#found all the biting hyper relatable because that's 100% what I would do in a fight situation just start chomping lol

[chaoticsoft]

i love my new hell divers shirt!!!!!!!!! 💛🖤

[helliontherapscallion]

Headcanons for SBI Sibling!Parrot Hybrid!Reader

(A/N): ope, went a little overboard with this one (also it’s not proofread, so sorry about any mistakes)

You have wings on your back (the feather pattern depends on what parrot floats your boat)

If you’re a Scarlet Macaw, Blue-and-Yellow Macaw, or Chestnut-Fronted Macaw, then you have black lines on your cheeks and heavy black lines around your eyes (think Hawks from bnha but less pointy)

If you are a Hyacinth Macaw, you have yellow markings around your eyes and mouth

If you’re a cockatiel, you have a killer mohawk/hair that is always very pointy and orange circles on your cheeks (how cute!)

I have a feeling that your hair is incredibly soft

Very sensitive wings

I feel like your teeth would be sharp and your nails would normally be fast-growing, long, and sharp

You tilt your head like impossibly far when you’re confused or trying to hear something better

Like your ear would almost be touching your shoulder

The head movements are very jerky and kinda just happen on their own when you hear something so you would have a lot of neck pain : (

You’re allergic to chocolate : (

I feel like people would underestimate you greatly and think you’re nothing except the ditzy comedic relief

Parrots are actually very intelligent

It bums you out to hear people say things like that behind your back when they think you can’t hear, but you try to not let them get to you

You give the best cuddles and are very affectionate with the people you’re close to (you’re also very cautious of strangers)

You’re also very in tune with the emotions of the people around you

You see someone sad? Head nuzzles and wing hugs

You see someone angry? You deescalate the situation the best you can and make sure they’re ok afterwards

You can dilate and contract your pupils rapidly at will

You may or may not stare at people doing it until they notice you staring or until they get creeped out

You fuck hard with any type of seed, nut, or fruit

When you get excited, it’s literally so cute??

Like you do everything parrots do

Little happy pitter patters with your feet, flutter your wings, your pupils contract and dilate rapidly, you make a ton of mob sounds

You’re easily excitable, hyper, and happy most of the time

It makes everyone happy to see you so excited so they would often go out of their way to get you things that make you happy

“Hey (y/n) I have some extra melon seeds if you want em!”

*Pupils contract and dilate rapidly*

You are loud

Like very loud

And very talkative

Like everyone knows where you are at all times

If you’re quiet and they know you’re around, either something is very wrong or they’re about to get pranked

God forbid you start to scream, your scream is loud enough to deafen someone for a brief amount of time and would leave everyone’s ears ringing for days on end

The mere mention of yours and Tommy's names together in one sentence is enough to give Philza a headache (someone give this poor man a couple of advils and a long vacation)

You two are literal demons when you’re together

Very chaotic relationship

You both like to fuck with people by sneaking up behind them

You would make mob sounds and Tommy would jump them before you two made a break for it

You and Tommy almost got killed by Techno a few times, but in your opinion the look on his face was 100% worth it every time

I feel like you would cart him up and down from the towers he builds

He could relate to being stereotyped as the stupid loud one, so he recognizes right away when you’re sad about it and will try to cheer you up

His main go to is the jukebox

Oh my god if he plays his jukebox around you, you go full send with your dancing

*AGGRESSIVE HEADBANGING*

He would laugh at your awful dancing, but he would join you eventually

Cat and Mellohi go hard

Speaking of music, Wilbur uses you as a walking soundboard

He needs a sound sample? You better prepare for spending most of your day recreating the sound

He needs back up vocals? You spend most of your day listening to his voice and other singers so you could replicate it

You don’t want to disappoint him so you try extra hard to appease his picky music composition

You kinda stress yourself out over it sometimes

When he notices (which he will, he’s very perceptive), he immediately calls it a day and has some sibling bonding time

You both bond over liking to eat strange things

Amazon macaws like to lick clay deposits on riverbanks so you like to have some on you at all times to lick when you get stressed

Wilbur carries some in a bag in his pocket and you carry a bag of sand 

Whenever one of you notices the other has a rough day, you give each other your respective stuff

You have to be sneaky with it though, Philza always takes away nonedible stuff from his children if he sees them trying to eat it (he has good intentions tho)

It always looks like a drug deal 

With Techno, I feel like he would find you incredibly annoying at first with how loud you are

He would actually start to hate you when you started to sneak up behind him 

It got to the point to whenever he would hear your voice he would get irrationally mad and have to leave the house for a few hours

He, like everyone outside your family, would think you were useless and incredibly stupid

That was until he passed Tommy’s room one day and overheard you crying and telling Tommy about your insecurities

He would spend the next few days ignoring you bc he felt bad

He would spend those days contemplating on why he treated you like he did

Coming to the realization that you were likely trying to get closer to him and you were just being yourself, making him feel like the biggest piece of shit

He totally had no idea how to confront you about this, so naturally he went to Philza (that man was literally so happy that his children were gonna start to get along)

He would spend the day gathering golden melons because he found out that you’d never tried golden melons before from Philza

When he approached you one day with an apology and some golden melons, you were suspicious at first

He hated you, so why would he get you these things if he didn’t need anything from you?

Quickly finding that his apology is genuine and he felt incredibly bad for treating you like that over the years

You picked up on his guilt pretty quickly and made quick work to reassure him

He would take you on short trips and would soon find that you’re very useful in detecting mobs and deterring creepers with cat noises

He would never admit it, but he loves it when you would scare Tommy or Wilbur, thinking it’s hilarious 

You also found out that carrying a seven and a half foot tall piglin hybrid was incredibly difficult to do, especially when flying

You two managed to get only about ten feet above the ground before your wings gave out under the strain and you fell on him

“(Y/n) has earned the achievement ‘When Pigs Fly’” flashed on everyone’s comm tablets that day

That wasn’t fun trying to explain to Philza

Philza would be ecstatic to have someone to fly with that he didn’t have to carry

He would take you on flights when you had too much energy 

Sometimes racing each other and competing to do tricks midair (which sometimes you both rope your brothers into judging)

Late night flights when you need to get your mind off from something

Watching the sunrise together in silence for once

Bonding over being able to see ultraviolet light when everyone else couldn’t

You always give him the shiny things you come across and he gives you your favorite snacks

He always fusses over your wings, sometimes preening them for you

Helping each other through molts

Matches your excitement sometimes when you’re really happy

You feel bad whenever you hear stories of how difficult you were as a baby

He’s quick to reassure you that raising you was worth it and you turned out to be a great person

But he wouldn’t be lying when he said you were a difficult infant

Your terrible twos stage? His literal hell

Philza swears he can still hear ringing from whenever you would throw tantrums as a toddler, even years after you left your toddler age

He also still has some scars from when you went through your biting phase (teething was awful for you, his poor baby)

But he’s happy he was the one that raised you, he genuinely enjoys your presence

If you’re in a really affectionate mood he is more than willing to let you cuddle up to him while he reads a book or something

WING HUGS WING HUGS WING HUGS WIN-

When he’s had a long day and is stressed out, you immediately pick up on that and do everything in your power to make sure your brothers are quiet and behaved, try to find out what made him so stressed, and sometimes go out of your way to take care of it for him

You try to be the one taking care of him for once as much because he’s taken care of you so well throughout the years

He can tell if you’re overwhelmed or upset just with one glance at your ruffled feathers and your rapidly dilating and contracting pupils

Immediately pulling you out of the situation and letting you talk it out

Whenever he finds you sad about your insecurities, he points out every part of your personality that he loves

That’s before he hunts down the person that made you feel like this (he really lives up to his title of ‘The Angel of Death’)

Overall, you wouldn’t trade your family for the world

[xoruffitup]

Just want to flail over Adam’s parts? People, I AM HERE FOR YOU. Here’s a time-stamped cheat sheet of Adam’s comments and generally precious moments. (Basically Round 2 of my overall flaily recap of this panel right after it happened.)

I start the video and my heart freaks out remembering when he first walked on stage. Get me a paper bag before I pass out... His little ‘Hello!’ and one-handed wave when he walked out I was already deceased.

1:35 - Everyone please just watch this adorable tall man awkwardly sit and fidget and bite his lip and make his oh god public attention face

11:25 - Adam makes no judgments about his character’s morality. He empathizes more with Ben Stiller’s character in the While We’re Young film than with his own, but recognizes that his own feelings about the character are irrelevant; as are his feelings about his own performance. 

“It’s not about me feeling it, it’s about an audience feeling it.”

I’m constantly struck by his humility and maturity in always thinking of himself as only a small part in every film project, regardless of how large his role might be. He’s hyper-aware that none of it is about him, and becomes uncomfortable when people try to make it so. Although he explains here that he relates to the “debilitating” pressure to play a role correctly or authentically, and we know that he constantly over-thinks and scrutinizes his own work to the point of not being able to watch himself on film; He also recognizes his personal gratification with his performance comes second to the overall story being told. Internally, he might hold himself to high personal standards, but he never presumes those standards should be projected on anyone else. He finishes this answer with “Who am I to say if they’re right or wrong?” (If audiences respond to a less authentic version of a work.)

I would love to hear him answer this same question about Kylo’s character.

27:50 (One of the moments when I had to physically restrain myself from flailing in my seat because he’s so damn presh) - The moderator tried to “bring back Adam” because he’d hardly spoken so far, and Adam goes “I’m good, I’m good.” Ben Stiller interjected, “Can I just say something about acting with Adam?” and Adam immediately shakes his head and waves his hand in a silent “Please no”, but then very magnanimously tells Ben to go ahead, even while squirming in his seat a tiny bit while Ben talked about him. 

29:00 - Adam says Noah’s writing is very “theatrical.” I did find it interesting how he talked here about a whole range of different potential meanings within the same words of a script, depending on how they’re delivered. I also love when he talks about working in theatre, just because I have a soft spot for stage actors. 

(Watching this whole video back makes me realize Adam really did quite effortlessly and unconsciously charm the audience (not just me), even speaking so little compared to the other panelists. I remembered clearly when he had his ~showdown with the moderator towards the end the audience was 100% on his side, clapping for him, but generally there are so many audience laughs for the little self-deprecating jokes Adam mixes into all his answers.)

31:10 (Alert alert, fangirl moment) - Perfect capture of how he fiddles with his fingers and listens so attentively. 

33:28 - THAT L A U G H

35:08 - My other favorite funny/presh moment! “There’s humor in doing the same things in life and still trying to make them more efficient... Like I still don’t think I’ve ever gotten into a car the right way.” (Confused audience laughter?) Then Adam gets serious with chagrin right away like “...that was a bad example...” (Audience continues laughing with him even though most people probably don’t get it.) He made a last-ditch effort to explain himself by saying “the Tesla” - but didn’t quite get to fully explain that he was referring to the uber-modern Tesla car that was driving him around the island over the weekend. Regardless, everyone found it amusing and I was there like I stan a man who can’t get into a car right WHAT A GEM

36:27 (Alert alert, another fangirl moment) - Everyone please just watch him take a drink of water. Why every single damn thing he did was totally mesmerizing to me I don’t know, but you’ll thank me later. 

46:13 - The moderator mentions Paterson screened at the Nantucket Film Festival several years ago. Adorable moment where he goes to start listing all the famous people from Paterson and has to give up with “...and a bunch of other people I can’t remember right now.”

47:10 - Hilarious moment but first strike against the narrator. Ben Stiller had to ask Chris Matthews if Paterson was the first movie he’d seen Adam in because yeah, he’d kind of been neglecting Adam a bit (not that Adam minded, clearly), but Ben went “...he’s also in Star Wars,” and the whole place cracked up. 

49:10 - Non-Adam moment, but I was really intrigued with Noah Baumbach’s comment here, talking about developing his dialogue and how “there’s communication, and then there’s talking.”

50:10 - THIS IS IT, FOLKS, THE GOLD MINE OF ADAM CHARM AND SASS. THE LEGENDARY MOMENT IS NEARING. Watch Adam’s life flashing before his eyes in a panic when the question “Who is the most influential person in your life” is suddenly thrown at him. He wasn’t ready for this!! (Although great question, Rea, so glad it was asked!) Then after he says he’ll pass on the question, you can see him basically flying to Mars in his head pondering. Then the cuteness and laughter when he announces he does have an answer!! He was 1000% the whole audience’s darling by this point. Then his answer is basically, “Listen to how insightful my wife is because she’s the best.” Then after boasting about his wife it’s right back to his modest self: “On to the next question and then I’ll finish this monologue...”

LOOK, okay he wasn’t even talking for that long! He’d given what, 3 answers before this during the whole hour-long panel?! The moderator himself blabbed at least twice as much. I was loving this monologue because it was the first time Adam was actually talking for an extended time. But apparently we can’t have nice things becomes here comes Mr. Rude-ass, Clueless Moderator...

(Also, Ben and Noah were 100% engaged with what Adam was saying so literally this was only the moderator’s problem...)

52:32 - The moderator audibly sighs into his microphone in the middle of Adam’s “monologue” and I’m SO glad Adam unpretentiously called him out: “.....Are you bored by my answer?” The whole audience laughed in sympathy with him because it was so weird and rude? Then Adam went on to be even more of a clever QT like: “You were thinking about another question? That’s what I was doing during your answers...” And the man is so straight-faced about it you genuinely can’t even tell if he purposefully meant that well-done, five-course ROAST. 

I cringe so hard at this memory I can barely watch it back, but ughhhh queue the moderator interrupting Adam’s attempt to resume his answer, with some bullshit about Jeff Goldblum... What even? Jeff Goldblum was mentioned once in the panel previously, but wtf how does your mind go there when Adam Driver is giving a painfully earnest, precious, and over-thought monologue for you???

52:50 - “...SO STAR WARS.” BOOM. In three words Chris Matthews has been KO’d. omg look at the almost proud look on Noah’s face like yeah you tell him bb and Ben’s cracking up, and the whole audience flips out like DAMN, SAVAGE!!!

(Also for ~context reference, walking out from the auditorium afterwards, I remember overhearing two guys saying to each other “Chris Matthews was like one of those old guys who just blurts whatever’s going through his head.” “Yeah but you’d think when you’re talking to Adam Driver you’d be more respectful and reign it in.” and in my head I was like DAMN RIGHT. Watching this whole thing back, Matthews gets on my nerves basically the whole time. He seems to enjoy hearing himself talk so much that he forgot what a moderator’s actual job is.)

58:40 - Adam’s advice to aspiring filmmakers about the usefulness of going to school, getting a firm foundation in your craft, and having the insulated space to fail and build yourself. 

Just so I can ~complete my revisiting of this whole experience~, I’ll add this photo taken by @wherethepastaat aka Rea aka https://twitter.com/cosmicreas in the parking lot outside after the event. I love her for asking the incredible question that gave us a world-class #SassybutClassy Adam moment, and also for snapping this A+ covert photo documenting the referenced Tesla car that caused Adam so much stress about how to get in it correctly. (Joanne’s getting in before him.)

I also owe her my firstborn because she inadvertently GOT ME IN THE PHOTO WITH ADAM!! That shoulder in the pink tank top directly behind him? THAT’S ME. THAT’S ME AND ADAM. IN THE SAME PHOTO. DEEP BREATHING, OKAY. Now I can always prove that I really was that close to him! (He came by even closer when he walked down the sidewalk. No, a month later I still have not gotten over it even .00001% percent.) 

Admittedly, there have been brief moments where I berate myself like ‘ugh why didn’t you ask for a photo?!’ but A) I was frozen in awe for the 10 seconds he was in front of me (pretended to be on my phone so I wasn’t overtly staring, lol) and B) You can see in this photo that there were a bunch of people milling around. If I’d asked him to stop, he probably would have gotten stuck taking pics with lots of people. I did the right thing AND got to witness more wholesome Adam moments as he was leaving!

Once again, Rea I owe you a gift basket because I am SO glad I got to witness when you/your brother called ‘Bye!’ to Adam from your car and your dad called “Hi Kylo!” and ADAM RESPONDED, smiled and waved and said ‘Hi Thanks!’ back. IT WAS SO PURE I CRY AT THE MEMORY.

All in all, despite the fact that Adam didn’t actually talk that much on the panel, it was still a 100% Quality Event and I still think about it daily. :’) My Adam crush has morphed into an all-consuming real-life thing that I do my best to control but look, a girl can only do so much in the face of THIS. I AM ONLY HUMAN, ADAM.

[pokemaniacal]

Yungoos and Gumshoos

…so…

…it’s an angry mongoose detective…

…that… also kind of looks like Donald Trump?

…sure?????

Yungoos and Gumshoos, as their names and weasel-like forms indicate, are mongeese (this being, of course, the obviously correct plural form of the word “mongoose,” which I will extol and defend beyond all reason).  Although they look very like weasels, mongeese, as I only recently learned, are actually not part of the mustelid family (weasels, otters and badgers) at all, but part of an entirely separate branch of the order Carnivora.  They are related to cats, hyenas and civets, while mustelids are much closer to dogs, bears and seals.  This is probably the reason for Zangoose’s odd species designation “the Cat Ferret Pokémon” – mongeese are to cats what ferrets are to dogs.  Zangoose was inspired by the most well-known characteristic of mongeese, namely their aptitude for killing venomous snakes, which Zangoose expresses through her bitter ancestral blood-feud with Seviper.  Yungoos and Gumshoos are designed after a very different and much more specific trait of one particular population of mongeese: namely, the saga of their introduction to Hawai’i.

Yungoos and Gumshoos are explicitly not native to Alola – they were introduced specifically to curb the Rattata population, an effort which failed miserably after the Rattata adapted to a nocturnal lifestyle and urban environments.  We’ve had a few Pokémon in the past that don’t seem to actually be native to the regions in which we first met them (Eevee is probably Kalosian; Togepi if anything seems native to Sinnoh) but that’s usually not spelled out clearly.  Yungoos, likewise, must come originally from some region we’ve never been to yet.  There’s a whole story to this, which is that the real-world Hawai’i really does have a substantial population of Asian mongeese.  They were imported on purpose in 1883 to hunt the introduced rats that were plaguing the sugarcane crop, after the success of a similar program in Jamaica (the rats in question include both the Norwegian rat, Rattus norvegicus, that arrived in Hawai’i in the late 18th century as a stowaway on European ships, and the somewhat more chill Polynesian rat, Rattus exulans, that had been deliberately introduced by the first Hawaiians over a thousand years earlier as a source of food).  These mongeese were an utter failure at controlling the rat population, since rats are mostly nocturnal while mongeese are mostly diurnal, but did succeed in devastating many of Hawai’i’s vulnerable native bird and reptile species.  This is what gives us the day-night duality between Yungoos and the Alolan Rattata, Yungoos only being able to evolve during the day and Rattata only at night, while Ilima’s totem Pokémon is a Raticate on Moon version but a Gumshoos on Sun version.  It’s also the basis of the adaptations of the Alolan Rattata and Raticate described by the Pokédex.

It’s an interesting idea, building a Pokémon around a story like this, but I’m concerned that it clashes in unfortunate ways with some of the basic assumptions of how the Pokémon world works.  Yungoos and Gumshoos clearly did just as poor a job of wiping out the Alolan Rattata as their real-world counterparts – and, we are told, even for the same reason.  They are nonetheless thriving, and one of the most common Pokémon species throughout the Alolan islands.  Like Hawai’i’s mongeese, they clearly found alternative prey, and presumably quite a lot, since we’re told their appetites are ravenous, though we hear nothing of what that prey might be – native Alolan species like Oricorio and Rowlet?  And it’s not clear what, if anything, Alola plans to do about this.  In the real world (particularly in places with large numbers of unique species, like Hawai’i or my own home in New Zealand), invasive predators tend to get little mercy.  They’re a danger to vulnerable endangered species that exist nowhere else in the world, many of which are also symbols of regional culture and identity.  We don’t see any of that side of the story in Sun and Moon.  And to some extent that’s fine and to be expected – I mean, it’s Pokémon.  What could they do, tell us to catch Yungoos and bring them to Professor Kukui to be euthanized because they’re a danger to rare native Pokémon?  Yungoos and Gumshoos are as sapient as any other Pokémon and didn’t migrate to Alola by choice; applying real-world policies on invasive species to them just wouldn’t mesh with a lot of the Pokémon world’s basic rules about Pokémon in society.  The problem is that, when you draw attention to this Pokémon being inspired by an invasive species, but get rid of everything negative about that inspiration, the moral of the story seems to be “introducing random exotic predators to fragile ecosystems as pest control works just fine, with absolutely no negative consequences.”  That would easily be in the top 5 most dangerously wrong claims Pokémon has ever made, and bear in mind, this is a franchise which would have us believe that all wild animals really just want to be friends with you.  I find it deeply troubling, but am not sure how best to resolve it.

Oh, and also, for some reason, Gumshoos has a detective aesthetic?  His hunting behaviour is described as “staking out” his prey’s daily routines, and his fur sort of makes him look like he’s wearing a trench coat like Looker’s.  I’m not quite sure where this comes from or why it’s in the design.  Clearly it needed something else on top of the introduced mongoose story to make it more interesting and Pokémon-ish, and I suppose the detective motif serves as well as anything, but I’m at a loss as to why they went with that in particular.  It’s not a reference to any real mongoose hunting strategies, as far as I can tell, nor to any particularly well-known fictional or mythological mongeese.  The theme manifests as a sensible enough aspect of Gumshoos’ behaviour, so it doesn’t become too obnoxious, just… really, really puzzling.  So that’s Gumshoos’ flavour – interesting but problematic on one level and a little bit puzzling on another, so a mixed bag all around (and just to clarify – no, Donald Trump was not actually an influence on the design).  Time to see if his skills match the same standard.

As a cookie-cutter early-game Normal Pokémon, Gumshoos isn’t really allowed to be very good.  He certainly tries, though – puts up quite a valiant effort, actually, and does so in a fairly interesting way.  Gumshoos’ particular schtick derives from his unique ability: Stakeout.  As well as describing his preferred hunting strategy, this ability allows him to hit for double damage with all of his attacks against any enemy switching in.  This makes it very difficult to deal with Gumshoos in a normal way, by switching in a counter Pokémon.  Between his powerful physical attacks, Stakeout bonus, and passable physical movepool, not all that many Pokémon can feel particularly secure switching in against him.  Even Pokémon with really top-of-the-line physical defence capabilities like Hippowdon and Ferrothorn can be stung pretty badly by a poorly-timed switch against Gumshoos.  Well, that sounds great, so what’s the problem?  The flip side, unfortunately, is that between his lacklustre defences, atrocious speed, lack of any priority attacks, and few resistances, quite a lot of Pokémon with even average offensive and defensive capabilities can afford to just go toe-to-toe with a Stakeout Gumshoos, provided they aren’t weak to Dark or Ground attacks.  Even that assumes you can actually get Gumshoos safely into play in the first place, and again, you’ll be hindered there by his average-at-best defences.

Gumshoos’ other two ability choices are similar in concept, in that they both give him ways of increasing his attack power.  Of these, Adaptability – his hidden ability – is probably the best of all three numerically, increasing the normal bonus for attacks of your own element from +50% to +100%.  With Adaptability, Gumshoos actually winds up having what I think are the most powerful Normal-type physical attacks in the entire game, just barely edging out Slaking, Huge Power Diggersby, and full-strength Regigigas.  Let that sink in for a moment.  One of these rubbishy cookie-cutter early-game Normal Pokémon can fire off a Return or (gods forbid) Giga Impact more powerful than bloody Slaking’s, and doesn’t even have to live with Slaking’s Truant (dis)ability.  Of course, now that I’ve hyped up Gumshoos’ power, I should point out the main problem with Adaptability: it makes Gumshoos extremely similar to Huge Power Diggersby, except clearly worse.  He’s slower, has weaker defences and fewer resistances, doesn’t get a same-type bonus on Earthquake, has a much narrower movepool, and only gets the Adaptability bonus on Normal attacks, while Huge Power works with everything physical.  Gumshoos almost seems like a reaction to some feeling on Game Freak’s part that Diggersby – his immediate predecessor in the rubbishy early-game Normal-type slot – was overtuned, and that they needed to make sure the next one was significantly weaker.  It’s not all bad, because Crunch and Earthquake very neatly cover almost everything that resists Gumshoos’ Normal attacks (this is probably Gumshoos’ biggest advantage over Diggersby: a strong Dark attack that keeps him from being bullied by Ghost-types).  High-defence Steel-types that aren’t weak to Earthquake, like Skarmory and Forretress, can just about ignore you, but not much else can.  Gumshoos’ third ability choice, Strong Jaw, boosts his biting attacks by 50%.  This might be interesting if, say, Gumshoos gets access to Fire/Thunder/Ice Fang from move tutors in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, but at the moment the only important attacks Strong Jaw applies to are Crunch and Hyper Fang.  The bonus to Crunch is admittedly nice for dealing with Ghost-types, and Hyper Fang with a Strong Jaw boost does technically have a higher power than a baseline Return, but neither of these things is worth giving up the power of Adaptability or Stakeout.

I’ve been assuming something along the lines of [Return/Crunch/Earthquake/???] thus far because, barring some variation in your choice of Normal attack (Hyper Fang for a hypothetical Strong Jaw moveset, Façade if you’re worried about burns, Frustration if you’re roleplaying as a villain, and Thrash if you’re roleplaying as an idiot), there’s not much reason to do anything else with Gumshoos.  There’s some variation in what that last attack can be.  Gumshoos gets U-Turn, which is generally a strong move, but considering how hard it is to get Gumshoos safely into play in the first place, and how much damage he can do once he’s there, I’m not convinced that pulling him out again is a great idea.  Pursuit is an option to catch Pokémon that try to flee, but meshes badly with Stakeout, since you want to be hitting the Pokémon that switches in, rather than the one leaving.  Revenge gives you a Fighting attack, and always going second isn’t a huge deal for Gumshoos, who’s slower than most Pokémon anyway, but the fact that you need to take damage in order for the move to be any good is not appealing (on the other hand, Revenge is a good response to the kind of play that Stakeout invites).  You could always just stick in Façade or even Giga Impact as a secondary Normal attack, I suppose.  Finally, and I hesitate even to bring this up… Gumshoos does get Last Resort, and with Adaptability this would be one of the most powerful attacks in the game.  Last Resort only works if you’ve already used all your other attacks, which isn’t feasible for a Pokémon of Gumshoos’ constitution.  You could, however, put together a Gumshoos with just Last Resort and Protect (Last Resort always fails if it’s your only move), use your other Pokémon to take out any Ghost-, Rock- or Steel-types in your way, then go to town.  This is not a recommendation; in fact I would characterise it more as a warning, but I’m not going to tell you how to live your life in the precious few days that doubtless remain before you run yourself off a cliff with a crate of nitroglycerine.

I’m seriously unconvinced by any possibility of using Gumshoos as anything other than a sledgehammer, because the stats just aren’t there, it’s a waste of his abilities, and his support movepool is decidedly on the “meh” side, but for the sake of completeness we should run through the options.  Gumshoos learns Yawn, which is interesting with Stakeout because it will generally prompt opponents to switch to keep their Pokémon from falling asleep.  Taunt exists, but Gumshoos is too slow to use it effectively and in most cases would be better served by just spamming Return.  Super Fang halves the target’s remaining health rather than dealing damage normally, and since damage is Gumshoos’ main strength, I wouldn’t generally advise trying it, but I suppose it does offer a nasty surprise for those few Pokémon who are capable of holding themselves aloof from his usual attacks, and it’s not like Gumshoos’ movesets are going to be full to bursting.  That’s… about it, honestly.

In summary, Gumshoos strikes me as more than a little one-trick-pony-ish.  You can batter your opponents with some incredibly powerful Adaptability- or Stakeout-boosted attacks, but you have almost no versatility; you’re slow, not particularly strong on defence, and have a very predictable choice of attacks.  I feel like Gumshoos is one of those Pokémon that’s on the verge of being good (and for evidence of that… well, look at Diggersby), because his strengths are huge; it’s just that his weaknesses are fairly all-encompassing too.  The design is interesting, in spite of (even because of?) the detective persona’s sheer weirdness.  The attitude that it forces the designers to take towards invasive species seriously bothers me though.  In any world that was even slightly more realistic or gritty than Pokémon, you would try to exterminate Yungoos and Gumshoos with traps and poison, as the Hawaiian government does.  You can probably make this complaint about a lot of Pokémon, and the games have never really made any effort to construct a Pokémon ecology that would stand up to real scrutiny, but Yungoos draws attention to it in a way that other Pokémon normally don’t, and leaves us with a distinctly worrying, probably unintentional message about invasive wildlife.

[bestforlessmove]

A CPA's advice for scaling your property management business

Heading up a property management business is no joke. Employees, friends, and family don't often see the blood, sweat, and tears that you pour into your company. If you're looking at how to grow your property management business, it's tough work and is not for the faint of heart.

As I've scaled my CPA firm, The Real Estate CPA, I've noticed that most of the companies that we work with follow the same general path as they're scaling their property management business.

The 4 Stages of Scaling Your Property Management Business

1. First comes the bootstrapping phase.

Small businesses in this stage are often made up of one or two people working tirelessly to make things happen. Many mistakes are made, and many hard lessons are learned. Some companies never make it out of this phase. In part one of this series, I talked about how to avoid some of the common missteps in establishing bank account structures, as an example.

2. The next phase is usually characterized by rapid revenue growth.

Prospective customers know who you are and are requesting your services. This state of hyper-growth could last a handful of months or multiple years.

3. Eventually, the company hits a ceiling and is forced to mature.

Such a ceiling can be characterized by:

Tons of prospects knocking on your door, but you don't have the capacity to serve them

Low margins due to previously poor pricing strategies, meaning that you can't add capacity now

A lack of systemized processes, causing confusion and mistakes

Technology solutions that don't talk to each other, further adding to operational confusion

Clients complaining about poor quality or a negative customer experience

If you haven't faced these issues, you haven't hit your first ceiling yet. I know because my firm and many of our clients ultimately go through this. It's painful, and your company is forced to mature quickly in order to survive.

4. Once your company matures, you'll again experience significant revenue growth.

This time, however, customers will be happy, margins will be higher (meaning that you can hire more employees), and you'll have a business that's systematized and operates smoothly.

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Throughout the process of growing your business, you'll continually hit ceilings that will test your ability to pivot and adapt. As each ceiling is broken through, the rewards become that much sweeter.

We've coached our clients on how to break through such ceilings; and whether you're a property manager, real estate syndicate, or developer, the advice is relatively similar. I'm going to share some of our advice with you today in the hope that you can put things in motion now to make breaking through your ceilings easier when they inevitably arrive.

3 Tips for Breaking Through Ceilings As You Grow

Tip #1: Experiment with Your Pricing Model

How do you charge for your services? Did you determine your pricing model based on what everyone else is charging?

Pricing is both an art and a science. Don't be afraid to take risks and test new offerings. For example, if you have an out-of-state landlord, what would they pay for a quarterly video walkthrough of their property?

There are three main ways to price services: value, fixed, and hourly. We have property management clients that incorporate all three pricing models into their overall pricing strategy. Consider the following:

You're an expert in your local market. How can you add value to landlords who are searching for real estate? Which trends are you noticing that they might not have picked up on, and how can you charge for your knowledge?

You have all the local connections to contractors. Is charging a 20% markup an accurate measurement of the value of the network you've built out? What if you charged a 50% or 100% markup?

Local brokers would love to work with your clients. Are you letting them do that for free?

Is a 10% management fee really a good measure of the value of your services? What if you charged an hourly rate? What if you charged a fixed rate regardless of how occupied the property was?

The key is experimenting to figure out what works for you.

Property managers often push back on the second and fourth points above. On #2, people think that a 20% markup on the contractor's pricing is “as far as I can go before clients will feel it's too expensive.” However, nearly all property managers in almost all markets charge that same 20%. On #4, clients tell us that a percentage of gross revenue incentivizes the property manager to keep the property full. That's understandable-but it also pushes you away from taking on properties that have low occupancy and will take a ton of work to lease up. Your revenue on such a property will be low in the beginning, so you may not take it on at all-and yet, you could probably add significant value to those landlords.

The point is that you not only need to consider different pricing strategies-you also need to test them. Figure out what works for you, and dare to be different. All the while, you need to be laser-focused on margins. Companies that have a hard time breaking through that ceiling of growth usually suffer from low margins.

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Tip #2: Systematize Now, Not Later

New property management companies typically use multiple technologies and lack standardized processes and procedures. Eventually, this will come back to bite you.

When we're coaching property management firms, we like to imagine a scenario where a new employee joins your company, and you don't have time to train them. The employee is totally on their own. Do you have a knowledge base that they can dig into to figure things out?

At some point, you'll need all of your processes to be standardized and well-documented. They should be so easy to follow that anyone could do it. This is a painful process, but lends itself to scale quite well, especially for service-based firms where your revenue is largely based on the time that you spend working.

For example, you may be tracking financial data on Google Sheets and running bill-pay through third-party software. You might be calling contractors on your cell phone, delivering custom reports to clients that take forever to create, and writing tasks down on sticky notes. What a mess.

Deciding to deliberately systematize your business allows you to take a hard look at how you run your company and work directly on improving it. It allows you to ask tough questions and visualize the “perfect” way to run your business.

For our clients, that “perfect” business is one that's fully automated. That means using property management software like Buildium that offers resident and client portals and a bill-pay solution, a contractor solution, and an accounting solution all in one place. It means building in triggers and tasks so that your employees know what to do and when, while also allowing you to monitor the completion of such tasks.

As our clients implement better systems for their business, they find that they have more free time. The business will begin to run itself, and the owners can focus almost entirely on growth instead.

You can start systematizing your business right now. Brainstorm a list of the business-related tasks that you've worked on over the last 24 hours. Reflect on that list and ask, “What technology can I buy to eliminate this task, and can that technology integrate with my current platform?”

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Tip #3: Track the Right Data

Without excellent systems, you likely don't have a way to track and analyze the data that you need in order to grow your business. If you aren't tracking the right data, you'll have little to base your business decisions on other than instinct-and instinct will only get you so far in the competitive sport of business.

The data that you track will be unique to your business and the way in which you operate it. I encourage you to explore key performance indicators (KPIs) for property management companies. You want to be measuring financial data, such as revenue and margin; operational data, such as turn-around time and quality; and client experience data, such as net promotor score.

One simple way to gain massive insight into your business is to start tracking time. I know, I can hear you groaning: “Listen to this CPA telling me to track my time-yeah, right!”

Believe it or not, I had the same reaction when one of my employees suggested that our firm begin tracking time. We were hitting that first ceiling after experiencing hyper-growth, and we didn't have much data to base decisions off of. So, we implemented time-tracking-much to my chagrin-and I was blown away with the data we collected as a result.

We found out that employees were spending way too much time researching tax laws when another employee already had the answer. We found that employees had natural abilities to perform certain tasks quickly, where other employees took two to three times as long. We also found clients that we had significantly underpriced.

Time-tracking is easy to implement and will offer you unique insights into how and where you and your employees spend your days. If you're not careful, however, time-tracking can easily provide you with awful data.

If you start tracking time, you must always resist the urge to use time as a performance management factor. For instance, many CPA firms use 'utilization' as a performance metric. You are assigned a utilization rate-say, 93%, which means that you must bill 93% of all working hours during the year, equating to 1860 hours. If you hit your utilization, you get a raise. If you don't, you don't.

Using time as a performance factor will encourage employees to flub their time card. “I worked 7.5 hours today, and I have nothing else to do, but I need the extra hours so I'll add one hour to a client and no one will notice.” This happens all the time.

To avoid this, we continually remind our employees that time will never be a factor in their performance review. We also explain that an 8-hour work day is obsolete and based on industrial-era methodologies. What we care about is getting the work done in a timely fashion and adding value-and we want time accurately tracked so that we can manage capacity and know when it's time to move people around or bring on new employees.

We coach our clients on the same thing. When they implement time-tracking, it's tough to get used to. However, the data that you receive-as long as you constantly remind employees to track their time accurately and give them no incentives to flub it-will provide awesome insights into your business' operations that you can take immediate action on.

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Technologies for Scaling Your Property Management Business

As stated, Buildium will give you operational efficiency across multiple spectrums. Here's a list of other technology I'd recommend checking out as you're scaling your property management business:

Toggl makes time-tracking quite easy, and it's free. We used this for a while before we built a project management platform that included time tracking in it.

G Suite (from Google) provides all the tools necessary to run your business in a flexible manner.

LiveAgent: An email platform that allows you to easily manage email across your entire organization. No more emails getting lost or stuck in employee's inboxes.

Podio: A flexible and cheap project management and CRM platform. You can use Buildium purely for the management operations and Podio for your overall business operations and growth.

Slack: A free way to communicate with your team. We have started adding clients to Slack and they LOVE it. We also love it because we get immediate responses to our inquiries.

BombBomb: A video platform that integrates with Gmail and LiveAgent emails-the coolest thing I've seen in a while!

10to8: A better and cheaper alternative to Calendly. Get your scheduling under control and receive better analytics.

Zoom: A great way to meet with your virtual clients. This is our main meeting tool and allows us to operate effectively as a virtual CPA firm.

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