soft flesh. Eddie tilted his head towards the warmth, his own mouth ghosting against Richie’s.

For a moment there was nothing but shared breaths. Their lips grazed, Eddie could feel the promise of Richie’s kiss so close, yet both were too scared to cross the line.

As Eddie’s heartbeat threatened to crack a rib, he took a leap of faith.

“Richie…” He moaned, far more desperate than he’d intended.

Richie surged forward, connecting their lips in fervor, unable to hold himself back from temptation any longer.

Simultaneously, they let their walls fall away, filling each other with nothing but desire. Richie prodded Eddie’s lips with his tongue, licking into his mouth when Eddie opened up. Their tongues melded together, their pace starting slow but heating up fast. When Eddie whimpered, Richie’s hands seemed to wander instinctively.

The strong grip disappeared from Eddie’s hips in favor of his shirt, sliding up beneath it in search of tender spots. Richie’s fingers found Eddie’s nipples and his back immediately arched in response. Richie didn’t hold back his smugness as Eddie mewled beneath him.

Eddie’s hands left their purchase in Richie’s hair to pull at his top, too lost in bliss to separate their lips for even a moment. Richie pulled back despite Eddie’s whine and rid himself of the barrier, taking the extra time apart to remove Eddie’s as well before they rejoined impatiently.

The newly exposed skin added extra heat to their fever, causing them to writhe against each other with renewed vigor. Richie’s hands explored new curves as Eddie’s tangled in the sheets. Despite the layers between them, the friction of their cocks rubbing together was already enough to have Eddie somewhat senseless.

Eddie could feel the flush on his face as Richie’s hands returned to their perch on his chest, seeking out his sensitive nubs and pinching them between his thumb and forefinger. The expanse of Richie’s large hands in contrast to his small torso made him feel inexplicably filthy. He wanted to feel those hands on every part of him.

Slowly, Eddie placed one hand atop Richie’s, leading it down his taut stomach until they reached the waist band of Eddie’s jeans. Their kisses slowed to match the pace. Richie’s fingers, shaky but determined, ventured under the rough denim in search of relief. The tense breath he’d been holding was let go as soon he palmed Eddie through his underwear and heard the responding groan. Eddie’s hips rocked up into his hand, silently begging for more friction. So, with a surge of confidence spurred on by Eddie’s actions, Richie dove one layer deeper, connecting skin to skin and making them both shiver.

Eddie’s cock was deliciously thick, squished shorter by the confines of his pants that it strained against. Richie could feel the bulbous point of its head leaking against his hand as he glided over it. He wished so desperately that the power wasn’t out, that he could see Eddie’s cock in full glory, standing tall and twitching for attention. The thought alone nearly brought him to the edge. He decided he’d need to settle on relying on his other senses instead.

Touch. He squeezed the base of Eddie’s cock and dragged his hand upwards, feeling the slope of soft skin against his fingers.

Smell. The scent of Eddie’s shampoo calmed his nerves, familiar and comforting, from then forth forever tainted by this memory.

Sound. Eddie’s small pants could be heard among the silence of the room, a whimper occasionally escaping his lips when Richie flicked his wrist just right.

Taste. Eddie’s lips had tasted sweet, like he’d just applied vanilla chapstick. His tongue had tasted like soda, sugary and sharp and unmistakable. His neck, salty and bland; the taste of clean skin with a sheer layer of sweat prompted by heavy petting.

But there was one spot Richie hadn’t tasted yet… A thought that made his mouth water and his pants tighten. A sinful dream that plagued his mind at night.

“Can I suck you off?” Richie found himself asking, his better judgement lost in a haze.

Eddie keened immediately; his brain already fuzzy from how fast everything was escalating. He nodded vigorously before remembering that Richie couldn’t see him.

“Yes, yes yes yes, please.”

Richie’s hands were pulling Eddie’s pants off within seconds, causing his partner to giggle as the movement tugged his small frame farther down the bed. He scooted back up as Richie repeated the action with his boxer briefs, leaving Eddie completely nude and at his mercy.

It was interesting how confident the dark made Eddie feel. He didn’t feel shy or exposed, but rather empowered by the black surrounding him. As he felt Richie crawl back up the bed, he tugged him in for a bruising kiss. They separated with a wet noise and Eddie guided Richie’s head down to where they both wanted him most.

The hot breath against his cock had flames quickly engulfing Eddie’s abdomen. As Richie licked his first stripe up Eddie’s dick, the twisting threat of release was already churning. Eddie cursed himself for being so into this that he might not last. He clenched his muscles and focused on his breathing as Richie’s tongue continued to do sinful things.

Richie was lost in his mind as he worshiped Eddie’s cock. It was heavy on his tongue as he laved at the head, collecting as much of Eddie’s pre-cum as he could milk from him. He already felt addicted to the stretch in his throat as he sunk down to the base, and the noises the action elicited in Eddie.

“Mmm- fuck, jesus christ- ahhhhh-” Eddie prattled above him.

With a brave hand, Richie brought a single digit up to the swell of Eddie’s ass, tracing the curvature until he reached the warmth of his hole. He continued his maneuvers on Eddie’s cock as his thumb pressed gently against the pucker, teasing the small ring of muscle until Eddie writhed beneath him for more.

Richie pulled off Eddie swiftly, tangling himself up in the sheets as he felt around for his bedside table. They both laughed at Richie’s clumsiness as he continued his tirade, throwing things on the ground while rummaging through the drawer.

Eddie crawled over to where Richie was kneeling at the edge of the mattress and snaked his arms around Richie’s waist in an attempt to calm him. Richie took a deep breath as he felt soft lips on his neck. He let himself melt into Eddie, the touch successfully easing his jitteriness away. His fingers finally curled around the bottle he was searching for, and he made sure to place it within reach before twisting around and locking his arms around Eddie’s waist. He pulled him around on to his lap, Eddie’s hands settling on Richie’s shoulders and his thighs straddling either side of Richie’s legs.

Their noses brushed as foreheads connected, Richie’s hands tracing delicate patterns over Eddie’s skin. Eddie brought their lips together in a kiss that was all smiles, and maybe too much teeth, but neither of them were bothered. One of Richie’s hands disappeared from Eddie’s waist, and after a few seconds Eddie heard the pop of a cap opening.

“Oh, so you don’t know where to find a flash light, but your lube is right on hand?” Eddie snarked with no bite.

“I have my priorities.” Richie responded in a tone that had no business being so sensual.

Eddie’s skin prickled with anticipation when he felt Richie’s other hand leave his body. When it returned, it was accompanied by a slicked-up finger, which Richie teased just at the bottom of Eddie’s tailbone. He slowly trailed the digit down towards Eddie’s neglected hole, revelling in the impatient whimper he got in response to his pace.

Richie finally began circling his rim, the lube coating the area generously. When he pushed the tip of his finger in, he couldn’t help but notice that Eddie already seemed stretched out. Richie was able to push his entire finger in down to the knuckle with no resistance.

“Fuck, Eds, your greedy little hole is already sucking me in.” Richie moaned into Eddie’s neck, where he’d settled his head.

Eddie responded by gyrating his hips forward.

“I may have a nighttime routine of my own.” He whispered.

The image of Eddie eagerly thrusting his fingers into himself while his unsuspecting roommate laid just a few feet away sent a new shot of arousal down to Richie’s groin.

Richie began to drag his finger out, pistoning it back up a second later. He repeated the motion until he felt that Eddie could take another. He added a second finger alongside the first, curling them just slightly so they dragged against Eddie’s walls as he pulled out.

After a short time, Richie was able to scissor his fingers apart, spreading Eddie open to what he could only imagine was a delicious sight. He pushed in a final finger, Eddie’s hole responding hungrily to the intrusion. Richie could feel his wrist protesting as he spread his fingers within the tight muscle, feeling hot walls constricting around him.

At this point Eddie was fucking himself down on Richie’s fingers, setting a steady pace for himself as Richie’s hand stood in as a makeshift dildo of sorts. On one particular thrust Richie curved his fingers just slightly, and when Eddie bore down the response was electric. Eddie’s body curled inwards as a sound akin to a sob escaped him. After a moment he resumed his movements in smaller increments, keeping himself close to Richie and only pulling up to Richie’s second knuckles before pushing back down. He was letting out little unh unh unh’s as he moved, and Richie’s mind was gone. It was so hot he nearly forgot about his own weeping cock, which was smearing precum deep into the fibers of his boxers as it strained against its confines.

When his mind returned to his body on a particularly loud moan from the boy above him, it was like something snapped in Richie. With fluid motions he flipped himself backwards and up the mattress, keeping Eddie securely in his lap with a strong arm around his torso. The new position left Eddie sitting directly on his crotch, Richie’s clothed erection settling in the cleft of his ass. Lube smeared across his pants as Eddie adjusted, adding to the wetness of his jeans.

Eddie’s fingers seemed to have the same thought as Richie’s as they both reached for the button on Richie’s jeans at the same time, neither trying to hide their eagerness. Richie popped the button as Eddie unzipped his fly, and together in an awkward mess of limbs they pulled the tight material down Richie’s legs until it laid in a sad heap at the bottom of the bed.

Eddie’s eagerness wavered slightly in favor of teasing Richie. Soft, delicate fingers traced Richie’s happy trail, dipping into the band of his boxers for a moment only to return up towards his belly button. It was a torturous procedure, but Richie still bathed in the moment, soaking up the attention from Eddie like a sponge.

“You are evil, you know that Eds?” Richie gasped out breathily after the fourth time Eddie pulled his fingers away.

Eddie conceded, not too fond of putting off his own pleasure any longer when Richie was so eager to please.

A single moment is all it took to have Richie reciting just about every curse known to man. As soon as Eddie pulled his boxers off and rested his warm hole up against Richie’s cock, the words just came tumbling.

“Holy fucking shit- aaaahhhhh- your motherfucking asshole is on my dick what the fuck- aaagggghhhh- son of a bitch- hnnnggg” Richie’s incoherence was accompanied by sharp nails digging into the flesh of Eddie’s thighs, hard enough to leave crescent moons in their wake. It was as if Richie thought if he held on tight enough, he might not entirely lose his mind.

Eddie loved the roughness, no matter how accidental or subconscious. He absently hoped there’d be bruises there tomorrow. He couldn’t help but rock back on Richie’s cock just a little bit harder in hopes of getting a harsher grip.

What Eddie got instead was a sudden flip of power. Before he knew it, he was on his stomach, being mounted from the back as he struggled to figure out how Richie had moved so quickly.

“No more games.” Richie growled into Eddie’s ear, his tone causing prickles along Eddie’s arms. He realized then that he’d teased Richie for just a bit too long, awakening within him a side that Eddie had never seen before. He wondered if Richie’s other partners had ever gotten this Richie; stern Richie. He quite liked it…

“O-okay.” Eddie responded with a quake to his voice.

“Now’s the time to choose.” Richie continued, tone even but solemn. “Do you want me to fuck you, or leave you to finger yourself alone in my bed?”

“Th-the first one?” Eddie answered back, a little more hesitantly than he’d intended.

The second he felt Richie’s weight shifting off him he panicked, scrambling behind him blindly to try and pull him back down.

“FUCK ME! FUCK ME, PLEASE RICH- DON’T- don’t leave, I want you to fuck me, please please.”

A chuckle much more akin to the Richie Eddie was used to rang through the air.

“I wasn’t leaving, Eds, I was going to grab a condom…” Richie’s voice dropped a few octaves before adding “But I appreciate the enthusiasm. Seriously, anytime you want to beg me to fuck you, please don’t hold back.”

Eddie’s face was flaring red, he was sure of it. Even in the darkness of the room, red light emanated through his skin to light him up like a Christmas bulb.

Eddie figured since he was already dying of mortification, he had nothing else to lose.

“Can we skip that part actually?”

His voice didn’t waver, and Eddie counted that as a big win for team Kaspbrak.

“Eddie…” Richie’s voice seemed to drop suddenly. “Of course we can skip sex. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.” His tone came out softened and cautious, and Eddie wanted to punch him for it.

So, scratch that, both teams were losing.

Eddie sighed before reaching back and taking Richie’s cock in his hand, guiding him to his entrance and propping up his hips in the process.

“You idiot. Skip the condom.”

The reaction was instantaneous, Richie’s head dropped to Eddie’s shoulder and a single incredulous huff exited his chest.

“Thank god. Jerking off in the bathroom wouldn’t have been nearly as satisfying as this-”

Eddie keened loudly as Richie slipped into him in one easy glide. His tight walls accepted Richie’s cock with no hesitation, leaving him sheathed fully as Eddie trembled below him, toes curled in pleasure.

Richie didn’t allow Eddie time to adjust, apart from the quickly exchanged confirmation that Eddie was okay. But once that was out of the way, Richie was setting a brutal pace right off the bat.

Eddie’d known Richie was well-endowed, but he hadn’t been expecting to feel quite so full with him inside. It wasn’t painful, but it was certainly a step up from the dildo he’d gotten used to using over the last year. This was infinitely better than a dildo.

“Ahhh- such a tight little hole, Eds. Jesus fuck, you’re perfect.” Richie ground out between clenched teeth, no doubt trying to hold himself back just as much as Eddie was.

The constant friction of his cock against the mattress wasn’t doing Eddie many favors in that department, and neither were the filthy things falling from Richie’s mouth.

Eddie’s entire body was already broken out in a sweat. It should’ve grossed him out, but instead it just added to the absolutely filthy feeling he was being consumed by.

“Rich- ‘Chee- fuck you’re so good.” Eddie had never been one for dirty talk, but words were spilling out of him like he physically couldn’t contain them. The praise just felt so natural with Richie.

“So full- hnnnnggg- ‘m so full, don’t stop please please don’t stop.” Eddie reached behind himself almost frantically, searching for Richie’s hands like if he didn’t intertwine their fingers soon, he might lose his footing and begin floating up into the sky.

Luckily, Richie tethered him to the ground, reminding Eddie that he was there, and he didn’t plan on stopping, and he wasn’t going anywhere. Eddie tried to focus on the feeling of Richie’s thumb rubbing the back of his hand as he evened out his breathing.

“So much…” Eddie started back up. “So full… so-”

Eddie was cut off as Richie folded over him, modifying his thrusts so they were shallower. He didn’t pull his hips back far before pushing back in, keeping himself nestled right up against Eddie.

“Is it too much?” Richie asked quietly, bringing their conjoined hands up to his mouth and kissing each of Eddie’s tiny fingers.

Eddie shook his head, then remembered Richie couldn’t see him.

“No, it’s just… it’s a lot, but not too much.”

Richie hummed in acknowledgement, keeping his new pace consistent as their bodies rocked together.

With Richie pressed so closely to Eddie, he could feel every inch of skin that rubbed together. Even things a simple as the graze of Richie’s leg against his thigh had tingles shooting up Eddie’s spine.

“Your skin is so soft.” Eddie whispered absently, kissing Richie’s wrist where their hands were still joined, now laying beside Eddie’s head as Richie used his elbows to hold himself up.

Richie stilled immediately, pausing for a moment before pulling out and flipping Eddie over on to his back. Eddie’s disoriented eyes darted around, blinking frantically as if that would make the darkness disappear. He was about to ask Richie why he’d stopped when he felt the same press of Richie’s chest easing down on to his own.

He knew Richie was close, could feel the hot breath escaping his lips and hear the labored breathing that accompanied it.

“You have the softest skin.” Richie said, placing an unexpected kiss to Eddie’s cheek. “And the best smelling hair.” He continued, threading his fingers through Eddie’s hair. “The sexiest body.” Richie hiked Eddie’s legs up to his chest, settling his lithe frame between them once again. “The most charming smile.” A press of Richie’s lips to Eddie’s informed him that Richie was wearing a smile of his own. “And the tightest ass I’ve ever felt.” Richie added with a small chuckle, rubbing his cock up and down Eddie’s hole before pushing back in very slowly.

Eddie’s breath hitched as Richie bottomed out, staying pressed in there tight as Richie lower his head to Eddie’s ear.

“And I’ve been in love with you for years.” He whispered, barely intelligible.

Relief that Eddie didn’t realized he’d been craving washed over him in a suffocating wave. Sex with Richie had been great so far; Eddie was out of his mind with lust for him, and that raw attraction alone had resulted in the best sex of Eddie’s life… But the other component that had made the sex so great for him was an unspoken secret that, until then, Eddie hadn’t thought was requited.

A sound similar to a sob escaped Eddie’s throat, and he tried to cover it up by clearing his throat as if Richie hadn’t already heard it.

“Eddie-”

“Me too.” Eddie cut him off, his determination just a beat behind. “I’ve felt that way for years too. Uhm, since seventh grade, actually.” Eddie’s voice was shy, as if he was afraid of baring too much of his soul.

“Well then I guess I win.” Richie responded coyly.

“Huh?”

“I’ve been in love with you since sixth grade; I have a whole year on you.”

Eddie gaped into the darkness above him, wishing there was enough light to throw Richie an unimpressed look.

“I didn’t even know I was gay in sixth grade!” Eddie defended, a lilt of humor coating his comment.

“Oh boy, you’re lucky. The gay crisis hit me strong as soon as I saw you in those little red shorts in gym class.”

Eddie tried to recall his memory of Richie back in sixth grade. He’d just begun hitting puberty and had shot up like a beanstalk, so none of his clothes had fit him quite right, and his walk had become a little awkward. That was also the year he’d broken his glasses and had to hold them together with tape. On top of all that, he’d talked about sex nearly constantly, despite having no real knowledge on the subject. Which, for tiny stuffy Eddie, who was still under his mother’s thumb at the time, was about one of the biggest turn-offs he could think of.

Richie had really grown into himself since then, an almost unrecognizable upgrade from the scrawny kid who’d eaten a worm because Beverly Marsh had dared him to. So, maybe it wasn’t exactly Eddie’s fault Richie wasn’t his ‘gay awakening’. Now, however, he was definitely awakening something inside Eddie. He’d grown into his figure, had developed a sense of style that worked for him, had since gotten new glasses that complimented his angular features and deep blue eyes aggressively well (and had zero tape holding them together). As for the last part, well… Richie still talked about sex just as much as he used to, but now he actually knew what he was talking about, and Eddie no longer shied away from the topic. In fact, that very combination of traits was what winded them in this exact position, and Eddie wasn’t complaining.

“Well, now that we’ve established that… new information…” Eddie swirled his hips tauntingly, earning a small groan of sexual frustration in return.

“Yeah, okay, moment over.” Richie agreed, pulling out with a shuddering breath before pushing back in just as gradually.

They built their pace back up slowly, the softness of their admissions making everything a little more tender.

Once Richie had set a bruising pace, and Eddie was getting used to the small puffs pushed out of him on every thrust, Richie suddenly changed angles.

“Hhhh-Ahhh!” Eddie screamed as Richie pounded right up into Eddie’s prostate without reservation.

Eddie’s body was gone, replaced with a firecracker. He could feel the fuse slowly lighting up every inch of his body as it burnt down.

Richie was also getting close, whispering in Eddie’s ear as his thrusts got quicker.

“I’m gonna cum, hnnnngg- fuck Eds, gonna fill you up, gonna have you dripping- aaahhhh-”

Eddie was right on the edge, so close but unable to topple over.

“Richie… I need… I need-”

Suddenly the room exploded in color and sound. The lights flickered a few times before coming back on, and the sound of their computer restarting melded with muffled cheers from down the hall. Despite the world coming back into focus, Eddie’s own mind was leaving. The sight of Richie above him, pale and lean and spilling sinful moans from his lips was enough to send Eddie over the edge. He tried to keep his eyes open as waves of pleasure rolled through him, but his pupils rolled back involuntarily. His muscles spasmed erratically as his body tried to move through the most powerful orgasm he’d ever endured. He clenched around Richie’s cock while spilling on to his own stomach, too preoccupied by his own euphoria to feel Richie’s stuttering hips, followed by the rush of warmth filling him up.

Richie’s legs shook violently as he emptied into Eddie. The sight of Eddie writhing beneath him, cheeks flush and brow drawn, had been too much for Richie to handle. It had only taken a few more pumps after the power came back on for him to be completely at the mercy of Eddie’s body.

Once Richie calmed down to have enough sense, he gently pulled out of Eddie and collapsed down beside him. Eddie had yet to reopen his eyes since his orgasm had hit, partly because he wanted to soak it all in, partly because he was afraid of what was to come next. When he did chance a peek through squinted eyes, Richie was watching him.

He shut his eyes again quickly, but not before he saw a smile being formed. He fought back his own smile as he willed his heart to calm down.

“Quit staring at me.” Eddie ordered with no real threat.

“I can’t. You’re too cute.”

Eddie opened one eye again, scrunching his nose as he looked back in Richie’s direction.

“’m not cute.” Eddie grumbled.

The bed dipped as Richie drew himself closer. Eddie opened both his eyes and let Richie come into focus.

“Yes, you are.” Richie bent forward, placing a kiss on Eddie’s cheek. “Cute…” A kiss on the other cheek. “…cute…” He hesitated once he was hovering over Eddie’s lips, searching his eyes for approval. Eddie gave a shy nod, letting Richie connect their lips for a soft kiss, unlike any of the other ones they’d shared. “…cute.” Richie whispered.

#reddie #reddie fluff #reddie fanfic #reddie fanfiction #reddie smut #reddie lemon #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #it 2017 #it stephen king #it fanfic #it fanfiction #it lemon #my posts #my writing

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pictureamoebae · 4 years

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gosh your taiga sandboox zoo is amazing, i'm so blown away and it's been inspiring me to work on my own taiga franchise zoo. do you have any miscellaneous tips for the game? doesn't even have to be franchise mode specific, even building tips and whatnot would be super helpful :-)

Thank you, anon! I’m finding it very relaxing to play at the moment. My cat isn’t very well (not sure why, she’s in quite a bit of pain with her back and her right legs, x-rays have shown nothing so we’re assuming arthritis) and the last few weeks have been quite stressful. Playing Planet Zoo has been just about the only thing that has let me take my mind off everything for a couple of hours a day.

As for tips, hmm... there are the usual ones like “start out very slowly” in franchise mode, but you probably know that already. I saw recently someone had taken an in-depth look at guest happiness, and one thing I learned was that if they have far to walk between habitats their happiness drops considerably, so having things for them to do in between is really important. As is adequate seating, and here’s the interesting thing: picnic tables restore happiness a lot more than regular benches, so making plenty of little spaces for picnic seating wherever your guests have to walk a lot seems like a great way to help with happiness.

Another tip: of all the things you can compromise on in terms of animal happiness, plants are probably the best. I’ve had a couple of habitats where I placed more plants than the animals wanted, so the bar was in the red, but it doesn’t affect their overall happiness too much and doesn’t compromise their more important welfare stats. So while I try to keep within the acceptable boundaries, when I come across animals that don’t like many plants at all I’m not afraid to ignore that and add extra so the enclosure doesn’t look too barren.

Rocks: they’re amazing. Especially the 2 large and 2 small square cladding pieces. They’re great to sink into the ground at different depths to make rocky ground look more natural, and even in patches of grass. And if you have large mountains or hills created with the terraforming tool, sinking some cladding in from time to time helps break up the terrain paint patterns and make it look more natural. And of course adding the other rocks to blend in and create more natural outcroppings and so on. Rock work is probably my favourite thing to do at the moment. Trying to make it look natural and blend in appears to be my idea of fun.

The workshop: make use of it, and don’t worry about feeling bad that you’re not building everything yourself. I often download things and then use them as a base for things I build on to, or just use other people’s smaller blueprints as quick and handy filler for spaces. There are some great little things people have made for backstage/staff areas, like vehicles and electric charging stations and crates -- they really help add something extra.

Animals: use the animal tab from the main Zoo menu (bottom left corner) to help manage your animals. It’s quicker than clicking on the barrier each time and individually clicking on each animal, then back to the barrier. I also move animals to the trade centre from there, because it often helps avoid the bug that reduces their rating (I think this only happens in franchise, I’m not sure).

Cheetahs: my favourite animal in franchise because if you save up for a gold rated breeding pair each of their babies (and they have 3 or 4 at a time) can be released directly to the wild for around 1000 cc each.

Even though the temptation is there to stuff your zoo with all the exciting animals, sometimes it’s better to try to stick to those more appropriate for the biome you’re playing in. In franchise it will help you avoid heating and cooling bills, but it also helps tie the theme of your zoo together. Of course, if you’re going for a mega zoo, you can have themed areas, and perhaps utilise large buildings for some animals, which are easier to control the temperature of.

If you find your computer struggling once your zoo gets to a certain size, you can limit the number of guests. In franchise/challenge this means you’ll be bringing in less money, so use with caution. The game relies more on your cpu than a lot of games, because of all the constant calculations it needs to make about what each guest, each animal, and each staff member is doing at any one time. Limiting the number of guests reduces the number of those calculations, helping ease the load a little. Of course, if you do a lot of building, making things with lots and lots of individual objects will have an impact as well, because even though 10 planks smooshed together can look like 1 plank, the game is still calculating and rendering 10 planks-worth of polygons.

That’s all I can think of for now. If there’s anything in particular you or anyone else wants to ask let me know. I’m at around 350 hours now, but I’m still learning things myself. Check out the Planet Zoo reddit, it’s often full of great information. And of course there are some brilliant youtubers creating stuff. Search for Mike Sheets to be blown away by absolutely beautiful designs. His stuff is second to none.

#planet zoo #planzo #zoo simulation #simulation game #frontier developments

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captainsimagines · 5 years

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RENT - Part 8

In which eight old friends in dire need move in together for one year.

Warnings: language; mentions of drugs and drug use; exotic dancing

Word Count: 1,000+

Sam - “Out Tonight”

THREE YEARS AGO

“I’ll take another one of those. Thanks very much.”

With his legs comfortably crossed and his shoulder draped with a small hotel towel, Sam breathed in the warm and humid air of Puerto Vallarta. It was much thicker than the air in Cuba, much warmer than the air in South Korea, and much more relaxing than the air in Los Angeles. Perhaps it felt ‘much better’ simply because he finally left his long-term girlfriend from high school, won $20,000 on the slots in Hong Kong, or because he was absolutely alone. Whatever it was, Sam sipped his brand-new sangria as he pondered the options.

Traveling wasn’t all glamour and big bucks. It took connections and some great taste in all things expensive. It didn’t make much difference to Sam if he was rich or poor. He was enjoying the freedom.

If Sam was questioned about it, he would claim he traveled better alone, experienced things with a greater mind that way. If it were up to him, he would only speak to another human being when needed. But he didn’t have to- not when everything was so perfect.

It was obviously some much needed ‘alone time’ after such an abrupt end to yet another strong relationship, but that’s what was foreshadowed.

He would never admit it to anyone yet and probably would always keep it locked away in the confines of his chest, growing and expanding. He would never find peace with himself, no matter how many times he sipped on delicious drinks and got the accurate daily dose of vitamin D.

He was extremely close to coming out to Dylan, the pool boy for his second cousin in England. He got close to telling Phil, the nice and rhythmic Jamaican that lived in the apartment next to his one summer. Sam had even told the fireman in France that he was ‘ heating up in places he shouldn’t be’, but quickly averted that awkward conversation to pointing at his neck and the oxygen tank instead. Sam almost mentioned it once or twice to Steve but decided against it- he, himself, simply wasn’t ready.

So, Sam quickly packed his suitcase and left a lovely, hand-written note to his latest love, Dave. Carefully placing the note in-between Dave’s medication and the cup of water on his nightstand, Sam debated once more.

A kiss goodbye? Should he just not leave?

Maybe he’d stay and tear the note and switch to ‘loving boyfriend’ mode and make Dave’s studio apartment smell like those burnt pancakes he loves so much. Or maybe Sam could visit Venice, Italy- he had never been there.

Sam eventually went with the second option, like always, and left the apartment with a glum expression and an even tighter chest than before.

THREE YEARS LATER

“How’s the couch treating yuh?”

Sam’s little quip almost ruined Bucky’s morning, but after breathing in the cool, Christmas morning air he quickly kicked off the three blankets with a happy look on his face. All red nosed and tangled curls sitting on top of his head, Bucky simply stuck his tongue out Sam and walked past him to start the coffee for five people.

“I’m doing fantastic, actually. How was your night?” Bucky replied.

Sam raised his eyebrows for a couple of seconds, but quickly set them down when he realized Bucky was only trying to fit into the holiday morning. Just the other night Bucky had almost blown someone’s head off and today he was actually trying to act less frightened.

“I slept great as well,” Sam smiled, gently clapping the table once and made his way to the balcony. Steve had been there for about fifteen minutes before Sam had woken, enjoying the morning breeze.

The sound of the window creaking open snapped Steve from his original gaze and landed on Sam instead. Sam raised his hands as an apology for the harsh sound but moved to stand next to his best friend. The two stood for a couple minutes without a sound, listening to the calmness of Brooklyn before people began getting up to start the Christmas day. By the time the fourth bird sang its song, Sam gently shoved Steve’s shoulder to alert him of his morning greeting.

“Morning.”

Steve smiled as a reply, a quiet sigh exiting his nose followed by a breeze of cold air.

“I hope you weren’t expecting a Christmas present. But I think my presence is enough. So, it counts.”

It was Steve’s turn to shove Sam to the side. Steve hugged the blanket tighter to his body and once he noticed Sam wore no warm cover, he suggested they head back inside. “As much as this morning calms me, I think we should freeze inside the building instead.”

Sam nodded in agreement, following the tall blonde through the creaking window. As they stepped back into the living room, you had emerged in your ‘angel’ uniform. It’s description could be kept short considering Steve had already scanned every single detail during your first encounter. But the diamonds and white silk still made him weak in the knees. Sam choked on his spit loudly, instantly covering himself with the same blanket Steve was wrapped in. He squeezed himself against Steve and stared at you in astonishment.

“Girl, what are you wearing?”

You chuckled, lugging your suitcase and large coat in both hands. You dropped them on the couch and did a slight twirl to your audience. “It’s Christmas. Perhaps one of the busiest days of the year. Besides Valentine’s Day and Super Bowl Sunday.”

Bucky had stopped pouring his coffee to stare at you in awe. He was quiet, deciding to listen to the conversation rather than intrude.

“But... it’s Christmas,” Sam whined, snuggling closer to Steve. Steve decided to join the dramatics, just in case you were to change your mind. He snuggled closer to Sam as well, and made a puppy-dog face to entice you with the idea of warmth. You rolled your eyes at the men and waved them off.

“I’ve got the main set today. Tips will be flooding at the doorway, gentleman,” you laughed and put on your oversized coat. “You gotta learn from this hard-working woman.”

Steve continued to shake his head, “Are you sure?”

“You want some rent money or not?”

Steve puckered his lips and raised his eyebrows in an exaggerated look of understanding. “Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. No doubt, no doubt, no doubt.”

“You’re crazy if you would ever want me to miss out on all the guilty dough from sad men celebrating Christmas in a strip club,” you twirled again, this way making your way to the kitchen.

Christmas, no matter how lonely it was in the mornings and the nights you returned, was always your biggest hit. It was as if the momentary dancing and singing and money being thrown at you was enough to numb your pain for a long while. You had always made enough money to buy a new needle or alcohol. If you had dressed better than the months before, or danced greater, or showed a little more skin, the men always gave you enough to buy some more smack.

But you had quit. You had thrown away all of your needles. You didn’t have the temptation anymore. The more you worked, however, the more temptation would itch.

But this was for rent money. Something you were always behind on, anyway. “Why don’t you guys come hang? There’s nothing here to get you in the spirit,” you laughed, grabbing yourself a styrofoam cup to pour some cream and coffee in.

Bucky smiled as you twirled around him, still hesitant about interrupting a conversation.

You stopped in front of him, “You’ll be able to make it to my set, right?”

Bucky’s eyes widened slightly. He had seen you dance on his drunken nights in the city when he used to visit Steve, but never had he voluntarily watched while sober.

Sam answered instead, “Us? Watch you... strip?”

For the second time that joyous morning, you rolled your eyes. “You’ll probably see just a little nip slip. Don’t worry too much about it.”

Sam smiled brightly, teeth showing and everything. “I’ll make sure to be the loudest and grandest tipper there!”

Your expression of delight turned into confusion. “Why would you waste your money, when it’s gonna go into my pocket, and then back into this apartment?”

“Oh,” Sam sighed. After a few chuckles, the sound of the door unlocking caught everyone’s attention. Peggy scurried inside with a tray of chocolate chip cookies and her ‘Best Cook’ apron wrapped around her waist. The four of you cheered and lunged at her, devouring her treats and locking her into the previous conversation.

“You gonna enjoy this miracle with us, Peggy?” Steve asked, mouth full of cookie. Peggy smiled at him and handed him a tiny napkin.

“Sure! I appreciate any form of dance! Just ask Steve.”

Sam grabbed his cup of black coffee and took a long sip before he replied to Peggy’s comment. “You managed to teach Steve something besides the sidestep?”

You quickly fixed your bra backstage, grinning at the constant muttering of the guys at the front of the stage. If you heard correctly, Bucky wanted to give the taxpayers their seats because they weren’t going to throw anything anyway. And you briefly heard Steve say ‘shut the fuck up’ once in a while.

The girls backstage wished you luck, a wider smile than usual on all of their faces. As sad as it was, Christmas day brought more customers and with that, more money. With one final stretch of the arms, you walked onto the stage in the dark. A mic was strung from the back of your bra and through your hair, the tip reaching the beginning of your forehead. You held onto the pole as the drums started to pound and the lights brightened you up.

“What’s the time? Well, it’s gotta be close to midnight!”

You danced and sang your heart out like you would any other day. Your voice vibrated off the walls beautifully and the men reacted like any straight man would be.

You reached the end of the stage and rolled over on your stomach, extending your legs outwards and then rolled over onto your back. Pushing yourself up, you leaned out into the crowd and smiled at your new roommates. So engrossed in your little dance, they were simply staring at you and then the wall... then you... then the wall.

To get the best tips possible and as a silent “I got this” to your friends, you hit the floor once again. Belting and following rhythm, you ended up on your back once again. You had it, you certainly did as any of the boys would exclaim, when you lifted your legs into the air and unlocked them, spreading them wide open for the whole audience. A cheeky look was all it was and it gave you breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the whole apartment for three whole days.

You wrapped up and headed back behind the curtain, wishing the next girl luck as you caught your breath.

The girls were all acquaintances and you knew everyone’s first and last name. There were no strangers. Every girl knew you and every girl spoke with Luke. It was a small community. However, no backstories were ever shared. No one knew how many siblings each person had or if they were sleeping under a roof every night. So, it would make sense that no one knew each other’s past addictions. You stopped in your tracks as you saw a suspicious teenage boy hand a little baggy to one of the girls who had already performed. You swallowed hard and averted your eyes quickly, heading over to your table to grab your clothes.

“Thank you, Peter,” the girl muttered, wiping her nose in the process. The boy looked at the woman with a hint of sympathy before he nodded and slipped out the back door. She turned around and almost yelped when she saw you staring.

She looked to the floor, “I’m sorry. I, um... needed it.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” you smiled slightly. She nodded quickly and grabbed her purse, exiting the same back door.

You could feel the itch in your throat and a headache aching to break through. Without a second thought, you ran to the back door and squinted at the afternoon light. She was gone and so was the itch. Almost.

“Need something?”

You turned and saw the boy near the door smoking a cigarette. You cleared your throat uncomfortably.

“Aren’t you a little young to deal?”

The boy chuckled, “Have to pay the bills in New York some way, right? I’m guessing you understand completely.”

His response was sort of backhanded but you ignored it. Instead, you left to reenter the building.

“Not gonna buy anything?”

You stopped in your tracks, looking at his pale green eyes. You always knew a dealer’s number one rule was to never try out the product. But you could tell her enjoyed it more than he should.

“I’m not interested,” you stuttered. It was then that you felt so cold, the afternoon air biting you in the face. Peter smiled and grabbed your arm quickly, making you jolt. You felt his hand slide into your jacket pocket and slide back out.

“Free handout.”

Before you could reject, he sprinted down the alley and out of sight. You let out a heavy breath, feeling the unbelievable weight of the tiny bag.

Steve exited the bathroom after taking his medication, joining his friends at the kitchen table. Everyone was eating the takeout you had bought right after your set.

“That blonde chick... ugh- I can’t... I can’t stop thinking about her,” Peggy joked. You laughed and told Peggy her name, also adding that she was most likely single.

Steve joined, “Don’t go giving Peggy girlfriends.”

You furrowed your eyebrows and ate a mouthful of kung-pao chicken before speaking. “Why can’t I?”

Steve answered immediately, “Because I think she’s interested in someone else anyway.”

You rolled your eyes and saw Peggy’s eyes leave Steve’s to hide her blush. You chewed with your new found knowledge, deciding to change the subject. “So, what did everyone think of the set?”

Bucky answered first. “It was surprisingly great.”

You scoffed quietly, “Surprisingly?”

Sam rolled his eyes and nudged your shoulder, “Bucky meant the surprise in his jeans.”

Bucky almost catapulted from his seat to pounce on Sam but he held himself together. He opted for a shy shake of the head instead. To save him as well, you brought your attention back to Sam.

“And what about you, Sam? Any girl catch your eye besides me? I could tell you loved me the most by how much fidgeting you were doing,” you teased, lying about the last part. “I could always get someone’s number.”

Sam continued to eat his noodles, “Not really. You did great, of course.”

The room was filled with laughter for a couple more hours before nightfall came. Before everyone retreated back to their rooms and Peggy back to her apartment, Sam presented a number of bags from behind the couch. Everyone’s mouth fell open.

Steve almost let a tear slip. “Sam, you didn’t have to.”

Bucky also agreed with Steve, “You really didn’t. Dude...”

Sam raised the bags in the air, “Yeah, yeah. But it’s Christmas! Here’s one for you...”

He handed a bag to everyone, including you. You looked at him in disbelief.

“How did you even have time?”

“You know when the orange-haired chick had that ten minute set?”

Everyone muttered in recognition. “Yeah, I left for a good thirty minutes after she took the stage.”

You snorted silently, covering your mouth.

“Open them! Open them!”

Steve went first, ripping the paper out from the bag and looking inside. He released a heavy sigh and pulled a first-aid kit. “Wow, thanks. Just what I needed.”

Sam brushed off Steve’s silent muttering of the word “dick”. Bucky opened his next, pulling out a new can of pepper spray. He scrunched his eyebrows and waited for Sam to explain.

“Yeah, that shit’s for when you wake up ready to kill us in the mornings.”

Everyone shared a tiny chuckle and pushed back the memory of a gun in their face.

You pulled the paper from your bag and found a bag of Doritos.

“You need carbs. Okay! Peggy! You’re last!” You pushed your tongue to the roof of your mouth to restrain yourself from both beating Sam and laughing out loud.

Peggy pulled a key from her bag. She pursed her lips and thought about what it could be for.

Sam asked for it to show her. She handed the key to him and everyone watched as he went up to the front door, opened it, and locked and unlocked it from the front. Peggy’s eyes widened, as did everyone else’s.

Sam threw the key back at her, “Whenever you get too lonely, or want to see Steve or anyone one of us, which is highly unlikely.” Steve just stood shaking his head at his best friend.

“Or when you finally decide to move-in.”

Peggy remained silent but threw herself at Sam and gave him a big hug. It was a grand gesture, one that no one was opposed to.

And just like that, a nice moment was ruined when a knock at the door disturbed you. The face behind the door was not really unexpected, especially since he popped up out of nowhere all the time. If it wasn’t for a packed apartment, Steve would have punched T’Challa for ruining a nice night.

Instead, T’Challa stood and apologized for his presence right away. “I apologize for my showing. I just wanted to deliver the news instead of having a poster strung up on your door.”

Steve’s heart fell. A slight ping pinched at his chest but the loud voices behind him made him forget about it. There was protesting already before T’Challa had even delivered the news.

T’Challa stepped into the apartment and shut the door behind him. He waited until an opening in the argument allowed him to speak. “I wanted to tell you in person that I had to sign the contracts. But I promise that I will push this project as much as I can.”

Bucky scoffed, “So, instead of kicking us out right away you want us to wait and wonder when all your pushing is going to finally fail?”

It was silent. T’Challa sighed and reached into his pocket. Before he could pull anything out, Steve stormed out with Bucky and Peggy following him.

You and Sam stood in the middle of the kitchen awkwardly, looking at each other and back at T’Challa. Sam looked T’Challa up and down while you fiddled with the interior of your jacket pocket.

“Here. Take it. Please,” T’Challa said, holding out an envelope that looked to be filled with money. Sam furrowed his eyebrows and continued to stare at T’Challa.

“You want us to take money from the one evicting us? Is it going to change anything?”

T’Challa slowly shook his head but proceeded to place the envelope on the kitchen counter.

“Just say it was from work. A bonus,” he said, looking at you to see if you understood. You stared in confusion and watched as he left the apartment, shutting the door quietly on his way out.

Both you and Sam just stared at the money.

“Should we take it?” you asked, still fiddling with the bag in your pocket. Sam reached out to take the envelope and count it. With a silent scoff, he threw it back onto the counter and retreated to his room.

You cursed the end of this wonderful day and cursed the money. The one thing you needed most was right in front of you. By the looks of it, you could take that amount and leave the state to start over. But would you really do that to your friends?

With one last flip of the baggy in your pocket, you began to go to your room to sleep. The door opened to reveal Bucky returning, wet and dripping from the rain outside.

It was quiet as you two stared at each other. He eyed the envelope and raised is eyebrows. You swallowed hard and spoke.

“Cigarette?”

A/N: OH MY GOD, HI THERE!!!!! I MISSED YOU ALL!!!!!! I’M BACK!!!!! I don’t know when regular updates will take place but guys, I’m so close to graduating and I’m doing really good. I know it took a whole year to get my vibe back and to get back to writing. I want to thank you all for being so awesome and loving my writing. I promise I will finish this fanfic, no matter how long it takes, and all the others I have started. Thank you so much for sticking with me. I love you all. xx -Moni

TAG LIST: @4theluvofall @ihavemymomentsstill @shrekssunflowers @sumafamouxx @chook007 @seems-sosimple @smollyssa @evyiione @directionerfae @aheadfullofsherlock @elaacreditava @fireflyloki28

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intoxicatingimmediacy · 6 years

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Sundance Film Review: ‘Blindspotting’

This thrilling snapshot of life in modern-day Oakland uses hip-hop techniques to amplify its characters' hyper-relevant concerns, courtesy of co-writers Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs.

In psychology, a black-and-white drawing known as Rubin’s vase poses a visual puzzle in which the brain perceives one of two images — either the outline of a vase or two faces posed in profile — but can’t see both at the same time. Take that phenomenon one step further and you get “Blindspotting,” not just a handy term for humans’ inability to look past stereotypes and appreciate the full complexity of others, but the most exciting cinematic take on contemporary race relations since “Do the Right Thing” nearly 30 years ago. The brainchild of Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs, two hip-hop artists turned outsider-voice dramaturges, this explosive big-screen collaboration marks a rousing and incredibly timely choice to kick off Sundance 2018, with great potential to serve as a cultural touchstone in months to come.

Diggs is already something of a known commodity, having earned a Tony award for his spitfire double-duty as both Thomas Jefferson and Marquis de Lafayette in “Hamilton.” But “Blindspotting” was Casal’s project to begin with, and he does the fiercest rhyming in a film that isn’t quite a musical, but transitions ever so naturally into sung-spoken verse whenever the characters have something truly passionate to impart. (A spoken-word savant, Casal performed on HBO’s “Def Poetry” back in the day.) Here, the charismatic real-life friends play black-and-white besties who work for a moving company that brings them into contact with the city’s nouveau riche. And though the two have clearly got one another’s backs, there’s undeniable tension between Collin (Diggs) and Miles (Casal) that’s bound to erupt before the movie ends.

So while “Blindspotting” doesn’t build to a spontaneous Bed-Stuy block riot the way Spike Lee’s firebomb did, first-time director Carlos López Estrada’s equally stylish pic packs powder-keg potential of its own, whisking audiences to the opposite coast, where this unconventional buddy movie dynamically captures the many forces — racial and economic, especially — now boiling over in modern-day Oakland. It was here, on New Year’s Day 2009, that a BART officer shot and killed unarmed Oscar Grant, whose story inspired the movie “Fruitvale Station.”

[...] Tonally speaking, one might expect the incident Collin witnesses to steer the film into full-blown damn-the-system mode, but “Blindspotting” is an anomaly among social-justice stories, recognizing that every one of the issues it confronts — from police brutality and racism to gentrification and class conflict — is far too complicated for a single film (much less two characters) to fix. In a stroke of combined wisdom and humility, rather than pretending to have the answers, Casal and Diggs are content to pose the questions, relying on their considerable wit and comedic charm to present such tricky topics in refreshingly engaging fashion.

Meanwhile, director López Estrada has the good sense to stay out of the way of the material, resisting that first-film temptation to show off at every turn, and instead making choices that support the script’s heavy themes and risky tone — which still allows for plenty of impressive visual signatures, including a quick-cut motif that keep the story clipping along. Oakland is a city bursting with color, from street-corner murals to the way the locals express themselves, and “Blindspotting” hones in on that vibe and heightens it, as in a scene where Miles hustles curling irons to a local hairdresser.

This may be a movie about two dudes, but the female characters make powerful impressions, asserting their values whenever Collin and Miles make boneheaded moves: When an inexcusably reckless Miles brings home a gun, his young son horrifyingly mistakes it for a toy, inspiring a furious diatribe from his wife, Ashley (“Hamilton” vet Jasmine Cephas Jones). At the moving company HQ, Collin’s ex, Val (Janina Gavankar), proves similarly resolute, refusing to fall for his flirtations until he demonstrates he truly is the reformed and enlightened soul his parole officer expects.

Over the past decade, no shortage of films have dealt with modern American society’s rampant man-child problem, often treating this epidemic of immaturity as something cute and worth celebrating. “Blindspotting” takes a more responsible attitude: Watching Collin and Miles together, we come to realize how these two friends actually encourage one another’s bad behavior. In order for either to evolve into socially responsible adults, they first need to take an honest look at the state of their own friendship — a stunning confrontation that unfolds almost like a back-alley rap battle. And then there’s the film’s actual climax, which comes on the heels of several intense tête-à-têtes, and dares to express itself in verse.

At one point, the duo considered writing “Blindspotting” entirely in rhyme, although the script’s final recipe features just the right balance between traditional prose and elevated poetry. There’s enough spoken-word to pitch the vibe above street-level realism (an asset, since so much of the film was shot on real Oakland locations), while remaining true to the spirit of the San Francisco Bay Area, whose unique mix of cultural literacy (from hip-hop to many of the great Beat writers) and political engagement (the Black Panthers were born here) makes it possible to weave articulate talking points into everyday conversation.

Members of the nouveau riche tech-world may be currently colonizing Oakland neighborhoods, but Diggs and Casal identify with an entirely different demographic and want the audience to do so, too. How often have we seen headlines about African-American youths beaten or shot by cops and actually identified with the fear and frustration that an entire segment of our society feels by simply walking the streets of their own neighborhood? How often do news reports frame such incidents to vilify the victims after the fact? “Blindspotting” encourages audiences to look beyond surface prejudices and really see their fellow citizens for the first time. If ever there was a film to open America’s eyes, this is it.

#blindspotting #daveed diggs #rafael casal #carlos lopez estrada #janina gavankar #jasmine cephas jones

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chroniclesofawkwardness · 5 years

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Bleeders (Them Shoes)

We’re not supposed to talk openly about going to the bathroom. It’s such a sensitive subject that children have their own lexicon for describing two things every single person on the planet does (number one or number two). Even a well-known producer of toilet paper has danced around the subject by composing a song about a booty smile in an ad for their ultra-soft product. Hell, even adults sometimes get caught using euphemisms like taking a dump, dropping a duce, or recycling water. The bathroom is supposed to be one of the last vestiges of privacy in a world where privacy is almost certainly dead. Personally, I tend to be very mission-oriented in the bathroom; I’m not much of a conversationalist. Unless somebody walks in on me mid-stream, I can usually get in and out of the water closet without too much trouble. That being said, sometimes confrontation is inevitable.

I used to love working nights. More money. Fewer people. No need to set an alarm in the morning. You might say I had a higher expectation of privacy. Still, this expectation was shattered one Friday night several months ago, when I visited the same bathroom I always used during my last break before the end of my shift. We humans are nothing if not creatures of habit.

There was no way for me to avoid him. The middle-aged man was standing directly in front of the trash can that was just inside the door. I was already in mission-mode. It wasn’t critical, but I still had to pee, so I wasn’t in the mood for exchanging pleasantries.

I read in a book one time that if you think someone is planning on attacking you, it’s a good idea to attempt to throw them off by asking an innocuous question such as, “What time is it?” The hope is that they’ll be so startled that they won’t carry out whatever devious plot had been dancing in their head. For a split second, I thought about asking this man that question, but I remembered I was wearing a watch. All I could manage was a weak, “How’s it going?”

I got an answer I neither expected nor wanted:

Man, I blew my nose and it just started bleeding.

Trying to contain my shock, I quickly thought of another innocuous question to attempt to defuse the situation:

Um… Do you need medical attention? I can call security.

I knew some people got really bad nosebleeds. I’d woken up with a few as a kid, so the last thing I wanted was another just-a-flesh-wound situation from Monty Python unfolding right there on the blue and white tile floor. In response, the man said something else that caught me totally by surprise:

No. It’s okay. It happens to all of us. Everyone in my family; we’re all bleeders.

He just walked away.

I felt an aneurysm coming on, what comedian Lewis Black said you might experience upon hearing the words, “If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college.” Fortunately, before the room started spinning, I came to my senses and remembered that I had to get back to work. My break should only last fifteen minutes. I chalked the encounter up to the randomness that I seem to attract on a regular basis and thought that was the end of the story.

I was wrong.

Fast forward about two months to approximately 9:00 P.M. on a Friday night in the dead of winter. You might wonder why I chose to go to the same bathroom again. I wouldn’t say the release was as cathartic as the one A Rumor of War author Phillip Caputo describes upon returning to Saigon, but like Caputo, I refused to let myself be defined by a bad experience. I went back to that bathroom because I had to. I had to know that I’d be okay, that I could experience my own literal release without the soundtrack of a stranger’s medical history to keep me company or make me sick to my stomach.

I was standing at the sink washing my hands that night when who should appear in the bathroom but the man with the spontaneously bleeding nose. This time, his problem was at the other end. I barely had time to think before he launched into another bodily proclamation:

If I were you, I’d get out of here. Sorry for oversharing… It’s all this fiber.

Okay.

I went back to my desk wondering why I hadn’t just waited until I’d made it home to use the bathroom. There’s just something about the comfort of one’s home bowl. The freedom from judgment and the freedom of movement it affords are unmatched. I can stand as close to, or as far away from the toilet as I want, and I never have to hold it in, acting like everything is fine, when in reality I’m about to explode. What’s more, I certainly have more privacy than in a building with over ten thousand employees, and a housekeeping staff that clearly doesn’t give a fuck who they walk in on when they start their nightly tasks of cleaning toilets, occasionally emptying trash cans, and pretending to vacuum floors.

I haven’t seen the man with the penchant for nosebleeds and fiber consumption since the last of these two incidents, though I think of him whenever I spot a bottle of Metamucil on the shelf at my Kroger pharmacy.

Wherever he is, I hope he got the help he needed and left me out of it.

II.

I don’t know why, but I’ve always had trouble getting shoes on and off my right foot. I could use a shoehorn, but I wonder if I’m too old to learn a new trick. When I was very young, I had a pair of braces for my legs, much like the ones a young Forrest Gump wore when he taught a young Elvis how to dance.

Unlike Forrest, if I’m going somewhere, I’m usually walking. Thanks to my pedestrian existence, I go through shoes pretty quickly, but I don’t always replace them in a timely manner when holes appear, or rocks get stuck in them. I’ve never been a big fan of spending money on myself unless it’s absolutely necessary, but this strategy sometimes comes back to bite me in the ass. A wholesale warehouse like Costco could be just the place to support my feet without breaking my bank. If I could be strong enough not lead myself into temptations all around, and wise enough to find my way without having to Hansel and Gretel that shit back to the entrance.

Until recently, it had been years since I’d visited Costco. I hadn’t had a membership, so my only exposure to the Costco experience was in their bakery when a friend of mine and I went there to pick up a cake for a co-worker who was transferring to another department. My friend wasn’t happy with me during and after our trip because he was convinced I’d blown his chance to stalk the head coach of the local National Hockey League franchise throughout the store. All because I couldn’t find a pen to fill out the order form for the cake.

I know it was him. The team is off tonight. We could’ve followed him around and gotten autographs, but SOMEBODY couldn’t find a pen. This is all your fault.

How can you be sure? All we could see was the back of the man’s head. Besides, if it was, the last thing he needs is a bunch of grown-ass, wannabe-Canucks fawning over him like teenage girls over Justin Bieber. Let’s just move on. I’m sure finding 500 ft. of aluminum foil or a 128 oz. jar of mayonnaise on sale will cheer you up.

I think my friend is still salty about the incident.

Anyway, my mom had been talking up Costco for weeks prior to our visit. You’d think we were going to a place that held the promise of the Disneyworld of my youth, or a Barry Manilow concert of hers. It was so beautiful, she’d say, so full of the spoils of hollow, American excess (You won’t have to buy paper towels for six months. Isn’t that just wonderful?) that nothing could reverse the magnetic attraction to it that its patrons would naturally feel. Once we’d made our way through the massive sliding doors of this consumerist-culture theme park, a little old lady stopped us at the entrance and asked to see the membership cards we didn’t have. We could’ve easily overpowered her and run amok up and down the aisles, but we decided to play by the rules like blissful, ignorant cattle being led to slaughter, and stand in line for proof that we belonged.

Maybe the cattle secretly knew their lives would never be the same after they slipped inside the slaughterhouse. Maybe we knew our lives would change forever after we slipped inside Costco. We were just too excited about the possibility of buying whole peaches (whole fucking peaches!) in jars to care. I wish I’d asked the little old lady to take off her politeness mask so I could see who she really was. I feel the same way about Disney characters. What I wouldn’t give to be in the break room at Disneyworld on a Tuesday afternoon in the heat of July. I’d pay to see Mickey and Minnie Mouse without their costume heads, smoking cigarettes, carelessly farting, and dropping f-bombs like normal human beings. That’s a Disney fantasy I could buy into.

I first saw them after I’d selected ninety-six pencils for four dollars, and forty-four bags of popcorn for nine. Snow tracks. They were pieces of rubber speckled with spikes that remind you of the bottoms of golf shoes. They were supposed to provide enhanced traction on snow and ice. I hadn’t yet bought myself a pair of winter boots this season, so I needed something to combat the unpredictable Ohio weather in the meantime. The snow tracks cost about five dollars and seemed they’d be a good fit until my boots came in the mail. I should’ve paid more attention to the actual fit. The package said they were for shoe sizes 3.5 to 7.5. I wear a size 8. Close enough, I thought.

I was wrong (again).

When I got the pencils, popcorn, and snow tracks home, I ripped the snow tracks from their packaging like a kid opening presents on Christmas morning. I was convinced I’d found an inexpensive, long-lasting solution to a transportation problem I’ve faced every winter. If cars could have snow tires, the snow tracks were supposed to be my pedestrian equivalent, my way of telling Mother Nature to suck it.

III.

Sex.

Now that I have your attention, keep reading.

I’m hardly the first person to point out that we live in the age of toxicity. Toxic femininity. Toxic masculinity. If you boy into those ideas, you’d have to behave as if you were walking on eggshells everywhere you went. When you’d go about your daily life, you’d have to be careful. In many scenarios standards (whatever those are) of conduct, language, and presentation (to name a few) have gradually shifted from what a reasonable person would consider acceptable, to what the most sensitive among us can tolerate. We’ve been invited to neuter ourselves because someone, somewhere might be offended by something we say or do. God help us if we were cross that arbitrary, ever-shifting line into the offensive. Our lives could easily be ripped to shreds on social media, or dissected for all to see in the court of public opinion without so much as a word spoken in our defense.

What does supposed gender toxicity have to do with bleeding noses, impromptu descriptions of impending bowel movements, shoes, Costco, and sex?

Keep reading.

The first day I wore the snow tracks to work, they were unnecessary. But I wanted to try them out before the weather got nasty. After I put them on and started walking somewhere other than the carpeted floor of my apartment, I felt like a dog or cat that seriously needed its nails clipped. I felt like I could tip over at any moment. You could even say the clickety-klack sound the snow tracks made as I walked was reminiscent of a newborn pony taking its first steps. In a way, I was learning to walk all over again. I probably looked as awkward if not more so than a newborn pony, whose difficulty with steps could be easily explained, if not expected. Mine, on the other hand, was caused by an invention so questionable it belonged on a Saturday afternoon infomercial (the playground of the gullible) or in heavy rotation on QVC (the playground of the elderly).

I was really wobbling by the time I got to work. I had to walk on a tile floor until I got to the set of stairs that meant I was mere feet away from the relative stability of carpeting. When I made it to the stairs without tipping over, I felt triumphant in my badassery. Not only had I told Mother Nature what she could go do to herself, I’d subjugated my favorite flight of stairs. For the briefest of moments, there was nothing I couldn’t do.

Each morning, like clockwork, I’d feed my coffee addiction by making the short trek down the hall to one of the break rooms on my floor. I went from being off-balance on the tile to feeling like my feet were stuck in quicksand on the carpet. I felt like Marv (Daniel Stern) in Home Alone as he got his feet repeatedly stuck in what looked like tar as he trudged up the steps into what he hoped would be a final confrontation with Kevin McCallister. I didn’t have traction where I needed it and had too much where I didn’t. I got my coffee just fine, but noticed a problem when I got back to my desk.

Fuck. One of the snow tracks came off one of my shoes. Now I’ve gotta Hansel and Gretel that shit back to the break room, and hope no one picked it up. In that case, I’d have only one, which won’t do me much good since I’ve got two shoes.

This was my first indication that the masculine drive I’d displayed by trying to fit something on the bottom of my shoe that wasn’t designed to fit there may have been misdirected. Fortunately, the solitary snow track was right where it had fallen off, twisted and sad, outside the entrance to the break room. I picked it up and carried it back to my desk. I was relieved, yet slightly terrified at not knowing who among my thousands of colleagues had seen what, or when.

Whole again, I decided to remove the snow track from my other shoe, lock them in one of my desk drawers, and thank my lucky stars that a hyper-sensitive person hadn’t found it. If they had, so went my worst nightmare, they could’ve easily mistaken it for a medieval torture device, a sex toy, or both. This could have triggered a massive HR manhunt. I was the only person I’d ever seen wearing snow tracks so it wouldn’t take security too long to figure out whose it was. I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a man’s shoes? Even though I had the snow tracks under lock and key, I’d already been peacocking to my co-workers about conquering Mother Nature that morning. I assumed one of them would cave, and point the finger at me as soon as one of our woke-up-like-this, my-uniform-is-three-sizes-too-big security guards applied even the tiniest bit of investigative pressure.

I didn’t think about the snow tracks until I could feel safe trying to put them on again, shortly after 5:30 PM that evening. I couldn’t risk being seen in the workplace wearing socks without shoes, so I decided to visit the same bathroom where I’d encountered Mr. Nosebleed, aka The Kellogg’s Cracklin’ Oat Bran Man. I refused to let him get the best of me, even if the competition between us was playing out exclusively in my head. I know now that should’ve just risked being accosted by an everything-is-a-trigger-warning coworker by sitting out in the open to take my shoes off and attach the snow tracks to them. Against the better angels of my nature, I opted for the blue and white tile of old familiar. For the first time in this nearly seven-year stint with my employer, I went into a bathroom stall. I chose one that was handicapable accessible at that because I knew I’d need a fair amount of room to maneuver.

If one’s home bowl provides an unparalleled level of comfort, I don’t know why I expected the toilet in this unfamiliar, reasonably public bathroom to have a lid. As far as I knew, I’d taken a dump in a public toilet but once in my entire life. Avoiding stalls in public bathrooms had become one of my personal rules after seeing far too many movies and television shows where the hero inconveniently finds himself seconds away from a for-a-good time-call-Charlie invitation scrawled in expectant Sharpie on one of the stall walls. The exception that disproved my rule was only brought about by the extenuating circumstance of my having been on a plane for 8+ hours, trying desperately not to pass gas in a closed cabin full of strangers and recycled air. When the time came for me to finally let loose, it was dark. My mission-oriented self couldn’t see much in 2011, so 2019 me had no earthly idea what to expect from the moment the stall door slammed home.

I sat on the toilet to take off my shoes, only to be betrayed yet again by my right foot. I had to bend and contort my body into several unnatural positions just to take off my right shoe. Even if I’d returned to the practice of yoga as I’ve been telling myself to do for years, it wouldn’t have done any good. By the time I managed to pry my foot free, I was bent over on the toilet seat, face red, and gasping for air as if I’d just been through a CrossFit workout. Extracting my foot from my left shoe wasn’t any easier. I was thankful I hadn’t fallen in the toilet the first time, and I decided not to risk doing so again. I sat on the floor of the stall among crumpled up toilet seat covers with my back against a wall. I succeeded in removing my left shoe, but it was a Pyrrhic victory that left me sucking air again five minutes later.

I thought the hard part was over, but I soon realized that I hadn’t really accomplished anything. I still had to get the snow tracks on my shoes. I decided to try putting the snow track on my left shoe first since I always put my left shoe on first anyway. I didn’t have nearly as much trouble as I’d anticipated. This only served to imbue me with a false sense of confidence as I entered the battle on my right side. Standing now, in stockinged feet, I twisted and pulled that infernal rubber contraption every way I knew how. It wasn’t long before the confrontation reached a tipping point. In the heat of the moment, I looked down at my shoe and saw that the toe was bent in in a position from which it might never recover.

Uh oh.

While admiring the shoe’s brush with death, I got so caught up in wondering how the hell I hadn’t destroyed it that I forgot to release the tension on the snow track caused by my desperate attempts to fit it over the bottom. Consequences be dammed, I kept pulling, and sure enough the shoe went flying out of my hand. I let out a simultaneous:

dammit!

as it flipped like a coin through the air. Even the staunch atheist in me prayed it wouldn’t land outside the stall. If someone had walked in to find my solitary shoe on the floor, I’d have had some serious explaining to do. Fortunately, it came to rest within the stall, right in the space between the floor and the bottom of one of the walls. It would’ve been easily visible to anyone who happened by. I scrambled to pick it up, and somehow managed to finally put the snow track on without losing a shoe, or an eye, in the process. Another Pyrrhic victory in hand, I did the clickety-klack catlike walk out of the building and homeward, praying I wouldn’t tip over like a little teapot along the way.

IV.

Education.

Not many things in this world make me truly happy. Whatever I’m doing, I’m often consumed by the notion that I’m wasting my time, and I should be doing something else. One exception is volunteering. I like to think that whenever I get out to give back to the community, I’m spending my time wisely, that my actions make even the smallest difference in someone’s day. Those feelings, those moments, are what make life worth living. That’s why I jumped at the chance to volunteer at a local shelter for youth in crisis.

I’d heard snow was in the forecast for that Saturday, so I put the snow tracks on my shoes, and called for a Lyft to take me where I needed to go. Upon arriving, my driver insisted that I get in the back seat. I complied. He said he was familiar with where I was going, and I babbled on about why I enjoy volunteering so much. I’ve given the same speech to two dozen or more Lyft and Uber drivers over the years. I don’t always mean to say the same things over and over, but at this point, I’ve got a streak going.

As we pulled up to the shelter, my driver said something that caught me by surprise:

God bless you and your ministry.

Okay.

I don’t know why he thought I was religious, but I decided it wasn’t worth fighting about since so few things in this world really are. As I got out of his car and stepped onto the sidewalk, I felt the same naked feeling I had when walking back to my desk with a coffee a few days before. I looked down at my feet, and instantly knew what was missing:

Shit! My snow tracks came off again. They’re in the back of a stranger’s car, and he’s pulling away from the curb…

I waved to the driver in a half-hearted attempt to get his attention. He probably thought I was waving goodbye, so he didn’t stop. I was dejected over the loss of my spikey companions, but I had a job to do. Need knows no season, after all. As the leader of our group for this particular event, I was the first to arrive. I asked our host to tell me more about the facility. Turns out, it’s a shelter where kids can go when their parents may have kicked them out of their homes, ripped up their birth certificates, or under any number of undesirable circumstances. Typically teenagers, the kids there are in tough spots. I remember hating life as a teenager, but I was incredibly fortunate to never lose my home or my support system. I’ll never forget that. How could I complain about losing a set of bougie spikes I’d bought at a club where I was a member in the back of a Lyft that I paid to ride in by just tapping on my smartphone? The short answer is, I couldn’t.

But that doesn’t mean shit couldn’t still get awkward.

If I’m mission-oriented in the bathroom, I’m also a mission-oriented volunteer. I was so excited to get started that I didn’t even wait for more people to show up. I started attacking the living room almost immediately. I found several intermingled decks of cards and resolved to make each one whole again. After working my way through a few decks, I made my way to an end table in search of rogue Kings and Queens. The table had so many board games on it that I almost didn’t see the circular object on the floor beneath it. I thought it was a fallen game piece at first. I reasoned that if decks could lose their cards, games could lose their pieces. No matter how hard I try, a part of me will always be a leave-it-better than-you-found-it Eagle Scout, so I bent down to pick up the fallen piece. But it wasn’t a game piece at all.

It was a used condom.

I jerked my hand away as if I’d touched a hot stove, but I quickly realized that the damage had already been done. In one motion, I picked it up and threw it in the closest trash can. Inside, I was disgusted. Outside, I knew I had to remain emotionally unmoved. How could I expect a house full of teenagers and my fellow volunteers to keep their cool if I couldn’t? The short answer is, I couldn’t.

As the color of my face slowly returned to normal, I returned to my quest for prodigal cards. Along the way, I picked up a canister of Lysol and a rag and started disinfecting. In the midst of organizing the cards and board games, I came across at least five different remotes that had either been left to their own devices on the end table, or fallen between the cushions of the couch next to it. I picked up a random remote to examine it; I couldn’t believe it had just one button. In that instant, I felt technology had come full circle. I simultaneously felt longing for the days of A, B, Select, Start, and a directional pad on a Nintendo controller from the 80s, and gratitude that I wasn’t overwhelmed by the option paralysis of my first and only X-Box controller from the early 2000s.

Somehow, in the midst of my button daydreams, I managed to turn on the television. I panicked, though not as intensely as before.

Great. This is the last thing we need… If the volunteer coordinator catches us with the TV on, we’re screwed. I don’t want anyone thinking we were being lazy, even if turning on the TV was an accident.

I looked out the window through the falling snow for signs of any important-looking adults. Once satisfied there were none on the horizon, I decided to turn off the TV with the same one-button remote I’d used to accidentally turn it on. I messed around with the button for a few seconds, and though I couldn’t get the TV to turn off, I did manage to jack the volume up to 60. To make matters worse, Netflix soon followed with its unmistakable Dum-Dum opening sound.

Fuck me. It’s bad enough that I turned the TV on, but now it sounds like I’m making myself at home surrounded by kids who don’t have one. I’ve already seen at least one Children’s Services worker in the house today to check on one of the kids. If I don’t turn off this damn TV right now, this could get ugly. No one wants to hear Maude Flanders scream “Won’t someone please think of the children” in a place where they’re supposed to be safe.

Since I couldn’t get the TV to turn off, or at least make a selection in time, Netflix did what Netflix does, and started playing the trailer of its featured show. As luck would have it, the feature that Saturday was Sex Education. I’d seen the trailer myself that morning, at home. But thinking of the hormonally-charged residents of the house, and my all-too-recent close call with a condom, I considered seeing it here to be the mother of all ironies. It’s a show about teenagers’ discovery of their sexuality, exacerbated by the fact that one of the teens’ mothers is a sex therapist. I knew this, of course, but I wasn’t horrified until the therapist spoke the trailer’s first words, to her son, which sent the following blaring throughout the house at volume level 60 in a British accent.

I'VE NOTICED YOU’RE PRETENDING TO MASTURBATE, AND I WAS WONDERING IF YOU WANTED TO TALK ABOUT IT.

As she (unintentionally) bellowed that call to puberty to anyone within earshot, my entire time as a volunteer flashed before my eyes. Everything from my first event sorting food at the Homeless Families Foundation, to having an Uber driver tell me his GPS said I was in the middle of the highway, came washing over me. I was convinced that a hyper-sensitive adult, or some freshly-minted preteen who’d only recently embarked down the path of life’s most awkward phase, would ruin it all for me. I tried feverishly to turn the volume down as she spoke, but my fingers wouldn’t follow my commands. They just blindly grouped that stupid, singular button.

Shit…. Shit…. Shit….. No… No…. No…. Nooooooooo!!! We’re fucked now, for sure! They’ll never ask us to come back! Great job, Mr. Leader.

Somehow, after a minute that might as well have lasted three years, I managed to turn off the television. I looked outside at the intensifying snowfall, and remembered my snow tracks were long gone. I was pissed off for a second, but I remembered that all I needed to do was ask someone for a ride in real life instead of just tapping a button on my phone. It’s redundancies that save you.

I had some unexpectedly good (some might say bougie) French toast, coffee, and conversation at a place called The Crest after sprucing up the house and locking down the TV. At the conclusion of our meal, I called for a Lyft to take me home, and I managed not to fall in my own parking lot once I got there.

My winter boots came in the mail on January 14, 2019, twenty-six years to the day my dear uncle Dave died. I’m not sure where or when he is, and I miss him like crazy sometimes. But I like to think that if he watched my struggles against Mother Nature and Father Time that weekend, he was laughing his ass off.

That’s another fantasy I could buy into.

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notagarroter · 7 years

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The Eternal Problem: A Meditation on Mortality in Sherlock S4

When asked about S4 during the promotional lead-up, Moftiss repeatedly said this new series would be about one thing: consequences. Now that we stand on the other side of S4, what do we think they meant? It obviously wasn't legal consequences for shooting Magnussen, or physical consequences of overdosing on drugs.

In this meta, I argue that TAB and S4 are above all about the moral, metaphysical, and narrative consequences of Sherlock faking his death during the Reichenbach Fall—an act which continues to reverberate through the story two series later, both for the characters and, significantly, for the writers.

Reichenbach Revisited

First, a little review session: What exactly was the "final problem"?

Ah. Here we are at last—you and me, Sherlock, and our problem—the final problem. Stayin’ alive! It’s so boring, isn’t it? It’s just ... staying.

We got an answer, but it was hard to grasp without a larger context. How is staying alive a problem? It is only in the context of Series 4 that the full meaning and extent of Moriarty's final problem starts to become apparent.

Moriarty was sick of staying alive, and he wanted Sherlock to feel the same way. It wasn't enough for Moriarty merely to kill Sherlock (which he could have done at any point on that rooftop)—he needed Sherlock to welcome death, just as he did.

Moriarty tried to give Sherlock the perfect motivation and opportunity to kill himself. He went to great pains to threaten Sherlock's best friends, so Sherlock could honorably sacrifice himself for their safety. Moriarty even stepped first into the breach, hopeful that Sherlock would follow him. But Sherlock refused his offer, and wiggled his way out of this pre-ordained death. He survived the fall and persisted in staying alive.

Appointment in Samarra

When does the path we walk on lock around our feet? When does the road become a river with only one destination?

The sinister story of The Appointment in Samarra is introduced early in Series 4, and referenced repeatedly in the first episode. Some found this heavy-handed, but it was vital to underline the significance of this fable, because this is the heart of our story -- not just The Six Thatchers, not just Series 4, but the entirety of Sherlock since The Reichenbach Fall.

What happens when someone misses their appointment with Death? Does Death show up at some other moment to claim what it is owed? Or does it pass them by completely?

When Sherlock returns from his faked death, he seems to be at least considering the latter possibility.

You know my methods, John. I am known to be indestructible.

As time passes, Sherlock appears to be testing his hypothesis by actively courting death. Mary threatens to shoot him if he steps forward, and he does. He accepts Mycroft's promise of a "certain death" assignment in lieu of a prison sentence. He overdoses on the plane in TAB, enough to potentially kill him.

It is during this drug-fueled fantasy that Sherlock starts to wonder why Moriarty was drawn to kill himself, and he himself flirts briefly with the temptations of death.

Dead is the new sexy.

But in the end, Sherlock doesn't die.

Between you and me, John, I always survive a fall.

He can fall and fall and fall, and he will never land.

Arthur Conan Doyle and the Fandom Problem

The meta-story about Sherlock Holmes's death and rebirth is so often repeated that it has taken on the quality of myth: Doyle hated Sherlock Holmes, he was sick of writing him, so he decided to kill him off once and for all. He even titled his story The Final Problem, for good measure.

We all know what happened next: the fans, to put it mildly, objected. The stories of people dressing in mourning clothes over a fictional character's death may well be apocryphal, but they are nevertheless an important part of how we understand Sherlock Holmes. The fans wouldn't let him die, so Doyle was forced to bring him back from the dead.

Doyle never tried to kill Holmes again, and when he died, other writers took on the project, and in the past hundred years, Sherlock has never stopped being revived.

"There can be no grave for Sherlock Holmes," Vincent Starrett tells us in that famous quotation. It's meant to be reassuring, heart-warming even, but looked at a certain way, it takes on the aura of a threat.

The Final Problem

This, then, becomes The Final Problem, both for Sherlock and for Moftiss. How do you end Sherlock? How do you make him mortal again? Now we see how right Moriarty was: the problem is, in merely "staying alive", Sherlock Holmes becomes inert, stagnant, boring. We don't need him to die, but the audience needs to feel at least that he can die, or all the tension and drama go out of the narrative.

As S4 opens, Sherlock has now walked away from three certain-death situations, and he's a bit giddy.

I’m just glad to be alive!!!

But even as Sherlock is gleefully tweeting and solving crimes and petting dogs, living life to the fullest, there's a pall over the episode. He doesn't quite trust his good luck—surely Samarra can't be avoided forever. So when will it catch up to him?

At last, it seems like it's going to.

But Mary gets in the way, sacrificing herself to save Sherlock, and thus perhaps fulfilling her own missed appointment.

At this point, Sherlock starts to realize the downsides to his invulnerability: it only protects him, not those he loves. Nothing he did could protect Mary, because she was destined to die before him.

Premonition and Predestination

What we call premonition is just movement of the web. If you could attenuate to every strand of quivering data, the future would be entirely calculable, as inevitable as mathematics.

As TST highlights, Appointment in Samarra isn't just about death, it's also about destiny. According to the story, no matter how far you run, you're always exactly where you were meant to be.

Series 4 takes up the idea of predestination repeatedly. In TST, Sherlock appears to be having premonitions—a dalliance with the supernatural almost unheard of in the entire Sherlock Holmes mythos. Sherlock claims to Mary that, given enough information, he can even predict the roll of a dice. This thread is taken up again in The Lying Detective, in which Sherlock is suddenly able to predict (with plausibility-defying accuracy) exactly where everyone will be and what they will do at any given moment.

Really? I correctly anticipated the responses of people I know well to scenarios I devised? Can’t everyone do that?

This preoccupation with predestination serves the narrative, while simultaneously serving as a commentary on the narrative itself. Predestination is a handy metaphor for what it feels like to rewrite someone else's story. BBC Sherlock is fanfic, and in theory it can go wherever it wants, make any changes the writers desire. But even as they make the story their own, we know there are some things Moftiss won't change: the Big Plot Points from ACD they feel obligated to respect. So yes, in a very literal sense, it was predetermined over a hundred years ago that Mary had to die.

Nothing’s certain; nothing’s written.

But Mary is wrong—her death was indeed written before, and so it had to be written again. Nothing Sherlock did was going to change that. He doesn't need to attenuate to a zillion strands of data, he only needs to follow one to its inevitable conclusion: the narrative. The path that has locked around his feet. Watson in TAB says he always knows when he's in a story; Sherlock is starting to notice the signs as well.

If this is the case, nothing Sherlock does can seriously put his own life at risk. He's the hero, so the narrative will always protect him. But while at the beginning of S4, this idea seemed to thrill him, in TLD he has become much more ambivalent. He cautions "Faith" against suicide, but he also thinks admiringly about Mary sacrificing herself to save him. He goes on a life-threatening drug binge, but doesn't take the idea of his death seriously, despite Molly's chiding. He tells Smith that he doesn't want to die, but he does want Smith to kill him. It's not that he wants to die—he wants to be mortal.

“Taking your own life.” Interesting expression. Taking it from who? Oh, once it’s over, it’s not you who’ll miss it. Your own death is something that happens to everybody else. Your life is not your own.

This is an anti-suicide speech, but in this context it's also kind of a lament. Sherlock does not own his life. Nor do Moftiss. Nor even does Doyle. The fans do—he can only die at their behest, and they will never let that happen.

Meanwhile, Moftiss are expressing the same anxieties about the fate of the narrative. If Sherlock can't die, how do you build to a satisfying, meaningful ending? The show can't go on forever, but its narrative can't be killed, either. The twists get twistier, the cliff-hangers ever more dramatic, the stakes grow higher and higher, but how can any of it ever be resolved?

Samarra, Revisited

The Final Problem is their answer to this question. In interviews since the airing, Moftiss have claimed the key word for the episode was "transgression": TFP goes out of its way to break all the rules of Sherlock. There are no loving shots of London, no text messages floating on the screen. 221b gets blown up, and the rest of the episode takes place in a very blank, artificial, alien environment—more like a stage set than the lived-in world we've come to know. There's no case, no client. Even the Belstaff is missing for much of the episode.

As a result, many fans thought that with TFP, the show had finally gone off the rails—that somehow the writers forgot how to write an episode of Sherlock. But this shift in aesthetic and narrative mode was entirely by design. The writers were deliberately upending everything we know and love about Sherlock in an attempt to convince us that anything was possible, that anyone might die. Even Mycroft. Maybe even Sherlock.

And so, it is in this context that Sherlock makes one last attempt to find Samarra.

As is only appropriate, it is Moriarty who (from beyond the grave) once again suggests this option.

And here we are, at the end of the line. Holmes killing Holmes. This is where I get off.

Up until this point, it seems like Sherlock is planning to kill Mycroft, but here he changes course. It's probably not the locomotive double-entendres that spark his epiphany, so it must be the line "Holmes killing Holmes." Eurus tells us that Jim Moriarty thought Sherlock would make this choice, meaning kill Mycroft. But that doesn't really make sense. When he was alive, Jim never said anything about wanting Sherlock to kill his brother. What Moriarty always wanted was for Sherlock to kill himself.

Of course. That’s the point of this.

Suddenly Sherlock realizes that Moriarty's original plan for him is the only way out of his current situation.

And so he "remembers the Governor", who did the one thing Sherlock couldn't do: he killed himself to save someone he loves. Never mind that it doesn't work—that was his appointment in Samarra, and in doing it he atoned for his earlier misdeeds and became a good man. Sherlock missed his appointment, but thanks to Moriarty's hints, he realizes he has a chance to do it over, make it right this time. He must fulfill his destiny and sacrifice himself to save his friends.

Except he can't. It's what Moriarty wanted, his final gift to Sherlock, the solution to their "problem". But Eurus/the narrative/the fans won't let it happen, and Sherlock is saved once again.

The Eternal Problem

And so the Final Problem remains unsolved, as it always will. The episode wraps up with a kind of coda—not so much an ending as a promise/threat of endless repetition. Again and again, we see Sherlock walk the path to his sister's cell. The flat at 221b Baker Street, which was so dramatically exploded earlier in the episode, is recreated with finicky, almost neurotic precision.

And a montage accompanied by Mary's voice-over reassures us that all our favorite characters will continue on ad infinitum. The idea is comforting and horrifying all at once.

Fans have made much of Lestrade's full-circle assertion that Sherlock is now a "good man", and Moffat has confirmed that the point of the show was to humanize Sherlock.

But this isn't really accurate. From the very first episode, Sherlock was always a deeply human character—that is to say, he was flawed. He was complex. He did good things for bad reasons, and bad things for good reasons. He tried and failed. He was vulnerable and sensitive. He was vain and petty and occasionally cruel, but he was also at times unfathomably kind and empathetic. He inspired loathing in some, but great loyalty and devotion in those who knew him best. He was playful, funny, unpredictable. If he hadn't been all those things—if he had truly been a cold, emotionless machine—he would have been a horrible bore to watch.

The progress of Sherlock Holmes, then, is not from great man to good man, but from a man—a mortal man with weaknesses and flaws—to a mythic hero who is perfectly strong, perfectly wise, perfectly compassionate.

Who you really are, it doesn’t matter. It’s all about the legend, the stories, the adventures. When all else fails, there are two men sitting arguing in a scruffy flat, like they’ve always been there and they always will.

Sherlock Holmes will go on forever, in fanfic and pastiche, in other adaptations, and maybe even under Moftiss's pen. This is how the story is ended, how the "final" problem is solved. Not by killing Sherlock, but by at last submitting to his true, unalterable destiny: Sherlock is fated (or doomed?) to spend all eternity "in a romantic chamber of the heart: in a nostalgic country of the mind: where it is always 1895."

#meta #sherlock meta #sherlock #S4 #the final problem #original post #1000

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thomisaacs · 3 years

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The Passagio: Understanding Registers Within Laryngeal Vibratory Mechanisms

Preface

I've been studying singing for around 9 years now, and the concept of my passagio has always been something very nebulous to me. While I may have had a surface level understanding of the difference between registers, internally I still understood them in a very unnuanced way. Falsetto was just some magical upper setting that somehow felt different and allowed me to achieve higher pitches, for instance, but I never understood the process at a granular level.

When starting at university, something became very apparent very fast: I didn't know my way around my voice as well as I thought I did. Suddenly I was singing with an amplified band for the first time, and it felt like all those years of classical and musical theatre training went out the window as I was left uncertain of how to project my voice over the band. I couldn't hit high notes that under any other circumstances would have sat comfortably in my range, and so had to find workarounds like taking a lower harmony while a female vocalist covered what I was actually supposed to be singing.

This was, of course, treating the symptom rather than the cause. As a singer in the real world, an employer isn't going to accept you rearranging their music to suit your inabilities. In order to improve this, I spent several months researching what constitutes phonation, register, and passagio at the base level. The following is what I have discovered.

Introduction

A singer's "break" or "passagio" is a concrete phenomenon with a roster of very vague explanations. A singing teacher might refer to it as "moving between your chest voice and your head voice", but what's meant by this varies wildly depending on parameters such as the singer's age, sex, etc. These registers are defined solely by how they feel to the singer, which is by no means a consistent metric. In this essay I will attempt to explain the concept of a passagio within a consistent, measurable, scientific framework, with the intent of better understanding how to traverse it in a musical context.

Before we can understand what constitutes a passagio, however, we must first understand how the voice is produced.

Components of an Instrument

All instruments consist of at least three main components. A motor, a vibrator, and a resonator. The motor can be defined as any sort of external influence that powers the vibrator, which then oscillates at pitch, and is amplified by the instrument's resonator.

The dilemma that we singers inevitably face is that we have no convenient visual interface for how our instrument produces sound; everything is internal. While it's obvious to a guitarist, for instance, that their fingers power their strings, whose vibrations are amplified by the instrument's resonant body - we have to deal with a lot of very complicated and unintuitive language for a process that feels very intuitive and natural.

So what are the components of our instrument?

Our motor, obviously, is our lungs - which are supported by a large muscle in the abdomen called the diaphragm.

Our vibrator is our vocal folds - two flaps of flesh and mucous, located in our larynx, (colloquially known as our "voice box"). (Pictured below[1], in abducted and adducted postures respectively)

Our resonator essentially boils down to "everything", but more specific examples include our nasal cavities and chest.

And finally, our articulator consists of our mouth. Our lips, teeth, tongue, soft palate, etc. all contribute to our filtering of sound into language. The same carries over to singing.

Phonation

Phonation is the process of producing sound by way of the vocal folds. The cycle of sound production begins with the folds more or less closed, pressing against each other. As pressure is applied by airflow from the lungs, the folds are blown apart for a moment, before returning to their closed setting. This, fundamentally, is the process of phonation. This oscillation occurs hundreds of times a second - producing a pitched sound.

For the purposes of this essay, we will consider the vocal folds to consist of three main components: the vocalis muscle, connective tissue, and mucosal layer.

Pitch

In any acoustic vibration, the pitch is dictated by the mass of the thing doing the vibrating. Since it takes more energy to move something of a higher mass, the more massive a medium is, the lower the frequency of its vibration will be.

Since we can't magically manipulate the mass of something without violating the laws of physics, we have to compromise. What we're able to do is manipulate how much mass is participating in the vibration. A guitarist, for instance, does this by pressing a string against a fret, changing the stopping point of the string and thus reducing how much mass is participating in the vibration.

The vocal folds operate under the same principle. The vocalis muscles (which make up the majority of the body of the vocal fold) and cricothyroid muscles pull against each other, thus providing tension and thinning and thickening the folds as required. Thin, tense folds will vibrate at a higher frequency than long, loose folds.

Laryngeal Vibratory Mechanisms

With all of that out of the way, let's discuss how this applies to one's Passagio.

As the frequency of the vibration goes up, the physical limits of the components of the vocal folds are reached in succession. We refer to these as Laryngeal Vibratory Mechanisms (LVMs) - four different settings of vocal fold vibration that encompass what we colloquially consider to be “registers”.

The LVMs are numbered 0-3. (The following images are intended to be animated GIFs. Direct links to the images are available in the bibliography if they do not appear correctly on your browser.)

Mechanism 0 can be referred to scientifically as "pulse phonation" and colloquially as "vocal fry". Essentially, what's happening here is the majority of the vocal folds are vibrating against each other at a low frequency.

Mechanism 1 is where our voices normally sit in day-to-day use: it covers the same ground as what would be referred to as “chest voice”. The full body of the folds are vibrating - it can be thought of as speech quality. (Pictured below [2a])

Mechanism 2 (pictured below[2b]) can be thought of as head voice, falsetto, etc. In this setting, the vocalis muscles (red) and connective tissue (yellow) are both rigid, and only the mucosal layer (orange) is vibrating. This is why we experience a break - we're literally shifting to a different mode of vibration all together.

Mechanism 3 relates to the whistle register, where even the mucosal layer is rigid, and the sound is produced under the same principle as whistling with our lips.

A more intuitive parallel for this would be to imagine this process in the context of drumming. If a drummer is playing a relatively low tempo pulse, they can get away with using their arm in the motion (M0), but as the tempo is raised it no longer becomes energy-efficient to do this. At this point, the arm becomes rigid and the motion is carried out via the wrist (M1). The same limit is reached here and it becomes too tiring to move so much mass for such a small motion, so the drummer switches to finger control (M2), allowing them to play much faster passages.

Below is a Sonogram of an ascending vocal glissando, showing the four natural “breaks” or transitions between mechanisms[3].

Registers Within the LVM Framework

The temptation here is to think that LVMs are a complete replacement to the idea of registers; they’re not, they’re just a standardised way of talking about the voice.

Registers definitely still have a place in our vocabulary, it’s just important to not conflate them with Mechanisms. For instance, it’s possible to switch register, while still remaining within the same LVM. Pictured below is a table of the four mechanisms and what registers fit within them[3].

Exercises

Interesting as it may be, the passagio is often an annoyance that we can only really cheat around. The only way to navigate it fluently is to have a developed understanding of how it works and where it sits in your range.

In my case, I found it helpful to learn how to cheat my way past the passagio by skipping past it using an unvoiced consonant (a consonant wherein the vocal folds aren’t vibrating). Doing octaves over the passagio on “sha”, “sa”, “tha”, “ti”, etc. is a very helpful way of developing this. The more consonants you practice with, the easier it will be to use this technique intuitively in a song.

If you must sing over your passagio, there are ways to make the process a little more forgiving. When the vocal folds vibrate, we can think of them as having what’s called an open and closed quotient. Essentially what these refer to is the ratio of how long the vocal folds are closed, vs how long they spend open during the phonation cycle (this is similar to the concept of a “duty cycle” in electrical oscillations). A high closed quotient sounds buzzy whereas a high open quotient sounds smooth and almost breathy at higher levels. What we want is to sing with a high open quotient and sing confidently through the passagio, which lessens the dramatic timbral shift of the transition (although it doesn’t eliminate it).

In Conclusion

Learning about LVMs has provided an invaluable boost to my singing ability. I’m much more confident in and aware of my technique, because I now understand the processes at the fundamental level. Going forward, I’d like to make more singers aware of this system of classification - as it’s not something we tend to learn about in music education. If nothing else, it’s just very, very interesting - and that’s as good a reason to learn about something as any.

Bibliography

[1] Voicedoctorla.com. (2018). Vocal Nodules / Nodes. [online] Available at: https://voicedoctorla.com/voice-disorders/vocal-nodules-nodes/ [Accessed 23 May 2018].

[2] En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Vocal folds. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocal_folds#Oscillation [Accessed 23 May 2018].

*note: I’m aware of the issues that come with citing Wikipedia as a source, but the two images in particular that I borrowed from them for use in this essay are a perfect visualisation of the point I’m trying to make, and I thought it a shame to die on the hill of not citing Wikipedia, rather than to produce a piece of work that A) I’m proud of and B) is readable/understandable. My main points come from other, more reliable sources.

[2a] M1 Oscillation - direct image link: https://i.imgur.com/B3Nc2xr.gif

[2b] M2 Oscillation - direct image link: https://i.imgur.com/2rMR67w.gif

[3] Roubeau, B., Henrich, N. and Castellengo, M. (2009). Laryngeal Vibratory Mechanisms: The Notion of Vocal Register Revisited. Journal of Voice, 23(4), pp.425-438.

[4] /u/GrafKarpador (2018). what happens physiologically when i change between two pitches? what should be changing, and what should not? • r/singing. [online] reddit. Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/singing/comments/86i0tl/what_happens_physiologically_when_i_change/dw5d952/?context=0 [Accessed 23 May 2018].

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vmfx · 3 years

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SALVAGE AND RECOVERY.

I met Syke when he signed on with me in food service during last decade’s economic recovery. He needed something and now, since he couldn’t build pools in the winter, and his wife was about to cut the cord if he didn’t bring anything home for her and their three daughters. But Syke had some news for me: he just salvaged a vinyl collection from a client that was thrown out in the sidewalk. She did what we call “the unthinkable”. How could anyone do that? Simple. Those are the same people who throw away their kid’s comic books and baseball cards because they don’t know or care for the value of anything in their lives. She didn’t even try to pawn her goods to eBay or a local record store and get any amount of money from some skivy, pot-smoking, potential Jerry Garcia-slash-Bruce Villanche cross-breed. No. She just put them out on the side of the road and told them to fend for themselves. A real winner. My friend took more-than-full advantage of someone else’s mistake. And rightfully so.

Most of her records were in excellent condition. She was into the hits, Seventies and Eighties pop, rock, adult contemporary, reggae, jazz, and even disco. They were kept in great care, too. We both assumed she purchased them, played them once or twice, and put them back on the shelf until forever. Syke already had a wealthier record collection than I had: 1,500 pieces and counting. Half in the backyard shed at a cemetery they lived on, and the other half in North Carolina at his old man’s house. My dad should know, too. He found three piles of throwaways and brought them back home. Collections of classic Sixties showtunes, vocalists, Woodstock rock, moldy basement records, children’s sing-a-longs, and even polka where I donated all of that to WUSB’s resident polka lady. (Note: my dad had a collection of records such as KISS, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones a while ago but sold them like a schmuck some 25 years ago for a paltry $50. Had he knew I was into music as much as I was now he’d keep them for me.)

Over the past decade I have been the recipient of several other music collections. Twice I have inherited cassette-tape collections, one from my former car-insurance peddler and another from my brother as he “found” a stash of tapes in a junkyard. The result? Lots of The Cure, The Smiths, Siouxie Sioux, Depeche Mode, Judas Priest, and other lesser-known 80’s acts and one-hit wonders so low on the musical food chain that I’m too embarrassed to even mention. (Simply Red, Corey Hart, or Rick Astley, anyone?) A few years prior, a former dee-jay at our station had a huge giveaway of vintage and classic rock he was parting with, about 30 or so records I took of his. One of the most tolerant people I ever known. So tolerant that he cut ties with me for a very petty reason I can’t even remember. That’s how petty it was.

Syke couldn’t possibly want all these records, so he invited me over to take a look at his victory. I arrive at his house and there they were: five boxes totaling about ~600 records. All 12’s. No 7’s, 45’s, or cassettes. All of them were in their original sleeves and most of them seemed to be played only once. The rules were simple. I could take whatever I wanted but with one catch: he would have the final word and take what he liked that I picked out. It was his find after all. Only then I would do the same to him. Out of the 600 or so records, I took 10% of them. Not bad for a vicarious lucky day. I picked out whatever classic radio rock that interested me. Lou Reed, Peter Garbriel, INXS, Bob Seger, Steely Dan, Alan Parsons, and more. More finds included the finest in post-punk from The Buzzcocks’ Pete Shelley, Blondie, Phil Collins, and three from Squeeze. Syke’s client, who in the end took great care of her records, was also huge on disco. He insisted I take France Joli, Studio 54, and the Saturday Night Fever records. O.K….if you say so? Then the joker cards in the collection: a compilation of Johnny Carson’s best moments and a Maxell rock sampler. Yes, a cassette tape manufacturer that has its own vinyl record. Please figure that one out. Also, I managed to take all of the Disney Records from the salvage and recovery operation. Why? My ma’ used to listen to Disney when she was a child growing up in the 50’s, so not only there’d be something to remember ma’ by, but also have at least some sort of relic of pure innocence; once upon a time when life was simpler, less anxious, and more innocent.

Then he vicked all of The Kinks and The Clash records from my stack. Good move. This was akin to your opponent pulling out all of yr Aces and Kings from your deck of cards. What did he also end up keeping? All of the Beatles’ records, and…Michael Jackson’s Thriller album. Yes, you heard me. If any of you reading this just said “holy shit!”, then I would’ve heard you. From far away. It’s one of the very rare albums that went ten times Diamond, meaning, it has sold at least 100,000,000 copies. Do the math.

But after Syke was done picking and choosing from my stack I should say that I still came out a winner. For jazz, R&B, and soul I chose Minnie Riperton, Grover Washington Jr., Weather Report, Taj Mahal, The Temptations, Donald Byrd, and Stanley Clarke. I also walked away with Peter Gabriel’s ‘So’ album. My eyes almost set themselves on fire when I found it. I also managed to score Peter Tosh and Bob Seger as well. Syke’s response? “Fuck Bob Seger!” as he smiled. Classic.

I also had some records I looked to get rid of, so I had to reciprocate. Those records my ‘tolerant’ friend gave to me? Those I now gave to Syke. About 50 of those out. Jefferson Airplane, Chick Corea, Herb Alpert, and some novelty Rolling Stones. Looking back, I felt bitten giving away the -Stones records, but they’re so plentiful that I bought them all back this year. Record collectors have to support one another throughout our addictions. You know how it is.

One person’s trash is another person’s treasure, they say. Syke was lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time for him to win a free vinyl collection. He didn’t wait for someone to die for this to happen, and he didn’t inherit someone else’s collection out of the blue because they were moving or that they lost interest in their favorite records. This was a no-strings-attached find that any other Joe or Jane would have to make years of visits and paychecks to have the same caliber collection that my friend found in one shot, or how my brother or Dad would hand them over for me. After that night was over, Syke and I were both winners and more so him than I. He / she who dies with the most toys wins. They also say that, too.

Shortly after our generous trade-off, Syke did wrong to his wife again to the point where she felt he gave up on her and the kids. He wasn’t bringing money in to provide for the family. Instead, he was wasting his time on video games and later on moved to Brooklyn for a few months, leaving his wife and children with no heat or utilities. She did something also unthinkable that would make some collectors commit suicide: she sold everything he owned in the shed to a random guy for $30. Could you blame her? She had no choice. It was all supposed to be mine…if only I’d kept my mouth shut and not tell her I’d buy his records to give to him. Cover blown. For $30 I would’ve have my friend’s collection. All of it. But I’m a neutral party. I wanted to be the cooler between the two sides because I’m a natural-born diplomat. Putting your family behind is wrong, and I wouldn’t have anyone sell my possessions on me. I don’t excuse his actions at all, but you can’t sell someone’s life like that on the cheap either.

But there comes a happy ending. Syke took a step back, re-prioritized his life, and realized what was truly at stake. The entire family moved down south to the Carolinas where longer warmer weather allowed his swimming pool business to thrive and re-united his other collection his father helped keep for him. He’s happy, the kids are happy, everyone’s still together and better than ever. All the best to them. Only Syke could forgive and forget. He had to. For the kids.

#VMFX #writing #short stories #Long Island #personal #vinyl #music #friends

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whoispeytonjames · 4 years

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How to Avoid the Need for a Vacation from Your Vacation

With the holidays approaching, it’s time to start dreading — I mean packing for — the travel that comes with visiting loved ones or making it to those New Year’s Eve celebrations. If you are anything like me, then you probably have a past of overdoing it during the holidays and returning to work or school in desperate need of a vacation to recover from your vacation. For example, two years ago, I returned home with bronchitis thanks to exhaustion and spending a night sleeping in a drafty airport basement. This past summer, I crammed my vacation so full of tourist activities that I needed to book off another week to rest up. At that time, I was working as a supply teacher so my job was flexible enough to allow me to take an extra break; yet not everyone has that luxury. If you want to return to work or school without feeling drained or emotional, here are some tips for better planning your trip so that you can feel more rested and energized upon your return.

Finish Off that To-Do List Before You Leave

Are dishes still sitting in the kitchen sink? Stinky litter boxes and garbage still hanging around? Take care of it before you head out the door to catch your flight! The week leading up to your vacation put together a to-do list including everything that is pressing and needs to be completed. This can include household chores, work deadlines, refilling prescriptions, paying bills ahead of time, and implementing basic security measures around your home. That way you are not having to worry about dealing with an unclean home or running errands upon your return.

Put Together a Plan for Pet or Child Care Ahead of Time

I may not have human babies but I have furry ones that I always have to account for before I leave for my vacation. If you are not taking your pets or kids with you on your vacation, be sure to arrange for a sitter or pet hotel in advance. The last thing that you want to worry about on your trip is the health and safety of your pet or child because you got stuck with using a care program or babysitter that you don’t fully trust. Start to plan about a month in advance, by beginning to make a list of people or organizations that you trust. Next, inquire about availability, and arrange for their stay while you are away. Lastly, leave a detailed schedule or list of duties that they will need to complete while caring for your loved one. If you are lending out your key, make sure that you have a spare one to take with you on vacation. Also, be sure to arrange a time to deliver the key to them, as well as a time to get it back.

Practice Self-Care Before, During, and After Your Trip

Although you want to be taking care of business before your trip, you also need to be taking care of yourself. Work some time into your days for adequate sleep, nutritional meals and snacks, meditation (if you practice it), and physical activity. Ideally, all these should be a part of your normal routine, and you want to try to keep these rituals during your trip as well. If you are staying at a hotel, make use of the fitness facilities, if at all possible. Try not to overindulge in rich or unhealthy foods and alcohol during the holiday season, no matter how tempted you are. Bring a reusable water bottle to encourage hydration. If you are taking a late-night flight, be sure to pack a light blanket, noise-canceling headphones, sleeping mask, and travel pillow into your carry-on bag to help you get some shut-eye during the flight. If you continue your normal routines during your trip and upon your return, it will be a lot easier to return to life as normal once your vacation is over.

Do Not Over-Plan Your Trip

As I mentioned earlier, I fell victim to this over the summer when I crammed an entire west coast trip into two weeks. Almost every single one of my days was filled with exploring a city or visiting a bunch of tourist destinations. I even topped the trip off with two loud metal concerts! Sure I still had the adventure of a lifetime and walked away with some stunning videos and photographs, but I also came home exhausted. The number one thing that I would recommend is to focus on who and what you want to see on your vacation. You are not obligated to visit every single family member and friend that you have ever known. No one will fault you for not visiting every single tourist destination or not hitting up every single party. Choose a couple of activities that you couldn’t imagine your trip without and then plan the rest of the trip day by day. While on vacation, listen to your body — what does it need? If you have the energy to hit up a family gathering or go hiking, then do it! But if you need some time to relax by the fireplace with a book, that’s fine too. Learn to say no to outside pressure, and do what you need to do to stay healthy on your vacation.

Take Advantage of Long Stop-Overs (If You Have Them)

Whether you are driving a long distance, taking a ridiculously long train or bus ride, or flying across time zones, schedule in some “me time” when you are coming back. Even if you think you can do a whole day of driving, think about breaking the trip up so that you are stopping somewhere to sleep about midway through. This will give your eyes, mind, and the rest of your body a nice break before hitting the road. You never want to find yourself in the middle of a car accident because you started to get tired midway through your drive! If you have a long stopover on another mode of transportation, consider checking into a hotel. When flying across time zones, this is a must, as it will help reduce the stress that jet lag puts on your body. Taking a break from any vehicle also gives you a chance to rest your muscles, which are fighting to keep your posture the same as when your feet are planted on solid ground.

Plan to Have Some Rest After Your Visit

In the past, I have given into the temptation of staying with my family that I was visiting up until I had to be back. I regretted it every time. If you can build in some relaxation days at home before you go back to work or school, take this chance. Sure we all hate saying goodbye to friends and family at the end of a visit, but those days at home are vital for physically, mentally, and emotionally preparing for your return to normal life. Not to mention, you will have time to pick up groceries and meal prep for the week, start to schedule any necessary meetings, check over important emails, and get a head start on any work that you may have to complete. This, of course, can be completed at your own pace, which is always a bonus.

Plan the Next Fun Thing to Do

Post-vacation depression is a real thing, folks. When I came back from the Supernatural Convention held in Toronto this past fall, I fell into a deep depression. That’s because I had been planning and anticipating the event for a solid year! As I had blown most of my budget at the convention, I wasn’t able to work in any fun activities for another month. This was a mistake, to say the least. When you come back from your vacation, take some time afterward to brainstorm and plan some fun activities to look forward to in the future. This will make returning to the norm a little less bleak. Perhaps think about taking up a new hobby, joining a club, taking a day trip outside of the city, or even planning your next vacation. Consider downloading a countdown app, such as Time Until, for your phone or computer so that you can see the number of days until your next vacation or planned activity. This will help to create a visual reminder of what you are working towards.

A little planning can go a long way when it comes to fighting travel fatigue. Use some or all these tips to get back to work or school after the holidays without the need for a second vacation!

#travel #travel tips #article #long read #long post #long reads

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jeremyau · 7 years

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How does Boston compare to SV and what do MIT and Stanford have to do with it?

This is an archive of an old Google Buzz conversation on MIT vs. Stanford and Silicon Valley vs. Boston

There’s no reason why the Boston area shouldn’t be as much a hotbed of startups as Silicon Valley is. By contrast, there are lots of reasons why NYC is no good for startups. Nevertheless, Paul Graham gave up on the Boston area, so there must be something that hinders startup formation in the area.

Kevin: This has nothing to do with money, or talents, or what it. All it matters is “entrepreneur density”.

Boston may have the money, the talent, the intelligence, but does it have an entrepreneurial spirit and enough of a density?

Marya: From http://ift.tt/1GmR1B9 “Graham says the reasons are mostly personal, having to do with the impending birth of his child and the desire not to try and be a bi-coastal parent” But then immediately after, we see he says: “Boston just doesn’t have the startup culture that the Valley does. It has more startup culture than anywhere else, but the gap between number 1 and number 2 is huge; nothing makes that clearer than alternating between them.” Here’s an interview: http://ift.tt/1ImzxPA Funny, because Graham seemed partial to the Boston area, earlier: http://ift.tt/14WuEQM http://ift.tt/gihLkN

Rebecca: I think he’s partial because he likes the intellectual side of Boston, enough to make him sad that it doesn’t match SV for startup culture. I know the feeling. I guess I have seen things picking up here recently, enough to make me a little wistful that I have given my intellectual side priority over any entrepreneurial urges I might have, for the time being.

Scoble: I disagree that Boston is #2. Seattle and Tel Aviv are better and even Boulder is better, in my view.

Piaw: Seattle does have a large number of Amazon and Microsoft millionaires funding startups. They just don’t get much press. I wasn’t aware that Boulder is a hot-bed of startup activity.

Rebecca: On the comment “there is no reason Boston shouldn’t be a hotbed of startups…” Culture matters. MIT’s culture is more intellectual than entrepreneurial, and Harvard even more so. I’ll tell you a story: I was hanging out in the MIT computer club in the early nineties, when the web was just starting, and someone suggested that one could claim domain names to make money reselling them. Everyone in the room agreed that was the dumbest idea they had ever heard. It was crazy. Everything was available back then, you know. And everyone in that room kindof knew they were leaving money on the ground. And yet we were part of this club that culturally needed to feel ourselves above wanting to make money that way. Or later, in the late nineties I was hanging around Philip Greenspun, who was writing a book on database backed web development. He was really getting picked on by professors for doing stuff that wasn’t academic enough, that wasn’t generating new ideas. He only barely graduated because he was seen as too entrepreneurial, too commercial, not original enough. Would that have happened at Stanford? I read an interview with Rajiv Motwani where he said he dug up extra disk drives whenever the Google founders asked for them, while they were still grad students. I don’t think that wouldn’t happen at MIT: a professor wouldn’t give a grad student lots of stuff just to build something on their own that they were going to commercialize eventually. They probably would encounter complaints they weren’t doing enough “real science”. There was much resentment of Greenspun for the bandwidth he “stole” from MIT while starting his venture, for instance, and people weren’t shy about telling him. I’m not sure I like this about MIT.

Piaw: One my friends once turned down a full time offer at Netscape (after his internship) to return to graduate school. He said at that time, “I didn’t go to graduate school to get rich.” Years later he said, “I succeeded… at not getting rich.”

Dan: As the friend in question (I interned at Netscape in ‘96 and ‘97), I’m reasonably sure I wouldn’t have gotten very rich by dropping out of grad school. Instead, by sticking with academia, I’ve managed to do reasonably well for myself with consulting on the side, and it’s not like academics are paid peanuts, either.

Now, if I’d blown off academia altogether and joined Netscape in ‘93, which I have to say was a strong temptation, things would have worked out very differently.

Piaw: Well, there’s always going to be another hot startup. :-) That’s what Reed Hastings told me in 1995.

Rebecca: A venture capitalist with Silicon Valley habits (a very singular and strange beast around here) recently set up camp at MIT, and I tried to give him a little “Toto, you’re not in Kansas anymore” speech. That is to say, I was trying to tell him that the habits one got from making money from Stanford students wouldn’t work at MIT. It isn’t that one couldn’t make money investing in MIT students – if one was patient enough, maybe one could make more, maybe a lot more. But it would only work if one understood how utterly different MIT culture is, and did something different out of an understanding of what one was buying. I didn’t do a very good job talking to him, though; maybe I should try again by stepping back and talking more generally about the essential difference of MIT culture. You know, if I did that, maybe the Boston mayor’s office might want to hear this too. Hmmm… you’ve given me an idea.

Marya: Apropos, Philip G just posted about his experience attending a conference on angel investing in Boston: http://ift.tt/2pZbdDg He’s in cranky old man mode, as usual. I imagine him shaking his cane at the conference presenters from the rocking chair on his front porch. Fun quotes: ‘Asked if it wouldn’t make more sense to apply capital in rapidly developing countries such as Brazil and China, the speakers responded that being an angel was more about having fun than getting a good return on investment. (Not sure whose idea of “fun” included sitting in board meetings with frustrated entrepreneurs, but personally I would rather be flying a helicopter or going to the beach.)… ‘Nobody had thought about the question of whether Boston in fact needs more angel investors or venture capital. Nobody could point to an example of a good startup that had been unable to obtain funding. However, there were examples of startups, notably Facebook, that had moved to California because of superior access to capital and other resources out there… ‘Nobody at the conference could answer a macro question: With the US private GDP shrinking, why do we need capital at all?’

Piaw: The GDP question is easily answered. Not all sectors are shrinking. For instance, Silicon Valley is growing dramatically right now. I wouldn’t be able to help people negotiate 30% increases in compensation otherwise (well, more like 50% increases, depending on how you compute). The number of pre-IPO companies that are extremely profitable is also surprisingly high.

And personally, I think that investing in places like China and Brazil is asking for trouble unless you are well attuned to the local culture, so whoever answered the question with “it’s fun” is being an idiot.

The fact that Facebook was asked by Accel to move to Palo Alto should definitely be something Boston area VCs should berate themselves about. But that “forced move” was very good for Facebook. They acquired Jeff Rothschild, Marc Kwiatkowski, Steve Grimm, Paul Bucheit, Sanjeev Singh, and many others by being in Palo Alto that would not have moved to Boston for Facebook no matter what. It’s not clear to me that staying in Boston was an optimal move for Facebook no matter what. At least, not before things got dramatically better in Boston for startups.

Marya: The GDP question is easily answered. Not all sectors are shrinking. For instance, Silicon Valley is growing dramatically right now

I’m guessing medical technology and biotech are still growing. What else?

Someone pointed this out in the comments, and Philip addressed it; he argues that angel investors are unlikely to get a good return on their investment (partial quote): “…we definitely need some sources of capital… But every part of the U.S. financial system, from venture capital right up through investment banks, is sized for an expanding private economy. That means it is oversized for the economy that we have. Which means that the returns to additional capital should be very small….”

He doesn’t provide any supporting evidence, though.

Piaw: Social networks and social gaming is growing dramatically and fast.

Rebecca: Thanks, Marya, for pointing out Philip’s blog post. I think the telling quote from it is this: “What evidence is there that the Boston area has ever been a sustainable place for startups to flourish? When the skills necessary to build a computer were extremely rare, minicomputer makers were successful. As soon as the skills … became more widespread, nearly all of the new companies started up in California, Texas, Seattle, etc. When building a functional Internet application required working at the state of the art, the Boston area was home to a lot of pioneering Internet companies, e.g., Lycos. As soon as it became possible for an average programmer to … work effectively, Boston faded to insignificance.” Philip is saying Boston can only compete when it can leverage skills that only it has. That’s because its ability to handle business and commercialization are so comparatively terrible that when the technological skill becomes commoditized, other cities will do much better.

But it does often get cutting-edge technical insight and skills first – and then completely drops the ball on developing them. I find this frustrating. Now that I think about it, it seems like Boston’s leaders are frustrated by this too. But I think they’re making a mistake trying to remake Boston in Silicon Valley’s image. If we tried to be you, at best we would be a pathetic shadow of you. We could only be successful by being ourselves, but getting better at it.

There is a fundamental problem: the people at the cutting edge aren’t interested in practical things, or they wouldn’t be bothering with the cutting edge. Though it might seem strange to say now, the guy who set up the hundredth web server was quite an impractical intellectual. Who needs a web server when there are only 99 others (and no browsers yet, remember)? We were laughing at him, and he was protesting the worth of this endeavor merely out of a deep intellectual faith that this was the future, no matter how silly it seemed. Over and over I have seen the lonely obsessions of impractical intellectuals become practical in two or three years, become lucrative in five or eight, and become massive industries in seven to twelve years.

So if the nascent idea that will become a huge industry in a dozen years shows up first in Boston, why can’t we take advantage of it? The problem is that the people who hone their skill at nascent ideas that won’t be truly lucrative for half a decade at least, are by definition impractical, too impractical to know how to take advantage of being first. But maybe Boston could become a winner if it could figure out how to pair these people up with practical types who could take advantage of the early warning about the shape of the future, and leverage the competitive advantage of access to skills no-one else has. It would take a very particular kind of practicality, different from the standard SV thing. Maybe I’m wrong, though; maybe the market just doesn’t reward being first, especially if it means being on the bleeding edge of practicality. What do you think?

Piaw: Being 5 or 10 years ahead of your time is terrible. What you want to be is just 18 months or even 12 months ahead of your time, so you have just enough time to build product before the market explodes. My book covers this part as well. :-)

Marya: Rebecca, I don’t know the Boston area well enough to form an opinion. I’ve been here two years, but I’m certainly not in the thick of things (if there is a “thick” to speak of, I haven’t seen it). My guess would be that Boston doesn’t have the population to be a huge center of anything, but that’s a stab in the dark.

Even so, this old survey (2004) says that Boston is #2 in biotech, close behind San Diego: http://ift.tt/2pfVjq7 So why is Boston so successful in biotech if the people here broadly lack an interest in business, or are “impractical”? (Here’s a snippet from the article: “…When the most successful San Diego biotech company, IDEC Pharmaceuticals, merged with Biogen last year to become Biogen Idec (nasdaq: BIIB - news - people ), it officially moved its headquarters to Biogen’s hometown of Cambridge, Mass.” Take that, San Diego!)

When you talk about a certain type of person being “impractical”, I don’t think that’s really the issue. Such people can be very practical when it comes to pursuing their own particular kind of ambition. But their interests may not lie in the commercialization of an idea. Some extremely intelligent, highly skilled people just don’t care about money and commerce, and may even despise them.

Even with all that, I find it hard to believe that the intelligentsia of New England are so much more cerebral than their cousins in Silicon Valley. There’s certainly a puritan ethic in New England, but I don’t think that drives the business culture.

Rebecca: Marya, thanks for pointing out to me I wasn’t being clear (I’m kindof practicing explaining something on you, that I might try to say more formally later, hence the spam of your comment field. I hope you don’t mind.) You question “ why is Boston so successful in biotech if the people here broadly lack an interest in business?” made me realize I’m not talking about people broadly – there are plenty of business people in Boston, as everywhere. I’m talking about a particular kind of person, or even more specifically, a particular kind of relationship. Remember I contrasted the reports of Rajeev Motwani’s treatment of the Google guys with the MIT CS lab’s treatment of Philip? In general, I am saying that a university town like Palo Alto or Cambridge will be a magnet for ultra-ambitious young people who look for help realizing their ambitions, and a group of adults who are looking to attract such young people and enable those ambition, and there is a characteristic relationship between them with (perhaps unspoken) terms and expectations. The idea I’m really dancing around is that these terms & expectations are very different at MIT than (I’ve heard) they are at Stanford. Though there may not be very many people total directly involved in this relationship, it will still determine a great deal of what the city can and can’t accomplish, because it is a combination of the energy of very ambitious young people and the mentorship of experienced adults that makes big things possible.

My impression is that the most ambitious people at Stanford dream of starting the next big internet company, and if they show enough energy and talent, they will impress professors who will then open their Rolodex and tell their network of VC’s “this kid will make you tons of money if you support his work.” The VC’s who know that this professor has been right many times before will trust this judgement. So kids with this kind of dream go to Stanford and work to impress their professors in a particular kind of way, because it puts them on a fast track to a particular kind of success.

The ambitious students most cultivated by professors in Boston have a different kind of dream: they might dream of cracking strong AI, or discovering the essential properties of programming languages that will enable fault-tolerant or parallel programming, or really understanding the calculus of lambda calculus, or revolutionizing personal genomics, or building the foundations of Bladerunner-style synthetic biology. If professors are sufficiently impressed with their student’s energy and talent, they will open their Rolodex of program managers at DARPA (and NSF and NIH), and tell them “what this kid is doing isn’t practical or lucrative now, nor will it be for many years to come, but nonetheless it is critical for the future economic and military competitiveness of the US that this work is supported.” The program managers’ who know that this professor has been right many times before will trust this judgment. In this way, the kid is put on a fast track to success – but it is a very different kind of success than the Stanford kid was looking for, and a different kind of kid who will fight to get onto this track. The meaning of success is very different, much more intellectual and much less practical, at least in the short term.

That’s what I mean when I say “Boston” is less interested in business, more impractical, less entrepreneurial. It isn’t that there aren’t plenty of people here who have these qualities. But the “ecosystem” that gives ultra-ambitious young people the chance to do something singular which could be done no-where else – an ecosystem which that it does have, but in a very different kind of way – doesn’t foster skill at commercialization or an interest in the immediate practical application of technology.

Maybe there is nothing wrong with that: Boston’s ecosystem just fosters a different kind of achievement. However, I can see it is frustrating to the mayor of Boston, because the young people whose ambitions are enabled by Boston’s ecosystem may be doing work crucial to the economic and military competitiveness of the US in the long term, but they might not help the economy of Boston very much! What often happens in the “long term” is that the work supported by grants in Boston develops to the point it becomes practical and lucrative, and then it gets commercialized in California, Seattle, New York, etc… The program managers at DARPA who funded the work are perfectly happy with this outcome, but I can imagine that the mayor of Boston is not! The kid also might not be 100% happy with this deal, because the success which he is offered isn’t much like SV success – its a fantastic amount of work, rather hermit-like and self-abnegating, which mostly ends up making it possible for other people far away to get very, very rich using the results of his labors. At best he sees only a minuscule slice of the wealth he enabled.

What one might want instead is that the professors in Boston have two sections in their Rolodex. The first section has the names of all the relevant program managers at DARPA, and the professor flips to this section first. The second section has the names of suitable cofounders, and friendly investors, and after the student has slaved away for five to seven years making a technology practical, the professor flips to the second section and sets the student up a second time to be the chief scientist or something like that at an appropriate startup.

And its not like this doesn’t happen. It does happen. But it doesn’t happen as much as it could, and I think the reason why it doesn’t may be that it just takes a lot of work to maintain a really good Rolodex. These professors are busy and they just don’t have enough energy to be the linchpin of a really top-quality ecosystem in two different ways at the same time.

If the mayor of Boston is upset that Boston is economically getting the short end of the stick in this whole deal (which I think it is), a practical thing he could do is give these professors some help in beefing up the second section of their Rolodex, or perhaps try to build another network of mentors which was in the appropriate way Rolodex-enabled. If he took the later route, he should understand that this second network shouldn’t try to be a clone of the similar thing at Stanford (because at best it would only be a pale shadow) but instead be particularly tailored to incorporating the DARPA-project graduates that are unique to Boston’s ecosystem. That way he could make Boston a center of entrepreneurship in a way that was uniquely its own and not merely a wannabe version of something else – which it would inevitably do badly. That’s what I meant when I said Boston should be itself better, rather than trying to be a poor pale copy of Silicon Valley.

Piaw: I like that line of thought Rebecca. Here’s the counter-example: Facebook. Facebook clearly was interested in monetizing something that was very developed, and in fact, had been tried and failed many times because the timing wasn’t right. Yet Facebook had to go to Palo Alto to get funding. So the business culture has to change sufficiently that the people with money are willing to risk it on very high risk ventures like the Facebook that was around 4 years ago.

Having invested my own money in startups, I find that it’s definitely something very challenging. It takes a lot to convince yourself that this risk is worth taking, even if it’s a relatively small portion of your portfolio. To get enough people to build critical mass, you have to have enough success in prior ventures to gain the kind of confidence that lets you fund Facebook where it was 4 years ago. I don’t think I would have been able to fund Google or Facebook at the seed stage, and I’ve lived in the valley and worked at startups my entire career, so if anyone would be comfortable with risk, it should be me.

Dan: Rebecca: a side note on “opening a rolodex for DARPA”. It doesn’t really work quite like that. It’s more like “hey, kid, you should go to grad school” and you write letters of recommendation to get the kid into a top school. You, of course, steer the kid to a research group where you feel he or she will do awesome work, by whatever biased idea of awesomeness.

My own professorial take: if one of my undergrads says “I want to go to grad school”, then I do as above. If he or she says “I want to go work for a cool startup”, then I bust out the VC contacts in my rolodex.

Rebecca: Dan: I know. I was oversimplifying for dramatic effect, just because qualifying it would have made my story longer, and it was already pushing the limits of the reasonable length for a comment. Of course the SV version of the story isn’t that simple either.

I have seen it happen that sufficiently brilliant undergraduates (and even high school students – some amazing prodigies show up at MIT) can get direct support. But realize also I’m really talking about grad students – after all, my comparison is with the relationship between the Google guys and Rajeev Motwani, which happened when they were graduate students. The exercise was to compare the opportunities they encountered with the opportunities similarly brilliant, energetic and ultra-ambitious students at MIT would have access to, and talk about how it would be similar and different. Maybe I shouldn’t have called such people “kids,” but it simplified and shortened my story, which was pushing its length limit anyway. Thanks for the feedback; I’m testing out this story on you, and its useful to know what ways of saying things work and what doesn’t.

Rebecca: Piaw: I understand that investing in startups by individual is very scary. I know some Boston angels (personally more than professionally) and I hear stories about how cautious their angel groups are. I should explain some context: the Boston city government recently announced a big initiative to support startups in Boston, and renovate some land opened up by the Big Dig next to some decaying seaport buildings to create a new Innovation District. I was thinking about what they could do to make that kind of initiative a success rather than a painful embarrassment (which it could easily become). So I was thinking about the investment priorities of city governments, more than individual investors like you.

Cities invest in all sorts of crazy things, like Olympic stadiums, for instance, that lose money horrifyingly … but when you remember that the city collects 6% hotel tax on every extra visitor, and benefits from extra publicity, and collects extra property tax when new people move to the city, it suddenly doesn’t look so bad anymore. Boston is losing out because there is a gap in the funding of technology between when DARPA stops funding something, because it is developed to the point where it is commercializable, and when the cautious Boston angels will start funding something – and other states step into the gap and get rich off of the product of Massachusetts’ tax dollars. That can’t make the local government too happy.

Maybe the Boston city or state government might have an incentive to do something to plug that hole. They might be more tolerant of losing money directly because even a modestly lucrative venture, or one very, very slow to generate big returns, which nonetheless successfully drew talent to the city would make them money in hotel & property tax, publicity etc. etc. – or just not losing the huge investment they have already made in their universities! I briefly worked for someone who was funded by Boston Community Capital, an organization which, I think, divided its energies between developing low income housing and and funding selected startups that were deemed socially redeeming for Boston. When half your portfolio is low-income housing, you might have a different outlook on risk and return! I was hugely impressed by what great investors they were – generous, helpful & patient. Patience is necessary for us because the young prodigies in Boston go into fields whose time horizon is so long – my friends are working on synthetic biology, but it will be a long, long time before you can buy a Bladerunner-style snake!

Again, thanks for the feedback. You are helping me understand what I am not making clear.

Marya: Rebecca, you said The idea I’m really dancing around is that these terms & expectations are very different at MIT than (I’ve heard) they are at Stanford

I read your initial comments as being about general business conditions for startups in Boston. But now I think you’re mainly talking about internet startups or at least startups that are based around work in computer science. You’re saying MIT’s computer science department in particular does a poor job of pointing students in an entrepreneurial direction, because they are too oriented towards academic topics.

Both MIT and Stanford have top computer science and business school rankings. Maybe the problem is that Stanford’s business school is more inclined to “mine” the computer science department than MIT’s?

Doug: Rebecca, your description of MIT vs. Stanford sounds right to me (though I don’t know Stanford well). What’s interesting is that I remember UC Berkeley as being very similar to how you describe MIT: the brightest/most ambitious students at Cal ended up working on BSD or Postgres or The Gimp or Gnutella, rather than going commercial. Well, I haven’t kept up with Berkeley since the mid-90s, but have there been any significant startups there since Berkeley Softworks?

Piaw: Doug: Inktomi. It was very significant for its time.

Dan: John Ousterhout built a company around Tcl. Eric Allman built a company around sendmail. Mike Stonebreaker did Ingres, but that was old news by the time the Internet boom started. Margo Seltzer built a company around Berkeley DB. None of them were Berkeley undergrads, though Seltzer was a grad student. Insik Rhee did a bunch of Internet-ish startup companies, but none of them had the visibility of something like Google or Yahoo.

Rebecca: Dan: I was thinking more about what you said about not involving undergraduates, but instead telling them to go to grad school. Sometimes MIT is in the nice sedate academic mode which steers undergrads to the appropriate research group when they are ready to work on their PhD. But sometimes it isn’t. Let me tell you more about the story of the scene in the computer club concerning installation of the first web server. It was about the 100th web server anywhere, and its maintainer accosted me with an absurd chart “proving” the exponential growth of the web – i.e. a graph going exponentially from 0 to 100ish, which he extrapolated forward in time to over a million – you know the standard completely bogus argument – except this one was exceptionally audacious in its absurdity. Yet he argued for it with such intensity and conviction, as if he was saying that this graph should convince me to drop everything and work on nothing but building the Internet, because it was the only thing that mattered!

I fended him off with the biggest stick I could find: I was determined to get my money’s worth for my education, do my psets, get good grades (I cared back then), and there is no way I would let that be hurt by this insane Internet obsession. But it continued like that. The Internet crowd only grew with time, and they got more insistent that they were working on the only thing that mattered and I should drop everything and join them. That I was an undergraduate did not matter a bit to anyone. Undergrads were involved, grad students were involved, everyone was involved. It wasn’t just a research project; eventually so many different research projects blended together that it became a mass obsession of an entire community, a total “Be Involved or Be Square” kind of thing. I’d love to say that I did get involved. But I didn’t; I simply sat in the office on the couch and did psets, proving theorems and solving the Schrodinger’s equation, and fended them off with the biggest stick I could find. I was determined to get a Real Education, to get my money’s worth at MIT, you know.

My point is that when the MIT ecosystem really does its thing, it is capable of tackling projects that are much bigger than ordinary research projects, because it can get a critical mass of research projects working together, involving enough grad students and also sucking in undergrads and everyone else, so that the community ends up with an emotional energy and cohesion that goes way, way beyond the normal energy of a grad student trying to finish a PhD.

There’s something else too, though I cannot report on this with that much certainty, because was too young to see it all at the time. You might ask: if MIT had this kind of emotional energy focused on something in the 90’s, then what is it doing in a similar way now? And the answer I’d have to say, painfully, is that it is frustrated and miserable about being an empty shell of what it once was.

Why? Because in 2000 Bush got elected and he killed the version of DARPA with which so many professors had had such a long relationship. I didn’t I understand this in the 90’s – like a kid I took the things that were happening around me for granted without seeing the funding that made them possible – but now I see that that the kind of emotional energy expended by the Internet crowd at MIT in the 90’s costs a lot of money, and needs an intelligent force behind it, and that scale of money and planning can only come from the military, not from NSF.

More recently I’ve watched professors who clearly feel it is their birthright to be able to mobilize lots of student to do really large-scale projects, but then they try to find money for it out of NSF, and they spend all their time killing themselves writing grant proposals, never getting enough money to make themselves happy, and complaining about the cowardice of academia, and wishing they could still work with their old friends at DARPA. They aren’t happy because they are merely doing big successful research projects, but a mere research project isn’t enough… when MIT is really MIT it can do more. It is an empty shell of itself when it is merely a collection of merely successful but not cohesive NSF funded research projects. As I was saying, the Boston “ecosystem” has in itself the ability to do something singular, but it is singular in an entirely different way than SV’s thing.

This may seem obscure, a tale of funding woes at a distant university, but perhaps it is something you should be aware of, because maybe it affects your life. The reason you should care is that when MIT was fully funded and really itself, it was building the foundations of the things that are now making you rich.

One might think of the relationship between technology and wealth like a story about potential energy: when you talk about finding a “product/market” fit, its like pushing a big stone up a hill, until you get the “fit” at the top of the hill, and then the stone rolls down and the energy you put into it spins out and generates lots of money. In SV you focus on pushing stones up short hills – like Piaw said, no more than 12-18 months of pushing before the “fit” happens.

But MIT in its golden age could tackle much, much bigger hills – the whole community could focus itself on ten years of nothing but pushing a really big stone up a really big hill. The potential energy that the obsessed Internet Crowd in the 90’s was pushing into the system has been playing out in your life ever since. They got a really big stone over a really big hill and sent it down onto you, and then you pushed it over little bumps on the way down, and made lots of money doing it, and you thought the potential energy you were profiting from came entirely from yourselves. Some of it was, certainly, but not all. Some of it was from us. If we aren’t working on pushing up another such stone, if we can’t send something else over a huge hill to crash into you, then the future might not be like the past for you. Be worried.

So you might ask, how did this story end? If I’m claiming that there was intense emotional energy being poured into developing the Internet at MIT in the 90’s, why didn’t those same people fan out and create the Internet industry in Boston? If we were once such winners, how did we turn into such losers? What happened to this energetic, cohesive group?

I can tell you about this, because after years of fending off the emotional gravitation pull of this obsession, towards the end I began to relent. First I said “No way!” and then I said “No!” and then I said “Maybe Later,” and then I said “OK, Definitely Later”… and then when I finally got around to Later, and (perhaps the standard story of my life) Later turned out to be Too Late. By 2000 I was ready to join the crowd and remake myself as an Internet Person in the MIT style. So I ended up becoming seriously involved just at the time it fell apart. Because 2000ish, almost the beginning of the Internet Era for you, was the end for us.

This weekend I was thinking of how to tell this story, and I was composing it in my head in a comic style, thinking to tell a story of myself as “Parable of Boston Loser” to talk about all my absurd mistakes as a microcosm of the difficulties of a whole city. I can pick on myself, can’t I; no one will get upset at that? The short story is that in 2000ish the Internet crowd had achieved their product/market fit, DARPA popped the champagne – you won guys! Congratulations! Now go forth and commercialize! – and pushed us out of the nest into the big world to tackle the standard tasks of commercializing a technology – the tasks that you guys can do in your sleep. I was there, right of the middle of things, during that transition. I thought to tell you a comic story about the absurdity of my efforts in that direction, and make you laugh at me.

But when I was trying to figure out how to explain what was making it so terribly hard for me, to my great surprise I was suddenly crying really hard. All Saturday night I was thinking about it and crying. I had repressed the memory, decided I didn’t care that much – but really it was too terrible to face. All the things you can do without thinking, for us hurt terribly. The declaration of victory, the “achievement of product/market fit”, the thing you long for more than anything, I – and I think many of the people I knew – experienced as a massive trauma. This is maybe why I’ve reacted so vehemently and spammed your comment field, because I have big repressed personal trauma about all this. I realized I had a much more earnest story to tell than I had previously planned.

For instance, I was reflecting on my previous comment about what cities spend money on, and thinking that I sounded like the biggest jerk ever. Was I seriously suggesting that the city take money that they would have spent on housing for poor black babies and instead spend it on overeducated white kids with plenty of other prodigiously lucrative economic opportunities? Where do I get off suggesting something like that? If I really mean it I have a big, big burden of proof.

So I’ll try to combine my more earnest story with at least a sketch of how I’d tackle this burden of proof (and try to keep it short, to keep the spam factor to a minimum. The javascript is getting slow, so I’ll cut this here and continue.)

Ruchira: Interlude (hope Rebecca continues soon!): Rebecca says “that scale of money and planning can only come from the military, not from NSF.” Indeed, it may be useful to check out this NY Times infographic of the federal budget: http://ift.tt/1CXAgYQ

I’ll cite below some of the 2011 figures from this graphic that were proposed at that time; although these may have changed, the relative magnitudes of one sector versus another are not very different. I’ve mostly listed sectors in decreasing order of budget size for research, except I listed “General science & technology” sector (which includes NSF) before “Health” sector (which includes NIH) since Rebecca had contrasted the military with NSF.

The “Research, development, test, and evaluation” segment of the “National Defense” sector is $76.77B. I guess DARPA, ONR, etc. fit there.

The “General science & technology” sector is down near the lower right. The “National Science Foundation programs” segment gets $7.36B. There’s also another $0.1B for “National Science Foundation and other”. The “Science, exploration, and NASA supporting activities” segment gets $12.78B. (I don’t know to what extent satellite technology that is relevant to the national defense is also involved here, or in the $4.89B “Space operations” segment, or in the $0.18B “NASA Inspector General, education, and other” segment.) The “Department of Energy science programs” segment gets $5.12B. The “Department of Homeland Security science and technology programs” segment gets $1.02B.

In the “Health” sector, the “National Institutes of Health” segment gets $32.09B. The “Disease control, research, and training” segment gets $6.13B (presumably this includes the CDC). There’s also “Other health research and training” at $0.14B and “Diabetes research and other” at $0.095B.

In the “Natural resources and environment sector”, the “National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration” gets $5.66B. “Regulatory, enforcement, and research programs” gets $3.86B (is this the entire EPA?).

In the “Community and regional development” sector, the “National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance fund” (new this year) gets $4B.

In the “Agriculture” sector, which presumably includes USDA-funded research, “Research and education programs” gets $1.97B, “Research and statistical analysis” gets $0.25B, and “Integrated research, education, and extension programs” gets $0.025B.

In the “Transportation” sector, “Aeronautical research and technology” gets $1.15B, which by the way would be a large (130%) relative increase. (Didn’t MIT find a way of increasing jet fuel efficiency by 75% recently?)

In the “Commerce and housing credit” sector, “Science and technology” gets $0.94B. I find this rather mysterious.

In the “Education, training, employment” sector, “Research and general education aids: Other” gets $1.14B. The “Institute for Education Sciences” gets $0.74B.

In the “Energy” sector, “Nuclear energy R&D” gets $0.82B and “Research and development” gets $0.024B (presumably this is the portion outside the DoE).

In the “Veterans’ benefits and services” sector, “Medical and prosthetic research” gets $0.59B.

In the “Income Security” sector there’s a tiny segment “Children’s research and technical assistance” $0.052B. Not sure what that means.

Rebecca: I’ll start with a non-sequitur which I hope to use to get at the hear of the difference between MIT and Stanford: recently I was at a Marine publicity event and I asked the recruiter what differentiates the Army from the Marines? Since they both train soldiers to fight, why don’t they do it together? He answered vehemently that they must be separate because of one simple attribute in which they are utterly opposed: how they think about the effect they want to have on the life their recruits have after they retire from the service. He characterized the Army as an organization which had two goals: first, to train good soldiers, and second, to give them skills that would get them a good start in the life they would have after they left. If you want to be a Senator, you might get your start in the Army, get connections, get job skills, have “honorable service” on your resume, and generally use it to start your climb up the ladder. The Army aspires to create a legacy of winners who began their career in the Army.

By contrast the Marines, he said, have only one goal: they want to create the very best soldiers, the elite, the soldiers they can trust in the most difficult and dangerous situations to keep the Army guys behind them alive. This elite training, he said, comes with a price. The price you pay is that the training you get does not prepare you for anything at all in the civilian world. You can be the best of the best in the Marines, and then come home and discover that you have no salable civilian job skills, that you are nearly unemployable, that you have to start all over again at the bottom of the ladder. And starting over is a lot harder than starting the first time. It can be a huge trauma. It is legendary that Marines do not come back to civilian life and turn into winners: instead they often self-destruct – the “transition to civilian life” can be violently hard for them.

He said this calmly and without apology. Did I say he was a recruiter? He said vehemently: “I will not try to recruit you! I want to you to understand everything about how painful a price you will pay to be a Marine. I will tell you straight out it probably isn’t for you! The only reason you could possibly want it is because you want more than anything to be a soldier, and not just to be a soldier, but to be in the elite, the best of the best.” He was saying: we don’t help our alumni get started, we set them up to self-destruct, and we will not apologize for it – it is merely the price you pay for training the elite!

This story gets to the heart of what I am trying to say is the essential difference between Stanford and MIT. Stanford is like the Army: for its best students, it has two goals – to make them engineers, and to make them winners after they leave. And MIT is like the Marines: it has only one goal – to make its very best student into the engineering elite, the people about whom they can truthfully tell program managers at DARPA: you can utterly trust these engineers with the future of America’s economic and military competitiveness. There is a strange property to the training you get to enter into that elite, much like the strange property the non-recruiter attributed to the training of the Marines: even though it is extremely rigorous training, once you leave you can find yourself utterly without any salable skills whatever.

The skills you need to acquire to build the infrastructure ten years ahead of the market’s demand for it may have zero intersection with the skills in demand in the commercial world. Not only are you not prepared to be a winner, you may not even be prepared to be basically employable. You leave and start again at the bottom. Worse than the bottom: you may have been trained with habits commercial entities find objectionable (like a visceral unwillingness to push pointers quickly, or a regrettable tendency to fight with the boss before the interview process is even over.) This can be fantastically traumatic. Much as ex-Marines suffer a difficult “transition to civilian life,” the chosen children of MIT suffer a traumatic “transition to commercial life.” And the leaders at MIT do not apologize for this: as the Marine said, it is just the price you pay for training the elite.

This is the general grounds which I might use to appeal to the city officials in Boston. There’s more to explain, but the shape of the idea would be roughly this: much a cities often pay for programs to help ex-Marines transition to civilian life, on the principal that they represent valuable human capital that ought not to be allowed to self-destruct, it might pay off for the city to understand the peculiar predicament of graduates of MIT’s intense DARPA projects, and provide them with help with the “transition to commercial life.” There’s something in it for them! Even though people who know nothing but how to think about the infrastructure of the next decade aren’t generically commercially valuable, if you put them in proximity to normal business people, their perspective would rub off in a useful way. That’s the way that Boston could have catalyzed an Internet industry of its own – not by expecting MIT students to commercialize their work, which (with the possible exception of Philip) they were constitutionally incapable of, but by giving people who wanted to commercialize something but didn’t know what a chance to learn from the accumulated (nearly ten years!) of experience and expertise of the Internet Crowd.

On that note, I wanted to say – funny you should mention Facebook. You think of Mark Zuckerberg as the social networking visionary in Boston, and Boston could have won if they had paid to keep him. I think that strange – Zuckerberg is fundamentally one of you, not one of us. It was right he should leave. But I’ll ask you a question you’ve probably never thought about. Suppose the Internet had not broken into the public consciousness at the time it did; suppose the world had willfully ignored it for a few more years, so the transition from a DARPA-funded research project to a commercial proposition would have happened a few years later. There was an Internet Crowd at MIT constantly asking DARPA to let them build the “next thing,” where “next” is defined as “what the market will discover it wants ten years from now.” So if this crowd had gotten a few more years of government support, what would they have built?

I’m pretty sure it would have been a social networking infrastructure, not like Facebook, really, but more like the Diaspora proposal. I’m not sure, but I remember in ‘98/‘99 that’s what all the emotional energy was pointing toward. It wasn’t technically possible to build yet, but the instant it was that’s what people wanted. I think it strange that everyone is talking about social networking and how it should be designed now; it feels to me like deja vu all over again, and echo from a decade ago. If the city or state had picked up these people after DARPA dropped them, and given them just a little more time, a bit more government support – say by a Mass ARPA – they could have made Boston the home, not of the big social networking company, but of the open social networking infrastructure and and all the expertise and little industries such a thing would have thrown off. And it would have started years and years ago! That’s how Boston could have become a leader by being itself better, rather than trying to be you badly.

Dan: I think you’re perhaps overstating the impact of DARPA. DARPA, by and large, funds two kinds of university activities. First, it funds professors, which pays for post-docs, grad students, and sometimes full-time research staff. Second, DARPA also funds groups that have relatively little to do with academia, such as the BSD effort at Berkeley (although I don’t know for a fact that they had DARPA money, they didn’t do “publish or perish” academic research; they produced Berkeley Unix).

Undergrads at a place like MIT got an impressive immersion in computer science, with a rigor and verve that wasn’t available most other places (although Berkeley basically cloned 6.001, and others did as well). They call it “drinking from a firehose” for a reason. MIT, Berkeley, and other big schools of the late 80’s and early 90’s had more CS students than they knew what to do with, so they cranked up the difficulty of the major and produced very strong students, while others left for easier pursuits.

The key inflection point is how popular culture at the university, and how the faculty, treat their “rock star” students. What are the expectations? At MIT, it’s that you go to grad school, get a PhD, become a researcher. At Stanford, it’s that you run off and get rich.

The decline in DARPA funding (or, more precisely, the micromanagement and short-term thinking) in recent years can perhaps be attributed to the leadership of Tony Tether. He’s now gone, and the “new DARPA” is very much planning to come back in a big way. We’ll see how it goes.

One last point: I don’t buy the Army vs. Marines analogy. MIT vs. Stanford train students similarly, in terms of their preparation to go out and make money, and large numbers of MIT people are quite successfully out there making money. MIT had no lack of companies spin out of research there, notably including Akamai. The differences we’re talking about here are not night vs. day, they’re not Army vs. Marines. They’re more subtle but still significant.

Rebecca: Yes, I’ve been hearing about the “unTethered Darpa.” I should have mentioned that, but left it out to stay (vaguely) short. And yes, I am overstating to make it possible to make a simple statement of what I might be asking for that would be couched in terms a city or state government official might be able to relate to. Maybe that’s irresponsible; that’s why I’m testing it on you first, to give you a chance to yell at me and tell me if you think that’s so.

They are casting about for a narrative of why Boston ceded its role as leaders of the Internet industry to SV, that would point them to something to do about it. So I was talking specifically about the sense in which Boston was once a leader in internet technology and the weaknesses that might have caused it to lose its lead. Paul Graham says that Boston has the weakness in developing industries that it is “too good” at other things, so I wanted to tell a dramatized story specifically about what the other things were and why that would lead to fatal weakness – how being “too strong” in a particular way can also make you weak.

I certainly am overstating, but perhaps I am because I am trying to exert force against another prediliction I find pernicious: the tendency to be eternally vague about the internal emotional logic that makes things happen in the world. If people build a competent, cohesive, energetic community, and then it suddenly fizzles, fails to achieve its potential, and disbands, it might be important to know what weakness caused this surprising outcome so you know how to ask for the help that would keep it from happening the next time.

And to tell the truth, I’m not sure I entirely trust your objection. I’ve wondered why so often I hear such weak, vague narratives about the internal emotional logic that causes things to happen in the world. Vague narratives make you helpless to solve problems! I don’t cling to the right to overstate things, but I do cling to the right to sleuth out the emotional logic of cause and effect that drives the world around me. I feel sometimes that I am fighting some force that wants to thwart me in that goal – and I suspect that that force sometimes originates, not always in rationality, but in in a male tendency to not want to admit to weakness just for the sake of “seeming strong.” A facade of strength can exact a high price in the currency of the real competence of the world, since often the most important action that actually makes the world better is the action of asking for help. I was really impressed with that Marine for being willing to admit to the price he paid, to the trauma he faced. That guy didn’t need to fake strength! So maybe I am holding out the image of him as an example. We have government officials who are actively going out of their way to offer to help us; we have a community that accomplishes many of its greatest achievements because of government support; we shouldn’t squander an opportunity to ask for what might help us. And this narrative might be wrong; that’s why I’m testing it first. I’m open to criticism. But I don’t want to pass by an opportunity, an opening to ask for help from someone who is offering it, merely because I’m too timid to say anything for the fear of overstatement.

Dan: Certainly, Boston’s biggest strength is the huge number of universities in and around the area. Nowhere else in the country comes close. And, unsurprisingly, there are a large number of high-tech companies in and around Boston. Another MIT spin-out I forgot to mention above is iRobot, the Roomba people, which also does a variety of military robots.

To the extent that Boston “lost” the Internet revolution to Silicon Valley, consider the founding of Netscape. A few guys from Illinois and one from Kansas. They could well have gone anywhere. (Simplifying the story, but) they hooked up with a an angel investor (Jim Clark) and he draged them out to the valley where they promptly hired a bunch of ex-SGI talent and hit the road running. Could they have gone to Boston? Sure. But they didn’t.

What seems to be happening is that different cities are developing their own specialties and that’s where people go. Dallas, for example, has carved out a niche in telecom, and all the big players (Nortel, Alcatel, Cisco, etc.) do telecom work there. In Houston, needless to say, it’s all about oilfield engineering. It’s not that there’s any particular Houston tax advantage or city/state funding that brings these companies here. Rather, the whole industry (or, at least the white collar part of it) is in Houston, and many of the big refineries are close nearby (but far enough away that you don’t smell them).

Greater Boston, historically, was where the minicomputer companies were, notably DEC and Data General. Their whole world got nuked by workstations and PCs. DEC is now a vanishing part of HP and DG is now a vanishing part of EMC. The question is what sort of thing the greater Boston area will become a magnet for, in the future, and how you can use whatever leverage you’ve got to help make it happen. Certainly, there’s no lack of smart talent graduating from Boston-area universities. The question is whether you can incentivize them to stay put.

I’d suggest that you could make headway, that way, by getting cheap office space in and around Cambridge (an “incubator”) plus building a local pot of VC money. I don’t think you can decide, in advance, what you want the city’s specialty to be. You pretty much just have to hope that it evolves organically. And, once you see a trend emerging, you might want to take financial steps to reinforce it.

Thomas: BBN (which does DARPA funded research) has long been considered a halfway house between MIT and the real world.

Piaw: It looks like there’s another conversation about this thread over at Hacker News: http://ift.tt/28XFjgR I love conversation fragmentation.

Doug: Conversation fragmentation can be annoying, but do you really want all those Hacker News readers posting on this thread?

Piaw: Why not? Then I don’t have to track things in two places.

Ruchira: hga over at Hacker News says: “Self-selection by applicants is so strong (MIT survived for a dozen year without a professional as the Director), whatever gloss the Office is now putting on the Institute, it’s able to change things only so much. E.g. MIT remains the a place where you don’t graduate without taking (or placing out of) a year of the calculus and classical physics (taught at MIT speed), for all majors.”

Well, the requirements for all majors at Caltech are: two years of calculus, two years of physics (including quantum physics), a year of chemistry, and a year of biology (the biology requirement was added after I went there); freshman chemistry lab and another introductory lab; and a total of four years of humanities and social sciences classes. The main incubator I know of near Caltech is the Idealab. Certainly JPL (the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) as well as Hollywood CGI and animation have drawn from the ranks of Caltech grads. The size of the Caltech freshman class is also much smaller than those at Stanford or MIT.

I don’t know enough to gauge the relative success of Caltech grads at transitioning to local industry, versus Stanford or MIT, does anyone else?

Rebecca: The comments are teaching me what I didn’t make clear, and this is one of the worst ones. When I talked about the “transition to the commercial world” I didn’t mainly mean grads transitioning to industry. I was thinking more about the transition that a project goes through when it achieves product/market fit.

This might not be something that you think of as such a big deal, because when companies embark on projects, they usually start with a fairly specific plan of the market they mean to tackle and what they mean to do if and when the market does adopt their product. There is no difficult transition because they were planning for it all along. After all, that’s the whole point of a company! But a ten year research project has no such plan. The web server enthusiast did not know when the market would adopt his “product” – remember, browsers were still primitive then – nor did he really know what it would look like when they did. Some projects are even longer term than that: a programming language professor said that the expected time from the conception of a new programming language idea to its widespread adoption is thirty years. That’s a good chunk of a lifetime.

When you’ve spent a good bit of your life involved with something as a research project that no-one besides your small crowd cares about, when people do notice, when commercial opportunities show up, when money starts pouring out of the sky, its a huge shock! You haven’t planned for it at all. Have you heard Philip’s story of how he got his first contract for what became ArsDigita? I couldn’t find the story exactly, but it was something like this: he had posted some of the code for his forum software online, and HP called him up and asked him to install and configure it for them. He said “No! I’m busy! Go away!” They said “we’ll pay you $100,000.” He’s in shock: “You’ll give me $100000 for 2 weeks of work?”

He wasn’t exactly planning for money to start raining down out of the sky. When he started doing internet applications, he said, people had told him he was crazy, there was no future in it. I remember when I first started seeing URL’s in ads on the side of buses, and I was just bowled over – all the time my friends had been doing web stuff, I had never really believed they would ever be adopted. URL’s are just so geeky, after all! I mean, seriously, if some wild-eyed nerd told you that in five years people would print “http://“,on the side of a bus, what would you think? I paid attention to what they were doing because they thought it was cool, I thought it was cool, and the fact that I had no real faith anyone else ever would made no difference. So when the world actually did, it was entering a new world that none of us were prepared for, that nobody had planned for, that we had not given any thought to developing skills to be able to deal with. I guess this is a little hard to convey, because it wouldn’t happen in a company. You wouldn’t ever do something just because you thought it was cool, without any faith that anyone would ever agree with you, and then get completely caught by surprise, completely bowled over, when the rest of the world goes crazy about what you thought was your esoteric geeky obsession.

Piaw: I think we were all bowled over by how quickly people started exchanging e-mail addresses, and then web-sites, etc. I was stunned. But it took a really long time for real profits to show up! It took 20 or so search engine companies to start up and fail before someone succeeded!

Rebecca: Of course; you are bringing up what was in fact the big problem. The question was: in what mode is it reasonable to ask the local government for help? And if you are in the situation where $100,000 checks are raining on you out of the sky without you seeming to make the slightest effort to even solicit them, then it seems like only the biggest jerk on the planet would claim to the government that they were Needy and Deserving. Black babies without roofs on their heads are needy and deserving; rich white obnoxious nerds with money raining down on them are not. But remember though Philip doesn’t seem to be expending much effort in his story, he also said in the late 90’s that he had been building web apps for ten years. Who else on the planet in 1999 could show someone a ten year long resume of web app development?

As Piaw said, it isn’t like picking up the potential wealth really was just a matter of holding out your hand as money rained from the sky. Quite the contrary. It wasn’t easy; in fact it was singularly difficult. Sure, Philip talked like it was easy, until you think about how hard it would have been to amass the resume he had in 1999.

When the local government talks about how it wants to attract innovators to Boston, to turn the city into a Hub of Innovation, my knee-jerk reaction is – and what are we, chopped liver? But then I realize that when they say they want to attract innovators, what they really mean is not that they want innovators, but that they want people who can innovate for a reasonable, manageable amount of time, preferably short, and then turn around, quick as quicksilver, and scoop up all the return on investment in that innovation before anyone else can get at it – and give a big cut in taxes to the city and state! Those are the kind of innovators who are attractive! Those are the kind who properly make your Boston the kind of Hub of Innovation the Mayor of Boston wants it to be. Innovators like those in Tech Square or Stata, not so much. We definitely qualify for the Chopped Liver department.

And this hurts. It hurts to think that the Mayor of Boston might be treating us with more respect now if we had been better in ~2000 at turning around, quick as quicksilver, and remaking ourselves into people who could scoop up all, or some, or even a tiny fraction of the return on investment of the innovation at which we were then, in a technical sense, well ahead of anyone else. But remaking yourself is not easy! Especially when you realize that the state from which we were remaking ourselves was sort of like the Marines – a somewhat ascetic state, one that gave you the nerd equivalent of military rations, a tent, maybe a shower every two weeks, and no training in any immediately salable skills whatsoever – but also one that also gave you a community, an identity, a purpose, a sense of who you were that you never expected to change. But all of a sudden we “won,” and all of a sudden there was a tremendous pressure to change. It was like being thrown in the deep end of the pool without swim lessons, and yes we sank, we sank like a stone with barely a dog paddle before making a beeline for the bottom. So we get no respect now. But was this a reasonable thing to expect? What does the mayor of Boston really want? Yes, the sense in which Boston is a Hub of Innovation (for it already is one, it is silly for it to try to become what it already is!) is problematic and not exactly what a Mayor would wish for. I understand his frustration. But I think he would do better to work with his city for what it is, in all its problematic incompetence and glory, than to try to remake it in the image of something else it is not.

Rebecca: On the subject of Problematic Innovators, I was thinking back to the scene in the computer lab where everyone agreed that hoarding domain names was the dumbest idea they had ever heard of. I’m arguing that scooping up return on the investment in innovation was hard, but registering a domain name is the easiest thing in the world. I think they were free back then, even. If I remember right, they started out free, and then Procter & Gamble registered en-mass every name that had even the vaguest entomological relation with the idea of “soap,” at which point the administrators of the system said “Oops!” and instituted registration fees to discourage that kind of behavior – which, of course, would have done little to deter P&G. They really do want to utterly own the concept of soap. (I find it amusing that P&G was the first at bat in the domain name scramble – they are not exactly the world’s image of a cutting-edge tech-savvy company – but when it comes to the problem of marketing soap, they quietly dominate.)

How can I can explain that we were not able to expend even the utterly minimal effort in capturing the return on investment in innovation of registering a free domain name, so as to keep the resulting tax revenues in Massachusetts?

Thinking back on it, I don’t think it was either incapacity, or lack of foresight, or a will to fail in our duty as Boston and Massachusetts taxpayers. It was something else: it was almost a “semper fidelis”-like group spirit that made it seem dishonorable to hoard a domain name that someone else might want, just to profit from it later. Now one might ask, why should you refrain from hoarding it sooner just so that someone else could grab it and hoard it later? That kind of honor doesn’t accomplish anything for anyone!

But you have to realize, this was right at the beginning, when the domain name system was brand new and it wasn’t at all clear it would be adopted. These were the people who were trying to convince the world to accept this system they had designed and whose adoption they fervently desired. In that situation, honor did make a difference. It wouldn’t look good to ask the world to accept a naming system with all the good names already taken. You actually noticed back then when something (like “soap”) got taken – the question wasn’t what was available, the question was what was taken, and by whom. You’d think it wouldn’t hurt too much to take one cool name: recently I heard that someone got a $38 million offer for “cool.com.” That’s a lot of money! – would it have hurt that much to offer the world a system with all the names available except, you know, one cool one? But there was a group spirit that was quite worried that once you started down that slope, who knew where it would lead?

There were other aspects of infrastructure, deeper down, harder to talk about, where this group ethos was even more critical. You can game an infrastructure to make it easier to personally profit from it – but it hurts the infrastructure itself to do that. So there was a vehement group discipline that maintained a will to fight any such urge to diminish the value of the infrastructure for individual profit.

This partly explains why we were not able, when the time came, to turn around, quick as quicksilver, and scoop up the big profits. To do that would have meant changing, not only what we were good at, but what we thought was right.

When I think back, I wonder, why people weren’t more scared? When we chose not to register “cool.com” or similar names, why didn’t we think, life is hard, the future is uncertain, and money does really make a difference in what you can do? I think this group ethic was only possible because there was a certain confidence – the group felt itself party to a deal: in return for being who we are, the government would take care of us, forever. Not until the time when the product achieved sufficient product/market fit that it became appropriate to expect return on investment. Forever.

This story might give a different perspective on why it hurts when the Mayor of Boston announces that he wants to make the city a Hub of Innovation. The innovators he already has are chopped liver? Well, its understandable that he isn’t too pleased with the innovators in this story, because they aren’t exactly a tax base. But that is the diametric opposition of the deal with the government we thought we had.

#entrepreneurship #startup #founders #entrepreneur

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