#mcbroken

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The US Copyright Office frees the McFlurry

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

I have spent a quarter century obsessed with the weirdest corner of the weirdest section of the worst internet law on the US statute books: Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the 1998 law that makes it a felony to help someone change how their own computer works so it serves them, rather than a distant corporation.

Under DMCA 1201, giving someone a tool to "bypass an access control for a copyrighted work" is a felony punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine – for a first offense. This law can refer to access controls for traditional copyrighted works, like movies. Under DMCA 1201, if you help someone with photosensitive epilepsy add a plug-in to the Netflix player in their browser that blocks strobing pictures that can trigger seizures, you're a felon:

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-media/2017Jul/0005.html

But software is a copyrighted work, and everything from printer cartridges to car-engine parts have software in them. If the manufacturer puts an "access control" on that software, they can send their customers (and competitors) to prison for passing around tools to help them fix their cars or use third-party ink.

Now, even though the DMCA is a copyright law (that's what the "C" in DMCA stands for, after all); and even though blocking video strobes, using third party ink, and fixing your car are not copyright violations, the DMCA can still send you to prison, for a long-ass time for doing these things, provided the manufacturer designs their product so that using it the way that suits you best involves getting around an "access control."

As you might expect, this is quite a tempting proposition for any manufacturer hoping to enshittify their products, because they know you can't legally disenshittify them. These access controls have metastasized into every kind of device imaginable.

Garage-door openers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Refrigerators:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/12/digital-feudalism/#filtergate

Dishwashers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/03/cassette-rewinder/#disher-bob

Treadmills:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/22/vapescreen/#jane-get-me-off-this-crazy-thing

Tractors:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#deere-john

Cars:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

Printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty

And even printer paper:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#dymo-550

DMCA 1201 is the brainchild of Bruce Lehmann, Bill Clinton's Copyright Czar, who was repeatedly warned that cancerous proliferation this was the foreseeable, inevitable outcome of his pet policy. As a sop to his critics, Lehman added a largely ornamental safety valve to his law, ordering the US Copyright Office to invite submissions every three years petitioning for "use exemptions" to the blanket ban on circumventing access-controls.

I call this "ornamental" because if the Copyright Office thinks that, say, it should be legal for you to bypass an access control to use third-party ink in your printer, or a third-party app store in your phone, all they can do under DMCA 1201 is grant you the right to use a circumvention tool. But they can't give you the right to acquire that tool.

I know that sounds confusing, but that's only because it's very, very stupid. How stupid? Well, in 2001, the US Trade Representative arm-twisted the EU into adopting its own version of this law (Article 6 of the EUCD), and in 2003, Norway added the law to its lawbooks. On the eve of that addition, I traveled to Oslo to debate the minister involved:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/28/clintons-ghost/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

The minister praised his law, explaining that it gave blind people the right to bypass access controls on ebooks so that they could feed them to screen readers, Braille printers, and other assistive tools. OK, I said, but how do they get the software that jailbreaks their ebooks so they can make use of this exemption? Am I allowed to give them that tool?

No, the minister said, you're not allowed to do that, that would be a crime.

Is the Norwegian government allowed to give them that tool? No. How about a blind rights advocacy group? No, not them either. A university computer science department? Nope. A commercial vendor? Certainly not.

No, the minister explained, under his law, a blind person would be expected to personally reverse engineer a program like Adobe E-Reader, in hopes of discovering a defect that they could exploit by writing a program to extract the ebook text.

Oh, I said. But if a blind person did manage to do this, could they supply that tool to other blind people?

Well, no, the minister said. Each and every blind person must personally – without any help from anyone else – figure out how to reverse-engineer the ebook program, and then individually author their own alternative reader program that worked with the text of their ebooks.

That is what is meant by a use exemption without a tools exemption. It's useless. A sick joke, even.

The US Copyright Office has been valiantly holding exemptions proceedings every three years since the start of this century, and they've granted many sensible exemptions, including ones to benefit people with disabilities, or to let you jailbreak your phone, or let media professors extract video clips from DVDs, and so on. Tens of thousands of person-hours have been flushed into this pointless exercise, generating a long list of things you are now technically allowed to do, but only if you are a reverse-engineering specialist type of computer programmer who can manage the process from beginning to end in total isolation and secrecy.

But there is one kind of use exception the Copyright Office can grant that is potentially game-changing: an exemption for decoding diagnostic codes.

You see, DMCA 1201 has been a critical weapon for the corporate anti-repair movement. By scrambling error codes in cars, tractors, appliances, insulin pumps, phones and other devices, manufacturers can wage war on independent repair, depriving third-party technicians of the diagnostic information they need to figure out how to fix your stuff and keep it going.

This is bad enough in normal times, but during the acute phase of the covid pandemic, hospitals found themselves unable to maintain their ventilators because of access controls. Nearly all ventilators come from a single med-tech monopolist, Medtronic, which charges hospitals hundreds of dollars to dispatch their own repair technicians to fix its products. But when covid ended nearly all travel, Medtronic could no longer provide on-site calls. Thankfully, an anonymous hacker started building homemade (illegal) circumvention devices to let hospital technicians fix the ventilators themselves, improvising housings for them from old clock radios, guitar pedals and whatever else was to hand, then mailing them anonymously to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#medtronic-again

Once a manufacturer monopolizes repair in this way, they can force you to use their official service depots, charging you as much as they'd like; requiring you to use their official, expensive replacement parts; and dictating when your gadget is "too broken to fix," forcing you to buy a new one. That's bad enough when we're talking about refusing to fix a phone so you buy a new one – but imagine having a spinal injury and relying on a $100,000 exoskeleton to get from place to place and prevent muscle wasting, clots, and other immobility-related conditions, only to have the manufacturer decide that the gadget is too old to fix and refusing to give you the technical assistance to replace a watch battery so that you can get around again:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24255074/former-jockey-michael-straight-exoskeleton-repair-battery

When the US Copyright Office grants a use exemption for extracting diagnostic codes from a busted device, they empower repair advocates to put that gadget up on a workbench and torture it into giving up those codes. The codes can then be integrated into an unofficial diagnostic tool, one that can make sense of the scrambled, obfuscated error codes that a device sends when it breaks – without having to unscramble them. In other words, only the company that makes the diagnostic tool has to bypass an access control, but the people who use that tool later do not violate DMCA 1201.

This is all relevant this month because the US Copyright Office just released the latest batch of 1201 exemptions, and among them is the right to circumvent access controls "allowing for repair of retail-level food preparation equipment":

https://publicknowledge.org/public-knowledge-ifixit-free-the-mcflurry-win-copyright-office-dmca-exemption-for-ice-cream-machines/

While this covers all kinds of food prep gear, the exemption request – filed by Public Knowledge and Ifixit – was inspired by the bizarre war over the tragically fragile McFlurry machine. These machines – which extrude soft-serve frozen desserts – are notoriously failure-prone, with 5-16% of them broken at any given time. Taylor, the giant kitchen tech company that makes the machines, charges franchisees a fortune to repair them, producing a steady stream of profits for the company.

This sleazy business prompted some ice-cream hackers to found a startup called Kytch, a high-powered automation and diagnostic tool that was hugely popular with McDonald's franchisees (the gadget was partially designed by the legendary hardware hacker Andrew "bunnie" Huang!).

In response, Taylor played dirty, making a less-capable clone of the Kytch, trying to buy Kytch out, and teaming up with McDonald's corporate to bombard franchisees with legal scare-stories about the dangers of using a Kytch to keep their soft-serve flowing, thanks to DMCA 1201:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Kytch isn't the only beneficiary of the new exemption: all kinds of industrial kitchen equipment is covered. In upholding the Right to Repair, the Copyright Office overruled objections of some of its closest historical allies, the Entertainment Software Association, Motion Picture Association, and Recording Industry Association of America, who all sided with Taylor and McDonald's and opposed the exemption:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/us-copyright-office-frees-the-mcflurry-allowing-repair-of-ice-cream-machines/

This is literally the only useful kind of DMCA 1201 exemption the Copyright Office can grant, and the fact that they granted it (along with a similar exemption for medical devices) is a welcome bright spot. But make no mistake, the fact that we finally found a narrow way in which DMCA 1201 can be made slightly less stupid does not redeem this outrageous law. It should still be repealed and condemned to the scrapheap of history.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/28/mcbroken/#my-milkshake-brings-all-the-lawyers-to-the-yard

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[cherryblossomshadow]

Donald Trump is the reason you can get e. coli at McDonalds. Lina Khan is the reason you'll be able to get ice cream there (comment courtesy of @traycakes)

.

VOTE BLUE FOR ICE CREAM AND DEMOCRACY (comment courtesy of @sunshine-tattoo)

.

As an aside, I was looking for the name of the ice cream machine company, and look at this treasure in the wikipedia:

.

Image description under the cut:

[Image ID and source: Screenshot of tweet by Busch Light Tyce Forever (@/BrostaDelMar), reading:

DEMOCRATS FIXED THE MCDONALDS ICE CREAM MACHINES??????

He was quote-tweeting a tweet by Lina Khan (@/linakhanFTC), reading:

Thanks to @/CopyrightOffice, McDonald’s franchisees now have the right to repair their own ice cream machines. In March @/FTC filed a comment in support of this change, and we’ll keep using our tools to protect people’s right to repair.

She was quote-tweeting a tweet by TODAY (@/TODAYshow), reading:

McDonald’s often maligned, seemingly perennially-broken ice cream machines could soon become a thing of the past.

/end ID]

[seo-m-e]

abt to get a michigan mix AUAUUUUU THE MACHINE IS BROKEN WHAT THE HELL

[tiger-balm]

HES BACK

[spacecores]

I’m gonna be real my dudes, I’ve been alternating between laughing sobbing and nothing at the speed of light and it took me a hot minute to realize it’s bc a doctor fucked me over for my medication. My poor brain going through withdrawals like that hamster that got stuck on the spinning thing while another hamster kept running and jumping over it

[aeclectick]

interrupitn gmy sinnners (22025) breakdown to say FUCK THE EDMONTON OIILERS THE STANLEY CUP BELONGS TO THE US OF A ON YA HEADDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

[sunshine-gumdrop]

Kiss Kiss kiss

└  Oilers vs Flames [Exhibition Game] / July. 28 2020

[follow-up-news]

The soft-serve machines at McDonald's restaurants are so often out of order that their reliable unreliability have long been the butt of jokes, memes — and now even a rallying cry in this year’s presidential race. The widespread issue has even spurred the creation of McBroken, an online tracker for broken machines across the U.S. A new exemption to a copyright law could pave the way for quicker repairs to the machines, sweetening the McFlurry maker's sour reputation. Before this week, most of the McDonald's ice cream makers could only be fixed through the machine’s manufacturer. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which protects the code embedded in the ice cream machines, made it illegal for third parties, like McDonald’s employees and franchisee owners, to break the digital locks installed by manufacturers. The new rule, which went into effect on Monday, allows outside vendors to fix “retail-level commercial food preparation equipment.” That includes McDonald’s ice cream machines, as 404 media journalist Jason Koebler explained to NPR’s Weekend Edition. It’s a win for the “right to repair” movement, which pushes back against companies incentivized to control the repairs made to their own products. The movement advocates for legislation that gets manufacturers to provide consumers and independent repair services access to their parts, tools and service information so consumers can get their own, legally bought devices fixed. The movement prevailed when Apple in 2021 announced it would allow customers to repair their iPhones themselves. 

[lyteandronix]

Mcbroken and mcdepressed (not really)

Icelilyn belongs to Starri

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A year in illustration (2024), Part four

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/07/great-kepplers-ghost/art-adjacent

Part one

Part two

Part three

The US Copyright Office frees the McFlurry

Figuring out how to illustrate the problems of DRM in McFlurry machines took some doing, but I'm super happy with how the HAL 9000-eyed poop emoji inside a spattered McFlurry cup (fair use of a McDonald's promo image) worked out.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/28/mcbroken/#my-milkshake-brings-all-the-lawyers-to-the-yard

(Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

Keeping a suspense file gives you superpowers

Another Keppler classic: originally, this was FDR being offered a helping hand to cut through his paperwork. I added in one of the elephant heads I'd cropped out for election illustrations, and used it to represent "not forgetting."

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/26/one-weird-trick/#todo

The housing crisis considered as an income crisis

The underlying image is another Keppler, showing death flamboyantly dicing with a millionaire. I added in an official (hence public domain) Reagan portrait, some monopoly houses, and a vintage aerial photo of Levittown, halftoned to disguise scaling artifacts.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/24/i-dream-of-gini/#mean-ole-mr-median

Retiring the US debt would retire the US dollar

More of Keppler's outstanding Uncle Sams! Add in a super-rezzed-up US $100 (all that intanglio looks great at high mag) and you've got an instantly arresting image.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/21/we-can-have-nice-things/#public-funds-not-taxpayer-dollars

Penguin Random House, AI, and writers' rights

The impatient guy makes another appearance in this WPA image of an adult literacy class; he's joined by another "business man" type, this one from a midcentury ad for a multi-level marketing scheme selling…business suits! The pupils' heads are all HAL 9000 eyes, natch, but don't miss all the little Easter Eggs, like the reeve and peasants in the frames on the walls.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/19/gander-sauce/#just-because-youre-on-their-side-it-doesnt-mean-theyre-on-your-side

(Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

You should be using an RSS reader

The guerrilla fighter is back, this time standing atop some mainframe equipment ganked from a Univac ad. The halftoned RSS logo in the background really works, especially with a partially blended GIMP "supernova" effect behind the rebel.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/16/keep-it-really-simple-stupid/#read-receipts-are-you-kidding-me-seriously-fuck-that-noise

Dirty words are politically potent

I spent a bunch of time experimenting with different ways of making emphatic speech bubbles and it paid off here; that poop emoji's gawlix is in a good home. Halftoning the foreground element (the poop) works surprising well here. I should do more of that.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/14/pearl-clutching/#this-toilet-has-no-central-nervous-system

Lina Khan's future is the future of the Democratic Party – and America

Keppler's Uncle Sam Cop is back, along with another Keppler – a carpetbagger flying through the air after getting a kick in the pants. I got good use out of one of my Democratic Party donkeys here. The background is a half-tones WPA travel poster for Montana.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/11/democracys-antitrust-paradox/#there-will-be-an-out-and-out-brawl

Cars bricked by bankrupt EV company will stay bricked

I actually made this brick by hand: first I rescaled a box image until it had the right proportions, then I found a public domain texture that was the right kind of brick and used the perspective tool to put it over each face of the box. I told you public domain bricks are hard to find.

It was very satisfying overlaying all the elements of the Fisker car I cropped out onto the brick.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/10/software-based-car/#based

Prime's enshittified advertising

Nothing exceeds like excess! The flayed face with eyeballs comes from a 19th century book of French anatomical drawings. The calipers' handles just didn't look right (I referred to stills from Clockwork Orange to try and get 'em to work), but then I hit on the idea of using the "As Seen on TV" logo, which worked perfectly. The halftoned K-Tel ad-card background doesn't quite work, I think.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/03/mother-may-i/#minmax

"That Makes Me Smart"

This is actually two Kepplers; the original guy in the leg-hold trap is some lost-to-history politician embroiled in a lost-to-history scandal. But once I added (yet another!) of Keppler's Uncle Sam heads to his body (recoloring his coat and converting his trousers to red stripes), it became a perfect visual representation of America, trapped. The halftoned US flag is my favorite background yet.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/04/its-not-a-lie/#its-a-premature-truth

The far right grows through "disaster fantasies"

When it came to finding heavily armored and armed weirdos, I was spoilt for choice; same goes for grainy photos of vintage malls that look good after halftoning. Add in the goofy, grinning newsie's head and overlay his hat in camou, and it's perfect.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/24/mall-ninja-prophecy/#mano-a-mano

Boss politics antitrust

Finally, I got a chance to use Keppler's "Capital Controls the Senate!" I agonized over which corporate logos to use. Boss Tweed is back, with a Trump wig and MAGA hat.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/12/the-enemy-of-your-enemy/#is-your-enemy

Antiusurpation and the road to disenshittification

A diptych! Both sides' backgrounds come from Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" – hell on the left, heaven on the right. The happy gas-jockey's old-fashioned ethyl pump divides the scene. The head-devouring dragon (with HAL 9000's eye) is a delightfully gory detail from Goltzius's 1183 painting of a couple guys having a hard time indeed.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/07/usurpers-helpmeets/#disreintermediation

(Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

Bluesky and enshittification

I know, canonically the sirens who tempted Ulysses were merfolk, not half-woman/half-birds, but all the merwoman versions have a ton of naked breasts in them, and frankly, Waterhouses's 1891 "Ulysses and the Sirens" just rips. It took a lot of fiddling with the perspective tool and the clone brush to swap their bodies for the Bluesky butterfly wings, but it still looked weird until I mapped in a kind of scaly, butterfly wing texture.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast

Shifting $677m from the banks to the people, every year, forever

I replaced Moses parting the Red Sea with Keppler's Uncle Sam Cop, but something still wasn't right. Then I figured out how to turn the Red Sea into a giant, aquatic US $100 bill (loooove that intaglio!) and it was awesome.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/01/bankshot/#personal-financial-data-rights

[bravesung]

one  day,  hanamaru,  you’ll  understand  just  how  powerful  you  truly  are  —  even  if  you  don’t  see  it  then.  you’ll  face  a  choice  no  one  should  ever  have  to  make . . . but  you’ll  know  how  many  lives  you  saved  because  of  it.

your  father’s  words  echo  in  your  bones  as  your  body  trembles.  across  from  you  stands  your  husband: what’s  left  of  him.  a  pained  vessel,  crumbling  under  the  monstrous  power  geese  howard  cursed  him  with.  how  does  one  prepare  to  lose  their  soulmate?  the  love  of  their  life?  a  devoted  husband.  a  gentle  father.  a  friend  so  fiercely  loyal  that  the  world  didn’t  deserve  him.  why  did  it  have  to  be  rock?  why  did  someone  so  kind,  so  good,  have  to  be  the  one  sacrificed?

every  memory  with  the  two  of  you,  from  the  moment  you  first  met,  to  the  day  he  asked  you  out,  to  the  day  he  proposed,  to  the  day  you  both  got  married,  to  when  ryuujin  was  brought  into  the  world   ––   it  all  flashed  before  your  eyes.  tears  streak  your  face  as  your  father’s  voice  rings  louder  in  your  head.  but  now,  it  doesn’t  guide,  it  cuts.

rock  must  be  killed. you  have  to  kill  him. a�� mercy.  a  release. to  save  him  from  the  beast  that  power  will  turn  him  into.

❛  rocky,  I  do  not  .  .  .  I  —  I  do  not  want  to  lose  you  .  .  .  !!  I  —  ❜

then,  you  hear  it.  that  melody:   soft,  haunting.  not  just  music.  a  command.  a  summoning.  it’s  begun.  your  eyes,  now  aglow,  you  have  been  called.

( please.  not  the  song.  don't  make  me  sing. please  don’t  make  me . . . !! )

but  you  know  you  can’t  stop  it.

the  fans  in  your  trembling  hands  unfurl.  your  heartbeat  thunders  in  your  ears.  you’re  choking  on  sobs,  you  had  to  seal  his  fate,  give  him  the  ending  that’s  a  lesser  of  two  evils.

❛ I  love  you, ❜  you  whisper,  your  voice  almost  gone. ❛ I  love  you.  I  love  you  .  .  .  I  .  .  .  I  am  .  .  .  I  .  .  . ❜

and  then  you  sing.

the  world  falls  silent. a  silver  arc  cuts  through  the  air  when  you  raise  your  fans. and  when  the  song  ends,  your  blade  is  stained  red. rock’s  body  collapses.   still,  peaceful. and  the  power  inside  dies  with  him.

you  drop  to  your  knees.  a  scream  tears  from  your  throat,  primal  and  endless,  as  if  to  rip  the  sky  apart  and  drag  down  every  god  that  allowed  this  to  happen.  you  fall  onto  his  chest,  your  hands  clutching  at  him  as  if  you  could  bring  him  back,  your  voice  cracking  in  desperate  song  after  desperate  song,  trying  to  rely  on  your  ability, but,  still  he  laid.  it’s  only  when  sachiko  pulls  you  away  that  she  sees  it:  one  of  your  blades  still  clutched  tight  in  your  hand,  bloodied  fingers  refusing  to  let  go.  she  knows,  instantly,  that  if  she  hadn’t  taken  it  from  you,  you  would  have  followed  him.   ❛ ryuujin  still  needs  you,  hana. ❜

❛ i’ll  get  yusuke  and  jin.  I  .  .  .  I  am  so  sorry,  hanamaru.  .  .  ❜  alyssa  says  softly,  biting  back  her  own  tears  as  she  watched  sachiko  hold  you  —  her  arms  wrapped  tight  around  your  trembling  form  as  you  scream  and  scream  until  you  finally  can’t  anymore.

𝐔𝐍𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐃 | @bravesung | 𝐀𝐂𝐂𝐄𝐏𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆

❛ no, no, no! this cannot be happening  .  .  .  !!  ❜  she sees it:  that sickening purple aura threatening to consume everything in its path. the cursed energy rock warned her about, once dormant, now spirals out of control, swallowing the man she loves whole. sachiko and alyssa stand frozen beside her, their faces drained of color, trembling as the ground itself hums beneath their feet. ❛ fuck, he’s losin’ it! ❜ alyssa yelled, a raw edge of fear slicing through the chaos, and it shatters something in hanamaru. her breath catches. tears sting her eyes. she can’t lose him. not like this. ❛ ROCKY!! ❜ his name rips from her throat like a war cry, fueled by desperation. then instinct takes over. she dashes toward him, heart pounding like thunder, dodging sparks of wild energy that ripple in the air. each step is a battle, the force threatening to knock her back, but she pushes forward. ❛ I won’t let this take you! you hear me?! I won’t! I’ll save you –– I swear it! ❜ because he’s not gone. not yet. and as long as she’s breathing, she’ll fight for him —against the curse, against fate, against the gods if she has to.

His blood was boiling; something was definitely happening to him. He thought he could have contained this awful power..but it seems no matter how hard he tries, it always finds a way to try and make him succumb. But..Rock refuses to let this power overtake him and the more Rock resists, the more pain he’d endure. Soon enough he wouldn’t just grunt, eventually, he’d reach for his own hand, grasping tightly, 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚢 as he began screaming in agony.

━━   ❝   𝐇𝐚𝐧𝐚...𝐇𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲..𝐲𝐨-..𝐚𝐠𝐡!!   ❞  As hard as he tried, he just couldn’t make good conversation now. The pain was far too great. It seems that today will be the day that this power would win because he could feel himself 𝚜𝚕𝚘𝚠𝚕𝚢 𝚋𝚎𝚐𝚒𝚗𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚘 𝚏𝚊𝚍𝚎, it wasn’t his consciousness but who he was as a person, there were so many things going through his mind right now, provoking thoughts that he knows are not his own. Images of blood and murder flashes in his mind, however, Rock remained vigilant and allowed the wonderful memories he’s made with both his wife and child to become his cornerstone.

“AHHHHHH!!!” He yells in agony as the fiendish cobalt aura began to surround his entire body, practically melting his own blood at this point. He could feel himself slipping..and before he was too far gone he came up with a solution. “Honey…listen to me..you’re..you’re going to have to…𝐊𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐌𝐄.” It was the last thing he wanted to ask of her..but in order to keep her safe, to keep their son safe, Rock needed to be erased. Slowly Rock even lost the power to stand, and he’d fall onto his knees, clutching his arm tightly.

“It hurts!!..agh…I don’t want to…GHAAAAH..” The energy around him grew and became destructive, burning against the very earth he stood upon, stopping anyone from getting too close but the blond managed to regain what little control he has over himself. “Do it quick Hana…I don’t…𝐈 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐧.” Now at this point, he was practically begging his wife to ease his suffering.

[scoringeffects]

super convenient for everyone that cmd’s last name begins w mc. collarbone mcbroken. mcmansion. mcwedding. connor mcsmythe. mccheatinggate. mcdimples. endless possibilities

[stereax]

hey!! i kinda wanna get into fantasy hockey but it seems . extremely intimidating ! i was wondering if u know of any primers / yt vids / anything that u found helpful when u were getting into it that might b helpful! :3

Hiya nonnie!

Honestly, to be blunt: it very much, uh, depends how much tolerance for White Cishet Men Who Think They're THE Shit Talking Puck Semi Accurately you have. I'm unfortunately not kidding.

Now, to answer more fully, let's go under the cut!

First off, it's important to keep in mind that everything is, to some extent, random. You can draft Connor McDavo with your first overall pick and he can become Collarbone McBroken for half the season. That's part of the fun, unexpected stuff happening. Fantasy hockey can be intimidating and overwhelming sometimes, but if you ask around, I (and possibly others) am totally willing to listen to your thoughts and help point you on the right track.

Secondly, though, there is a lot you can control. You don't draft Brendan Smith expecting him to put up McDavid-like numbers. That doesn't make sense. If a fourth-liner just scored a hat trick, it doesn't mean he'll do that every game.

Some people say that a good draft is key to winning a fantasy hockey league, or even doing well. This is only partially true. You can win with an autodraft team, but it's much more of an uphill climb.

That's why my first big tip is to try mock drafts. Do several, on Yahoo and ESPN and wherever you want. Learn who's available at generally what rounds. This can help you identify possible steals in the draft. Additionally, be very aware of the rules of your league. Is it points or categories? Are the points "standard" or are some stats more heavily weighed? As an anecdote, one of my leagues has a strange point distribution that gives massive weight to penalty minutes. This lends itself heavily to the playstyles of, for instance, the Tkachuks, Tom Wilson, and Evander Kane.

My second big tip is to watch hockey news. Familiarize yourself with players slated for a breakout year or players that are good at certain stats (Alec Martinez, Blocks Georg, comes to mind here). Especially get cozy with teams you and your group of opponents don't follow much. Another anecdote, my friends are mostly Devils and Pens fans. This allows me to capitalize on (somewhat) under-the-radar players like Sam Reinhart on the Panthers, Drew Doughty on the Kings, and Sean Durzi on the Coyotes.

My third big tip, depending on your league, is learning to stream. Not hockey games, but players. Generally, there are fewer hockey games on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. This means that usually, your lineup will have spots open those days, and will be full Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, with mostly-full Sundays. If you drop and add players strategically, you can get five, six, or even seven "man-games" out of a single slot, increasing the amount of points you can earn. DataDrivenHockey on Instagram runs awesome fantasy help data sheets, along with streaming advice to maximize man-games.

As for resources... Yahoo and ESPN for mock drafts. Do your mock drafts. I cannot underscore how important this is. ESPN publishes good articles as well, about player stocks weekly and more general ones in the preseason. Yahoo seems to too. Here's a good "fantasy hockey 101" article I just pulled up from Yahoo, actually. (Be aware that some of the things it mentions, like separating forwards into C, LW, and RW, as well as salary cap drafts, generally don't exist in ESPN leagues.) DDH, as mentioned, for streaming stuff; posts there go up usually every Friday. There are also sites like DobberHockey and RotoWire that are good for fantasy hockey stuff, but I don't personally use them, so I can't vouch for their effectiveness. Places like the Athletic do draft cheat sheets. Once you get into the season, you're mostly adding and dropping based on average points per game anyway, especially over the last 15 (sometimes 7 or 30) days.

And then, if you're beginning to get hyperfixated, you can start looking for your low-view-count YouTube videos.

But honestly, it's probably better if you just drop a line with a friend to ask at that point. Or me. I'm totally down to talk fantasy hockey and give my tips and advice!!!

[aeclectick]

Good Lord Almighty I need you to prevent Collarbone McBroken from getting a ring bc I’m seeing Ovechkin playoff choker narratives on Reddit in comparison like we all need to die rn

[silveve]

Hello, my name is Silveve and these are my two children; No-leg-room Mcbroken-knees and his sister, Purring little boob stabber. I love them so much and tbey are named after their favourite things to do <3

[rosespacesingout]

Are you fucking kidding me