#as if I need to add more onto the backlog of building stuff

[witchoftrinity]

hey gamers sorry for the delay on all my posts! I got dragged into the model kit mines again a little busy with life & helping a friend with prep stuff for this weekend. Normal posting should be coming back soonish!

[sagekjs21]

1. There are only three TV shows that I care about at all anymore: The Chosen, When Calls the Heart, and Heartland. They really don't overlap much, so I don't really have a backlog of TV that I need to watch. When these three shows are completed, I am very unlikely to pick up any new shows at all, I have pretty much lost all interest in TV other than these three shows. 

2. I don't have a favorite pair. 

3. Yes, of all different sorts. When I make my own, I always add spinach or kale because if you blend it properly you can't even taste it and it just packs the smoothie full of vitamins and nutrients. 

4. My order of preference would be dress pants first and foremost, a skirt is tolerable, and I try to avoid dresses like the plague. If I have to though I will. I literally own one dress and one skirt. 

5. In an omelette with cheese, different types of breakfast meats, and different combinations of vegetables depending upon my mood. For just plain eggs though, I prefer them scrambled with a bunch of pepper. 

6. Whatever is handy: a bookmark, a receipt, a random piece of junk mail, anything really. I don't dog ear the pages though. 

7. I've got a fairly decent mixture. I prefer black, blue, red, and white, but as far as I know the only color missing is pink and it's going to stay that way lol. 

8. No. I used to, I used to collect all kinds of things. But I've moved around enough times in my life to know that holding onto stuff is not something that I am suited for. I'm not a true minimalist, but I don't like collecting a bunch of stuff either. 

9. A cat purring, running water, birds, a music box, the perfume my grandmother used to wear, vanilla, coconut, the perfume that I wear most often

10. No opinion

11. I wear sunglasses outside and in brightly lit rooms/buildings.

12.  I've got two best friends, and I love their enthusiasm. Both of them, when they get on a topic that they love or get an idea that they're excited about, they're like little kids. 😊 @titaniumpeony @pinestripe37 ❤️

13. If I have to write by hand, pen, but I much prefer to type. 

14. Really only at my church, my current home, and the house that my grandmother used to live in which I will probably never visit again. 

15. Not applicable 

16. Also not applicable. I don't think I've owned a hoodie since around 2012. Not really my style. Not feminine enough. 

17. Food on DoorDash lol. As to which restaurant, I honestly can't remember. 

18. Lots of biblical things, particularly the good ones surrounding Jesus. 

19. Not applicable 

20. I'm good at the basics, I'm good at algebra, I'm good at geometry, and I'm good at trigonometry. I have never done calculus and so I have no idea what my skill set is there, and the only math I ever struggled with was statistics but I still managed to get an a. Barely. 

21. Definitely not applicable lol. 

22. Usually iced unless it is very very cold outside. 

23. Anything that comes up that I know the lyrics to and enjoy. 

24. Of course I am! I am seriously the best driver that anyone would ever meet. 😊 For anyone reading this that doesn't know, I'm partially blind and legally am unable to drive ever. 

25. Just the average pierced ears, and I don't want any other piercings and definitely no tattoos. 

26. Both! I've got a lot of different stuff that I think is good and a lot of people compliment me on. Probably my spaghetti sauce would be one of the top things. I can make pretty much anything though and have fun tweaking and playing around with a lot of ingredients and recipes. 

27. Just one. And honestly I can't even think of what it is lol. I know it has to do with the state of Arizona and it's some kind of picture but that's all I can remember. 😊 

28. I would consider myself an intermediate swimmer. I know more than just the basics, I know a few different strokes, I took lessons for either six or seven years quite a while ago. However I'm not exceptionally fit and so speed would definitely be my downfall and I don't know anything advanced. 

29. I had a very basic set when I was very little, and when I was maybe 12 or 13 one of my friends had a bit of a more complex set but it didn't really have a theme. 

30. Yes, from left to right: tank tops, short sleeve shirts, three-quarter sleeve shirts, long sleeve shirts, sweaters that act as shirts, pants, my skirt, jackets/sweaters. My dress is in a different closet as are my extra pairs of shoes. 

31. I have absolutely no idea. Probably one of the songs that @pinestripe37 sent me about Psalm 23. 

32. I wouldn't. 

33. Earbuds 

34. Of course. 

35. It's a black and white cat that @pinestripe37 gave me for my last birthday. 

36. I'm not really good at many of them because they generally contain a lot of visual aspects, but I do have fun playing at arcades. Haven't done that in years and now I kind of want to lol. 

37. I prefer it. It gives me someone to talk to and if they want to help out they can and if not that's OK too. 

38. I don't have any secret TV shows or musicians that I like that I'm too embarrassed to tell people about. I mean really, I don't care. My music taste very eclectic, I still like the Backstreet Boys and a few songs from the Spice Girls and I really don't mind admitting that at all lol. If people are going to judge me based on that I probably don't want them in my life anyway. 

39. Receiving a bunch of very useful information from God. But a lot of good stuff happened today, I mean tons of it! 😊 it was one of the best days I've had in a long time. 😊 

40. Probably a Christmas tree of some sort or a palm tree

41. Usually either vanilla or coconut

42. Not applicable 

43. This is a super weird question. For me most of the time I shower with the lights off but that's because light from the windows gives me enough light in my bathroom to see by. It wouldn't for people with normal vision, so this question has me wondering why anybody would shower in the dark. I probably don't want to know the answer to that. 

44. I usually give it to people, friends, street people, I may put it in a tip jar or just anything of that sort, I don't like holding onto spare change at all.

45.  definitely not lol

46. I can't think of anything specifically, but probably a book or a song. 

47. Only if I'm with someone. Going on a walk by myself is boring.

48. No. 

49. I like to go out and stand in the rain. I don't care if it's sprinkling or pouring. Yeah, I'm that crazy person lol. Smile 😊

50.  a comfortable bed for sure, a pillow that provides lots of head and neck support, the room is not too hot or too cold but the perfect temperature, and I can sleep the whole night through without waking up. 

50 Questions Just Because

What are three shows in your watchlist that you’ve been meaning to get to?

Describe your favorite pair of socks

Do you like smoothies?

What do you wear when you have to dress nicely?

How do you like your eggs?

What do you use to keep your place when you’re reading a book?

What color dominates your closet?

Do you collect anything? If so, what?

What sounds or scents calm you down?

What’s your favorite kind of uquiz question? (Lyric, color, aesthetic, etc)

Do you wear glasses or contacts?

What’s something about your best friend that you love?

Do you prefer to write in pen or pencil?

What are some places where you feel most at home?

Do you have any houseplants? Do any of them have names?

Describe your favorite hoodie. How long have you had it? What makes it unique?

What’s the last thing you ordered online?

What’s one historical event that you would have liked to have witnessed?

What’s your favorite Halloween costume from when you were a kid?

What kind of math are you best at?

What’s your favorite period in art history, your favorite famous work and/or your favorite style of art? If you don’t know any that’s ok!

Iced or hot drinks?

Which songs do you like to sing in the shower?

Are you a good driver?

Do you have any piercings or tattoos? Are there any that you want?

Can you cook or bake? If so, what are some of your specialties?

Do you have any keychains on your home or car keys? Describe them!

Can you swim very well? Do you like swimming?

Did you play with Legos as a kid? What was your favorite set?

Is your closet organized? If so, how?

What’s the last music video you watched?

If you could dye your hair any color, regardless of how you think it would look, what color would you choose?

Headphones or earbuds?

Can you read analog clocks?

Describe your favorite stuffed animal, either now or from when you were a kid.

What’s an arcade or table game (air hockey, ping pong, etc) that you’re really good at?

Do you mind if others are in the kitchen when you’re cooking or baking?

What’s one show you watch or musician you listen to that your friends know nothing about?

What was the best part of your day today?

What’s your favorite kind of tree?

What scent is your deodorant?

Do you have any games on your phone? If so, which one(s) is/are your favorite?

Do you shower with the lights on or off?

What do you do with spare change?

Do you have good handwriting?

What’s the last thing a friend recommended to you that you looked into and actually liked?

Do you like to go on walks?

Do you have a favorite plate or bowl?

What’s your favorite thing to do when it’s raining?

Describe your perfect sleeping conditions

[actualbird]

Hi Zak! I really love your writing style and interpretation of the ToT characters. You show so much depth and understanding and reading your work is always a treat. My question is, how do you find the motivation to write so often and develop all your ideas? All I have is a backlog of Dramatic scenes in my ideas doc and I can't figure out how to add enough plot to even make them into oneshots.

hello, anon ヾ(＾∇＾)

thank you so much for your kind words!!! im glad my fics are enjoyable :D

as for your question......hm, i think i have a lot of things that motivate me to write a bunch at the speed i do, so heres all of the motivators i can think of

a big emotional one is that....i feel palpable physical anxiety when i havent Created A Thing in a While, HAHA. and my brain's definition of "a while" is anywhere from a week to one day KJBKJS. i feel happiest and most like myself when creating and having created. this emotional motivator is v important to me bc it helps me relieve negative emotions and experience positive ones.

my brain never shuts off!! ever!!! it's throwing new ideas at me 24/7 and leaving the ideas in my brain where nobody will ever get to see it......thats Agony For Me. i write so much because i wanna be like EVERYBODY, LOOK, LOOK AT THIS CONCEPT!! DONT LEAVE ME ALONE TO THINK ABOUT THIS, THINK ABOUT IT WITH ME!!!

people tell me that my writing makes them happy or makes them laugh or gives them some kind of benefit. this is hugely rewarding for me and pushes me to make more because i want to continue to make things that people can benefit from

i write my stuff because......nobody else will. like, the stuff i enjoy is somewhat niche. i wanna see smut but it's a comedy at the same time. or i wanna see the nxx team being stupid but also being a loving found family. i wanna see nxx polycule dealing with a voyeuristic pet bird. the stuff i want....NOBODY ELSE IS GONNA WRITE IT, theyre all way too specific, so i have to be the one to write it!!!

I Just Love Writing. ive been writing fiction for more than a decade now (exactly a decade, if ur going by my ao3 fics) and it's something i'll continue doing for the rest of my life. sorry to sound cheesy, but it's deadass my passion. it's what i chose to study and major in college, it's what i do at my current job, and it's what i do in my free time. i love writing, so i do as much of it as i can.

so theres a bunch of motivators that keep me trucking on like crazy!!!!

but theres a second question here, right? i think? or am i misreading? you also ask kinda how to develop ideas/plot, yeah? because huge mood at "backlog of Dramatic scenes" tbh thats how most of my fics start in my brain HAHA.

so heres how i personally develop ideas

the dramatic scene/s (or just whatever "seed" of a fic, be it a badass line or a stupid joke in dialog) in the head? i write that down immediately. no matter what is going on, i grab my phone and scribble that thing down on a notepad. i have woken up at 2am just to blindly wordbarf an idea into my diary discord, lemme get u an example actually, heres the message:

and this single message resulted in the fic "The NXX Investigation Team In Their Natural Habitat, Unhinged: A Documentary by DAVIS"

so like no matter how un-fleshed out the idea is, get it down!!! make the backlog in ur head a backlog somewhere outside of ur head so that it doesnt disappear bc a lot of the time, those ideas need to like.....simmer. i often need to put an idea down and let it rest for a while for me to understand the concept more and then start building around it. case in point: that message was sent on November 16. the first chapter of nxx docu fic was posted November 19......okay that wasnt a great example, it only simmered for 3 days BUT MY POINT STANDS

onto the plot!!!

i personally add plot by going through at LEAST TWO STAGES OF OUTLININING. this is gonna make me sound insane, but bear with me.

OUTLINE ONE: WORDBARF

this is the barebones shit. like tbh, all i put in this outline is as simple as premise, conflict, resolution. THATS IT. example of outline one of "how Puppy Pierce© conquered the world":

barest bones in the world but theyre still bones aka, theyre whats needed for a story. there is a premise, conflict, and resolution. fiction comes in all kinds of forms, but these three are the easiest and most noticeable building blocks. keeping these blocks in mind always helps me get from concept to story.

i move on now to

OUTLINE TWO: embellish the wordbarf

this is where i go insane because based on outline one, i expand as much as frigging possible. the outline one for puppierce is as short as u see above and my outline two based on it is 864 words long. this is where i get detailed and lay down scenes, sometimes i lay down the exact dialog as well. heres an excerpt of outline two from the same fic above:

BONUS: a list of things to Keep In Mind.

this is something i only do with fics that delve deep into emotions and themes but it's very very helpful for me because it allows me to have like...a guide to look towards whenever i feel blocked or stumped, it realigns my trajectory to where i want it to go. i do this in the beginning before outline one and two. heres an example from the fic "it's only ever a seed planted from outside in":

and once all that is done, tadaa!! everything is built!! and then i do the Actual Writing bit JBJKFGS

i hope this is helpful somehow? a lot of my writer friends have told me that both my motivators and my writing process is fucking insane but sdjkbkgjsd insane is what works for me. i hope you find what works for you :')

again, thank you for lovely ask!! if ever u have questions on like, writing process or story development, dont hesitate to hmu!!! my degree in creative writing has to be useful for something HAHA.

hope u have a nice day!!

[jasonbehrs]

i wanna read every word

by airauralintensity (aka me, jasonbehrs!)

“Have you ever fallen in love with someone you’ve never met?” “Uh, do you mean like we’ve-been-doing-long-distance-slash-online-dating or like I’ve-been-crushing-on-the-cute-barista-at-the-library-cafe?” “Ummm, more like I’ve-read-their-poems-and-sure-they’re-very-talented-but-their-handwriting-alone-makes-me-smile.” “... That’s oddly specific.”

fandom: kpop, super junior characters: eunhyuk, ryeowook; guest appearances by the rest of sj-m and yesung ship: eunwook genre: romantic comedy themes: alternate endings, strangers to lovers, handwriting, identity reveal setting: college chapter: 1/4 word count: 3.7k

read it below or on ffnet, aff, wattpad

chapter 1: the beginning

A/N (5.31.2021): Back with another Super Junior fanfic! Rom-coms aren't really my thing, so this was such a challenge yet so fun to write. I was inspired by Ryeowook's One and Only music video, the fact that he hand-wrote letters to ELF every single month he was enlisted, the fact that he keeps every letter he’s ever been given even after antis used it as a means of sending him targeted hate. 🥺 He clearly cherishes handwritten things, and he just seems like the kind of person that would find meaning in people's handwriting. Thus this fic was born!

Rating for mild language and suggestive instances. Title comes from You Wrote the Book on Love by the Backstreet Boys. Cover art by me. If you recognise anything, that means I don't own it. This story will have two alternate endings. Updates on Sundays. Many thanks to Amy for being my beta!

~~~

Henry cancels their lunch plans at the last minute, which is just fine by him. Ryeowook is in no position to turn down an impromptu opportunity to study, not with a quiz tomorrow for which he is woefully underprepared. He just grabs a to-go wrap from the dining hall and heads for his next class's building. If he recalled correctly, the room that held his noon lecture should be empty right now.

He's right. He happily climbs up to the rear right quadrant of the lecture hall, beelining for what he considers his seat. He is, after all, a devout practitioner of the same seats code of conduct.

He pushes aside the loosely crumpled up piece of paper right on the desk, probably left there by the previous student, and lets himself get lost in his notes from two Evolution of Diet lectures ago.

It isn't until someone takes their seat a few chairs down from him that Ryeowook realised just how much time passed by. He checks his watch then eyes the crumbled pieces of paper around his notebook, casualties from previous attempts to create a study guide. The professor is due to start the class at any minute, so he hurriedly stuffs the paper into his backpack for later recycling.

Unfortunately, Ryeowook does that a lot.

Later, he finds himself sat by his apartment's recycling bin, opening up the backlog of miscellaneous papers one by one to ensure there's nothing he needs from them before throwing them out. They're just the standard class handouts, old notes, whatever.

That is, until he unfolds a page to be greeted with words that are not his own in handwriting that is definitely not his.

I'm thinking of you more today I wonder how tomorrow morning will be Will I miss you more than I do today?

Um, what?!

Ryeowook frantically looks through the remaining pieces of paper in his bag, trying to find anything else like it, but he comes up with nothing.

His mind goes into overdrive, trying to think of a logical explanation for why such a romantic note is in his bookbag, but his traitorously hopeless mind keeps coming back to one conclusion: he has a secret admirer.

"What'cha got there?" his flatmate, Mi, asks when he comes out of his room to find Ryeowook intensely staring at a wrinkled piece of paper while sitting on his haunches by the recycling bin.

Ryeowook falls back on his butt in surprise. "N-Nothing!"

Mi, the pleasant-to-a-fault person he is, gives a winsome smile despite the obvious lie—"If you say so."—before continuing to the kitchen to make a snack.

Ryeowook hastily stuffs the note into his pocket and zips up his backpack. He'll resume this ritual next time his bag is stuffed to the brim. For now, he has other things to focus on. His study guide for tomorrow's quiz is still only half-finished, after all.

Unfortunately, the allure of a secret admirer only lasts for two more days.

When he shows up for his next noon lecture, he sees another crumpled up note by his seat, and he distantly remembers how he found one just like it the last time he had this class. In a valiant attempt to listen to his professor, he manages to ignore it for all of seven minutes before he couldn't fight his curiosity anymore.

It is with bittersweet disappointment that he recognises the handwriting before him.

Take your beautiful smile with you Don't leave it here You saw me with tears in my eyes

The words written on the page thoroughly crush the idea that the poem he memorised before was intended for him—what kind of secret admirer writes a break-up poem for the person they admire to find?—but he lets it go as quickly as the idea originally came to him.

Without the thrill of secrecy overpowering his judgement, Ryeowook has only fondness. Whoever this person is, their work is good, and they've got endearing handwriting to boot.

He feels a little bit shady when he slips the paper into his binder so that he can unite it with its distant cousin back home, but he firmly squashes that feeling down. Whoever left this behind won't be missing it.

When he does it again five days later, and again the next time after that, and keeps doing it every time he sees the tell-tale crumpled paper on his desk, he just accepts that he has suspicious tendencies and maybe a crush.

~If I ain't got you, my kiss is just needless extravagance.~

When Yesung finally arrives at the cafeteria, he's bickering with someone Ryeowook has never met. He watches curiously as the pair approaches where he is sitting. Yesung looks really annoyed, but the new person has a gummy smile painted wide across his face.

"Can you leave now? I'm meeting up with my friends for lunch." Yesung gestures impatiently towards Ryeowook, but the newcomer seats himself. "Cool, what are we having?"

"Who are you?" Ryeowook asks plainly and without formality, having no problem helping his hyung get rid of someone that's clearly bothering him.

The stranger merely offers a charming grin and a friendly hand in response. "Nice to meet you, my name is Hyukjae. Frankly, I'm a rap genius," he introduces with absolutely no shame.

Yesung facepalms.

Ryeowook laughs in his face, high and bright, thoroughly unimpressed with the newcomer's boldness. Hyukjae smoothly retracts his hand, but the grin doesn't waver.

Neither does his determination to stay.

"Who's the new guy," Kyuhyun asks without interest as he seats himself at the table with his food. Mi and Henry are not far behind.

"A nuisance," Yesung complains as he rubs his fingers into his temples.

"Oooohh! We have a new friend?" Mi asks excitedly.

"I'm guessing Yesung brought him?" Henry asks as he bites into his food.

"He followed me like a stray, and now he's at this table begging for scraps."

"Hey, I resent that analogy," Hyukjae speaks up for the first time since the whole friend group gathered. "I thought our friendship was a little more symbiotic than that. You're the whale, and I'm the little fish that's suctioned onto you for dear life."

"I gain nothing from this friendship," Yesung maintains.

"Did you know those fish don't hang on by their mouths but by a separate suction cup organ on their stomachs?" Henry says to the blank, weirded-out, or surprised faces of his friends. "Like, you think it would be their mouths, but no it's a whole other special thing."

"Oh, so that's what you're doing when you're too busy to text back?" Ryeowook snarks. "Watching marine biology documentaries?"

Henry shrugs. "It's just something I know."

"Speaking of, how do you guys know each other?" Mi directs the conversation back to Hyukjae and Yesung.

"He TA'ed for my Vocal Performance class last year—ah, I'm a dance major, but I'm gonna declare a performing arts minor," Hyukjae adds as an aside, "Anyway, he was the only one who held office hours when I was free, so we saw a lot of each other back then. We've been best friends ever since." Hyukjae ends with an arm slung around Yesung's shoulder and a cheesy grin.

"I thought I'm your best friend," Kyuhyun whines.

Yesung shrugs Hyukjae's arm off. "We crossed paths on my way here, then he just invited himself along after I told him I had plans. We're barely friends," he clarifies with a glare at Hyukjae. The other pouts exaggeratedly, and Yesung rolls his eyes before turning his glare onto Kyuhyun. "And if anyone at this table would be my best friend, it would be Wookie."

"If I had a best friend at this table, it would also be Wookie," Henry adds just to annoy Kyuhyun.

"I guess you're the person to know, huh?" Hyukjae directs to Ryeowook with a grin. "Good thing I'm already on his good side," he comments offhandedly as he takes a sip of his drink.

Ryeowook snorts. "Since when were you on my good side?"

"I made him laugh earlier before you guys all got here," Hyukjae explains to the rest of the table. Mi gives him an encouraging thumbs up.

"I was laughing at you."

"The ego perceives no difference," Hyukjae assures.

Ryeowook stares at him incredulously, but he can feel the amused smile that pulls at his lips without his command. Hyukjae shoots him finger guns in response, and Ryeowook just shakes his head and takes a bite of his food.

"So now that we've established a hierarchy, what are y'all's names?" Hyukjae asks brightly.

~Out of the plain people who will be forgotten in a matter of seconds, I know you're different.~

Between Mi's hospitality mode that he can't ever seem to shut off and Ryeowook's nutrition courses that totally upped his cooking game, their apartment is the de facto hangout spot for their friend circle.

Just because they're together doesn't mean they're doing the same thing, however, another de facto manifestation of their friendship. They're all eating the meal that Ryeowook prepared for dinner, but Yesung, Mi, and Henry are watching a movie (well, Henry's on his phone, but he's on the couch with them and sometimes glances up, which is basically the same thing) while Kyuhyun and Ryeowook are doing homework at the kitchen table.

At least, Kyuhyun is. "What are you even working on?" he asks after observing Ryeowook 'work' for the past few minutes.

Ryeowook hastily shuts his notebook shut. "Nothing!"

"It's probably not nothing," Henry remarks without looking up from his phone.

"It's probably related to why he was reading homework next to the recycling bin last week," Mi offers in a vastly misguided attempt to be helpful.

"What does that even mean," Yesung deadpans.

Ryeowook is too busy trying to fend off Kyuhyun's annoyingly persistent hands from getting access to his notebook to respond to the conversation at the other end of the apartment. "Why are you so long!" he wails.

Mi sighs and gets up from the couch, easily swiping the notebook from Ryeowook's grip but refusing to hand it to Kyuhyun.

"But Ryeowook-hyung is keeping secrets!" Kyuhyun complains.

"Ryeowook is allowed to keep secrets," Mi explains like an underpaid teacher.

"Not in this friend group, he isn't." Yesung paused the movie when Mi got up from the couch, and now he's figuratively and physically siding with Kyuhyun.

Finding the antics of his friends more interesting than whatever was on his phone, Henry gets up to join them. "Might as well tell us now," he says to Ryeowook while leaning an elbow on the older's shoulder which Ryeowook promptly shrugs off.

He looks around to his friends looking at him with various levels of interest and expectation, and he sighs in defeat. "Have you ever fallen in love with someone you've never met?"

"Uh, do you mean like we've-been-doing-long-distance-slash-online-dating or like I've-been-crushing-on-the-cute-barista-at-the-library-cafe?" Henry clarifies.

"Ummm, more like I've-read-their-poems-and-sure-they're-very-talented-but-their-handwriting-alone-makes-me-smile."

"... That's oddly specific," Kyuhyun breaks the silence.

Ryeowook flounders for a second, debating with himself if he's ready to go this far, then decides screw it and hurries into his room and back out to his friends with a book. "See for yourself," he says as he lays the book on the table.

"They just kept appearing, so I kept reading them, then I started saving them, and now I'm, sorta, crushing on whoever this person is," he narrates as the others flip through what turns out to be a scrapbook��a literal scrapbook for the scraps of paper he finds, with dates and a little passage next to each paper entry of his first impressions of the work.

"The words themselves can be so romantic or witty or silly, but there's just something about the handwriting," he effuses. "I look at the way the words slant and how the letters bleed into each other, and… I don't know. It makes me feel like I know this person, whoever they are."

"I don't know which is more pathetic: the fact that you managed to fall in love with handwriting or the fact that you're interpreting actual Korean out of this chicken scratch."

Mi ignores Henry's comment. "And this notebook is…?" He holds up the book he had pilfered from Ryeowook. The latter looks up, to the side, to the TV, anywhere to avoid looking at his friends when he confesses, "My attempts at answering them back through poetry."

Yesung snorts. "What do you know about poetry?"

"Nothing," Ryeowook pouts as he stomps, "which is why I would like my notebook back, please, before meaner eyes than yours look through it." He directs the last half of his thought to Mi, who nods understandingly and returns the book to him. Ryeowook clutches the book to his chest protectively.

"What if the writer turned out to be a guy?" Henry asks when he looks up from perusing the scrapbook. Ryeowook shrugs his shoulders sheepishly. "That wouldn't necessarily be a problem." Henry raises his eyebrows in interest. "Noted."

"What if the writer turned out to have a significant other already?" Mi points out. Ryeowook twists his mouth in a moue as he thinks. "That would suck," he says at last, "but I could at the very least tell him his work is good. If the scraps are his throwaways like I suspect they are, then what would the stuff he was actually proud of look like, you know? And if we meet, maybe we might even become friends."

"So what I'm hearing is that you're hoping it's a guy," Kyuhyun observes as he reaches for the communal bowl of shrimp congee that Ryeowook cooked for dinner, having lost interest in the whole ordeal once Ryeowook willingly offered them information.

In retaliation, Ryeowook stomps over and swipes it away before carefully pouring the last of it in Henry's bowl, steadfastly ignoring Kyuhyun's protests and the blush on his own cheeks.

~You'll be able to befriend scary things after all. I'll show off how I can blow away the loneliness.~

Ryeowook's literally minding his own business in the student union when Yesung and Hyukjae stroll up to his table. "Stored any more love notes, Wookie?" Yesung asks apropos of nothing when he sits himself down.

"Hit a B5 yet, Yesung?" Ryeowook fires back. Yesung moves to hit him, but Ryeowook's too fast and Yesung loves him too much.

"What's this about love notes?"

Ryeowook glares at Yesung, who snickers and leaves him to fend for himself. "They're not love notes," he eventually explains to Hyukjae. "They're poems, mostly about love and most likely aimed at a different person."

"And then he projects and makes believe the person is him," Yesung pipes up.

"Why did you wake up today and decide that it's my turn to get bullied?"

Hyukjae lays a hand on Ryeowook's shoulder and sends him a conspiratorial wink when the other looks his way. "Nothing wrong with being a romantic. What's the point of art if you don't draw from it what you can?"

Ryeowook considers him. "I like that. I'm stealing that."

"For what, your 'poetry'?" Yesung snorts, but the others ignore him. For his part, Hyukjae just frowns and sighs. "I'm glad someone at this school thinks I'm creative. My prof completely slammed my latest free prose assignment."

Ryeowook exaggeratedly pouts. "Poor baby."

Hyukjae looks at him, betrayed. "I thought, out of everyone at this table, you'd be the one to show me some sympathy."

"Blame Yesung. He put me in a bad mood, and misery loves company."

~Those disgusted eyes at this scale are not enough to enrage me. As long as there is silence, you will fight amongst yourselves.~

To the surprise of no one, Kyuhyun is the one to figure out a plan first.

"If Ryeowook's class is at noon, and there's no class immediately before his, it's gotta be the 8am class, right? So to find Poem Person, we just have to figure out what class meets in…" He looks to Ryeowook. "Bomnal 235," Ryeowook supplies. "Bomnal 235 on Mondays and Thursdays at 8am, and then—"

"Songwriting?" a new voice says.

"Don't you have other friends?!" complains Yesung as Hyukjae settles into their booth at the pizza parlour.

"He doesn't mean it. We like having you around," Mi assures Hyukjae as he passes him a menu.

"Speak for yourself," Yesung grumbles.

"Can we get back on track here?" Ryeowook cuts above the chatter. "Kyuhyun was about to solve the greatest mystery of my young adult life!"

"And what does the junior songwriting class have to do with that?" Hyukjae interjects.

"What do you mean?" Henry asks.

"Uh, you guys were talking about Bomnal 235 on Mondays and Thursdays at 8am? That's the junior songwriting class."

Ryeowook sits up straighter in his seat. Those aren't poems he's been finding. They're song lyrics.

"Okay so step 1 is down, what's step 2?" Henry asks Kyuhyun.

"Step 2 for what?"

"To stop Ryeowook from pining pathetically after someone he doesn't know," Yesung says.

"I know plenty about him!" Ryeowook defends.

"The gender is actually not confirmed," Mi offers to Hyukjae as an aside.

"And notice how Ryeowook doesn't dispute the 'pathetically pining' part," Kyuhyun adds on.

"Oh my god, stop talking," Ryeowook cuts in. "Let me explain," he offers to Hyukjae.

"Please."

"It's not even that big of a deal. I just have a bit of a crush on someone in the class."

"Because of the love notes," Hyukjae recalls from the conversation several days ago.

"They're poems!" Ryeowook defends on instinct. He stops and reconsiders. "Well, based on what you said, they're probably song lyrics, but yes."

Hyukjae nods. "So Step 2 was going to be…" He looks to Kyuhyun.

"Well, we'd probably have to procure a roster somehow, then we'd spend the rest of the semester staging elaborate situations to get Ryeowook to interact with these people, and hopefully Ryeowook would hate all of them enough to give up on this useless pining and give us back our hang-out times to talk about real things like my gaming tournament at the end of the month."

Henry howls with laughter, and Ryeowook gawks. "That was your plan?!" Kyuhyun puts his arms out in a what-do-you-want-from-me gesture.

"I think I have a better one," Hyukjae pipes up.

"You have a plan?" Yesung asks, a strong note of skepticism in his voice.

Hyukjae slowly meets the eyes of everyone at the table, letting the tension build just a little bit, then drops the bomb. "I'm in that class. I probably know whoever leaves you the notes."

He loves the quick and scattered intakes of breath, but the slowly growing hope on Ryeowook's face is what makes him smile. He makes a come-on gesture with his hands. "Tell me what you know."

The others groan or roll their eyes, having heard some or all of the upcoming discussion over the past few weeks. Even Mi has to politely direct his attention to his phone to avoid letting his tiredness show on his face.

Ryeowook ignores them all. "He's very detail-oriented, but he's usually focused on the next thing to work on or whatever's lingering in the future. He's so friendly—he feels all of his emotions intensely, really—and he's ruled by that more than he probably wants to be. He can be impulsive at times, but his heart is always in the right place." He ends with his chin in his palm and a sigh.

Hyukjae allows himself a moment to fully take in Ryeowook's passionate yet ultimately meaningless description. "Um, that's great, but… don't you know his name? Or appearance? Something a little more tangible for me to work with."

"The gender is still unconfirmed," Mi reminds him.

"I would recognise—" Ryewook cuts his eyes at Mi, who shrugs, "their handwriting anywhere, but something tells me that'll be as unhelpful as anything else I've said tonight."

"'I know plenty about him,'" Yesung mocks as he plays with his pizza.

Hyukjae whistles low and shakes his head. "That makes my job a little harder," he admits.

"You don't have a job," Ryeowook hurries to assure. "You don't have to help me."

"Aish, let him help you," Kyuhyun gripes. "The sooner you meet this guy, the faster you can get over him."

"The gender—" "If you say, 'The gender is unconfirmed' one more time, I'm gonna make your gender unconfirmed."

Mi blinks then just smiles at Henry, who throws himself back into his chair in exasperation.

Hyukjae slowly turns his attention away from the pair and back to Ryeowook. "I'll find a way to help, no problem," he confirms with a smile.

It's not the brightest Ryeowook has seen from the other, but it's genuine and directed at him. For now, he returns the smile with a slight blush on his cheeks and immediately prompts Kyuhyun to talk about his impending tournament.

Later, when he'll think of Hyukjae, the sight of him framed by the unflattering pizzeria decor and selflessly agreeing to a favour will be the image his brain supplies for reference.

~Sometimes what cannot be seen gives birth to unspoken understanding.~

[mikegchambers]

Focus on features — not versions — when building products in the cloud

Why are IT shops using versions to trade stability for productivity? Have your cake and eat it too by deploying features in the cloud!

After years of consuming a heavy diet of Microsoft Office and Oracle, we’ve been conditioned to think that software improvements are packaged in versions. This atomic ‘all or nothing’ upgrade comes from the days when vendors batched all the updates for a release, scripted the installation procedures, and sent you a CD that contained all the magic.

The user didn’t know whether the latest build contained a single change or 100% new code— it was just ‘the next version’. We also came to expect pain and unpleasantness from this method of upgrades. For most IT shops, upgrades are synonymous with outages, instability and irate calls — not fun.

This approach to upgrades is single-handily the most unhelpful idea to making better applications for users. We must shift this way of thinking about software changes.

I’ve been trumpeting the idea of features over versions for ages — and corporate IT leaders still look at me like I’m crazy. But do you know which version of Google search you’re using? What the current version Amazon.com’s homepage? And what are the odds that you’re using the exact same version of those pages as me?

In the world of cloud applications, nobody — nobody — is talking about versions. Features are all users care about — and with the cloud, we can now deliver without the tyranny of traditional deployment.

James’ Book Listing Service

I’ve been busy again with another unicorn venture. This time I’ve built an incredibly useful Book Listing Service that allows you to add book titles and authors, and then list them. In expectation of its success and VC funding, I’m reserving my new Tesla.

Under the covers, the Book Listing Services looks like this:

As users are prone to do, they immediately provide feedback with a list of new feature requests which they never mentioned before. Tssk, users! And the developers also injected a couple of changes as well — so my backlog is already looking like this:

The Post-Its will stop if we just shut down 3M

There are now hundreds of active paying users expecting me to start rolling out these changes — so what are my options? Traditionally, there are only a couple of ways to release changes into a production environment:

The Big Bang. We take the system offline late at night, run whatever processes are needed to make the changes, and put it back with fingers crossed so hard we’re practically cutting off the circulation.

Build a duplicate. We buy new hardware, install the latest version, see if it looks okay and then cut everyone across.

As a Product Manager, I want to roll all these features together into version 2 because multiple deployments are painful. But one of my best customers is unhappy and is demanding an immediate bug fix or she’ll stop using the product— you can only add book titles up to 50 characters. What to do!?!

Step 1: Blame the Cloud.

A feature-driven approach to the rescue

Fortunately, our best developer is a master of micro-services, a curator of the cloud, and likes nothing more than using her services sorcery to solve problems like these. She decomposes the back-end design further:

We start mapping features to required changes in the main three components and realize we can do some clever things. It turns out that our two main services are actually Lambda functions and our front-end talks to AWS’ API Manager reach them.

I call our star customer and ask if she’s interested in becoming a beta user — we’re going to make the change today and she will be the only person to receive the feature. If it looks good and doesn’t cause any issues, we’ll then roll it out to everyone.

We will allow a subset of our users to see a different version in one component of the system, while everyone else stays on the old version:

Fast forward a week and this change is promoted to all active users — and I’m now choosing the color and interior finish of my Tesla. I work with my lead developer and very soon we are flowing testers and developers onto different versions of the components so everyone sees a slightly different ‘version’ of the system:

Our developers are now working on a feature that will check the book price using Amazon’s API, but it’s working against production versions of the other services. Needless to say, our QA people are doing back-flips down the hallway.

In this model of our coding factory, the features list— the backlog — is our list of customer orders, and we keep the conveyor belt full of code moving into production in a fairly constant, continuous state. We can easily roll back changes if needed, apply automated testing to the release process, and generally feel good that we are both delivering customer value and not hurting stability. Just so much winning.

The Myth of the Next Version

Although my book listing example is very simple, you can see how we can do things very differently with service oriented architectures and the cloud. By decomposing functionality into smaller and smaller units, we can move versioning down from the overall product level down to the code level.

This approach has positive impacts on customers and product managers:

You can blend development, testing and production environments together. That’s crazy, right? Well no, not really — look at Gmail Labs features as a example. By throwing beta-level functionality to a subset of users, Google can launch testing-level features into a production space.

You can A/B test ideas. You see this on webpages all the time (or not, since it should be invisible) where companies test multiple features to see which perform better. You can adopt this approach in any other software to compare how features are used.

You can release constantly. Looking at the feature board for products I’ve worked on, they’re usually composed of customer-driven features that can often be released one at a time (or in small groups). There’s no need to wait for some “next version” — just keep pushing out the features.

You can make upgrades to systems that previously were considered untouchable (the ‘too important to fail’ problem of monolithic systems).

You can change direction more easily, making it much more compatible with agile-minded product management.

Though not new to the technical audience, I’m surprised how many business leaders have no idea we can do this.

Types of upgrade in the cloud

The Books Listing application illustrates a micro-service approach, but there are several other types of upgrade that commonly affect cloud infrastructures.

Upgrading your instances

If you’re managing your own code on EC2 instances, this isn’t too different from on-premise upgrades and has the same likelihood of success or failure. An upgrade script is running on the instance and if it works — profit! — and if not, we attempt to rollback and hope the rollback state is just like it was before.

Alternatively, and preferably, you have a stateless army of instances. You upgrade one, test it, and if it works as expected create an image to generate new clones. If it doesn’t work, you terminate it — a few pennies poorer but the lights are still on.

Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) are grossly underused among the clients I’ve worked with. You can have an inventory of different OS’s, stacks and applications at different version numbers all stored as APIs, waiting patiently to get spun up into live instances whenever you need them.

Whenever making a build change, always ask “Should I create an AMI?” before just doing it anyway.

2. Managed application upgrades

If you’re on Google’s App Engine or Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk, these environments create a safe space to do tightly-controlled upgrades with reliable rollbacks and versioning baked in. These are almost always a better way to deploy apps than juggling EC2 instances and really handle a lot of the administrative pain for you. These are fantastic services that developers fall in love with quickly.

3. Complex project upgrades

This is where on-premise IT often shuns the cloud believers — “You could never perform an Exchange/PeopleSoft/Dynamics/[insert horrific software here] upgrade in the cloud!” they proclaim. Well, we can and we do, more quickly and with better results than the equivalent on-premise plate-spinning spectacle.

The reason is we have CloudFormation — which I’ve come to believe is the greatest thing since Python. Even if your upgrade has a mixed of server types, databases, firewalls and security changes, we can script the upgrade in CloudFormation and safely test by spinning up entire cathedrals of virtual hardware with the new version. Once it passes the tests, we just point users to the new stack. It’s a beautiful thing.

Under the covers of CloudFormation might be less sophisti-cat-ed than we hoped.

The factory that produces nothing

The reason I’m fascinated by versioning is because the process is central to getting new software out the door. As a lifelong Product Manager and entrepreneur, ‘releasing stuff’ is the most important thing a development team can do for me and, by extension, my customers.

In most IT shops, the traditional versioning and upgrade cycle becomes a reason not do things. But I’m more interested in working in a cycle that makes the lack of change the exception, not the rule. I want to ferret out anything that doesn’t change and increment its version number just to make a point. User feature requests never stop — if they do, our product stinks. And we need to keep delivering — if we don’t, our product will stink.

Technology managers often see a contention between change and stability. Their empire is a factory where widgets roll off an assembly line and anything that threatens the widget-rolling is bad. The problem is that just being operational doesn’t mean you’re producing anything of value to the customer.

We are standing up a whole operations where virtual conveyor belts run with nothing on them. But in software, the feature releases are the widgets. We need to turn this thinking on its head — when you release nothing, you produce nothing.

Keeping the lights on and ‘being stable’ is expected — it’s not an excuse for releasing nothing.

TL;DR — Let’s release features not versions

Pushing versioning from the overall application level down to the code level can have a major positive impact on agility and stability.

Using the tools available in the cloud, we have enormous flexibility in implementing a highly controlled and testable approach to versioning.

Being stable is nothing to celebrate — it’s expected that you can talk and chew gum at the same time.

Don’t be the factory that produces nothing — your customers want to see a steady stream of improvements and feature releases.

Versioning isn’t atomic — we can reveal different versions of infrastructure to different audiences and even put testing, development and production environments together if we want.

Thanks for reading! If you like what you read, hit the ❤ button below so that others may find this. You can follow me on Twitter.

Focus on features — not versions — when building products in the cloud was originally published in A Cloud Guru on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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