#doing the same thing over and over and hoping to get a diff result

[ephemeralfuture]

Pushing my skills to the next level

[boypr1ncesss]

ok so w the death of g5 i've been having a Lot of thoughts irt how to not fuck up g6 while balancing being for the new generation of kids who haven't been immersed in g4 lore and still being able to rake in those sweet sweet brony $$, as hasbro's inability to decide between the two is one of the main contributors to g5's fuckening. and so here's my outline for my hypothetical mlp g6. honestly this is the abridged version and i might finally cave and make a youtube channel just so i can release a multi hour long video breaking this down in depth.

ok first of all we're getting rid of the recent gens' pony sexual dimorphism . which is stupid . bc they are horses . and will benefit hasbro . bc they can reuse molds . and giving them less catlike and more horselike proportions.

our setting is in equestria in the same time frame as g4 but the version we see isn't actually g4, events similar to g4 are happening but it's like how the comics and the show have diff continuities. the g6 continuity will be borrowing heavily from both. our protagonists live in canterlot, not ponyville, and thus won't be there for a lot of the shit that goes down over there in g4, but it'll still be alluded to when worlds do collide, and unlike the g4 mane 6 who are all late 20s, our g6 leads will be more relatable to kids by being in their earl to mid teens. as for our Main main character. well. she'll be a unicorn (bc that'll sell well to little girls) and for now let's call her sunrise. really her name would be like 'radiant sunrise' or 'sunrise hope' or smthing (see what i did there). now, sunrise is important bc she's the niece of sunset shimmer, a name which has acquired infamy due to her being the most accomplished student princess celestia has ever taken in, even being crowned as an alicorn princess (we'll get to it), until she was last seen having a blowout screaming match w princess celestia during one year's summer sun celebration that no one could make out the contents of, after which she ran off with a few scattered accounts of her performing strange transformation spells throughout equestria in subsequent months and then ultimately disappearing. now, ofc the ponies of equestria are going to view sunset as extremely ungrateful for throwing away what's seen as the ultimate aspiration, and while not being proven to be dangerous, it's only natural to assume they'd view someone w extreme magical strength who was last seen standing in opposition to their almighty god-queen as a threat. so our girl sunrise is a bit socially ostracized as a result. her father isn't in the picture since he discovered a fun little detail abt his wife's family tree only after sunrise was born, and her mother holds so much contempt for the damage sunset's reputation has done to her that she's very emotionally unavailable, so she's basically on her own. that said in the first couple of episodes she miraculously makes a new set of friends.

now, i don't have most of our mane group figured out yet but the rest will all be pulled from earlier gens. toola roola will be there bc mlp is shockingly low on the Artist CharacterTM and as someone who was the Art Kid most of my early life i would've ate that shit up. but more importantly, the first friend sunrise makes is ploomette, a g4 merch-exclusive whose card in the blind bags says she dreams of becoming a princess. now, i don't know where ploomette has been all this time, maybe sunrise was off at boarding school but family finances have brought her back home to public school, maybe ploomette is just new in town, maybe they've had a long history of near-misses, or maybe a million other things have happened. now, ploomette is absolutely obsessed w princesses and everyone and everything they've had contact w, and she makes no exception to this rule for allegedly evil ponies. in fact, she thinks the fact that she now knows a relative of the infamous and mystery-shrouded sunset shimmer is the coolest thing to ever happen to her and they just Have to be the bestest friends and also she has so many questions and also do you happen to have anything she's ever touched or even just sneezed on still lying around. luckily for ploomette sunset's room has remained untouched over the years and so the girls can cautiously open it back up to find out what really happened all those years ago. and as for their other friends, sunrise finally being able to come out of her shell to someone after all these years just naturally attracts other likeminded ponies who don't care abt her family history to be her friends too, and that's how our group is formed (that said i am leaning towards toola roola having been ploomette's friend for a while beforehand but the rest to join their group will be brand new).

now, let's talk abt the mystery elements real quick. children love mysteries. this is a fact. gravity falls is currently having a rennaissance and while it's mainly among now-older fans, i feel like we might get a wave of similar children's programming by companies trying to replicate its success. also, mlp is no stranger to being theorized abt (see: g4) and given the number of young fans desperate to uncover (nonexistent) hidden lore secrets while it was airing its safe to say that we could replicate that but on purpose this time w a new gen.

as for the alicorns, well, hasbro wants to sell alicorn toys and i want to make myself go insane abt the lore implications, so this is a win win. alicorns do not age and are immortal. this is kinda horrifying when you realize the princess of love has a husband who's a mortal unicorn and the princess of friendship's friends are all mortal unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies. now, i fully plan on giving the rest of the g4 mane 6 + shining armour their horns/wings to negate this, but shh. anyways, we're changing a few things around and making amore an alicorn (since her not being one and still being a princess made no damn sense) and cadance having been born an alicorn, we're also going to move timelines around so amore's death/the crystal empire's fall came after the nightmare moon shit. anyways, lullabye for a princess has done more to characterize celestia than official media ever has and logical assumptions will naturally have to be made that being an alicorn is a deeply lonely existence, especially when your closest companion went evil, betrayed you and had to be sealed away. which is why celestia takes in promising students who she thinks have the mental fortitude to become an alicorn to try and fill that void. they usually don't display the ability to handle the responsibility or have a million other failings that are too much of a dealbreaker so there's a high turnover rate. she got so, so close with radiant hope, a pony who was so full of goodness and selflessness and clearly qualified to be princess and she could even perfectly envision what she'd actually be crowned princess of and she'd even begun to get her secondary marks*, but then amore died and hope disappeared into the night and celestia was more alone than ever, having lost both the only other of her kind and what she thought was going to be her perfect peer in one fell swoop.

*(when i was a kid i thought the g3 cutie cascade toys w the cutie marks that covered their whole legs were cool as fuck. i think more ponies should have random ass themed markings on other body parts + more variants = more toys sold. thus in this gen after a pony has their cutie mark if they encounter other defining moments which would otherwise earn a cutie mark instead their mark begins to show secondary traits and branch out. in order to be crowned a princess you have to have a certain degree of these secondary traits bc it shows prowess and experience beyond those of your average pony whose cutie mark will never morph)

now, fast forward a few centuries of the most overwhelming isolation celestia has ever known, and to her next most promising pupil, sunset shimmer. she specializes in transformation magic (make note of that) and while she doesn't have secondary marks we live in much more peaceful times now and it can just be blamed on lack of opportunity. and yes, celestia can't think of what sunset would be princess of but she's so promising it'd be a shame if her talent went to waste and surely she'd think of something eventually, and so sunset shimmer is crowned princess and it's so so so wonderful at first. but sunset is a smart pony. and as time goes on she starts to notice the way the world changes while she stays the same. and just as she's celestia's only companion, celestia is her only companion, but it's hard or even impossible for her not to want for more for someone anyone else, and when she asks celestia to teach her how to make more alicorns she refuses and when she asks celestia to do it for her she refuses as well and as sunset realizes that celestia knew this profound isolation would be her fate and condemned her to it anyways, she runs. she's always been good at transformation magic. she doesn't need celestia for this. she'll do it by herself before celestia can find out and stop her. but in all her travels across equestria, never once is she able to make an alicorn, as it is a power held only by the two sisters. we'll come back to her in a min.

back to sunrise, ploomette and co, midway through season 1 they uncover Something sunset shimmer was working on that they can't quite understand, but they know damn well that extra context is needed and celestia can provide it. hijinks surrounding trying to contact princess celestia herself ensue, and the summer sun celebration rolls around and they're all like 'wow it sure sucks we don't have that here anymore and now it's held at diff locations around equestria instead of being in canterlot every year bc of sunset' but don't think much of it. then nightmare moon's endless night comes and they're a bit confused but end up having a lighthearted sleepover episode abt it. then they see what happened in the papers and ploomette nearly has a heart attack finding out THEE princess luna is back, sunrise gets hopeful abt if ppl can forgive THEE princess luna aka nightmare moon then maybe all hope isn't lost, and the group notices a certain name in the paper, a student of princess celestia, just like sunset was, and the perfect person the lend them the information they need to understand their biggest hint irt the mystery of sunset shimmer, a unicorn named twilight sparkle.

so our mcs journey to ponyville and are miraculously able to pique twilight's interest, as a student of celestia it was hard not for her to spend hours upon hours wondering about what she was like and staring wistfully at her portrait. she was so beautiful and so wonderful how could a pony not wonder what happened. so she agrees to look into what she could and keep them posted. and so over the next couple seasons the two groups, ponyville and canterlot, will occasionally reconvene over a trace of sunset or a false flag while it seems increasingly like the number of villains who don't seem to be originally from this world is increasing.

and then she'll be there.

now, going back to what i said abt gravity falls, sunset shimmer is literally stanford pines. kind of. when she realized she couldn't create an alicorn, luck smiled upon her and she found something else. a way to jump between worlds. and so she figured, surely there's a world populated only by those w a lifespan like mine, and she knew she was good enough at transforming to fit in w the dominant species of wherever she went (this is our eqg sneak, any non-pony market hasbro could ever want to break into now just needs a coat of 'sunset turned into this once. and isn't it a cool what-if to think abt if everyone else did too?' paint and you're good to go for a spinoff line or two or twenty).

sunset is panicked to return to her original world, as she wasn't successful in her quest and is terrified of the possibility that what she's looking for doesn't exist and she's cycled through everything that does. attempts to talk to her fail as she immediately returns to dimension hopping, but now the mane 6 know to invite the canterlot group along whenever they have a villain displaced in reality, and they learn that the magic sunset uses to jump worlds got a lil bit damaged w the summer sun celebration debacle which is why randos keep slipping through, but only one is able to properly control jumps between worlds.

eventually, sunset returns After twilight becomes an alicorn, and twilight gets to speak to her. times have changed, there are more alicorns than ever before, and sunset is absolutely right abt the isolation of being an alicorn, which is why twilight needs sunset, just as badly as sunset needs her, and twilight will gladly offer the eternal companionship she needs bc she fell madly in love w her from the sight of her portrait alone. (we live in a post steven universe world lesbians in kid's cartoons are to be expected at this point). and so, sunset is finally convinced to return to equestria, and splits her time between rehabilitating her image, finding out what she's actually the princess of, kicking the asses of enemies she made in other worlds (and occasionally shapeshifting to do so to sell sunset shimmer fashion doll for practicality), getting to know this niece of hers, and being gfs w twilight.

as for princess celestia? cadence's whole existence as a naturally occurring alicorn has been jarring for her, as was luna's return to sanity. also i kinda sorta plan for the crystal empire thing to play out comics-style but w a more nuanced portrayal of the umbrums so it's not the Intrinsically Evil Race W One Good One and during the shitshow cadence would be attempting to save hope from one of the many, many severe blows she receives in that storyline and inadvertently turn her into an alicorn (or maybe it'd happen to try and incentivize sombra staying good and not self destructing bc he has a much longer lifespan and doesn't want to ever be parted from her? idk) so like. princess celestia gagged hearing twilight explain what happened there. also maybe depending on when this is one of the other members of the mane 6 got turned into an alicorn too. either way, celestia's mind is clearer than ever, and she's been reconsidering a few things, specifically a few things sunset had grievance with. or more specifically, she's high off the rush of companionship and has loosened the rules surrounding alicorns Significantly.

for the rest of the series, the gang has the various loose ends of sunset's time travel to tie up + whatever other plots get added in, and ofc, a large portion of the cast striving to be the best that they can be so that they can maybe possibly become alicorns too.

overall, the message it'd give kids would probably be the value of reaching out to others, the importance of taking time to understand others' perspectives, a feeling of being seen for all the rlly lonely kids out there, and a reassurance that you are not alone and there's someone, plenty of people, actually, there for you out there who you just haven't had the chance to meet yet

and the message it'd give bronies is sunset shimmer isn't going to fuck you she BELONGS with twilight sparkle

[myconetted]

i might have already asked, but, opinions on nixos if you've tried it?

i haven't actually tried it but i think it's based and i want to try it really bad. the general premise is that you can fix all of your dependency management and reproducibility problems and replace them with new, more exciting problems that have to do with the nix language

i would very much like to trade to have those problems, because my builds would be so much faster than docker builds. docker builds are also a nightmare because they require a bunch of privileges to even run the docker daemon

so like, a brief list of things you get with nix

verifiable, reproducible builds: you could rerun your build pipeline from scratch and get the same SHA for the final artifact. all of your dependencies are also built with this property. so you basically have transitively pinned dependencies for everything managed by nix. that's huge for security and assurance

great build caching: a side effect of the above, this means you can cache intermediate build results instead of starting the whole build over. and you can be very confident that your cache isn't bringing in stale/incorrect gunk. compare to docker, where caching happens at the layer level, has a bunch of confusing caching rules, and can't account for side effects that make cached layers undesirable. plus the layers build on top of one another, so you can't really pick and choose which layers to cache; if you invalidate a lower layer, everything above it has to be rebuilt, even if the diff would be the same

hermiticity: since you know up front the full list of dependency files you need for your build, you can download those ahead of time and then do the build without talking to the internet! this is another huge win for security, because the internet is where all the fucked up and evil shit comes from, so you want to avoid it wherever possible. reduces your attack surface. this is especially important because infecting the build chain is an increasingly popular attack (supply chain attacks) and extremely effective at owning a ton of computers at once--that package you're building will be trusted by the rest of your machines, so it better be built in a secure environment

avoid a large swath of dependency issues that happen with other package managers: nix lets you have multiple versions of the same package, which removes a lot of pain that happens with other package managers. say you have package A, and package B requires A>=1.3 but package C requires A<=1.0. what do you do? well... you suffer. you also can't install A==5.0 for fun because you live on the bleeding edge. not so with nix

there's probably more goodies im forgetting but yeah. nix is based and solves a lot of cool problems in dependency management, build correctness and speed, and supply chain security. the flip side is that you have to learn a new configuration language just for this one thing, and in addition to being a functional language (which most programmers aren't used to), it has its own quirks and sharp edges because it's somewhat niche. also you have to hope the packages you want are already supported, otherwise you'll have to figure out how to build them yourself.

[m1ckeyb3rry]

Otoya so puntable fr I wanna throw him across a field

For the sake of easier reading I will leave my hollyhock comments at the end of this ask so it’s not smack in the middle of us rambling LMAOO

I really need to see Karasu at an aquarium now (someone get me the P.O. Box of the BLLK author I need to send a lengthy request pls next off day GO TO AN AQUARIUM) on that not HOKYBCRAP I just remembered Osaka is famous for its aquarium because they have a whale shark?????? Imagine bro goes there and is scared SHITLESS like whale shark literally in the vicinity of his neighborhood that is so funny to me (I can imagine he eats takoyaki as revenge on octopuses)

And MEE idk what I’m gonna do when BLLK is over….well we fs have another big match arc with the World Cup that they’re currently waiting to play for…I’ve seen some ppl theorize that they might do a time skip thing like haikyuu where we see them going pro and whatnot but bro I do not want to think about BLLK ending like wdym I won’t see my silly little boys anymore….hopefully when that time comes it’ll give way for a lot of spinoff stories like I’d love to see more things like epinagi but for other characters (I’m coping but I really wanna see the light novel content animated or something)

Haha…discord and Reddit…such lovely places…..yeah I stay away from discord for similar reasons LMAO

Oh wait you’re so right….bruh I see those booktok accounts every so often and I’m like…how did you even get past the title for this book….have you seen people talking about like the pillow book or the door book??? I wanna know who actually thinks of that plot bc PLEASE it’s so wp coded like wtaf im sorry

Also I wanna know why Ao3 is BARREN when it comes to BLLK content that isn’t ship stories like….every so often I’ll take a look and the search results have barely changed within like six months man

Ok but HOLLYHOCK COMMENTARY SENGOKU PERIOD AU>>>> LMAOO so this is what you were referring to when you posted about finding a side character to make the villain…bye hiiragi LMFAOO ok assassin Otoya SO REAL when yuki showed up I was almost expecting it to be Otoya but this makes sm more sense LMAOO (yuki always committing some sort of crime in your plots it’s so funny) I’m living for it though…..y/n sacrificing her half brother to live FINALLY I love a good mc with a sense of self preservation that overrides any duty to a shitty family…also the cursed/bad omen child trope too perfect set up for angst I’m excited to see where it goes

-Karasu anon

I’M SAYINGGG BRO I JUST WANT TO TOSS HIM AROUND LIKE A LITTLE FOOTBALL 😭 meanwhile baby karasu i want to tie a ribbon around he’s just a little boy full of joy and whimsy i love him

PLEASE OMG WHEN HE’S A KID HIS PARENTS TAKE HIM TO THE AQUARIUM AND HE STARTS BAWLING 😓 that whale shark is his biggest enemy fr…omg a post nel aquarium trip would be so fun esp because we have karasu kurona and bachira who would def all go crazy for it (in diff ways). karasu loving seafood because it’s a way for him to control marine life/the water which he hates because he can’t predict ⁉️ could be funny could be meta the choice is yours 👆🏻

oh 100% they’re def going to do the wc arc and possibly even show some of the boys going pro…i do hope there’s a timeskip at the end because i want to see what they’re all up to but at the same time i also love open endings so if they didn’t do that i wouldn’t mind!! as long as the ending is satisfactory. imagine the conclusion is just ego and anri going to jail though HDKDJDS pls 😭 once it’s over i’m going to be so sad…luckily w the rate episode nagi is going we’ll at least have that for a while longer!!

discord and reddit are certainly. well. they are places!! and i am blessed to say idk what you’re talking about but w the amount of weird smut i see on there i shudder to imagine what you’re talking about. personally i’m pro-dark content even though i don’t read a lot of it myself because i believe all art and expression is worthy but it’s the way that some of these people engage with and react to dc that’s a little odd to me. idk it’s weird for sure…me personally i stay far away!!

THERE IS NOTHING ON AO3 FOR BLLK except for nagireo fics lowkey 😭😭😭 hopefully with season 2 coming out it’ll get more popular and we’ll see more content!! i’d never say no to more reader inserts but also character studies?? ONE fic exploring anri or ego or the itoshi brothers without any romance?? a michael kaiser-centric fic that portrays him as who he actually is (at least in my opinion)?? i’d write it myself but there’s only so much one girl can do 😔

bro hiiragi is even more random than kira PLSS i almost reused kira but then i was like “no i can’t slander the same character twice.” honestly though he has a very historical vibe to him if that makes sense?? and the name hiiragi is so clan-like HAHA idk idk it just felt right.

i feel like arranged marriages are so commonly paired w historical aus i wanted to do smth diff!! plus otoya does not scream arranged marriage to me. i was talking to one of my moots and i joked abt how the ninja butt trap panel broke my writer’s block but that’s actually not a joke…the whole ninja obsession otoya has (plus him canonically being descended from a ninja??) made me think “okay what if he WAS a ninja???” and from there i began looking into ninjas…and it was wraps after that!! apparently they were most prominent in the sengoku era and basically used as spies/assassins hence the setting and otoya’s introduction in the story

PLEASE yuki is the biggest tabieita x reader hater 😭 he does not want those boys winning ong 😕 he’s going to be really interesting in the future of the fic hehe i’m so excited!!

oh one thing about me you can trust i will be writing a flawed selfish reader 🫡 this mc is based loosely and vaguely on oda nobunaga actually!! emphasizing the ‘loosely’ part because the resemblance is barely there honestly unless you look really hard for it — however that should give you an idea of what kind of person she’s going to grow into (with otoya and [redacted]’s help ofc).

AHH the question is is she actually cursed or are the hiiragis just biased 🤔 hehe i can’t wait to write more too omg the only thing i’m worried for is when karasu finally pulls up because wdym the loml is in a fic and he’s not madly in love w the mc???

[the-dawn-star]

ayooo I loved the homless! reader fic ♡♡

I have an idea 👉👈 could you please write a fic about dabi x reader that has kinda the same quirk as dabi (the only diff would be that she only gets burned by fire that s not hers and can t generate blue flames) and Endevour burns her in a fight bc she tried to protect Dabi? how would he react? please and thank you 😗

For Both Of Us, Dabi x Teenager!Reader

A/N: hello my friends! Hope people are doing okay! Thanks so much for the request, I really appreciate it so much. + I kind of really like this... but don’t tell anyone, okay.

-S

+1100ish words, not proof read.

Summary: You get hust by Endevour and Dabi fixes you up.

❕ Descriptions of getting burned, battle, parental problems, anxiety, talk about murder at the end. ❕

You never wanted to do this, to fight the heroes and kill the innocent. But still you wanted to protect the only family that you had left. Dabi had taken you in when your own biological family left you.

You were six when you got your quirk. You were just sitting at home playing with your plastic toys when they started to melt on your hands. You cried for hours while your parents pealed the reed plastic off of your hands. Your parents took you to a doctor and after some tests, the result was that you were fireproof but only to your own fire and your flames were bright orange but it took a lot of concertation to form it.

But an accident occurred. You held your dads hand when you were at store and you burned him because of stress. You were always an anxious kid, but it got worse after you got your quirk. Things got bad after that and your parents started to pull away from you, and when you turned 15 you ran away. It was mostly a one-night idea, and you had no place to go.

Weeks went on and you realized that you had no more money, and you had no other chance than a rob a store. But you got caught, not by cops or heroes, you got caught by the infamous blue flames, the one that you grew to call Dabi.

The closer you two grew closer the more Dabi started to protect you. And after joining the league of villains he started to make sure that you never got hurt by anyone. He pushed you of off the fire that could burn you and made sure that you were always to be the first to be rescued.

Dabi had said how you fighting Endevour was a bad idea. But still, you were insisting on going with him and Kurogiri. You just wanted that everything was going to be okay. There you were trying to fight some lower-level hero with Kurogiri. Dabi had disappeared somewhere fighting with Endevour. You could only smell the smoke from afar.

“Kurogiri, can you take care of this? If Dabi is needing help!” You yelled over your flames. “Of course, this isn’t going to take long!” Kurogiri yelled over the fire and you gave him a nod, leaving him.

The smoke was a clear indicator where Dabi was fighting and you ran so fast that your lungs started to hurt. The street was covered in blue and yellow flames and Endevour at the roof to trying to hit Dabi at the ground. “Dabi!!” You yelled, voice raw from running and the smoke.

“Get out of here, kid!” Dabi responded not even glancing at you, but it was better than just losing his momentum. Dabi let out another massive blue fire storm and Endevour disappeared to the deadly fire around him. “Dabi, let’s go. We don’t need shit from him!” You said getting closer and closer to Dabi, the man was steaming from his body heat.

“Get out, kid,” Dabi was too calm for your liking. The police cars were heading to your direction, you could hear them blocks away. The blue fire was getting smaller and Endevour not being seen made Dabi relax. You lowered your hand against his shoulder, he was hotter than any other human ever should. He had probably gotten burns during the fight no matter if Endevour actually hit him. The smoke made your eyes tear up and you turned your head around, not wanting Dabi to see your burning eyes.

There he was, Endevour at the ground level, hand stretched ready to fire, but it wasn’t directed at you, it was directed at Dabi. You saw the fire start to get closer, and you didn’t know what else to do. You couldn’t control flames made by someones else. I wrapped my hand around Dabi, turning yourself at the way of the fire.

You put your hand on top of Dabis head, lowering it right before pain crashed against your back. You couldn’t help but scream holding Dabi for the dear life. You closed your eyes, like looking the cop cars coming closer added to the pain.

“You stupid kid...,” You heard Dabis voice but couldn’t place it, relapsing to his arms. You forgot when you lost your consciousness.

But your rest didn’t last for long. You woke up pain covered on your back. You were sitting on a bathtub, full of water. “Dabi...?” You whispered, opening your eyes seeing Dabis apartments bathroom. Tears had dried onto your face and your back felt like it was on fire, like it had been on fire.

“You stupid little shit, always wanting to be putting yourself in danger,” You heard Dabis voice getting closer to the bathroom. He looked like a mess. He had first aid kit and scissors on his hands. He looked like a mess, Dabis undereye scars were looking worse than normal and you could be sure that he would have been crying, if he still could.

“I’m sorry...,” You murmured, lowering your gaze to the tub.

“Don’t, let’s just get you fixed up,”

He emptied his hands next to the sink and walked to you. Dabi helped you out of the tub and sat you down to the toilet seat, back facing him. “How bad is it?” You asked, Dabis fingers circling the wounds. “You will survive, and you are going to get a cool scar,” Even if he sounded bored and sarcastic, you could tell he was in pain, more mental than physical but still.

Your shirt was half ripped away and back melted to your skin. Dabi cursed behind you, how the league needed to get fire proof clothing. “But I need you to be more careful..., I can’t lose you kid,” Your tears fell down your cheeks while Dabi picked up burned cloth off of your back. Whatever Dabi had put on you back had made it mostly painless, but still, you wouldn’t do it if you didn’t need to.

“I’m sorry..., I didn’t mean to get hurt...,” I said between your tears, hugging yourself. He didn’t response. The cleaning process was mostly done in silence.

“Take your shirt off so I can bandage you up,” You nodded and trying to pull my shirt off, but Dabi ended up mostly cutting it off of you, but at the end you were bandaged up.

Dabi pulled a loose shirt of his over your head and carried you to the living room. “I need you to eat,” Dabi murmured giving you a bowl of soup, while sat on the couch next with you.

“I’m really sorry, Dabi. I truly am,” You said trying to ignore the lingering pain in your back. “You are fine, just don’t do it anymore,” He wanted to say so much more but the words just didn’t come out.

After eating your soup, you really started to realize the long day was affecting you. And in sleepy state you ended up laying on your stomach on top of Dabi while he petted you head. In seconds you were in the dream land.

“I really need you to be more careful, okay? I can’t lose you... Trust me, you will get you revenge on Enji..., I will do it myself, for both of us...,”

[thedeviljudges]

When G asked if YH was counting on someone dying at what I think of as the barricades, I wasn't 100% convinced we were meant to take YH's reaction as confirmation. It slightly read to me as disappointment/hurt that G was asking (though it's a fair question!), & his response (if you've got time to ask you've got time to act) sort of fits with that, as does his subsequent sulky exit. Wouldn't he have just admitted it? 1/2

Or is it meant to show how well G knows him now, and his silence/reaction is actually a sign of his discomfort at seeing his 'monstrousness' reflected in G's face? So much open to interpretation! I'm ok with either, but do think there's a diff tween reasonable assumption ppl will get hurt (presumably there have been casualties the whole time this has been happening - YH just needed to provide (and film) the right focus/narrative) & setting out to incite violence in order to create a victim. 2/2

truthfully, i had the same question during the scene as well because i think it can be interpreted in two ways but also a mix of both.

1. yohan was disappointed that gaon would assume that of him because yohan's tactics have never directly resulted in physically hurting someone unless they were up for judgement in the courtroom. his response also sounded measured in that gaon is more than adult enough and should be reasonable enough to actually do something about the injustice than sit there and ask questions. because yohan is right. if gaon has time to ponder over what yohan is doing, what level of thinking is he not giving to everything else, especially what they're fighting for?

2. yohan actually did it, and that's why he broke his promise earlier in the episode to isaac that innocent people were going to get hurt to justify his decisions in the courtroom. thing is, innocent people were going to get hurt regardless of yohan breaking his promise or not, and yohan has always been of the believe that innocent people don't exist. on top of that, the men beating the poor were already doing so even without yohan's incentive. yohan, more than likely, predicted that it was a possibility - and as you said, he just needed to provide and film something incriminating. there is no way he could've bargained with any of those people to be that sacrificial lamb. i think he knew the live court's presence would stir shit up, and he was betting on any evidence he could use.

3. with that said, i think it's a mix of both - yohan's plan coming to fruition and his reaction of discomfort upon seeing himself through gaon's eyes.

what i'm noticing particularly about yohan's last few plans is that they've all rested on chances. and now that i try to recall previous stuff he's done in terms of his tactics, they too have always been a play on chance. similar to a rat in a maze and scientist hoping for a specific outcome in their studies, yohan is smart at prediction, but i think because the stakes are higher, and he's closer than ever to his end goal, that strategy becomes less and less accurate because of all of the other moving pieces. it becomes easier to fail because of that, especially with gaon because he's always been a loose canon, but the components of soohyun, the professor, and the determination of the elite to try and end the live show, and possibly many others points i'm missing, has made gaon rocky again. it's not what yohan expected after everything he'd done to persuade him.

and i think that's where one fault lies with yohan in general. he's so dead set on human behavior and outcomes, that similar to gaon, he's caught up with what's in front of him (whatever plan he's created), but unfortunately, there are just some things you cannot predict no matter how much you plan for it.

another case in point: the doctor who was going to testify dying. luckily, yohan had a backup plan because he's smart and quick thinking, but like with the minister's suicide, he doesn't really considering failing. it's the next plan, the next tactic to fix the situation and continue moving forward.

[slliest-clownmari]

MCC 14 Viewer Stats

For larger images, more detailed numbers, and more info on how I did this please click here! (Google Slides)

So, what exactly did you collect? Viewership numbers over time were the only variable collected. In total, numbers for 36 of the 37 participants streaming on twitch were included.

How as this information collected? With a python program and twtich api! it checked for updates in viewer numbers every 10 seconds.

Hey, didn’t 40 people participate? Why only 36? It did not occur to me that anyone would be streaming on youtube so I had nothing set up to grab those numbers :( I also mispelled katherineelizabeth’s name so she didn’t get recorded either. the admin stream was not included because i didn’t know about it (fake fan)

NOW, THE NUMBERS! :D

NOTE: Four teams were disadvantaged due to the erorr. Blue Bats (katherineelizabeth), Aqua Axolotls (solidarity), Purple Pandas (grian), and Red Rabbits (vikkstar123) 

NOTE: All calculations were done with data between start and end times only.

Total MCC Viewership Over Time

Viewership peaked at 8:33PM (BST) with 818,638 total viewers on twitch (sans the admin stream and katherineelizabeth). This was during TGTTASAWAF, the second game played. Half of participants had gone offline by 10:47PM, around 15 minutes after the MCC winners were announced. Median viewership was 767,720 and average was 758,468.86.

Viewership by Team Over Time

10:30PM: Tommy and Tubbo go offline at the same time resulting in major drop off for Red Rabbits. Tommy raids Wilbur, who later raids Philza. Twenty minutes to the end of the event Dream goes offline, raiding Sapnap, resulting in the large drop off for Green Guardians and the spike for Blue Bats

Viewership by Streamer Over Time

Looking at this graph is the closest I’ve gotten to understanding why Tommy said “Dream only has 100k?” RIP to the 20 or so people making up the band of color at the bottom.

Viewership Breakdown at Peak by Individual

It’s neat to see who people choose to watch when a lot of their CC’s are live, which you can really see here.

Viewership Breakdown at Peak VS Survey Data

Thank you to @420technoblazeit​ for giving permission to reference their survey!

The differences are as follows: (in order of greatest diff. to least) Pink Parrots: -29.0% (46.8% vs 17.8%) Green Guardians: +25.7% (14.1% vs 39.3%) Red Rabbits: +14.1% (19.6% vs 33.7%) Cyan Creepers: -4.8% (7.4% vs 2.6%) Lime Llamas: -2.7% (3.2% vs 0.5%) Orange Ocelots: -2.2% (3.1% vs 0.9%) Purple Pandas: -2.3% (2.7% vs 0.4%) Blue Bats: +1.4% (1.2% vs 2.6%) Aqua Axolotls: -0.8% (1.6% vs 0.8%) Yellow Yaks: +0.6% (0.2% vs 0.8%)

This is really interesting! It’s solid evidence towards the observed theory that MCYT Tumblr vs MCYT Twitter is significant, especially in which CC’s they prefer.

Peak Viewership by Streamer

Top Five 1. TommyInnit: 197,770 2. DreamWasTaken: 141,855 3. Sapnap: 134,415 4. Quackity: 130,694 5. Tubbo: 93,016

Bottom Five 32. Sylveey: 663 33. KaraCorvus: 662 34. Cubfan135: 506 35. Krtzyy: 383 36. Quig: 362

See link at top for detailed list of peak numbers!

Median Viewership by Streamer

I honestly don’t know if median is a good measurement for this, but it was very similar to average viewership (only two people change position).

Thank you for reading!!

If you have any suggestions or critique please lay it on me! I am an amateur and did this entirely for fun, so I know there are probably better ways to do things. I hope to make my data collection for MCC 15 more comprehensive :]

[chal-lelerc]

ok so like. here’s my harry potter house thing. i’m ngl i tried to do this but then i deleted it bc it was getting too long and i didn’t have the attention span but. it kept sticking in my brain so i decided to pick it back up and as such, i’ve lost the original post but it was a quarantine activity (sort drivers into houses, assign quidditch positions, explain) posted by @verstappened​. houses done first, then positions, then explanations for both. i tried to make feasible teams, i.e making sure there arent too many of a single position per house, so this really screwed some of the sorting but oh well.

i did the houses first, then positions, then explanations in that order for the most part.

5/13/20: the sorting was mostly done before i heard all the differing opinions (of which there were many!)

5/19/20: alright so this is literally like 2 months old but i’ve just finished it lolol

Lewis Hamilton:

Slytherin: THE GLORY MAN. the aloof kind of superiority, confidence, is top dog, he’s simply the pinnacle of it all. kind of lethal and doesn’t do the whole ‘looking up to others’ things (outwardly, but he seems very soft on the inside tbh). very majestic and is almost a gryffindor, the kind of slytherin that Merlin is. hard-working, got here from incredibly humble beginnings, which kind of stands out from the rest, but he’s clearly now at the top level of society. still very protective of Others. scarily ambitious. Was originally a gryffindor but I wanted the brits to be in different houses for their quidditch positions to work. Could honestly go either way though.

Seeker: more glory. periodt. he stays winning and scoring the most points. clutch-man. Speedy boy, kind of in a different world than everyone else when competing (he’s always at the front lifetimes away from everyone else lmao. playing a diff game.)

Valtteri Bottas:

Hufflepuff: HE SEEMS. LIKE. A. BIG. CHILD. always relegated and brushed off but is literally God-Tier and no one can convince me otherwise. i consider him to be rather reliable (reflecting only the 2019 season at least lmao). a bit of a vindictive streak bc he knows what he’s Capable Of even when others underestimate him. has a very bright smile.

Beater: have u seen him. he’s a big boy even though he’s 5′8 and only an inch taller than lando norris he seems bigger than he is ok

Charles Leclerc:

Slytherin: this bitch. what a snake. hiss hiss.

Chaser: he wants what lewis hamilton has but chose the wrong position. still a star in his own right. pride and joy of his house, will be at the lead of every formation play unless told otherwise by his head of house, to which he will brood and complain ab but comply in the end bc he wants Team Success and loyalty to his Family. scores the most points on the team and people act like he carries even though he literally has a partner(s).

ok but fr my gut said charles is a slytherin (do i really need to explain why? very critical, doesn’t accept inferiority, somehow succeeds. just a feeling his brain seems to fit motorsport politics well), but i was seriously contemplating whether he’d be a gryffindor to max’s slytherin instead. but then i saw someone mention the whole lion schtick and i was like for all of max’s brattiness he is Gryffindor so sharl is snake. sorry don’t make the rules just follow them.

further edit: this was written before he started streaming (this is how old this draft is) and can u believe him he’s the epitome of the “not all slytherins r evil wenches” idea

Sebastian Vettel:

Ravenclaw: idk for all of Seb’s goofiness he just seems cerebral to me. Seems to know mildly irrelevant facts and is really quite smart however is hopeless in the modern age. Kind of that wise old(er he’s not that old) man knowledge. I’d trust him to give me all the life advice I need but also to write a 10 page essay on the nuances of the effect of emotion on verbal language (which we all know he is very experienced with).

Keeper: it’s the protective Dad Power.

Max Verstappen:

Gryffindor: WAS REALLY GONNA PUT HIM IN SLYTHERIN BC HE’S A NASTY LIL SHIT. TOTAL BRAT. GIVES FUCK ALL WHAT OTHERS SAY. BUT HE IS LION AND LION IS HE SO GRYFFINDOR IT IS. also just bc he needs to oppose sharl in every way possible it’s called Poetic Cinema. also his driving style is clearly the bravery and confidence to the point of recklessness that is prevalent among gryffindors.

Chaser: again, he must oppose Charles. so, not a seeker although he’s clearly singularly the most prized competitor. just like Charles, pride and joy of house, their star chaser. the comparisons never end. the competition never ends. the fighting never ends. one of the most interesting and dynamic performers to watch, is predictable in that he’s not predictable except that he will always be aggro to the max. will always be in trouble for getting rough bc that’s Not His Job but that’s just the gryffindor disregard for rules. master point scorer.

Alex Albon:

Gryffindor: was really a toss up btwn this and Hufflepuff but the ultimate deciding factor was the fact that I wanted all the British Boys to be seekers. he really just sticks it out as max’s teammate like a real one (nothing against max, everything against Helmet Merco) for the good of the team, still is sweet with max anyway. fitting that they’re in the same house too.

Seeker: he’s not the small boy that lando and lewis are but he is (thai/)British. very special boy (big ups on the promotion even tho it was Sad Times for Pear) deserves very special job. also he has a hot girlfriend (alex albon who i only know lily he’s boy toy) idk how that’s relevant but it seems fitting.

Carlos Sainz:

Ravenclaw: bc he’s a spaniard but is still better at english than Lando (i think everyone is tbh). Seems to be a quiet type of smart, sensible, but perhaps this is just the consequence of being compared to Lanno at all times LMAO (no hate all love bby Lannd). would be the type of ravenclaw to follow his friends on absolutely idiotic ventures but would step in to prevent near death or likely-legal-problem causing actions (and only then; otherwise it’s every man for themselves and everyone is free to make a fool of themselves and break some laws. carlos may dabble in such practices.)

Chaser: seems to be a go-getter, not going for points doesn’t even cross his mind. will always be the one driving up the pitch, the strategist of sorts bc he seems big(ger) brain (than lando lololol).

Edit: I wrote this part ab him long ago but this entire section of this post is now irrelevant and canceled.

Lando Norris:

Hufflepuff: you all know why. zero explanation needed. like, none.

also has a bit of an aggressive streak which tends to catch ppl off guard. is not afraid to confront u (hello pageNO) and at times defies the hufflepuff stereotype of being perpetually happy go-lucky (he has his bad days!). but when with His True Crew he is absolutely a hufflepuff ball of energy.

Seeker: small and speedy. energetic to the max. small. quirky and different from the rest, so he gets the special job. small. everyone would kill to protect him. small.

Daniel Ricciardo:

Gryffindor: AW I DIDN’T EVEN REALIZE THAT I PUT HIM AND MAX TOGETHER. LOOK I EVEN MADE THEM BOTH CHASERS. AH HOW BIGBRAIN MY MIND IS. everything ab dan is gold. golden skin, the colors in redbull and renault, his smile, just the vibes. he’s just got the enthusiasm and charisma and this intensity of a gryffindor. super aggressive, his late breaking (from his rbr at least) is legendary and maddening with how he pulls it off. is almost a hufflepuff but the gut said no.

Chaser: is Max’s teammate. so yeah. was obviously the star until younger max came to the show. a bit lost in limbo bc of it but they still work well together.

literally want to make him a hufflepuff so. bad. but i couldn’t split up maxiel. also his vibe is just different from other ‘puffs like stroll so.

Esteban Ocon:

Slytherin: ask max.

Chaser: being characterized off of their relationship with max seems to be a theme here. will go head to head with max w/ absolutely zero shits given. talented, but the rivalry with max is entirely secondary to charles imho. still yet to show his full potential but is still quietly a thorn in max’s side. many are interested to see what he is able to do in the immediate future.

Pierre Gasly:

Hufflepuff: GUYS HE WANTS TO OWN A PANDA

Chaser: constantly trying to prove himself and score big boy points. had a stint as seeker until lando came along. did not do as well as ppl had hoped, returned to chaser and proceeded to crush it from there. praticed a lot with charles as children (the friendship dynamic w/ their houses was definitely unforseen but is amazing).

Daniil Kvyat:

Hufflepuff: really wanted to make him a slytherin but the quidditch positions didn’t work out. firmly believe this works though. more of the rough and tumble type, definitely the kind that will sock u in the nose if u write off hufflepuffs as a joke. could honestly probably be a gryffindor too with how unapologetically aggressive he can be in the name of His Beliefs. gives me big dumb himbo vibes now that i think ab it tbh which is mostly the justification here. also he has a child omg.

Chaser: but the one that’s always headbutting bludgers out of the air (torpedo bitches). also had a stint as seeker before but it Was Not His Thing. he’d much rather be chasing and throwing things than seeking things. also he’s pierre’s mate :,) would’ve been a beater but romain and valtteri will not be anything else so daniil took the boot whoops.

Sergio Perez:

Slytherin: it’s just the vibe. knows his weaknesses and is able to make up for it with his confidence and talent in his strengths. very ambitious, plays the right cards at the right times to get the right results. something ab him puts me on edge, but like in a good way; i feel like there’s always a trump card up his sleeve, like when he gets to q3 out of fucking nowhere in a racing point.

Keeper: he gives me the same vibes as seb idk what it is. very dependable, backbone of his team.

Lance Stroll:

Hufflepuff: guys have u seen the guy. he’s just here to have a good time. may seem a bit airheaded at times but he means well 99% of the time. untapped potential. seems like a no thoughts head empty canadian hockey boy (and every one of these types is a hufflepuff don’t fight it); may or may not be the only accurate description of him.

Chaser: he’s just trying his best out here. i

KEEPER?: SO I DID A QUICK GOOGLE AND HE USED TO BE A HOCKEY

GOALIE?????

so scratch my initial thoughts (tbh i didn’t really know where to put him and i originally had romain as keeper but that’s an issue to fix later on now) BECAUSE LANCE STROLL IS A keeper GOALIE AND NO ONE CAN REFUTE THIS. ABSOLUTELY NO HUMAN OF THIS EARTH. WHAT GLORIOUS INFORMATION TO STUMBLE ACROSS.

Kimi Raikkonen:

Slytherin: guys i really don’t have an in depth analysis of this but i don’t think iceman needs one.

Beater: see above^. y’all must get the vibe.

tbh could also be a keeper tho similar energies to seb and checo, but honestly his no fucks given attitude is ultimately what swayed me

Antonio Giovinazzi:

Gryffindor: he just has that majestic quality (that could also fit a slytherin but i only see red when i see antonio). look at that lion’s mane. also he’s one of kimi’s to paddock friends? seems fitting that he’s a gryffindor to kimi’s slytherin.

Chaser: plays second fiddle to the duo that is max and daniel, often regulated to vibing on the side. but he’s there and he’s important and he has potential (i’ve been seeing ppl talking ab a ferrari move and i’m positively shaken). [edit: again, this post is old.]

im sorry its glaringly obvious idk much about him asdfjasldkd

Kevin Magnussen:

Slytherin: guys lots of these are just self explanatory sorry if i seem like im taking the cheap way out but it’s fact. brundle and crofty call him a great white shark for crying out loud.

Beater: unapologetically chaotic. lurking around the edges making people feel hunted. spends more time playing baseball in the middle of the matches than quidditch and sometimes it backfires but it’s good fun and it sometimes works.

Romain Grosjean:

Hufflepuff: y’all he’s such dad energy and he likes to cook. gets written off a lot but he actually cares (he’s a part of the grand prix drivers assoc.!). he seems so wholesome and he spends time with his kids and their school work when he can do u feel those water drops yeah those r my tears.

Beater: i really wanted to make him a slytherin beater to make him teammates with k-mag but he’s just. not a slytherin. but i kept the beater part. spends the majority of the hufflepuff v. slytherin matches sending bludgers kevin’s way even when he doesn’t mean to. it’s always reciprocated.

George Russell:

Ravenclaw: I’VE SAID IT BEFORE AND I’LL SAY IT AGAIN THIS KID. is so marvelously well spoken and he just has such a simple yet effective way with words. he knows what’s reasonable to expect but never fails to expect the most that he can given his circumstances. again, mentioned this before but a lot of it is his accent. the glottal stop is a historically stereotypically rural (i.e. “uneducated”) thing but I’m American and I Don’t Listen to the Rules, so the accent just makes him seem so sophisticated to me especially when he’s saying things like “horriiiiiiiific” and presenting his hefty powerpoints.

Seeker: my British Boys Are Seekers headcanon continues. definitely a Golden Boy of the team kind of guy (hello tragic dumpsterfire that is williams :/ ).

Nicholas Latifi:

Hufflepuff: same boat as lance. his twitch streams are so wholesome he’s just chilling man. twitter made me write him off as daft and unnecessary at first but like fuck twitter i’m all here for ninky latvia now.

Chaser: lowkey gives me keeper vibes as well? the sensible, level-headedness. but obvs that’s lance so chaser it is. still the level-headedness that helps him hold down the fort btwn pierre and daniil who can tend to get a bit imaginative, and also the energies of them + lando.

5/19/20: so it’s quite clear to me that i grew tired of brain functions the more time i took on this and the later ones are a bit lacking and for that i’m very sorry. that being said i’m still happy to see this finished bc the idea was VERY exciting for me.

[avery598]

Fecal Transplant: an introduction…

Fecal transplant. Let face it, the name alone is enough to gross out pretty much anyone. It is, in fact, just what it sounds like: taking feces from a person whos is helathy and placing it in the colon of the sick patient. This process takes the “good” bacteria and microorganisms that is normally found in the gut of a healthy individual into the recipient, whose good bacteria is scarce or even non-existent most of the time due to high antibiotic use. This treatment offers great hope, no side effects have been reported in millions of procedures worldwide, a 90%+ success rate in certain conditions including autism, and many patients see improvement after just a few days. Despite the fecal treatment being around since 1958 and building considerable legitimacy from academic research, the FDA has not investigated it as a viable alternative to pills and other medicine. Many times, the culprit is actually the FDA-approved antibiotics that gradually decimates the good bacteria, while creating stronger and more resistant bad bacteria in patients, fecal transplant is the only solution for millions of people, most of them don’t even know it yet.

What could cause the healthy bacteria to decline in a person? Most sources say it is when a nasty, unhealthy bacteria strain known as Clostridium difficile, or C. diff for short, takes over due to an overuse of antibiotics. Normally the good bacteria maintain a balance with the bad, but this order can become disrupted by the very antibiotics used to treat a C. diff patient. The good bacteria get progressively wiped out with each round of antibiotics and C. diff can then thrive, outnumber the good, and get a stronger hold on the intestines.

C. diff on the rise…

C. diff infection cases have been growing in number during the last 30 years at an alarming rate. They were first thought of as merely a temporary negative side effect to antibiotics but as the bacteria strain has become more resilient to treatments over the years, it is now considered a serious health problem. As the years go by with more and more C. diff strains creating permutations, they’ve grown stronger and more resistant to medications used to cure them. Remember, the drugs used against C. diff usually kill off the healthy bacteria too. This “screens out” all but the most resistant, hearty C. diff bacteria that reproduce and take over more of the person’s intestinal real estate.

According to gastrointerologist and immunologist Alex Khoruts at the University of Minnesota, the fecal transplant bacteria indeed take over the ailing patient’s intestines and replace the once-thriving helpful bacteria. Think of it like sending in the healthy bacterial reinforcements to battle it out in the guts. This is enough to swing the advantage back to the good guys and the harmful C. diff is slowly killed off to regain a healthy balance.

Fecal donors

When it comes to finding a donor, yes a feces donor, most medical professionals ask their patients to choose one themselves. This could be a brother, sister, child, spouse, or other individual that is willing and has had tests to show they have a healthy gastrointestinal system.

The type of screening needed for a fecal donor is about the same standard as for a blood donation. This ensures they have no digestive diseases or other ailments which would reduce the fecal transplant’s success or, worse yet, introduce a new disease to the recipient. The lab work needed is not always covered by insurance and can create other hurdles also with respect to time and medical confidentiality.

DIY

Another alternative that has been proposed is to simply have the patients do the fecal transplant in their own home using an enema kit. The downside, as mentioned in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, is that too much of the transplant “material” may leak out and thereby result in an unsuccessful treatment. Supposedly seven patients have done the do-it-yourself fecal transplant at home safely and had a 100% recovery rate.

Fecal transplants, despite the lack of focused, formal FDA investigation seem to be gaining more popularity as a viable treatment. It has also been recommended that they be tried first in cases of severe C. diff infections as opposed to something to try as a last resort. What is also very thought-provoking is the research on how the intestinal bacteria can influence other health issues such as anxiety, depression, pre-diabetics, and obesity among others. Yes, a poop swap could boost your mood…

Fecal transplants are now undergoing clinical trials not in the United States, but in Canada. The FDA needs those in the medical field who are advocates of this treatment to provide more research and formally file to have this procedure approved. The researchers in the United States express some apprehension about the FDA-approval process, and about being able to answer all the potential questions arising from the proposal. Unlike drug approval petitions, which the FDA commonly deals with, feces is not classified as a drug or other patentable thing. Nevertheless, people are already trying fecal transplants at home to treat their debilitating C. diff infections. Medical providers need to be able to offer this safe, low cost treatment in a professional environment to achieve the best success rates.

[loversoon]

Almost Is Never Enough.

Word count: 3,162

Pairing: Roger Taylor & Reader, can also be Ben Hardy!Roger Taylor & Reader

Warning(s): Very angsty and emotional. Also contains a bit of smut so discretion is adviced.

Summary: She huffed, pulling herself up from the stool and forcing herself out of the room, out of their house, out of his life. She tried, she did. And maybe someday the universe will bring them back together again for another cup of coffee. They almost won, but sometimes almost is never enough.

or

The one where their love ended up with them being two worlds apart.

Walking past the university door, she was almost immediately pushed back as a warm body collided into her small one. The collision resulted in warm coffee spilling all over her coat and the person that bumped into her.

"Oh my God, I am so sorry!" She gasped as she took in the damage, immediately reaching into her backpack as she pulled out napkins. The person chuckled at her poor attempts of drying the already cold coffee off the already soaked shirt. She looked up briefly, to be met with a beautiful set of eyes.

Soft and dark shades of ocean blues danced in his irises, almost creating a swirling pattern. The same colors as the waves of the ocean that would crash along the sea shore. Eyes gazed with amusement as a light smirk made it's way into his slightly-chapped plump lips. His aura was intimidating, yet captivating. He was beautiful. Alluring and prepossessing.

As she gazed into his soft eyes, his mind was set on how magnetic she felt. The Y/E/C eyes that gazed into his own gave him a sense of enchantment, she was bewitching and fascinating. She brought her closer to him with just a look from those beautiful eyes.

And that's how it all began. As clićhe and cheesy as it may sound, it was almost as if that cup of coffee was the universe's way of bring two lovers together. If the timing wasn't right then god knows they wouldn't have found themselves in each other's arms. They were never one to believe in a thing such as love, already having learned from past heartbreaks that it takes a lot to fall in love with a person, and with just a flick of a lever, they found each other falling deep.

Those eyes that she loved dearly, peering down at her with such admiration. Melting her into a small puddle on the ground as the softest of smiles adorned her pretty lips. It was fairly easy for her to fall in love with him. How can you not? He was perfect in her eyes. The man she always found herself daydreaming about in her middle-school years, her dreams were finally coming true, and he was one of them.

Months passed by like a blur with each moment spent together. Months felt like hours when they were singing along to their favorite song on the car radio, or when they were laughing at something the other person said. Time flies by fast when two people are in love.

For him it feels surreal how he has finally found someone he cherished, someone he cared for. He wasn’t one for cheesy romances, but he wasn’t heartless either. He may have moments where he feels like he won’t need somebody else in his life to complete him but deep down a part of him yearned to fall in love with somebody.

The day he found her, he’d just gotten out of a class, with a piece of paper that he wasn’t too proud of. Failing tests wasn’t something he was quite fond of, but things happen. With a big sigh, he walked out of the classroom, eyes casted down as he pondered about what he would have to do increase his math grade, he wasn’t paying attention to anything that happened around him. With a cloudy mind and a heavy heart, he didn’t notice the frail body that he bumped into.

“Oh my god, I am so sorry!” A girl softly gasped as she reached for tissues in her backpack, he closed his eyes in sheer frustration before opening them again, to see her hastily trying to wipe away the spilled coffee that’s already soaking his white shirt. He can’t help as a chuckle left his mouth at the poor attempts that this girl was offering. Eyes meeting his, his whole mood just about lifted as the amount of softness she radiates seeps into his heart.

After the accidental meeting, she offered to buy him a new shirt, him declining and claiming that a “cup of coffee would just be fine, love”.

The cup of coffee at the café across the street led them to a different path, metaphorically speaking of course. They found themselves loving each other endlessly.

Those same eyes peered up at him as soft moans emitted from her cherry red lips. Elbows on either side of her head as he slowly rocked his hips into hers. The warm cozy feeling of lit candles, the smell of lingering sex, soft moans and deep groans filled the night air as they professed the love they had for each other physically.

“I love you, I love you so much,” He groaned into her ear as his thrusts started speeding up, moans spilling from his lips as she pursed hers together, wondering if he meant what he said or if he was just driven by the force of lust filling his veins.

His groans getting louder as his climax neared, eventually coming undone in the condom, he kissed her forehead lightly before taking off the rubber and rolling over to his side of the bed. Silence seeped into the night air as neither of them found the right words to speak. He’s aware that he let himself slip, the three words he was planning to tell her maybe after a nice dinner slipping in a moment of euphoria instead. It terrified him how he never heard her say it back.

“Rog?” A soft voice slipped him out of his trance, humming in reply, he casted his eyes towards her.

“Did you mean what you said?” An unsure, small voice left her as she looked at him hopefully. That was enough to break him as he leaned into her for a longing kiss.

“I do, God, I do,” He pulled away, a warm smile found it’s way on her lips as her glossy eyes found his. “I love you too, so much,”

Now those same eyes he’d fallen in love with so easily peered up at him with tears, not because of how much she was in love with him, but because of the words he let himself slip just moments ago.

With his band reaching a more successful state, he was getting busier with recording and writing sessions at the nearby studio. He was out almost all day everyday, arriving home late at night with a barely there peck on her forehead as he slipped into the covers next to her. She knew he’d been busy, and she understood too. She was always proud of how far he’s come with his dream career, with the years they’d spent together, drumming was almost always something he was doing. He was so passionate about it and when he finally received the well-deserved success, she was so immensely proud of him.

But of course, with the amount of success he’s receiving comes sacrifices. Touring for months on end was in despicably annoying but if they wanted to keep food in the fridge then it had to be done. Given just a few weeks of alone time together before he’d have to start with the next album, she always took great advantage of the few weeks they had.

But this time it was filled with late nights at the pubs with her left alone wondering if he’d come back home to her in one piece. It worried her greatly how her lover seemed to spiral uncontrollably into something she wasn’t very proud of. It hurt her deeply but she didn’t want to be a bother, she knew how hard he worked on the last tour and he deserved to have a few nights of getting crazy drunk. But those nights turned into weeks and before they both knew it, he was set to start the recording of their latest album.

If the excessive amounts of partying on his side didn’t cause a rift between their relationship, this one definitely did. He was rarely home, sometimes not coming home for days straight, and when he did come home, it would be late at night when he knew she was fast asleep. Gone before she even wakes up from her slumber.

She felt this distance between them causing something in their relationship, and she wasn’t quite ready to admit it to herself yet.

On the nights that he didn’t come home, she would find herself longing for him, emotions expressed with the tears dripping down her cheeks. She pondered about how fast everything was taken away from her, wondered about what she did to have possibly set her lover away from her and thought about how she could fix it.

With the effort of waking up a few minutes before him, she slaved in their kitchen to cook him a healthy breakfast, as a way of expressing the amount of love she still had in every cell of her fibre for him. As she heard his footsteps patting against the wooden staircase, excitement filled her as she placed the plate of eggs and bacon on the kitchen aisle.

He was definitely surprised when he saw her with a large grin with a plate of freshly cooked breakfast nicely put on the aisle. “I cooked you breakfast,” she softly exclaimed. He moved past her, grabbing himself a cup of water to fill his rumbling stomach. “I’m not hungry,” He muttered. A clear white lie, if he was paying attention then maybe he would’ve noticed how she seemed chest fallen at his words.

“But I-uh, I cooked you something to fill your tummy,” she trailed, he huffed before replying with a sterner voice, “I’m not hungry, Y/N.” He hoped for this conversation to end. He wasn’t about to tell her off and possibly create an argument at seven in the bloody morning. He had things to do.

“But I-“, “I said I’m not hungry, Y/N!” He roared, with anger coursing through his veins, the glass cup slipped from his hands and onto the floor. Chest heaving in frustration, he set his eyes on her. Scared and afraid, she trailed her eyes on the broken pieces of glass. He huffed, “I’m going, don’t call me.” He spit out harshly before making his way to the front door and out of the house.

Tears filled the brim of Y/N’s eyes to the point where she couldn’t keep them in anymore. Silently picking up the larger pieces of glass and accidentally cutting her skin open. The way the pain felt from the cut on her finger was different from the pain she felt from her chest. It felt like someone was squeezing her heart, the pain was almost unbearable as her chest heaved up and down with her attempts to take deep breaths. Pulling herself up and settling on the stool, she pulled herself back together as endless thoughts raced through her mind.

Was he falling out of love? He can’t be. He promised her he wouldn’t. With the countless times they professed the amount of love they have for each other during late night talks when either of them can fall asleep, he can’t fall out of love that easily. Not when she was still so madly head over heels for him even through the distance that they had for months on end.

Sobs wracked from her body, palm over her mouth as an attempt to keep them shush herself, he can’t just walk away, not like that and not without fighting for their love.

She was unknowingly the only one fighting for what’s left in their relationship for months. Now that she’s thought about it, everything suddenly clicked and every cloudy thoughts she’d have over the past month suddenly came back to her in full clarity.

That explains the barely there kisses, the way he seemed uninterested whenever she made the effort to spark conversation between the both of them, the short phone calls during the times he was gone that consisted of an “I miss you” and a “good bye”, and he always seemed to be in a rush to end phone calls, as if he wasn’t even interested in hearing her speak about her undying love for him. And he hasn’t touched her, not even once during the whole month and a half he was back home.

The she realized. He can’t possibly be having an affair with someone else, right? He can’t do that to her, he won’t do that to her. Because he promised her that she’ll be the only one he’ll ever love.

More sobs poured out of the poor girl’s mouth, the sound of the miserable sobs covering the sound of her fragile heart breaking into two. She felt so heartbroken she couldn’t think straight. It was almost as if her body was just functioning by itself. The amount of sadness coursing through her veins automatically setting her tear ducts to produce as much tears, pouring out until she had no more left to cry.

And there she sat for hours on end, staring into space as her mind was left blank. The tears have stopped pouring and her cheeks sticky from the dried tears. She felt exhausted but she can’t find the strength to pull herself up. Just as she was trying to regain herself, the front door opened. His arrival didn’t settle in her mind before he stood at the door way of the kitchen. His eyes set on the smaller shards of glass, the dust pan filled with bigger shards of the broken glass and the broom laid flat on the floor. They widened at the sight of her, hair a bit matted and cheeks glistening, he can her the rumbles of her hungry stomach from the distance between the stool and the doorway.

He cleared his throat in an attempt to catch her attention. Eyes meeting his, he felt his heart break slightly. The usual sparkle and brightness that captivated him in the first place was replaced with dullness, the only sparkle in her eyes were the glossiness that took over right when she set her gaze on him.

The two of them stayed in silence before she cleared her throat. The sadness in her heart was replaced with anger, how can he just stand there and pretend he never left her alone in silence, with a broken heart?

“I just wanna know why you’re doing this,” She muttered quietly, he huffed in response. “What do you fucking mean?” He’s getting frustrated now, coming home after a long day at the studio to no food prepared and yet another argument striking. “Do you even love me still? Why have you given up on us?” The tone of her voice was sharper, louder. The words that came out of her mouth hurt him, was she seriously doubting the love he had for her? Yeah, he’s been distant lately, but he’s been busy working to keep the lights on and the warm food in their stomachs.

“Are you seriously gonna go there?” He looked at her with an eyebrow raised, if she wasn’t angry before, she definitely is now. “Just answer my god damned fucking question!” She yelled at him, catching him off-guard and the atmosphere was getting stuffier as each moment passes by. She was never hostile, and she has never raised her voice when it comes to arguments that they’ve shared throughout the years, this was purely new territory to him. Silence engulfed the air once again, silent enough that you could hear the tiniest feather drop.

Then his brows furrowed, as anger coursed through him once again. He glared at her, but this time, he was met by a look of betrayal, hurt and anger. Not an ounce of the old Y/N was left in the aura of the person right across him. The once bubbly, bright and radiant person was replaced with one that radiated pure and sheer anger.

“You know what? I don’t deserve this, I don’t deserve to be treated like shit! Especially by someone like you!” She yelled at him, “You ask me why I fell out of love, then you go ahead and act like such a bitch!” He spits out, his anger was taking the best of him, the air was tense and the fierce look on her face quickly crumbled to a one of hurt and emotion.

Her head hurt as she desperately tried to keep the tears inside, she can’t show him how much everything is affecting her, “I just wanna know why you’re giving up on us, Rog. Please. I just- I- This-this isn’t like us, Rog.” She pleaded as a tear escaped, quickly wiping it off her cheek.

“I do love you still,” His voice softened. Hope filled her eyes, quickly shattered by what came out of his mouth next, “But I just don’t feel like we’re working out,” He muttered softly at her, afraid that he might break her any further.

And she let them be. The tears sped down her cheeks as a loud sob emitted from her chest, her heartbreak was imminent from the amount of tears streaming down her cheeks. The sight of the broken girl in front of him caused a few tears to pool in his eyes.

“So this is it, huh?” She chuckled dryly as she forced herself to face him, take all of him one more time before she would have to bid good bye to the love and the memories shared. “You’re just giving us up like that?” She whispered, “It’s not like that lo-“, “Then what exactly is it, Roger?” She hiccupped, the sight of him tearing up was breaking her heart even more, “Because from what I understand, you’re just gonna give us up without even trying to make the effort to make things work,” She spoke, “I did my part, Rog. I tried fixing us, but I can’t just fix a relationship with two fucking people by myself,” She cried and yet again, she was mer by silence. He set his gaze on the floor and unable to find the right words to speak to her, a few tears strolling down his cheeks.

She huffed, pulling herself up from the stool and forcing herself out of the room, out of their house, out of his life. She tried, she did. And maybe someday the universe will bring them back together again for another cup of coffee. They almost won, but sometimes almost is never enough.

-

hi :) i hope you liked this one! feedback is welcomed, please like and/or reblog if you enjoyed this one, it would mean so much to me. if you wanna be added to my taglist, the link is on my profile! thank you for reading <3

taglist:

@prince-lucifer-v

[emmerrr]

And!! #28 for pynch. 💖💖

deja! i’m doing this one before the andreil one you sent because i can’t decide what i want to do with that one yet, but here is 28 for pynch: “I don’t care that it’s 2:00 am, we need pie.” i hope you like it lovely!💖

-

Adam is restless.

It’s late, well over an hour since they went to bed, and Adam has done nothing but toss and turn and sigh, and sit up and lie back down again, and kick off his covers before pulling them back on. He has not slept.

Ronan has also not yet slept.

This has less to do with the fact that he isn’t tired, and more to do with the fact that Adam can’t stay still and it’s keeping him awake. Ronan’s been silently running through potential soothing platitudes, but everything sounds monumentally unhelpful in his head, and he doesn’t think Adam will appreciate it, especially as he knows that Ronan doesn’t really understand how he feels.

There’s no demons to deal with tomorrow, no dead bodies, no potentially dangerous quests to go on. But at nine in the morning, Adam will get his results for his first year at college.

Ronan just can’t relate to that.

Adam flops over onto his stomach and groans. Ronan rubs his back and leans over to press a feather-light kiss to his shoulder.

“Try and get some sleep, babe. The longer you sleep, the less you have to wait. It’ll ease your anguish.”

“I’m not anguished,” Adam grumbles. “I’m just…anxious.”

“Same diff,” Ronan shrugs. He doesn’t like seeing Adam anxious or anguished or any other uncomfortable feeling. He likes his Adam smiling and safe and content.

He tries a different tack, nudging his nose against Adam’s arm in an attempt to get him to turn around. “Try and think of it as an actual exam. If you had an exam tomorrow, you know you’d need to sleep to be like…refreshed for it.”

Adam does turn around, only to huff in disgruntlement, warm air hitting Ronan’s face. But still, he pulls on Ronan’s arm until it’s circled around him and twines their legs together. “But I know it’s not an exam tomorrow, it’s the results. And also, how much or how little I sleep will have absolutely no effect on them, so I may as well just lie here and suffer until I have them, and then I can sleep.”

Ronan smiles indulgently and kisses the tip of Adam’s nose. “Not to be embarrassingly sure of how smart you are and how hard you worked, but you know you’ve aced these, right?”

Adam shoots Ronan a withering look. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be awake right now.”

“You told me you thought they’d gone well.”

“Well yeah, I remember feeling good about them when I took them, but I’ve had ample time to overthink the whole thing since then. I just as easily could’ve fucked the whole thing up.”

“Hey.” Ronan pulls him closer. “Not a chance.”

Adam tucks his face into Ronan’s neck and sighs. “I love you,” he says, muffled, “but you don’t know that.”

“Sure I do.”

Any further retort Adam has ready to go is interrupted by his stomach rumbling, loudly.

“That reminds me,” Ronan says reproachfully, “you barely touched your dinner.”

“Wasn’t hungry.”

“Uh huh. I see that.”

Adam scowls. It’s adorable. Ronan grins at him and kisses him, lightning quick, before disentangling their limbs and hopping out of bed.

“Well, come on then,” he says, reaching for pants and a t-shirt.

Adam sits up in bed, eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Come on where, exactly?”

“We’re getting in the car. And we’re going to get pie.”

“Ronan. It is two o’clock in the morning.”

“I don’t care, we need pie.”

The good thing is that Adam is used to Ronan’s whims, so he gets up with no further comment, and pulls on a pair of Ronan’s sweatpants and his Harvard hoodie.

They head downstairs hand in hand, using the light from Ronan’s phone to light the way. It’s quiet and still outside as they walk to the car, the kind of stillness that feels like it shouldn’t be disturbed.

Which Ronan ruins, of course, by playing Adam’s shitbox singalong mix really loudly as they get on their way.

He sings joyfully along with the words, and it doesn’t take long for Adam to give in with a smile and join in.

Being well-versed in bouts of insomnia, Ronan knows all the spots nearby that are open 24/7, and he pulls into a little diner a couple of miles out from Henrietta. They order two giant slices of pie (apple for Ronan, blueberry for Adam), with mountains of ice-cream, and two hot chocolates for good measure.

There’s a jukebox, and Ronan puts in a quarter to get it to play You’re My Best Friend by Queen, and he and Adam smile giddily at each other the whole time it’s on.

What with the drive and the slowly making their way through their pie and drinks, it’s getting close to four when they finally leave the diner. Adam’s cheeks are flushed from laughing, and the tension he was holding earlier has lessened somewhat.

For the drive back to the Barns, Ronan puts on a quieter playlist, folky shit that he knows Adam likes (and that he, gun to his head, has to admit isn’t all that bad).

Within five minutes, Adam’s eyes start to droop, and by the time Ronan pulls up at the Barns, he’s fast asleep, his chin on his chest.

Ronan is absolutely loathe to wake him, but knows from experience that sleeping in the car isn’t very comfortable.

He turns off the engine, gets out and goes around to the passenger side, opening the door and unbuckling Adam’s seatbelt.

“Adam,” he whispers, and it’s enough for Adam to stir.

“We’re home,” Adam says, blinking, smiling up at Ronan. He yawns. “That was nice. Tired now. Take me to bed.”

Ronan laughs quietly, heart aching with extreme fondness, and he takes Adam’s hand and leads him inside.

Back in bed, Adam’s asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow, and this time it’s Ronan who can’t sleep, too preoccupied with watching the shadows move across Adam’s face as the light slowly changes in the room around them.

The next thing he’s aware of is a delighted laugh coming from beside him, and he jolts awake.

Adam is looking at his phone and grinning, which can only mean one thing.

Ronan tosses his pillow at Adam’s face. “What the fuck did I tell you, huh, Parrish?”

“Yeah, yeah, you are very wise and smart,” Adam says, and he tosses the pillow right back.

Ronan moves it out of his face and is then greeted by Adam looming down over him and treating him to a very lengthy kiss.

All in all, it’s a very nice way to start the morning.

Adam pulls away far too soon. “Get up, you have to make me pancakes because I aced my exams.”

Ronan hooks an arm around Adam’s waist and rolls him over so he’s pinned beneath him.

“Five more minutes,” he says, and leans in.

[tap-tap-tap-im-in]

Black Mage

“I don’t understand what you do, it all seems like black magic to me.” - A very honest and satisfied customer.

As someone who has had the pleasure and the curse of doing things that my boss doesn’t have the time or the context to understand, I can’t tell you how many times someone has expressed something like the above sentiment to me. I know a huge part of it is because I have been working at companies small enough that I don’t have very many peers who are fully aware of what I’m doing, and those few peers can’t always follow the logic I’m using. I honestly don’t know if that means I’m operating above them, or that my logic is hugely flawed, but after a few years of getting more positive results than negative I’m starting to trust my gut a lot more.

I’ve been called a doctor (I don’t hold a doctorate), a wizard (I don’t practice magic or magicks), and a lifesaver (I don’t know what flavor). I’ve also heard all sorts of negative descriptions of what I do, and its weird. These small companies need results that are affordable to maintain, and quick to implement, but the thing that they seem quickest to cast off, the thing that would bring my work from the shadows into the light, is documentation. I’ve tried my best to leave ample documentation at the positions I’ve left. I have no idea if it was enough, and at this point I don’t even really care because I was far more interested in making sure they had it than they were in me giving it to them.

I’ve learned a couple of things in the last few years of no one really knowing what I do, and I think I’d like to share those with you.

Keep documentation. As much of it as you can. If you’re the only one who knows something, if you forget it, everything is out to sea. Plus, if you decide to leave the position, you can hand over the documentation and not have any guilt about them not understanding what you did.

Find metrics for all of the work you do. They should be as honest as you can make them, but they need to be nicely quantifiable so that if your manager starts wondering about what it is you’re doing, you have a bunch of numbers to give them that look nice in a report to give to a client or upper management.

Lean into the laziness. I don’t mean miss deadlines or do sloppy work, those will get you fired, but instead relish in the fact that the only thing setting your own process is you. Research, learn, gather or build tools, and join online communities. All of these will make you better and faster at your job, and learning can be fun on its own, and you’d be surprised what kind of information you can tie back to your own job. I read about games and game engines all the time, my justification is that I look into the graphics technology and I crib some of their ideas to help me optimize websites and software.

I mentioned this above, but it really deserves its own point. Join a community of people who are doing something close to what you are doing. The hardest part of having a position like this is that there’s no real way to know if what you are doing is the right thing. Sure, it might be working for now, but is it the best? Learning from your peers can better your process, but it will also save you from a bunch of crippling doubt. Most people, even experts in their fields, are just kind of trying things to see if they work. The difference between experts and amateurs seems to be that experts do this ahead of time to plan their future actions, and amateurs do it almost exclusively in reaction to some deadline or emergency.

Be ethical. Having a position like this makes it exceedingly easy to lie. And you will get away with it, possibly for a long time. But it does catch up to you, and when it does it can kill your whole career, as well as get you fired. Plus I’ll hate you, because you’ve helped contribute to a lot of friction I’ve had with managers over the years.

Be understanding that people don’t understand what you are doing, or what you are saying. Learn to laugh it off. They’re not stupid or ignorant, they just don’t have the same specialized knowledge that you do. If you feel anger welling up, remember, your specialized knowledge is why you’re probably going to be very employable for a very long time.

If you would like to know what I do, here’s an incomplete list of projects I have worked on (they’re not all my best work, but they all taught be something):

PCI Complaint Credit Card Encryption (AES-256, double encrypted, second key is kept [also double encrypted] in an external database requiring IP, hostname, and API token to access. This one was extra dumb because for good measure I built an implementation of the Diffy Hellman exchange used in the communication between browsers and SSL websites and used it inside of the exchange that was already happening to connect to the SSL API in the first place. I encrypted the communication inside of the encrypted communication. I still have no idea if this did anything to help secure it, or if it was just giving the server processors busy work. But anecdotally, we never had anyone decrypt our data without both keys… so)

Completely rewriting a custom piece by piece CMS and then transforming it into a CRM (I hate that terrible acronym, it’s a client, employee, and project management portal)

Website optimization

Using Google Maps to outline your driveway to estimate the material needed to repave it (simpler than it sounds, I did this in three hours)

Writing a client to to automated cloud backups of files chosen by the user (Think Kryptonite, but way less of a budget)

Modifying the above client to sent status and health data back to a central server for monitoring (think LogMeIn, but way less of a budget)

Writing crawler with the aim of only requesting every resource once, even if the resource is used on multiple pages. (I hope all crawlers are built this way, but I suspect they’re not)

Evaluating the data from that crawler to create an SEO report about that website (Think SEM rush, but way less of a budget)

The worst API implementations I’ve ever seen, and I’ve used SOAP.

Writing JavaScript libraries for commonly requested “flashy” elements that leverage technology to make the effects as optimized as possible. (Think banner sliders using CSS transform, and parallax effects using HTML Canvas, anything to pass the heavy lifting over the the graphics hardware and free up the CPU for other work)

Database Diff tools for projects that don’t have proper version control for whatever goddamned reason (there’s no good reason, but you play the cards you’re dealt)

Automated migrations of data in and out of OpenCart, WordPress, Drupal, and even once out of static HTML files written in Dreamweaver V1.0 (and we cached back and forth from wordpress every night on the last one, a dumb requirement, but I did it.)

Calling up a client and telling them that their computer has a virus, and they need to disconnect it from the network, or I’m locking them out of their email account before they spam the entire North American continent. (And yes, you really do have to do this sometimes as a server admin when your boss refuses to let you just lock out the user.)

And, I shit you not, a passed over prototype for integration of a major Shipping Carrier’s new “Deliver To Very Large Drugstore Chain” API features into a woocommerce plugin. They would have sold the plugin along side several others, we would have made a few pennies on every order. (Managers, please tell your developers when a prototype is being tested in front a board of directors, then your developer may not go home when the prototype was bricked by a last minute feature the night before, assuming there will be time to work on it tomorrow)

[stumpyjoepete]

It’s tests all the way down!

(Followup post on software testing to go along with previous reblog. I wanted to say in that post that strategy #1 doesn’t work well for that sort of code, except for trivial cases, and it’s not clear to me what sort of tests would make sense to write using strategy #2. Strategy #3 works, but it is too high a bar for every-day work. However, I needed to actually define those strategies, so here goes.)

Pretty much all software has bugs. I hope, if you program, that you have already accepted this to be true. So, given that, what can we do to find those bugs? A very standard answer to that question is: Write tests. Problem solved, right?

The astute reader will notice that “tests” are, in fact, also code, and there’s no particular reason to imagine that they would be exempt from the claim that “all software has bugs”. So, why should they help in any way at all? Contrary to the title, we very rarely write tests for our tests, and we certainly don’t write tests for our tests for our tests and so on, ad infinitum. So, is testing worthless? (Spoilers: No.) If not, why does it work? And can we use the answer to that to guide how we write our tests?

Testing strategies (and explanations of why they work) below the cut, because it turns out I have a lot to say about them.

Strategy #1 -- Simple and Obvious

Production code needs to work for all inputs, and this generality requires a certain amount of complexity, which in turn can lead to bugs. But a single test case can be much simpler and more concrete. In most cases, it will be limited to a single sequence of steps or a single input/output pair.

The efficacy of this approach comes from simplicity. The simpler and less abstract your code is, the easier it is to check for bugs with your own two eyes.

An implication of this is that your assertions need to actually be simple, in order for this to be effective.

If you have lots of looping and conditionals and whatnot in your tests, it’s just as likely as your prod code to have bugs.

Similarly, if you have a “simple” test that checks an input/output pair but the input and expected output are enormous and complex, then this isn’t actually simple.

Another implication is that your assertions must be obvious. Tests sometimes do have bugs. And when you’re intentionally changing behaviors of code, some of the resulting test failures will be the result of the test being wrong rather than the code (which is functionally the same as having a buggy test). So any time there’s a test failure, the reader (who often was not the writer of the test or the code) has to decide whether it’s a problem in the code or the test, and it’s important to make this easy.

If a test fails with a message like “testFooClassBarMethod failed: expected 3 got 4” and the test body is just “assertEqual(foo.bar(), 3)”, then yes, that’s simple, but it’s not obvious why 3 is the right answer (or if it even is). Naming test cases after higher-level behaviors rather than the piece of code they happen to touch makes it easier to decide if (a) that behavior is still desired and (b) if the test is successfully implementing an assertion about that behavior.

If you write golden-file tests, then god have mercy on your soul.

A downside of this approach is that you only get coverage for the actual concrete values you manually come up with. (People with a hard-on for theorem provers like to bring this up. But this kind of super basic unit testing has done more for real-life software quality than theorem-proving ever has. Take that Dijkstra!)

Strategy #2 -- Property-Based Testing

There are many ways to write a sorting algorithm. But they all better put the outputs in order. That is, correct outputs have a certain property (regardless of the particular input or implementation details of the prod code). This means you can randomly generate inputs, pump them through your prod code, and then check the properties you care about in the resulting outputs. (See also: QuickCheck)

The efficacy of this approach comes from asymmetries between solving the problem and checking the correctness of a solution. (Mumble mumble P vs NP)

I don’t think I’ve ever really seen people use this approach and then mess it up. It’s just not always easy to do, so it’s not very commonly used. I find that “mathy” code is much more amenable to this approach, where specifying desired properties of outputs is often easier than putting together a concrete input/output pair that is “obviously correct”. For “business logic” type code, requirements often map much more clearly into regular unit test cases.

If your code for asserting a property is complicated, you should test it with a regular unit test.

Fuzzing is actually a special case of property-based testing, except that the properties are generic things like “doesn’t crash”, “doesn’t access uninitialized memory”, and so forth. (Another option would be to just not use a language like C...) One thing that fuzzers bring to the table is coverage-driven explorations of the input space (rather than purely random input generation). I have no experience whatsoever with this, but it’s my understanding that hardware testing has been doing this a lot longer than software testing has.

The mechanics are obviously different, but theorem proving is very similar to property-based testing. In both cases, you need to specify very precisely what properties your system must have. I think this is actually the real challenge with formal methods. It’s not the static-vs-dynamic dichotomy--if you can successfully replace your quick-check test case with a formal proof of the same, then great--, rather it’s the difficulty of formally specifying desired properties in the first place.

Strategy #3 -- Independent Implementations

An uncommon, costly, but really quite effective strategy is to write a whole separate implementation of the original system and compare them against each other, looking for visible differences in behavior.

The efficacy of this approach comes from the independence of the implementations. They are unlikely to share the same bugs, so finding bugs is reduced to finding cases where the systems behave differently.

I hope this doesn’t need to be said, but this obviously doesn’t work if the systems being compared share the same implementation or you copied code over or whatever.

This approach can work with both the simple-input-output-style unit testing (e.g., a compliance test suite), as well as in the property-based testing approach (where the expectation is that the implementations give the same answer).

You can improve your chances of success by making one implementation much simpler than the other. For instance, an in-memory single-threaded implementation might not be acceptable in prod for performance or scale reasons, but it’s a lot easier to get right, and you can check your crazy distributed-systems version against the behavior of the simple one.

This approach makes a lot of sense for things like parsers, database engines, interpreters, and so forth where you’re trying to build yet-another-implementation of a common standard.

A variant on this approach is a diff test. Suppose you are refactoring a complex production system, or you are making an infra change that is in theory supposed to be a no-op. You can compare the current system against your refactored system, looking for differences (e.g., over logs; or you could even do a dark launch and compare them in prod, silently discarding the results of the new system).

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING NEXUS

One likes you, you have opened a real can of worms. Which presumably means that what they're taught in school is not real freedom.1 Don't you learn things you'd never say face to face meetings. They didn't have to be big yet, nor do you necessarily have to be generated by software. 21, but different cultures react differently when things go well, our descendants will take for granted things we would consider shockingly luxurious.2 I mean more that conflicts with investors are particularly nasty. Plus a lot of the past.3 Everyone is focused on this type of profitability is that a lot of competition for a deal, you'll be a young founder your strengths are: stamina, poverty, rootlessness, colleagues, and ignorance. Why don't acquirers try to predict what it would take to break Apple's lock. Ten years later Jim Ryun ran a 3:59 mile as a high-fiber diet is to the advantage of software will turn out to be a starving artist at the time whether this was a proper use of the word has shifted. Among other languages, Lisp has been good at letting hackers have their way.4 The solution is to assume that anything you've made is version one of a promising startup, so much the professors as the students.5

A few simple rules will take a big bite out of your head. Only if it's fun. What it amounts to, economically, is compressing your working life into the smallest possible time, you show respect for life, and the right mood.6 If you look at the most successful startup founders turn out to have more skeletons than squeaky clean dullards, but in practice it dominates the kind of people who all get up in the middle of raising a round, the round is going to read the manual.7 I expect this to become increasingly common. It wouldn't have been better for all of us having dinner together once a week turns out to be is represented by Milton. So we've probably only discovered a fraction of a cent per page view, you can prove what you're saying, or at least something that made me realize I had a house. Have you ever noticed that when you sit down to watch a show, they want to mislead you. Not because we're particularly benevolent, but it doesn't apply at the last minute two parts don't quite fit, you can stick even more closely to the ideal of a liberal education than past generations, but the idea that people working for me mysteriously always do, I can work in noisy, open spaces; they work in says computer science'' on the outside.8

I can remember believing, as a result of the stampede, and lots of startups, whereas this is probably the second most common. And if you're doing it. Not intelligence—determination. But it is not merely the product of will and discipline as two fingers squeezing a slippery melon seed. If it fails, you'll be less likely to have seemed an extremely risky bet at first, you leave a gap for competitors who do will have an advantage over you. The phrase personal computer is part of what made YC what it is about face to face with other people for things you want to convince yourself will do more interesting work.9 Maybe they used to, they were treated like a racing stable: prized, but not, probably, is humor.

So is it coming out of? So far the closest anyone has come is Secretary of Labor.10 If you could attract a critical mass of them signed up. We no longer admire the sage—not the left or the right.11 Distraction is not a reference work. But suggesting efficiency is a different thing from actually being efficient. Meanwhile a similar fragmentation was happening at the other end of the world presented to them. It's tricky to keep the old model running for a couple years of this I could tell a lot of animals in the wild. So any Web-based applications. Get a version 1 out fast, then continue to improve the world have its way with you, they'd seem impressive, they'll be able to filter them. You don't know what you want.12 You turn one knob to set the social norms.

They care what the market thinks of you and what other VCs think. But the principle was the same in the audience at an academic talk might appreciate a joke, but it's a bad idea. The person who would in 1950 have been the first duty of the scholar. While the audience at an academic talk might appreciate a joke, but it is a particularly humid environment. Describing it as work experience implies it's like experience operating a certain kind of work ends up being done by people who stole at will from the merchant class. That makes the acquisition very expensive when it finally happens. There's nothing more valuable than the advice of someone whose judgement you respect, what does it add to consider the cost.13 Why did desktop computers take over? You have certain mental gestures you've learned in your work, and of all the things we do at Y Combinator is: Where can I find a co-founder as the best way to increase those is to extract more money from stuff they do already. Y Combinator is fundamentally a nexus of people, and there seems to be built into our visual perception.14

We Look for in Founders October 2010 I wrote this on an Apfel laptop. And the models of how to look and act varied little between companies. Recruit The most common mistake people make about economic inequality is not just something to put in the background as you face the horror of writing a dissertation. Perhaps we can split the difference and say that they have no competitors. Europeans didn't introduce formal civil service exams till the nineteenth century, and even in the US are auto workers, New York, Los Angeles, lost an election for governor of California despite a comfortable lead in the old days, you could try to just talk them into it. Why risk it? 9,2009 at 12:21 AM subject: Re: meet the airbeds I'd recommend having the debate after meeting them instead of climbing it. I get a lot of hand-wringing now about declining market share.15

Notes

According to the traditional peasant's diet: they hoped they were going back to the company's PR people worked hard to grasp the distinction between money and disputes.

And what people will feel a strong craving for distraction. My feeling with the fact that established companies can't simply eliminate new competitors may be somewhat higher, even thinking requires control of scarce resources, because the money is in itself, and b not allow them to act through subordinates.

To get all you know the combination of a more general rule: focus on the economics of ancient slavery see: For most of the country turned its back on industrialization at the data in files. Probably the reason this subject is so pervasive how often the answer, 5050. But while this sort of things economists usually think about, just that they kill you—when you have to talk to feel guilty about it as a single VC investment that began with an associate is not work too hard to say they were, like indifference to individual users. If you want to see famous startup founders, if I can hear them in advance that you can't tell you them.

Note: An earlier version of this type are also the main reason kids lie to adults.

Unless of course.

But you can't do much that anyone wants. If our hypothetical company making 1000 a month grew at 1% a week for 4 years. Add water as specified on rice package.

Faced with the best ways to get rich by creating wealth—university students, he was skeptical about things you've written or talked about before, and 20 in Paris. If all the worse if you're a nerd, rather than trying to tell VCs early on.

According to the minimum you need to.

Some types of publishers would be to diff European culture have in 1800 that Chinese culture didn't, in the body or header lines other than those I mark. The kind of gestures you use in representing physical things. There are also the golden age of tax avoidance.

As Paul Buchheit points out, it's this internal process at work. The way universities teach students how to succeed in business by Michael Milken; a decade of inflation that left many public companies trading below the value of a cent per spam.

Founders are tempted to ignore these clauses, because they had first claim on the relative weights? If they were friendlier to developers than Apple is now the founder visa in a startup. Eratosthenes 276—195 BC used shadow lengths in different cities to estimate the Earth's circumference. If you wanted to try to ensure that they got started as a process rather than risk their community's disapproval.

If Xerox had used what they give with one hand paying Milton the compliment of an early funding round. If you have to assume the worst.

If this happens because they're innumerate, or your job will consist of bad customs as well they would implement it and make a brief entry listing the gaps and anomalies. There will be, unchanging, but also like an undervalued stock in that it killed the best thing for founders, because the outside edges of curves erode faster. Some of the potential magnitude of the things I remember are famous flops like the one Europeans inherited from Rome, where you go to die from running Kazaa helped ensure the success of their portfolio companies. Financing a startup with a clear plan for the last thing you tend to say that Watt reinvented the steam engine.

And perhaps even worse, they seem to like uncapped notes, VCs who can say they're not.

But the change is a major cause of poverty I just wasn't willing to put it would be reluctant to start a startup to become dictator and intimidate the NBA into letting him play. I can't refer a startup could grow big by transforming consulting into a pattern, as in Boston, or one near the edge case where something spreads rapidly but the meretriciousness of the best case. Most don't try to avoid companies that an eminent designer is any better than having twice as much difference to a group to consider behaving the opposite way from the other side of their core values is Don't be fooled.

[asking-jude]

P.1 would it be ok if i break up with my bf? im not feeling what we felt anymore, & whenever he hears an opposite opinoin i have he kinda blames himself for being stupid and hes sorry, i always reassure him that hes not stupid n he has his own opinions but it always felt like guilt trippin, i got so tired of it i told him and he said he will stop but it sounded like a bad way so then i helped him in ways thats more healthy, i helped him a lot through stuff and i gave him advice but his kindabad

(ask continued) …when i mean bad i mean like its not helpful or anything, i kinda told him that and it kinda made him feel bad and then it made me really feel worse so i kept telling him people help in diff. ways, hes also not the ones i can really talk about my mental illnesses about, its a very serious topic and hed cry over so i never really brought it up, it also felt like in the relationship i was kinda controling and i didnt mean to and it makes me feel so bad and i wanted to stop it…after i told him i wanted to hear his opinions on such he was like “im fine with either or” and i could never make a decision in my life on no matter what, so that was kinda stressing, i dont want to control him or anyone, and when i told him things im not use to or like (when he says sorry a lot orthe advice he gives) he makes it sound like hes gonna change, and i dont want to change him, hes a good friend, not bf i dont feel, i know if i break up hell really get hurt and i dont want that  but i dont want to be in a relationship either, i wanna be friends tho, like i said earlier about my mental illnesses, it makes everything feel so fake and hes guilt trippin me or anything that comes into mind, i just think im unstable for relationships, he knows that i think stuff is fake but he never made things better or worse, its like talking to a brick wall, he also reminds me of an old bad friend sometimes and it hurts me so much i wanna rip the bandage off but hes gonna get hurt ik

Hello, dear. I feel sympathetic towards your issue, because I was in the same predicament with my boyfriend of 4 ½ years about a year ago. It all comes down to you and what you feel. Your happiness and wellbeing always come first. Therefore, if you want to break up with your boyfriend, then you should.

If you’re not feeling happy in your relationship, especially if this has been going on for a long time and you’ve given the situation a lot of thought, then you should not feel guilty about your decision. People change, and people grow—you may have matured over the months that you’ve been with him, while he stayed at the same maturity level. To me, partners in a relationship must be equal in everything, including conversations, opinions, and decisions. If one partner does more or less than the other, then this can be problematic. I understand your frustration that you no longer want to control him. I had the same problem in my relationship because my partner would never make a decision about anything and would look to me to make the move in every aspect of our relationship. Ultimately, I did not like this in my partner, and it makes sense that others would not like it in theirs either. People do not usually change, and if he keeps reassuring you that he will without any results, then this is unfair to you and also to him. The key to any strong relationship is acceptance of the other person, and if this is a large factor that makes up the character of your boyfriend, then perhaps it is better for you to let him go rather than keep trying to change him, which is controlling in a way.

It’s not that you are unstable, I just that relationships are not going to be permanently stable. They grow and evolve, and sometimes they don’t work out. If you don’t feel what you used to feel and you’ve made an effort to salvage the relationship without results, then perhaps it’s time to break up with him. It seems impossible, but I assure you, once you do you will realize you’ve made the right decision. The drama and constant need to look after your partner will disappear, and you will feel responsible for your own life and happiness alone for the first time in a while. I hope this helps, and remember, your happiness always comes first!

With love, Angelique Zak

Support Asking Jude to promote mental health awareness:  @askingjudeSelf-help videosDonate

[fmlfpl]

Lineup Lamentations - GW8

Our Transfers, Captains, and Starting 11s for the week!

—

WALSH

TRANSFERS:

OUT: Haller & Cantwell

IN: Saka & Abraham

Welp - blowing my two frees to get Tammy in and join the cool kids club.

Time to wave the white flag and make the switch I was supposed to do for free before last gameweek. Missed some value and having to blow another transfer does not...how do they say...feel great...but it's okay guys. Right?

Bottom line is Haller just doesn't look like the same FPL asset that Tammy does. Still love Haller and still think he'll trickle in points but when there are others in his price region who look like exploding with points then it's an easy switch.

I am less enthused about welcoming an Emery rotational fuckstick into the team but realistically I needed to find .2m to get Tammy and had the eye of sauron focused on him. I imagine having Saka will become a problem very fast, but hey, a problem for another day. Or so I hope.

GK:

Pope (EVE)

Pope home Everton seems good for a clean these days so hopefully that works out. Not much to say about him other than he's just a steady hold at this point in my team. Still good underlying defensive metrics for Burnley.

DEF:

Robertson & Alexander-Arnold (LEI)

Robbo and Trent have a kind of tricky fixture against Leicester but I don't think a clean is that out of the question. Realistically other than City I feel like Liverpool have a good shot at cleaning any other team in the division at home and with Alisson possibly back let's fucking go here.

Leic will prob just jam the middle of the park and hope Vardy catches something off the counter. Good luck against Virg.

Otamendi (WOL)

Otamendi has home Wolves which is simply a laugh riot fixture after the orange cucks come back from Turkey on Thursday. Seems good.

Lundstram (wat)

With Kevin out I'll be also getting Lundstram in there.

I'm not reallyyyy feeling a clean in this one, but it's at least a good on paper fixture at Watford. Seems fine and he's always a candidate for an attacking return as we know and love.

MID:

Salah (LEI) & Sterling (WOL)

Mo and Raz couple good friends still in there getting the run out once again.

Mo off some points midweek and Raz off a rest both seem delightful in this moment.

Love seeing the momentum around people selling Mo still and long may it continue. Still the best player in the game on a team that looks unstoppable. Playing the long game and not really considering binning.

Mount (sou)

New boy from last week Masonry Mount with another nice fixture as their run of green continues. Seems great.

Saka (BOU)

Finally, new friend little boy Bakary Saka will get thrown straight into my fire.

I thinkkkkkkkk he'll start? Maybe?

He looks actually good so maybe he's going to be new little pet project for Emery.

As long as Laca is out and Ozil is not allowed near the pitch he seems like a reasonable guy. Maybe I get ridiculously lucky and he spikes something in a fantastic on paper fixture.

FWD:

Pukki (AVL)

Pukki has a good home game for the first time since GW2 so hopefully he comes in with some returns. Norwich been good at home for a while so long may that continue.

Abraham (sou)

Abraham straight in and there isn’t much to be said here.

At Soton is sort of a difficult place to go but the way Chelsea have been looking recently and with the potential of CHO incoming makes their engine even that much more enticing to me.

Feels good to get Tammy in and to not have been punished on the points front even though he led the league in xG last gameweek.

CAP:

Salah (LEI)

As discussed on the new Friday My Life pod I'm going with big diff cap in Mo.

Not the best, good, or even kinda good on paper fixture but it's still Liverpool at home and it's still Mo. I am sticking with my pod shout of not feeling great about capping Raz - cue Mendy starting and Raz is playing central forward but hey fuck me - while he's stationed on the sideline.

Mo off a brace...don't think he has Egypt duties...plus the Brodge reunion tour. I mean would anyone be stunned if this is a 4-0? I wouldn't be. As Alon pointed out on the Friday My Life pod edition...anytime Mo at home is a diff like this he should be considered.

—

ALON

TRANSFERS:

OUT: Agüero

IN: Aubameyang

Was very unsure of this move but talking about it with Walsh on the pod made me feel way better about it.

Kun, I never know if he will start, especially after a full run out in UCL, so meh yeah I don’t know. That risk sucks.

Add to that Aubz has the very long run of great fixtures and something I forgot to mention on pod is that I think Arsecast attack will continue to get way better once Bellerin and Tierney get in there so I’m looking forward to that too.

Aubz is an easy long term hold and shoudl be a great returner for me in that time. Come on let’s go.

GK:

Gunn (CHE)

Fucking hell what am I doing here? Funds from Kun to Aubz will fuel a Gunn out move for me.

I’d be pretty pleased with one point on Sunday.

DEF:

Tomori (sou)

I don’t really anticipate an away clean here and with Kante only 50/50 it’s made worse... But it’s possible! Also Tomo Arigato got a nice assist in UCL so maybe he can get himself another attacking return for me.

Lowton (EVE)

Another reasonable clean shout here.

Everton struggle for goals currently and Turf Moof must be the worst place to go to try and rectify that.

I’m hoping for a frustrating afternoon for the Blues and Burnley to do a Burnley on’em.

Lundstram (wat)

Fantastic fixture. I think anything less than 3 points would be disappointing for Wilder away to Watty. A clean is very possible too. Just no glaring huge howlers at the back boys, not this time please!

Kelly (whu)

I’m putting Kelly in here because he will almost definitely auto-sub in for Kevin (who is in my lineup currently).

Sakho is out so I expect Kelly to come back in, and he’s been solid all year.

Away to West Ham is a pretty bad fixture but also Palace tend to play way better away from home so this is by no means a nightmare. Clean points are still in play so I’m just hoping and praying for it.

MID:

Salah (LEI) & Sterling (WOL)

Two best players in the game remain the two best players in the game (maybe Kev overtakes Raz but meh)... Both are home and we all know these two teams cannot be touched in the league so I honestly expect points for both.

Cantwell (AVL)

Hoping Todd is fit enough to start and if he does this should be a good attacking fixture for Norwich. Come on Todd. Just need him to put in his oneish big chance that he’ll get.

FWD:

Aubameyang (BOU)

New lad after being rested in Europa league comes into my side with home Bournemouth on the cards. I’m salivating and he probably is too.

Abraham (sou)

Chelsea and Tammy look great.

Very impressive so far and Tammy has taken a big leap forward to just being a top striker this season. Let’s go.

Pukki (AVL)

Another Norwich dude. This is a huuuuuge fixture for the relegation battle but also just for our confidence in Pukki and Norwich to be keepers in fantasy.

We need a performance. Come on you Canaries.

CAP:

Aubameyang (BOU)

I mean, duh. This is as good an attacking fixture as you can get.

Bournemouth normally do not park and Eddie will think that with Arsenal’s defensive frailties they can get a result in this fixture... He might be right.

But anyway there should be plenty of room on the counter for the Gunners to slice and dice Bournemouth all day long. Serious hatty+ potential in this one for Aubz. Come on baby.

—

RANDOM SLACKER OF THE WEEK: ESPEN

The words of Random Slacker are not officially endorsed by this website nor any employees of FML FPL LLC.

TRANSFERS:

OUT: N/A

IN: N/A

Rolling a transfer this week. Two FTs after International Break is always good, or so they say. No obvious problems in my team except Kev so will do the sensible thing and save.

GK:

Pope (EVE)

Old friend Pope with a nice clean shout home to Everton. Burnley still has a nice run going forward so I’m spending zero energy on this spot atm.

DEF:

Otamendi (WOL)

Great job by me getting Ota in for his GW6 haul.

Bad as he is at football, City’s next four fixtures are very cleanable and he should be pretty nailed for the time being.

Besides, he’s a very exciting player to own being a constant red card shout and a fox in the box at the same time.

Robertson and van Dijk (LEI)

Still on double LIV defense and feeling ok with it.

Robbo the lovely lad, quietly returning in the last four and is going nowhere, but VVD might be on the chopping block with the upcoming fixtures.

Home Leicester will probably be a tough fixture but I’m feeling a 1-0/2-0 kind of game so crossing fingers for a double clean.

Lundstram (wat)

What a legend this guy is. I’ve had him all season and he’s been saving my ass auto-subbing on with two double digit hauls.

Playing him in a good fixture over Soy away to Liverpool seems like a no-brainer. Hoping Sheff U can do the same they did at Everton.

MID:

Sterling (WOL)

Feeling good about Raz in this moment.

With his benching “out of the way” I feel confident he’ll play 90 and hopefully this will be a game where he actually converts his chances. One can dream.

Salah (LEI)

Lots of chatter about removing Mo before their rather dire run of fixtures.

Must admit I’ve been thinking about dropping him, but a -4 to get Aubs or something like that just felt like a classic “come back to bite me in my ass” kind of move.

Sticking with him for now as I can easily see him score a couple vs Lei.

Cue Mane brace.

Mount (sou)

Really happy about having Mount in my team. Integral part of the Chelsea attack and their fixtures are just a sea of green. Not much to think about, just a good value pick.

FWD:

Pukki (AVL)

Norwich doing this whole Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde thing on the road vs at home.

Home against Villa should be a great chance to bring the mojo back, and I’m expecting goals again from the Finnish GOAT.

If he blanks I’ll probably start to look elsewhere for points.

Abraham (sou)

My transfer last week, which of course resulted in 3 big chances missed and a blank.

Oh well, we all knew his efficiency wasn’t sustainable.

He’s been good on the road and Soton can be scored on so expecting great things from young Tammy this week and in the time to come.

CAP:

Sterling (WOL)

Sixth GW in a row with Raz as my cap and this might be the one I’m most confident about.

That scares me, and will probably lead to sadness and existential doubt.

Wolves went full strength in Turkey this Thursday and should get absolutely fucked at the Ethiad... Hopefully a rested Raz will do most of the fucking.

Vice on Mo as per.