#might post on ML explainability later-too much for one post

[averagelolcodeenthusiast]

I think the most important thing to understand with ML (AI) is that it is, fundamentally, unexplainable intelligence, or intelligence without understanding. What I mean by this is that it solves a problem in a non-algorithmic way, a way that can't be properly explained or duplicated. However, although this may sound like a "bad" thing, this is a actually where ML gets its strengths and it's really no different from how our brains work. We can't explain how we see or come up with words or do pretty much any fundamental mental task. Seeing is fundamentally too complicated of an operation to be done generally and algorithmically. It's the same case with ML. For instance, meteorologists can (imperfectly) predict the weather by using a simulation, which takes our understanding of physics and applies it to the atmosphere to predict how it will change. This is understandable intelligence: we understand how each component works and how they combine to create predictions. However, this approach can only take in as many factors as we feed into it. Using ML on the other hand, we can account for factors that we didn't even know existed. The famous butterfly thought experiment says that, because weather is this massive chaotic system, that a tiny disturbance like a butterfly flapping its wings could lead to a hurricane further down the line. Although ML can't account for something as small and random as a butterfly, it can account for an almost infinite number of other factors, like maybe the migratory patterns of the Monarch butterflies, or the influence of small but regular ocean currents on air temperatures. However, the ML model doesn't know that butterflies are migrating, it just knows that there is a disturbance at a specific place and time of year and that when there is such a disturbance it will lead to a set of probable consequences. The very fact of it's non-understanding allows it to account for millions of tiny factors, which leads to more accuracy than could ever be achieved through traditional methods.

[murasaki-cha]

I've recently gotten into web comics but I don't like most of the male characters in romance comics, they do some really creepy things that seem to just get swept under the rug. Do you have any recommendations for some good romance comics?

*cracks neck* I've trained for this day for years

This is going to be a combination of manhwa, manhua, webtoons and probably some manga too, of all kinds of genres, most are my favorites and I'll explain why so pick whatever catches your interest.

Post is going to be super long so:

I Stan The Prince -> starting of with a strong one, the fl writes a fanfiction about the notorious ex crown prince and raises his popularity. Now she has to work with him and write another book all while dealing with political drama and dark royal secrets. This manhwa rescently just came back from an incredibly long hiatus, it has no novel it's an original manhwa and the main couple are literally the cutest most in love mutual pining idiots ever they're married they just don't know it yet

Hidden Love -> Warning this has a 7 age gap! The story starts when the fl is 13 and meets her brothers dormmate and falls in love with him but keeps it a secret and they lose contact. Years later when she's in college she reunites with the brother's friend and old feelings start to resurface and he slowly falls for her now that she is an adult. I am going to repeat this only once, no grooming, no weird underage romance, ml never liked her like that when she was a child her romance was one sided back then, both are consenting adults now. The fl helps ml with his struggling past and makes him realize he is worthy of love. The fl is strong and confident and she's the one saving the ml multiple times. The ml is literally such a green flag even if he's a big flirt when "courting" her. It's an incredibly touching story and it even has a drama

Eternal Love/First Froat -> set in the same universe as the story above, this is about the love story of the prev fl brother and the mc, his high school classmate. Both had a crush on each other back then but the fl pushed him away coldly and they seperated. Years later they met by chance and by chance yet again ended up as roommates. Slowly they realize the feelings never went away and they keep getting drawn to each other but the horribly tragic past of the fl and the reason she pushed the ml away slowly uncoveres too. This is a beautiful story of a love that never stopped. The mcs are literally meant to be and the fl is so strong after everything she's been through. And the ml is the most patient, caring mam ever everyone deserves a man like him. Literally the standard. Both these books can be read as stand alones but there are some hilarious moments that can only be completely understood if you read them both

Savinvg My Sweetheart -> You will cry so hard while reading this. Fl is the saintess' daughter and after the death of her husband who she was politically married to, she goes back in time a few months before their marriage and only has one goal, to save her kind husbad from her mother even if it causes her death. Both the fl and ml love each other so incredibly much but both think the other hates them because of the forced marriage yet that misunderstanding doesn't stop them from being the literal greatest cople ever! The are such a healthy couple and both are incredibly fleshed out and not just making romance their entire point of existance. Fl slowly gathers powers in order to stop her biological mother who is evil incarnate and save everyone. Ml works together with fl and on his own in order to strengthen his kingdom. And the link that connects them will literally have you crying for the next 20 years. The story is more of a found family/romance and it's one of the most well written stories ever, you will almost never find one loophone everything is planned to the T

Caught By The Villain -> the ml might start bad here but I'm telling you his character development is simply 👌 ✨️. Fl gets transported into the world of this novel she read as the twin sister of a minor villain. Later she has to join knighthood disgusted as her brother and somehow gets chosen as the personal guard of the crown prince, aka main villain, but also with the og!ml which is somewhat different from the story. Ok I'm going to start by saying the title is literally the greatest clickbait ever because almost everyone but the villain catch her and discovered she's a girl. The story has great representation and discusses about a lot of topics like gender and sexuality which you almost never find talked in manhwas. The ml starts bad but slowly by spending time with fl he realizes his mistakes, sincerely apologises tho does not expect forgiveness, promises to change and does keep his word, genuenly loves and cherishes her and is an all round little meow meow and I love him. He's a bi disaster too. Fl is strong and under lots of stress. She slowly gets closer with ml and realizes he's not just the big bad evil villain from the novel and the closer they get and the more genuine their friendship becomes, the more she feels guilty for hiding her true identity from ml. And the og!ml is a special case that I don't even wanna touch with a 10 foot pole so theres that. The development all these characters go through is slow and so perfectly written you don't even realize how much they changed until you go back and realise they're not the same as the beginong

Even If You Split My Mouth -> manga with japanese urban legends which means it has some gore and body horror. The story follows a Kuchisake-Onna and her contract fiancé, a 17 yo boy who has the power to strengthen her legend with his words so she won't disappear. She doesn't want this engagement while he is in love with her so they form a pact, if she can scare him within a year the engagement is off, if not than they get married. This is one of those stories that start all silly goofy but end up having some of the deepest lore ever. The fl is super cute for a yokai and she blushes a lot every time ml flirts. Ml is completly unphased by her scare attempts and loves her to bits. They're such a dumb cute couple and their love story is so fun and sad sometimes. All the side characters are entertaining and lovable. Really there's not one bad thing I can say about this manga, it deserves more love

You Are My Desire -> high school sweethearts and later uni sweethearts. Fl moves to a new city and school after her parents messy divorce and her father's remarriage. While looking around she stumbles upon a tatoo shop and amazingly embarrasses herself in front of the tattooist. On the first day of school she happens to end up as deskmates with that same tattooist who's coincidentally the school tyrant but slowly it becomes visible this tyrant doesn't act like a tyrant at all and so a weird relationship is born out of the two of them. The two mcs are one of the best couples I've ever read. They slowly heal heach others wounds and teach each other that they love them even with their scars. I don't wanna say a lot since the manhua only has aroumd 20 chapters and there's so much story from the novel that hasn't been told yet. There's slso a drama that was rescently released

Daytime Star -> modern manhwa. An actress who has been cast as nothing but an extra for almost 10 years lands a small role where she gets to play along one of the best male actors in the industry. After that they both can't stop thinking about each other and that's how their love story begins. One of the healthiest modern manhwa couples ever! They're literally so cute they will call you single in all languages pf the world and more. I also loved that the fl slowly rose to fame almost all on her own using her own strength and talent with very few minor moments where others helped. It's a great story and it talks about the struggles of working on the korean entertainment industry too

Villains Are Destined to Die -> oh where do I begin with this masterpiece! Fl gets transmigrated into a dating sim she was playing as the villaines and she's currently in the hard mode which makes it super dificult for her to clear the game. She has to increase the affection percentage of the capture targets so she can go back to her old life and avoid the bad ending which always results in her death. This is literally one of those stories that gets you hooked on the very first chapters alone. Fl goes through so much and she's such a tragic character. All she wants is a peaceful life and she works damn hard for it. Her family is just exhausting but they slowly develop besides SOME who shall not be named. The ml, which you'll probably figure out who it is lile halfway through because he's just that iconic, is literally THE BEST, THE STANDARD! I love him so much and it might not show it in the begining chapters but he's is just perfect. The romance is more secondary tho and the story focuses more on the fl's struggles to survive and the discovery of the secrets that can change the fate of the entire kingdom.

See You In My 19th Life -> this rescently got a drama and I recommend watching that too. Fl is a reincarnator who remembers all her lives besides the first one. In her 19th life she resolves to find a boy form her 18th life who made her enjoy life again after so many reincarnations and made her wish she was reincarnated once again. She manages to get a job in the hotel he manages and immediately asks him to date. Thus begins the story of her following and flirting with her love from the prevous life without him knowing it's her and slowly healing his scars and traumas while also solving the mystery of her reincarnation. The story us full of mystery and absurdly cute couples. The ml is traumatized by fl's death since she died quite literally right in front of his eyes when he was really young and he also has a crap ton of family drama to deal with. The fl loves the him so much and tries her best to help him not just physically but emotionally too. She's like a breath of fresh air for the ml and their love is just so selfless. He loves her even when he doesn't know she's his first love reincarnated. The side couple is literally amazinv too and I would need an entire paragraph to talk about them too. The mystery of the webtoon always keeps you on the edge. Overall amazing webtoon and has an amazing kdrama!

(I'm getting tired and I have to wake up early tomorrow so I'm just gonna drop some titles with no explenation now. There might be some shounen ai in there fyi)

A Stepmother's Marchen

How To Win My Husband Over

Death To Lady White Ferret

Positively Yours

Business Propsal (Also has a great kdrama)

Sasaki to Miyano

A Good Day To Be A Dog (kdrama rescently started)

Till Debt Do Us Apart

Shoujinkou Nikki

Hirano to Kagiura

Given

The Reason Why Raekiana Ended Up At The Duke's Mansion (also has an anime)

Once More

Love Like Cherry Blossoms

Tsuiraku JK to Haijin Kyoushi (it's a student x teacher but honestly it's more of a dark comedy manga and it's hilarious so I recommend it)

I Raised Cinderella Preciously

The Perks of Being A Villainess

Ajatsuki no Yona

My Secretly Hot Husband

Ok that's all I can squeeze out of my brain for now. Hope you enjoyed the recs

[richardsphere]

Fic Research Sucks

So im currently doing a rough outline for a Persona/Miraculous crossover fic. And while trying to mesh the universes, i needed to do some research. i dont like where it took me. So below the cut, a peek behind the curtain of a Fic that im still not certain will ever see the light of day. TW: mentioned Christianity, and the works of HP Lovecraft.

My fic kind of needs Plagg (and Tiki in the background) to have at least a vague, aproximate knowledge of Personae, like he needs to know roughly how it works and who Igor, Nyarl and Phil are. That's about it. No expertise, but given their immortality and multiversal-conciousness it makes no sense to paint Plagg as entirely ignorant on this stuff. As such, i decided to see if I could do the classic "historic figure was actually magic in this fic"-trope using figures that Persona cannonically alludes to having been involved with Persona-related stuff. to get the obvious three public domain figures out the way: I felt that inserting a reference to Plagg having either met Carl Jung himself was too cliche, or interacted with Nyarl and Phil during their 0-35 AD adventure would be a bit gauché. Option 1 felt too on the nose (and overdone) and option 2 is downright sacrilegious. Which im not normally against but saying "Plagg caused the black sun and the earthquake when Oily Josh got crowned to death" feels in bad taste... even for me. It's one thing to say "Plagg sank Atlantis and killed the dinosaurs" , its another for my fic to even remotely imply "Plagg killed Jesus of Nazareth". Third option: Go for Mary Shelley/Frankenstein references that come from the Velvet Room... there is potential there, but it would pretty much require I rewrite Adrien's persona-progression list. ("The Creature" is currently drafted as his phase-2 when he finds out about the Senti-thing. And the progression between Adam-Creature-Final Battle Super-Persona is actually very nice and thematic in my current draft. I dont want to overturn all of that so i can make a single, one-off handwave explanation work) So you might understand why I was kind of desperate trying to find another historical reference in Persona i could use... and then I remembered there are references to that Lovecraft book with the talking cat in P2, and I thought "maybe there could be references to black cats specifically in that Lovecraft book..." and I jotted that down to research later. Well later arrived: The book was called the Cats of Ulthar, and before i could even research that specific book in-depth I found that there is at least one, explicitly black cat in another book: The Rats in the Wall, a prospect that excited me for all of 0.5 seconds before I realized: It was his actual cat. The one that was infamously named for its black coloration. and the timelines add up there. Fu was born in 1829 and was at most 20 when the temple was destroyed. Lovecraft was born in 1890 so he could easily be a post-temple wielder... Maybe Fu gave it to HP's father then the father ran away with Plagg (explaining the infamous but cannonically vague alusion to Fu having "gotten it wrong" once before) and left the ring with HP, where Fu eventually recovered Plagg. It all adds up, it is an entirely plausible thing to write into my story (and with the way he grew less racist later in life... actually apropriate for the "people can change"-theme in my fic) and would also shore up some holes in the ML canon in the process, and I do not want it to... but it seems to be the best option. And I am really struggling to find a fifth public domain figure, but P3-5 are extremely light on the historic references (or at least the ones that alude to persona's being involved), so i either need to dig through the entirity of P2 (way too much effort for a single-line handwave explanation), or just swallow the bile and say: "Plagg was N-man"

[faelicy]

Miss Faelicy I would love to get your opinion on Bingqiu.

I see people posting things like how they are "problematic" and how they don't really love each other and SQQ only feels sympathy etc. Obviously there were struggles between them as there should be (considering all that happened) and just because sqq wasn't very open and super obvious about his feelings doesn't mean they are not there..this is how I interpreted it. I would love to know your opinion

Hello! This also covers part 2 of the previous ask.

First, massive spoilers for the end of the novel. Second, a disclaimer: I despise shipwars, which I think are behind most of those comments. I hate them because it's usually all in bad faith: everyone's already committed to their interpretation of the ships, and any discussion is just a guise for justifying their preferences.

So to any readers: I don't want anything here to be used as shipwar fuel. This post is about Bingqiu's canon arc and themes. Basically, I don't know or care if Bingqiu is a good ship, but I do think it's a well-written one.

I'll start by saying directly: for most of the novel, Bingqiu is neither healthy nor romantic. And that this is not bad writing, but on purpose.

A relationship that drives one party to mental breakdown isn't healthy. A relationship where that party says it's okay to hurt or kill them can't possibly be healthy. That happened because there was something deeply wrong with their relationship, something that can't be reduced to Xin Mo, miscommunication, or LBH throwing a tropey yandere fit.

And out of all three MXTX novels, only SV lacks a love confession from the MC to the ML. Again, I don't think it's an oversight, or just because SQQ's face is too thin. There are plenty of ways MXTX could have worked a subtle one in if she really wanted to.

In my opinion, Bingqiu's narrative can be split up into four arcs: Qing Jing Peak (ch 1-27), Jin Lan City (28-43), Post-revival (29-55), and Reconciliation (56-81). Other than the first arc, where their relationship is pretty straightforward, Bingqiu spend most of the rest in direct conflict.

I'll give an overview of the arcs here, but what I truly want to say about Bingqiu starts in arc 4, so if you're impatient you can scroll down. But the overview might help add context.

Jin Lan City arc is about LBH's anger at being brutally betrayed by the one person he thought he could trust. Here he tries to force answers out of SQQ, who he believes both hates him and is a hypocrite. He's driven by a desire to return to the past, but his rage and love makes his actions contradictory: on one hand he tries to win SQQ's approval constructively, by climbing to the top of Huan Hua Palace and performing good deeds, on the other hand his belief that SQQ doesn't care about him so it's all futile anyway (reinforced by SQQ's own actions) causes him to lash out destructively, going as far as to hurt and imprison SQQ.

LBH's bitterness is portrayed very negatively, because all it does is instill despair into SQQ, until SQQ ends up believing that he's only been a blight on LBH's life, and that he must make up for it by killing himself. Whereupon LBH breaks down, regressing into a childlike state. Some might ask, why does LBH never bring up the Abyss again afterwards? It's because he gives up here. This entire arc is about getting LBH to let go of past wrongs and to stop seeking answers, whether the reader believes it's fair to him or not. Because SQQ's life is more important.

Post-revival arc then is about SQQ trying to come to terms with a blackened LBH who also loves him. Interestingly, despite SQQ's horror at realizing LBH was romantically interested in him all along, SQQ actually has a very subtle but telling secondary reaction. To explain, let's back up to the first arc.

Starting around ch 9, probably as a sign of his growing affection, SQQ begins addressing LBH as 这孩子, or "this child," in his internal monologue, instead of LBH's name. He does it once each in ch 9, 12, 17, 21, 25. However, once Jin Lan City arc starts, SQQ drops the address entirely. LBH and "child" are never brought up together except for one snarky comment on LBH's tantrum being disgracefully childish in ch 38.

At first glance this doesn't look noteworthy because LBH by this point is no longer a kid. But when LBH kisses him in ch 49, SQQ changes again: right away he returns to using "child" on LBH, and the "this child" address starts popping up at a much higher frequency. By the end of SV SQQ has referred to LBH as a child in some manner at least 35 times (yes I went and counted), with the vast majority after ch 49, and he continues to do so right into the last extra.

Why was SQQ unwilling to use this address of affection for over 20 chapters? Perhaps because he too thought LBH hated him, and couldn't bear to think about him so intimately knowing that. So SQQ immediately falling back into it the moment he learns LBH loves him is a sign of his relief. He's still dismayed at the romantic part, but though SQQ likes to deflect from his real emotions (this is the guy who focused on bad naming sense after being fatally poisoned, who cavalierly commented only after it was all over that he'd expected to die), the fact that LBH loves and doesn't hate him, means a lot.

Here SQQ's feelings towards LBH are at their most complicated. He still assumes the worst of him like in Jin Lan City, but now because of the above, also sees a lonely child whenever LBH is unhappy and lost. It's like he has two filters actively interfering with each other, "crazed criminal" and "pitiful child," and so he flip-flops between pushing LBH away and comforting him. But when LBH drags CQMS into it, and even seemingly takes advantage of SQQ's love for him, SQQ's negative image and frustration with him only grows, until he finally snaps and tells LBH to never come near him again.

At this point SQQ still believes that LBH is the same black-hearted, invincible, devil incarnate that og!LBH was portrayed to be. The Reconciliation arc starts by chipping away at this filter that's been plaguing SQQ for so long. First the revelation that TLJ/ZZL was behind the sowers, thus clearing LBH's name at Jin Lan City. Then we see how unloved he is by his own father; we see him injured and helpless and unconscious. Meng Mo yells at SQQ, reinforcing that image of a vulnerable, terrified child. So by ch 62 SQQ has thrown away the "crazed criminal" filter completely, and in that same chapter they cling to each other and finally make up. Because while it's true that the current LBH is misanthropic, antisocial, and mercurial, SQQ has also finally accepted that he's still the same LBH he'd raised and doted on, back on Qing Jing Peak.

Now I'm going to talk about what I see as the most important part of Bingqiu. Yes, despite the wall of text already.

A common sentiment of Bingqiu shippers about their issues seems to be, "SQQ is dumb and oblivious; he can't figure out what LBH needs even though he loves him because he sees LBH as a novel character," but I think the problem is far more complicated and insidious than that. If that was everything, why give SQQ the epiphany that he misunderstood LBH so early? Why have him think in ch 66 that "truthfully, he'd never really trusted Luo Binghe, and that's why he kept accidentally hurting him?" If he's already realized that he shouldn't treat LBH like og!LBH (he even meets og!LBH in ch 71 to rub it in further), why do we go another 13 chapters believing their relationship is good and well, even giving us a sweet, happy moment in ch 75, only to show LBH having the worst breakdown of the novel just 4 chapters later? Was it all just padding to demonstrate the danger of Xin Mo?

Or is there something else beneath the surface?

In ch 66, the same chapter where SQQ implies he doesn't want to accidentally hurt LBH anymore, he says something telling. When LQG is skeptical that LBH can be trusted, SQQ thinks, 家里孩子不懂事，大人不容易做, or "when your child doesn't know any better, as the adult you don't have it easy." The child here of course refers to LBH, and the adult is SQQ, who's complaining about smoothing over LBH's messes. But what is SQQ implying here?

Doesn't know any better? That's what you say about a toddler who can't think for themselves, not a grown man. LBH is 25 and SQQ thinks he doesn't know better. Doesn't know better about what? LBH's wants, his needs? His feelings? Or even what's good for him?

And then you realize that's exactly how SQQ's always treated him, like a helpless child who can't make his own choices.

It's SQQ who chooses to throw LBH down into the Abyss without trying to talk to him. It's SQQ who decides that keeping silent is the best choice. It's SQQ who believes self-destructing in front of LBH will help, who thinks that breaking off their relationship is for the better. And it's SQQ who scolds LBH into tolerating CQMS, even though they hate each other and CQMS is hostile towards him. Who forces him to leave first at Zhao Hua Temple despite LBH's pleas otherwise, who shoos him out the window when CQMS walks in on them.

Every single one of these decisions, SQQ made believing it was for the best (repair LBH's relationship with his family, help him avoid arrest, not wanting to make excuses, wanting LBH to be free of his hatred), and every single one of them only damaged LBH further. Because SQQ's never listened to him, even once. Never consulted him or considered his feelings.

(And LBH did try to bring up his feelings on one of the matters in ch 75. He insinuates to SQQ that he doesn't like LQG calling him "little beast" or "ingrate." And SQQ's response is to dismiss them entirely, saying that LQG's "not wrong.")

SQQ has always loved LBH, but he's never once respected LBH's agency or personhood. Because LBH doesn't know better and SQQ does, so SQQ must make all his decisions for him.

And this, amplified by Xin Mo, is what finally drives LBH mad in ch 79.

To LBH, the important part isn't whether SQQ loves him, which I think he knew after ch 43 (it's why he can be so daring and pushy with SQQ's boundaries). What's important is that the moment SQQ believes abandoning LBH is justified for whatever reason again, SQQ absolutely will.

Ch 80's two-way noncon (since LBH was basically unconscious and couldn't consent) tends to draw most of the attention, but I actually think that what happens afterwards is one of the most important scenes for Bingqiu. There SQQ tries to sacrifice himself a second time for LBH, drawing Xin Mo's demonic qi into his body. Yet the novel claims that SQQ's actions here are completely different than in ch 43. SQQ himself says that this time he's doing it for LBH, while last time he was doing it for himself. But can the reader see a functional difference?

There is one, in fact: it's SQQ's response to LBH's choice afterwards. LBH decides to follow SQQ in death, even though this would void the point of SQQ's sacrifice. But instead of insisting otherwise, SQQ just accepts it. Because he finally understands that whether LBH's life is worth living, whether LBH will be better off, is for LBH and only LBH to decide.

It's the first time he respects LBH's agency. And this is the only reason why he and LBH can finally begin building a healthy relationship on the mess they've had up to now.

So that's what I see as the true beauty behind Bingqiu. It's about communication and mistaken assumptions, yes, but it's also about the nature of love between parent and child. The romantic developments were left to the extras, I believe, because this was the main story MXTX wanted to tell with them. Their relationship as lovers only starts afterwards, hence why SV ends with, "the story between you and I, has only just begun." It was never meant to be a whirlwind romance where they fall in love cleanly. It might not to be to everyone's tastes, but an incredible amount of thought was put into the narrative, and that's what amazed me when I first finished this novel.

(This post went on way too long and I ended up cutting off a huge chunk of tangential stuff and how SQQ came to his realization in ch 79: he didn't do it alone. It took him seeing the LBH in TLJ and the himself in YQY for him to understand. In fact, YQY and og!SQQ's relationship has a similar parent-and-child dynamic. I've touched on it before on twitter; if there's interest I might try writing that up here too.)

[wonwoosthetic]

So I recently devoured your entire Minnie ML and I know you say we can send in requests, but what if you have like....a lot? Lol. Not that I would expect them to be done but I guess like... Additional suggestions or things we'd like to see. Idk if that makes sense but I'm now emotionally invested.

Hi, haha, thank you so much!☺️🥰😂 It’s always so nice reading comments like yours :)

So, how I usually do it, and maybe I should put that on the masterlist bc I’ve only ever answered that once before and that was months ago:

If I get normal requests that don’t have anything to do with any series of mine, I do try to get them done as soon as possible and, of course, if I get any inspiration and am able to write something good with the request I’ve been given.

If it’s a request for any of my series, I always would ask to be patient because, especially with Minnie, I also make social media posts, gose episodes, etc. So, if you have a request, please send them in, don’t hesitate! I’m always happy receive requests🤗 if I don’t answer to it, it means that I’m keeping it in my inbox or drafts and answer to it with the actual post :) if you don’t see your request as a chapter within a month, don’t be afraid to ask me about it, like “hi, I sent x request a while ago and you haven’t posted it yet, just wanted to ask if you still have it?” Because, sadly, tumblr often deletes inbox messages after I’ve received them or won’t even deliver them to me properly. It’s really frustrating and I’m extremely sorry about it.

I have some Minnie requests in my drafts that I’m keeping to post at a later time when I feel like it would fit, but if you want it to see it as soon as possible, just add a little “asap pls” at the end of your request☺️ always let’s me know how soon I should post it.

I truly try to go with the “first come, first serve” thing, but sometimes I just don’t have any idea/inspiration for how I could write it into a good post. And if I just start writing it without being motivated to do so, I won’t like it, and I only like to post things I’m actually satisfied with. So, it might happen that I don’t have any ideas for a request at the time, but I still like the request, so I keep it for a later time.

Also, another two examples:

There’s one request for a Minnie and Hanbin song collab that I’ve had in my drafts for quite some time. I LOVE the idea, truly LOVE it, but not for right now. I want to post it at a later time when I feel like it would fit the story line.

Another one would be Minnie’s SM days/her switch to Pledis. Another request I really really like and I’ve had it in my drafts for very long, but each week I get new ideas that I want to include and I’m still not 100% happy with the post, so I’m going to keep on editing it and posting it when I feel satisfied with it, instead of posting it and then over editing it after that bc then most people won’t read the edited chapter but the one I posted first… hope that makes sense

I’m really sorry if anyone doesn’t like my approach to posting, I’m trying my best, but I really don’t want to post anything I’m not happy with. I hope everyone understands🤗

This is a way too long explanation and all over the place, I’m sorry😅 but I’m really really glad that you asked and I was able to explain this.

So, long story short: don’t be shy or hesitant to send in requests, but pls be patient (especially also bc tumblr is very sadly not my job nor education), or write something like “asap pls” or “just a short sth” to let me know that it’s okay if it only has around 1-2k posts instead of 3k+ that would take me slightly longer🤗🥰

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

I m sorry if this post makes u upset but honestly this is something i have been wondering a lot about. So i m sure the admis are aware of a theory that has existed for long time in t/k spaces that BH was holding t/k back. So wrt that we also know the boys recently became partners of BH by buying shares sometime in 2020. They also renewed their contracts in 2020. We also know tae has become happier and the famous t/k conversation took place in 2020. We can also see that t/k have more on (1/2)

screen interactions and are more frequently paired together since after the ITS convo and also appear to interact more with each other in various cobtent. Also there is a fall in j/k content no? I wonder if that theory was indeed true and that tae being happier could be bcoz of him getting to be more open with jk now and not hiding their relationship infront of the cameras and if that has anything to do with them being shareholders and the new contract. Bcoz this kinda makes sense to me (2/2)

Admin 1: The only thing with which you’ve upset me is by ignoring what I’ve said just a few posts ago about how the only ships I feel have actual potential of being ‘real’ are vmin and, to a certain degree, namjin, and how I’m more than open to talking about other duos etc as long as we talk about them as their real life friendships. Just yesterday I said that I don’t really care or pay attention to what other shippers do because it’s simply none of my concern. Why is that? Because no JK+ML ship has ever given me reason to go “huh?” or given me the impression there could be more than just friendship. Also, I’m not here to try and disprove other ships, or somehow try to convince anyone that my views are the only correct ones, I simply want to have a good time talking about vmin, namjin, and Bangtan, and that’s it, which I’ve said it yesterday as well.

I’ve been ARMY for many years now and yes, I’m more than aware of this theory because, in a way, it’s inescapable even if you try to stay clear of what T/K (and J/K) shippers are up to. And yet, despite that, for years my opinion on the topic has not changed in the slightest. I’ve written a whole post about ships and BH and how they are used for marketing purposes in rather obvious ways at times, how more screen time doesn’t immediately equal them being romantic (and the whole no screen time = no bond paradox), or BH “allowing” them to show off their relationship more, because that frankly, to me, sounds ridiculous.

Even if we’d entertain the idea for a moment, while also remembering that apparently T/K is still the biggest BTS ship, wouldn’t it make more sense for BH to show them? Because that would bring in more money? So, in that sense, hiding them wouldn’t make such sense business wise? Someone could argue that scarcity creates more demand, which once they do supply that demand, the money basically rains down on BH like crazy. And yet even that, to me, doesn’t really make all that much sense, given that they could just put T/K content behind a paywall, as in keep their interactions as paid content exclusives, but even that isn’t the case since apparently there hasn’t been much T/K shipper satisfying content even there. So, what exactly, would be the business point for BH to “hide” them? Remember, they are a company after all, not a matchmaking service.

Anyway, going back to my thoughts. We have 4 O’Clock followed by the knowledge that not that long after Tae started working on Happy Christmas, a duet for himself and Jimin which supposedly was too much for two members to sing it together (the implications here are rather clear), which was followed by Scenery (which has clear connections to the same event as in 4 O’clock and to Jimin), and add to all of that what Tae replied to that ARMY on weverse (this I also have a whole post about which I thought might’ve made my thoughts clear in a way, but I guess it did not). That does paint quite the obvious picture, does it not?

Just yesterday I said that the biggest rule in shipping is respect and being respectful, yes? Do you think it is respectful to still hold on to this made up T/K theory despite being faced with Tae’s own words? Despite how ridiculous it sounds? I don’t think so.

Therefore, for me, with everything Tae has done to express his feelings in connection to Jimin, as well as clearly stating that 95z is love (just a few months after telling off that shipper) and the fact that (despite surely having to jump through many hoops along the way) Jimin answered Tae in kind by making Friends happen which solidified them as soulmates to us but also made their wish and promise of remaining together even when the cheers are gone known (here’s my analysis of that song). That’s no small thing. And if that T/K theory held any merit, I highly doubt either Tae or Jimin would do all this, which I’ve also already once discussed in a previous post. Add to that Tae’s Weverse reply, their conversation during ITS, and Tae wanting Jimin to come sleep next to him on JKs birthday (that being something the company has no control over and is their own free time and their free will of telling us about it), the only “relationship” that Tae has with JK, in my opinion, is that of close friends, band mates, and colleagues.

As for their contract and them being shareholders and that having some kind of connection to them being able to show their relationships more freely—while yes, they did say that they’ll sign the contract and thus give BH seven more of their years so long as the contract reflects their hard work and achievements, it’s rather ludicrous to think that there might’ve been some kind of clause in there as well about how BH won’t “hide” a ship anymore or allow them to just run free and show off their relationships. Frankly that would be stupid and way more risky than worth it both for BH and the members themselves. Besides their personal relationships, especially romantic ones, are not for public consumption, so to speak. Even more so in the world of idols and with the prospect of having to do their military service in the future (this being doubly important and risky when considering their relationships being between two members and therefore LGBT).

We have no way of knowing what is exactly in those contracts, and what kind of effect them having BH shares has on their work-relation with BH, all we do know is that whatever was in those contracts was satisfying enough for all seven of them to sign it and be happy with that choice. Everything else is pure speculation.

This is the final time I’m answering such an ask since now I think I’ve truly made my stance on JK+ML ships known sufficiently, and this time I mean it.

Also, for future reference, can we please talk about JK not in romantic connection to a member for once? I have a whole post expressing my grievances with the treatment he gets from shippers and how there is so much more to him.

Admin 2: We live in a materialistic capitalist world where money is the leading power. Many people get up in the morning and work their a*s off to bring in enough income to live and to feed themselves and their possible family. But there are also people who find ways to make money without having to work their a*ses off. Such possibilities in todays day and age gives you, among other things, making videos on Youtube. If you’re sneaky enough and have an eye for what sells best at any given time and what brings in the biggest viewership, you might come to find that a great way to earn well is by making videos about BTS, and more specifically, about popular BTS ships, or even the most popular one at that.

Maybe you noticed how at some point there was a boom on youtube when it came to people making reaction videos, especially to anything BTS related, as well as hundreds of channels about shipping doing analysis videos, especially for T/K and J/K.

More below the cut:

In that moment when Tae basically said no to T/K being romantic, those T/K channels faced potentially “losing their jobs” and thus losing a very lucrative source of income. When I say lucrative, I mean up to $90k a year, which is a sum of money the average person can only dream of. Therefore, to save their existence and income, they decided to push on with their agenda and disregard any signs pointing against their ship. That’s why I think theories such as the one anon presented us with are ones that are created during conversations between people with such channels as wonderful solutions to explain away signs and behaviors that simply didn’t fit them and their agenda. There is a whole own eco system between those channels and their views, and shippers at large, to keep their shipper fantasies alive at all cost.

We know that T/K is one of the oldest, and the most popular one, among BTS ships, which relies on how fun and nice interactions between JK and Tae are to look at, how silly they used to be in the past together, and how some of their on stage behavior worked well in terms of “awakening” crazy fantasies among shippers. The most important in all of it though has always been that this ship contained the maknae and the next member closest to him in age, and thus also to many of those who ship them. But that of course isn’t all there is to it.

Since 2016 we’ve had 4 O’Clock and Scenery, both inspired by the same event, as well as vmin defining each other as their soulmate. These facts alone are, for me, a glaring contradiction for this whole T/K theory and any kind of romance existing within either T/K and J/K. For me, it’s a rather absurd thought to have a soulmate and also be in a romantic relationship (or harbor romantic feelings) for another person. Just like it’s absurd for me how supposedly two big JK and maknae ships are supposed to be real at the very same time and the band also exists at the same time as some form of background noise.

We also later on have Tae who wrote Sweet Night in which Tae sings about falling in love with his best friend, who has always been Jimin. Taking into account what Tae told that shipper on Weverse yet months later announced that 95z is love, that he sang Friends with Jimin, which was also co-written by Jimin, I very much doubt that there have ever been any romantic feelings from Tae toward JK (and vice versa).

I’d also like to note that Tae and JK didn’t spend any time together during their vacation in 2019 (according to them in the first episode of BV4), as well as JK having shown a kind of distaste toward the idea of one of Tae’s friends already having gotten married (or at least that’s what his facial expression looked like) which to me indicates the same thing they said in the ITS conversations: they’ve matured and their personalities have simply grown in different directions making parts of their friendship a bit awkward.

On the FESTA 2020 Rolling Paper Tae called JK his comedian while JK called Tae is safe place, which for me makes it sound that their bond is simply that of an older brother and his younger brother. I feel like during their ITS conversation they tried to communicate to us that they had some issues with each other but at the same time also try to somewhat negate all that obsessive romantic shipping that's been going on involving those two for so long. But that obviously hasn’t worked out.

Tae did say that he had to take certain steps and now he’s happier, but personally I believe that had far more of a connection to their work, or specifically Tae’s mixtape and the work and negotiations around it, since we know some of it might’ve been pushing the lines a little too much if BangPD felt the need to call him and ask him to tone it down a little. If I put on my delulu hat, looking at how happy Tae seems in recent months, I’d be inclined to believe this also had something to do with Jimin, who also seems to be in quite the happy mood as well.

Even if I’d step into a whole delulu tent, I see absolutely no connection to JK when thinking of all the things that could’ve been a factor that led to Tae’s happy state.

It’s easy to see that we’ve been getting more T/K interactions recently, which can be due to marketing strategies (since Tae’s mixtape is coming soon, and potentially also JKs since it’s been mentioned here and there last year) but also due to them getting closer again friendship wise after working through whatever was causing them to be awkward with each other (or at least slowly doing so). We all know that Tae is a very honest (as much as that’s possible in their line of work) and the only thing all of this shows us that Tae is simply showing us with JK that they’re doing better again, but none of their behavior in any way diverges or exceeds anything that’s normal for all of BTS and how touchy and full of affection they are with each other to various degrees. We have a whole post on the bias of body language as well.

Personally, I see no indication whatsoever for there being anything romantic about T/K, since that’s what you’re essentially asking about. After all Tae was the only one who had no idea about JKs drawing for Hobi, so if they were romantically involved, don’t you think JK would’ve showed it to him or at least told him about it?

I’d recommend listening to what Tae told us, remember that especially when we see him put his arm around JKs shoulder or touches his arm, that that isn’t a show of his romantic love for him, but just their normal level of BTS affection. Don’t let people convince you into buying into their agendas because at the end of the day, they have a lucrative business in doing so while, should it all one day come to an end, you will be the one that gets hurt due to their words and theories.

The sole fact that T/K relies on many of the same arguments as J/K, and both have JK as the part of them, is, for me, an indication that those ships aren’t real and instead that Tae and Jimin treat JK as their younger brother whom they love, just like all of BTS does. This is simply how BTS are. Everyone touches everyone’s arm, thigh, back, and hugs each other, it’s simply them being them. In order for a ship to be romantic and “real”, it takes a little more than just a touch of a thigh. There needs to be something more, like we’re able to find/see that something more with vmin, for example.

Tae is my bias and it always upsets me when people don’t respect him and the things he’s said.

[perhapsitmaybedragons]

You Smell Really Nice

For the ML Guild blog, the request was “You Smell Nice; Can I borrow your sweater” and this is what I came up with. Established relationship, post reveal.

Marinette snuggled into Adrien's arms, breathing him in. “You smell really nice,” she wrapped her ams around his waist and laid her head on his chest. It had been months since Hawkmoth was defeated. And just weeks since they'd become a couple. They were still learning their way around one another, but they'd mostly settled into a nice pattern.

Right now they were on the roof above Marinette's room, star gazing. It was getting late, but Tom and Sabine trusted their daughter.

Adrien kissed the top of Marinette's head. “I think you smell nice,” he pulled off his sweater when he noticed she was starting to shiver and carefully wrapped it around her. “Better?”

“Better.” Marinette fiddled with the edges of the sweater – it was black, but with a silver butterfly embroidered on the back. A Gabriel Agreste original, she was sure. She bit her lip, trying to think of something to say. Instead, what came out was “Would it be alright if I borrowed your sweater?”

Adrien cocked his head at her. “Isn't that what you're doing now?”

“No,” she said insistently, “I mean... it smells like you. You smell nice.”

“Yeah, you said,” he smiled fondly at her and reached for her again. She pulled back from him.

“Well, can I or not?”

“Of course you can,” his eyes flitted to the butterfly on the sweater.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” he said automatically. “Yes. I do, but I'm not ready yet. Can you wait for me, princess? I need to get a new sweater anyway. You can just have that one. Even if it does have ...” he trailed off. “Anyway, it looks better on you.”

“You're literally a model.”

“And yet you're more beautiful than I am,” he countered, grinning wickedly. “Suppose you'll just have to join me on the cat walk, huh?”

“Watch it, cat boy,” she nudged him with her shoulder. He sighed contentedly and pulled her back into him. They stayed that way until Sabine came up to say that it was getting a little later, and didn't they both have school in the morning? Adrien gave Marinette a peck on the cheek then headed back home.

She waved him off then promised her parents she was going straight to bed. It was a lie, of course, but a harmless one, she figured. Once she was sure they were asleep (her father's snore could easily be heard, even with her parents' door closed) she crept from her bed and got to work.

“What are you working on?”

Marinette held up Adrien's sweater. “This.”

“Is it ok to change his clothes?”

“This is different, Tikki. He said himself that he didn't want to keep it. And that he doesn't have another jacket right now -” she didn't mention that Adrien could still definitely afford another one. Sure, his father had gone to prison Adrien still had money. Some of it was going to a very good therapist right now, but there was still plenty to buy new clothes with. “Anyway, I think he might like if I made a change to it. And if he doesn't, I can fix it back the way it was.”

“Ok. But you really should get some sleep.”

“As soon as I'm done,” Marinette insisted, pulling out a stitch with her teeth.

“Can I help with anything?”

“Not this time. Just get some rest, Tikki. I'll see you in the morning.”

“Ok, Marinette,” the kwami agreed, curling up on the bed. “Goodnight.”

Marinette waved her off, mind moving at a thousand miles a minute and her hands moving almost as quickly.

She finished just shy of five am – a few hours before her alarm went off. She flopped herself into bed and it seemed to her that her alarm went off just a second later. Groaning, she turned it off and got up and ready, then regained some of her energy when she saw the sweater. She grabbed it and headed out of the house, only stopping to grab a croissant from her dad on the way.

Adrien was waiting for her outside. He often was these days. She shoved the croissant into his hands. “Have you eaten yet?” he asked, pulling her back inside the bakery when she shook her head no. “Good morning, Ms Dupain-Cheng. I think Marinette left without some things this morning.”

“Yes,” Sabine agreed, “Marinette, where's your backpack?” she handed each of the teens a pain au chocolat.

“Upstairs,” Marinette mumbled. “My room.” she turned around and went back to grab it. When she got back to the bakery Sabine and Adrien were discussing different pastries.

“That's one of my favorites, too,” Sabine was saying, “But pain au chocolat is still very good,” spotting her daughter, she waved the pair off. “Get going before you're late to school.”

“Yes, maman,” Marinette agreed, pulling Adrien along. When they got out to the street she shoved the sweater in his hands.

“I told you to keep it,” He insisted, starting to shove it back into her hands. She shook her head.

“Look at it.”

He unfurled it, looking at the back. The silver butterfly was gone. In its place was a silver kitten with the worlds “Cool Cat” embroidered above it. “Marinette,” she winced at how stern he sounded. “How late did you stay up doing this?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it does. I don't want you losing out on sleep! You already lose so much as lady--” he glanced around, remembering they were in public. “As a lady. You need to get all the sleep you can.”

“I wanted to do this for you,” she insisted. “Is it ok?”

He immediately softened and brought her into his arms. “Of course it is. I love it. Thank you. But please, please, please get some sleep. Or ...” he thought about it. “I'll make puns all day at school.”

“You wouldn't.”

“I would,” he grabbed her hand, “Pawsitively would, my lady.”

“Fine,” she threw her free hand up in surrender. “I will try to get some sleep when I can. No puns.”

“A few puns,” he offered, releasing her hand to put the sweater on. “How do I look?”

“Good.”

“I have an excellent designer,” He explained. “An excellent designer who is going to be late for class...along with her doting boyfriend if we don't get a move on it. Ready to run for it?”

“Ready!”

[xixxvxx]

first testosterone injection

in this post i’ll explain in (probably excessive) detail what my first shot was like. i had a lot of nerves about doing it, as everyone does, but i found that reading other people’s accounts and advice on the matter beforehand helped ease some of my anxiety. i wanted to share my experience, that my doing so might help someone else in turn!

before proceeding, please keep in mind that i am not a medical professional in any capacity, and this is not formal medical advice! i am just recounting my personal experience for anyone who might be curious about what it’s like. if you’re planning on injecting yourself, don’t take my word here as guidance—your doctor should be able to walk you through the process step by step in person, and additionally provide you with take-home resources which will explain how to do your shot, so stick to those instead.

in-depth talk of needles and injection under the cut.

my first shot was a fairly standard starting dose of 0.3 mL testosterone cypionate. my injections are subcutaneous, so they go into the layer of fat between my skin and my muscle. the needles for this are 25 gauge and 5/8 of an inch long— relatively short and thin. (if you don’t have a reference for what that looks like in real life, a 25g needle is about as thick as a small sewing needle, though obviously much sharper, and at 5/8” it’s about the length of your thumbnail.)

my prescription includes the previously mentioned 25g x 5/8” needles for subcutaneous injection pre-attached to syringes, as well as individual 18g x 1” needles for drawing up the testosterone. when i draw my dose, i swap out the original subcutaneous needle for the drawing needle, draw the testosterone, dispose of the drawing needle, and replace it with the subcutaneous needle. (i can explain the drawing process in more detail if anyone wants to know more about it.) your needle and syringe configuration might be a little different depending on your prescription and your pharmacy’s available stock, and the process of drawing might take one step more or fewer depending on that.

i was told that for subcutaneous injection i could pick a site on the fatty part of either one my thighs or my belly. i decided to use my belly, since i found it a little easier to pinch the flesh there. here are the steps i took to inject myself, from start to finish:

with my NP’s supervision i located an injection spot about an inch to my right of my navel.

i cleaned a 2” circle around this spot with an alcohol wipe for 10 seconds, then let the area dry for another 20 seconds. (i’ve heard that it can sting if you inject before the alcohol has time to dry.)

using my non-dominant hand i pinched a thin fold of my skin from that area in my fingers, pulling it away from my abdomen slightly.

in my dominant hand i held the needle like a dart—i grasped the end closer to the tip with my thumb and middle/ring/pinky fingers, and kept my pointer finger resting on plunger. (i found that you don’t really need to worry about accidentally pushing the plunger too soon here—the testosterone is thick and requires some effort to push out.)

after lining the needle up to the fold of skin at a roughly 45º angle to the right, i pushed the needle through my skin in one firm, quick motion. (this sounds scary, but it was easier than i thought it’d be—more on that later.)

once the needle was fully in my skin i pushed down on the plunger with my pointer finger, being careful to keep my hand as steady as possible so as not to wiggle the needle.

after all the testosterone was injected i pulled the needle out fully before letting go of my skin.

finally i re-capped the needle and disposed of it in the sharps container.

here are my personal observations of my injection experience:

i knew that i would only get more anxious about the shot the longer i waited, so when the time came to actually inject myself, i took a deep breath, did a quick 3-2-1 countdown in my head, and pushed the needle in very quickly before i could really think about it.

i was surprised and pleased to find that my shot did not hurt! i was terribly nervous about it beforehand, but it was virtually painless—in fact, i don’t even know that i would describe it as uncomfortable. i did feel the needle enter my skin, but it was just the mildest tugging/pricking sensation. there was no resistance—the needle slid in easily and fully in under a second. i’d heard people describe their shots as mild or painless before, and had trouble believing it before i tried it, but seriously, i barely felt it. the hardest part of the whole experience was pushing down on the plunger, because, again, the testosterone is a viscous liquid and comes out a little slowly. other than that the experience was a cakewalk.

when i pulled the needle out of my skin a small drop of testosterone leaked out behind it, along with just the tiniest pinprick of blood. the bleeding was so minor that i didn’t really need a band-aid, but i put one on just in case.

as the day continued i felt no discomfort around the injection site. when i removed the band-aid i saw that no more blood had leaked out. i could just barely see the itty bitty red dot where i injected myself, and though my NP told me mild bruising or swelling is common after an injection, i experienced neither.

all in all it was a quicker, simpler, and far less painful experience that i had anticipated it would be!

[soul-life-line]

Post Season 3 ML Headcannon

This Post contains theories and spoilers for the Miraculous Ladybug Season 3 Finale.

This post also contains descriptions of mental breakdowns so please be cautious.

Headcanons for season 4

Trapepdheadspace!AU

In Feast, Master Fu talked about visiting the temple now that had been fixed with the miraculous cure right? Now that his memory is gone, Marinette must go to the temple of the guardians to gather more information and training because she is the new guardian with little to no knowledge of what the heck she is doing.

- Marinette tells her parents that she wants a change in scenery and goes to visit her mother’s side of the family. Instead, she travels to Tibet for Guardian training.

- Ladybug explains to Chat Noir that she will be traveling to Tibet every day for Guardian training. Chat asks to come with but she says she must do this alone.

-She explains that if there is an akuma that all he needs to do is contact her and she will use the horse miraculous to travel back to Paris.

- Hawkmoth does not unleash too many akumas in the time Ladybug is gone because he is formulating new plans, helping Natalie, and fixing the peacock miraculous.

- She starts her training and learns of the Order of the Guardians and gives condolences to anyone who might have known Fu. 

- Here she learns to cancel emotions so that Hawkmoth can never akumatize her and distancing techniques so that the burden of being a guardian is less stressful and overwhelming. 

- The other guardians hypnotize Marinette to when her emotions become so overwhelming, she gets trapped in her own headspace so that Hawkmoth cannot akumatize her. When she gets so overwhelmed, she gets a small shiver down her spine and she and all emotions get trapped in her headspace. One can tell because the light in her eyes flicker and become duller. She is trapped in that headspace until someone can snap her out of it.

- Her training is finally over and she heads back to Paris

- Marinette comes back to her school a few weeks later and everyone asks if she is ok. Her training has changed her and knowing that she has all this new responsibility, she emotionlessly responds that she is ok.

- There is a new seating chart because Marinette was gone for so long. Lyla sarcastically asks if this is ok because she is sitting with Alya now. Marinette responds, again with no emotion, that it doesn’t bother her and it is better if she sits in the back.

- The first breakdown happened at the end of the first day back at school when it seemed like no one cared that she was gone. She knew it would be like this, but it still hurt.

- Her breathing gets shorter and her chest tightens up. Her vision blurs into nothingness as she hunches over slightly. She feels a shiver down her back and she collapses. Adrien, Alya, and the rest of her class run over to her as she lies lifeless on the ground.

- Luka coincidentally comes to visit Marinette because he heard that today was her first day back. He watches as she collapses on to the pavement and runs to her as everyone crowds her. He goes full beast mode and makes everyone move because he knows what to do via Juleka’s panic attacks.

- Luka puts his hand on her cheek as he softly calls her name and Marinette slowly comes back to. 

- She grows closer to Luka because of how he comforted her from Loveater and because he can bring her out of her headspace. She doesn’t tell him everything, but she tells him she has a new huge responsibility. Luka is the only person who Marinette is herself around anymore. Adrien is closer to Kagami and Alya, Nino, and the rest of the class are influenced by Lyla.

- Marinette has many breakdowns over the course of the weeks on learning to isolate all emotions and every time, only Luka can truly bring her back so quickly. Adrien becomes saddened every time Luka helps Marinette when he cannot. Luka playing guitar automatically calms down Marinette every time.

- Marinette finds small coping mechanisms here and there. Her favorite is spending time with the kwami of the miraculous. They all talk until the strain of wearing all the miraculous exhausts her. One of these times, she accidentally passes out from exhaustion.

- Marinette has dreams of Fu being captured and used as bait against her and Cat Noir even though he has no memories. 

- Over time, Marinette’s eyes become glossed over from not expressing emotion for days on end.

I have more but I am gonna save it for another post. This is my Trappedheadspace!AU Thank you very much!

[greengargouille]

AC x ML: Static, Part 1

((So... Do any of you guys remember when, more than one year ago, I posted something about Which Partner, and I mentioned something about an akumatized Mimura? And then I mentioned it here and there and never seemed to publish any actual content about it?

Well, one year, multiple changes on the costume/power idea and a lot of inspiration, I’m... still not done. But since it’s Which Partner’s second birthday, why not publish the first half as a way to mark the occasion? Besides it being a bad idea for editing in details I forgot, I mean.))

The days following a big project always had a special taste to Mimura.

The freed time was great, of course, nobody would argue that. And it was a relief not having to worry about his parents catching him working on that when he pretended to be studying (well, not so much pretending as not correcting them when they assumed it was the case). But, mostly? It was just the satisfaction of a job well done. One step further toward maturing his skills. Sharpening his vision and showing it to the world.

 …To think not so long ago, he was still settled on never letting others know about his amateur film productions. The second year of junior high certainly had dampened his enthusiasm over the creative process. If it wasn’t for Korosensei- if it wasn’t for becoming friends with other artists- he might have actually abandoned it all, letting this part of him rot and suffocate till he no longer felt anything toward cinema or directing. Falling into class E might have been what saved him.

 Still, nothing Mimura had ever done, even before that year, was comparable to how ambitious he has been this time. With how popular Ladybug and Black Cat were, not just on a town or prefecture level but actual national status due to the moon explosion theories making all of Japan aware of supernatural beings, any project related to them was sure to bring views. For this one-of-a-time opportunity, his work had to be flawless. He had spent days seeking the highest quality videos available on the two superheroes, pondering over and over on the music, the transitions… Even in his first year in the film research club, he never had spent so much time and effort in a single work- not for one of such a short length, at least. 

A fake trailer. By using fan footage of the akumatized fights and the TV news interviews of the town’s heroes, with some editing and a voiceover narration, making a pretend video for a movie about the miraculous holders. Especially tricky since he couldn’t go ask said holders to play out a scene for him to film. 

Boy did Mimura had felt his heart pound when he posted it online. He hadn’t been able to fall asleep without checking every five minutes if he actually posted the right thing, hadn’t made any glaring error or anything off-putting. And checking the ladybug forum for new messages and seeing the positive reactions… The excitement had kept him awake. Thankfully he posted it on Saturday afternoon and didn’t have to worry about dozing through morning classes. 

Still, this Sunday might be free of classes, but not of any event. As a sort of celebration- and partly because Mimura had put his social time aside while he worked-, the artist trio decided to hang out together at the mall and go see a movie. The boy wasn’t too sure about its potential quality, as he had very mixed feelings over the director’s previous works, but it was his first time making a horror story, and he was working with that music composer Mimura liked. 

“Hey, you guys! I didn’t make you wait too long?”

It was rare for him to be the last to arrive. Granted, whenever he went to an exhibit with Sugaya, the artist was dragging with him way too much supplies, a supplementary weight he brought ‘just in case’. God, how many times Mimura had to help him carry his stuff as they had to run away from the rain. Thankfully the boy had judged unnecessary to bring anything this time.

“It’s fine, don’t worry.” Okajima replied while getting up from the bench where he was waiting. “We’ve got largely enough time before the screening. -More importantly,” Sugaya interjected, “congrats for your video! I saw this morning, it was almost at fifty thousand views? -Wow, no way, let me check.” Okajima took his phone and started to type. “Well, there are a lot of people on the Ladyblog forum…” Mimura started to answer, all kinds of excuses rushing into his head. “Right, there was a lot of positive comments, wasn’t it? You deserve it.”

Mimura really didn’t know how to reply to that, and it was even tougher knowing Sugaya was probably sincere and he couldn’t brush it off as politeness. Being praised- having an undisputable achievement- those weren’t things he was used to. Not like this. Not on that.

But it’s not like he could deny he had done something, and that something was successful. How much time one had to wait for the other shoe to drop before having to admit they did a great job?

“…Thank you.” It was hesitant, but it was a start.

Sugaya replied with a smile, one of those soft smiles where he unconsciously tilted his head on the side, which made Mimura finally relax. It was fine. Maybe he did deserve it after all.

“Hm. Guys. You need to check that.”

Okajima turned his phone toward them. A single sentence, white over a dark screen. A single, ordinary sentence, one Mimura had read plenty of times; yet seeing it brought out an uneasy feeling, which increased as Okajima explicated the obvious:

“The video had been taken down.”

--

“It wasn’t great, but it was entertaining, at least.” Okajima commented before biting on his burger.

 Despite the unpleasant news, Mimura had insisted for them to go through what they had planned. After all, they were already close to the shopping mall, and just because he would skip a movie and fast food lunch, his video wouldn’t suddenly magically reappear. He would need to look into the details of it, of course. But, later. No need to rush. It wasn’t urgent. Nothing that mattered.

“I dunno, I feel like I wasted my time. Like, the special effects are clearly the main point of the film, but they felt uninspired.” Sugaya replied while grabbing some fries.

 Plus, a movie was distracting, which was welcome at this moment. No need to act before calming down. A great film would have been better, of course, one where Mimura could get immersed and forget all about his current worries as he analyzed it. That’s what he did back when his grades started to drop. It had bordered more on denial then, actually, ignoring the problem till he was too big to ignore, and at that point it was too late. But that wasn’t the case now. Because there was nothing to ignore. Just a silly little problem.

 “Yeah, I see what you mean. Instead of showing us the creature, it would have been better to leave it in the dark, it would have been scarier.”

 The thing was, Mimura didn’t have the authorization for some of the footage he had used. He had tried to contact whoever he could, all the small intrepid reporters that happened to be on place during an akumatized fight, but he had completely forgotten to check for the TV interviews. It wouldn’t have been a problem most of the time, but maybe, for a more popular video…

“There’s that, of course, but also the music, it was fine but I felt it wasn’t used very well? They should have just cut it at some place. I don’t really know how to explain… What do you think, Mimura?”

Or was it the music? He was pretty sure it was free of rights, was he mistaken? Either way it would be able to remake the video while cutting the faulty element. It was all structured together. He couldn’t correct it.

“…Mimura? -…Sorry, what? I was thinking of something else.”

Sugaya and Okajima shared a look of concern. Oh, that was what Mimura had wanted to avoid. Concern. He wasn’t especially upset- shouldn’t be, over such a trivial matter- but with all the akuma attacks over the town, everyone was a bit on edge over any potential crisis. Still, he was annoyed his friends would think he would break down over something so unimportant. Between the school’s ostracisation, the wall he had constructed between him and his parents, and now the assassination, he had gone through much more stressful. It’s not a little annoyance over a hobby that would change things. 

“…Dude,” Okajima said, “if you want to talk, we’re here, okay? -That’s great to know.” Mimura replied in a way he hoped was casual. “But I’m fine. I was just thinking about something else, that’s all.” He immediately switched on an excuse. “My father told me to stop at the convenience store on the way to buy something, but I couldn’t remember what. I think I should try to call him now before I forget. Can you guys watch my stuff? -Sure?”

Mimura got up from his seat and took his phone from his pocket while leaving the table, barely checking to see his classmates’ reactions. Only a phone call. It was normal to go outside- well, outside the restaurant at least, he wasn’t planning to leave the mall- when calling someone.

Right, that won him a few minutes to himself. Couldn’t do more, or that would be suspicious. He still had barely touched his own meal after all.

…Sometimes it was exhausting pretending to be fine. Mimura knew his face showed his emotions easily, and he wasn’t so smooth a liar he wouldn’t slip up if someone asked him directly what was wrong; he was more the kind to redirect the subject before said question came up. All of this… it made him feel resentful against those who were concerned over him, for all the stress that added to him. Couldn’t they just ignore him and leave him sulk? But at the same time, it was his own fault for feeling bad about the situation in the first place. Why did he had to invest so much into something that didn’t matter? Why did he had to bring his hopes up when it couldn’t be any different from usual? He should know by now he wouldn’t get any recognition for his efforts. It was stupid to think otherwise.

Mimura put back his phone in his pocket and felt a piece of paper inside that he took, intrigued. Ah, right, the movie ticket. Stupid movie. So bland and so overdone, so many things that would have been easy to fix- but he didn’t have any right to talk about that as an amateur, did he? God he hated this. Why did some people get so much money to make their movies while he was stuck seeing his videos taken down for some petty authorization- it’s not like he did anything bad with it, it wasn’t a whole song nor a complete footage- why did others got away with making mediocre works and his had to be perfect and it still wasn’t enough, why wasn’t he enough, he hated this, he hated them all, he hated- 

No, he had to calm down. It wasn’t the moment. Later, in private. No, not later. Never. Getting over it. He would close his eyes, breath deeply and count to three, and then everything would be fine.

One, two, three.

When Mimura opened his eyes, a dark butterfly just entered his field of vision.

 He barely had the time to register it, to see it land on the ticket without being able to react- And then it was sudden clarity. Pure feeling. All parasite thoughts numbed down to barely a whisper.

“Static”, a foreign voice spoke into his mind- and the name felt so fitting, somehow, “I am Kochou. I can give you the power to get revenge over the unfair treatment your videos have been given. I only ask for one thing in return. -The ladybug and cat miraculous.” Mimura- no, Static- completed, a smile on his lips. 

Sentences popped into his mind, distant, the shadow of a thought process. ‘Bad idea’. ‘What will others think of you?’ But, already, those words dissolved into the resolute feeling that had taken him.

“I accept with pleasure, Kochou-sama.”

 --

Okajima looked at the entrance, his fingers tapping on the table as he waited. Not necessarily for Mimura’s return, but… something. A form of acknowledgement on how the situation was wrong. 

Okajima thought of himself as an honest man. If he liked something, he had no problem saying it, even knowing his opinion was unpopular. If he disliked something, he would complain about it with all the frustration and anger he felt- even when his classmates thought he was overreacting. He was just that kind of person. True manliness was to be totally shameless no matter the topic. That’s why dishonest situations like this one didn’t sit well with him.

“Say”, he addressed Sugaya who seemed absent-minded, “what do you think we should do? -Walk around in the mall? There’s a clothing shop I would like to see. -Not what should we do after eating,” Okajima corrected with annoyance, “about Mimura. He’s clearly not taking the video thing well, despite how he refuses to admit it. -Oh.” His classmate just replied with a small sound. “So I wasn’t just imagining things then. -Well, yeah, that was very obvious. I kinda want to force him to talk just for that, but he might just close up even more and we will go nowhere. Plus, you know. That might just add even more negative feelings to the pile.”

Sugaya stayed silent, clearly uncomfortable with the subject. His fingers idly played with his straw, twisting it as he seemed lost in thought.

“I don’t know what to do.” He finally admitted. “Neither do I,” Okajima replied, “but you know Mimura better than me. Plus, you’ve been akumatized already, so you should know how he feels. -That’s… I don’t think it can apply. I mean, I wanted to be left alone, but look at what that did for me. Do you really think Mimura could be akumatized over this? -Eh, dunno. Honestly I feel like bad luck is also at play, but it’s not like you can tell how important something is to someone, even if it seems silly. A man’s passion should never be ridiculed,” Okajima added on a serious tone. “…Wow, that would sound so cool if it wasn’t from you. -Hey, what’s that supposed to mean? -…If Mimura feel bad over this, then I want to help.” Sugaya totally ignored Okajima’s last comment. “But I never had this problem before? Like, with Chiba I trusted him to come to me if he felt like I could help him with something? -Dude, no offense but Chiba ended in class E with us and neither of us saw it coming. -Well, I did say something I could help him with, not sure what I could have done.” Sugaya sighed. “You’re not totally wrong though, I felt bad about it. -What about the other guys then? Didn’t you hang out with people of the art club sometimes? -Them? I… am not sure they counted as friends? Like, in the first place it always was way more casual, and it soured up quickly anyways. Because I’m ‘too much of a troublemaker’. -Oh, yeah, so they were this kind of guys, uh? I know what you mean. -…So, yeah, I don’t have much experience dealing with this. I want to help and I feel like there’s something I could do, but nobody is telling me what. It’s frustrating.”

Okajima wasn’t sure either what it was that they could do, but fortunately the noise of a door brutally closed and a scream stopped the conversation before he had to reply. 

“AKUMA ATTACK!!”

He turned his head toward the entry door, that an alarmed woman was closing, clearly terrified by what she saw outside.

“An akuma… Shit, Mimura’s still outside. -What, do you think he…?” Sugaya didn’t dare finish his sentence. “I don’t know if it’s him, but if it isn’t then he’s in first line to be attacked. -Crap, you’re right.”

People around them were starting to panic, some already diving under the tables, other running towards the kitchens, probably hoping to find a back door. Honestly, Okajima was tempted to follow them. He didn’t know what super villain would appear, but it certainly wasn’t going to be a fun experience.

…But, he already had made his decision.

“Let’s go,” he said to Sugaya, walking towards the entrance.

--

Hayami had to pull her nails into the palm of her hand to keep her face calm.

In front of her, on the other side of the small plastic table, Nakamura was currently playing with her nesoberi plushie’s pigtails. A Ladybug nesoberi. She wasn’t sure what was flustering her most, that her friend was so fond of her new acquisition, or the fact that it was sold at all. 

“It’s obvious,” Nakamura explained, ignorant of the girl’s inner turmoil, “if you have the blueprints and material to make nesoberi in a factory, then you’re not going to stop at fifteen. Probably, the collab with the arcade was to see how popular they would get. Man, I kinda want to see what kind of face the fans who spent so much on the game will pull learning they could just have waited a few months instead, it will probably be hilarious. -You don’t say”, Hayami replied, impassive.

How would Nakamura react if she knew Hayami was such a fan. She would probably be too busy harassing me over how I’m a Black Cat fan. The endless teasing… Thankfully she was good at keeping a cool appearance. 

At first, when the two of them had planned an afternoon at the mall together, she had thought it would just be a relaxing moment between friends. Some shopping, maybe a movie, trying out the new purikuma booth, checking out from afar that children live stage performance the mall was organizing- she vaguely remembered Chiba mentioning accompanying his sisters to see it sometimes, and it had intrigued her- just silly fun activities two teenage girls would do on their weekend. To be perfectly honest, Hayami would have tried to include some homework into that schedule, but Nakamura had loudly complained about it, and with Tikki insisting so much lately about all the work she did, she hadn’t pressed further.

 She would have never expected they would end up facing a shop window full of Ladybug and Black Cat themed goodies. It kind of baffled her sometimes, how popular was her other identity. She and her partner were just a pair of local heroes doing their job. Maybe it was the magic? Of course people would be all over something that proved the existence of the supernatural. She had seen some topics speculating on the subject on the Ladyblog, but she might have underestimated their importance. Usually people ask us more about our relationship… Well, revealing anything about the Miraculouses to the public would be a big no-no, even more than some hints about their true identities, so it made sense that interviews gave up on that.

Still, Black Cat goodies… She would have to come back there, maybe with a disguise. And to think they would end up selling that nesoberi plush… Would she have tried to win one if she knew the exclusivity would only last for a few months? Probably.

God, I really fell hard for him.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea.” Nakamura grinned with a face full of mischief. “Can you take a photo with my phone? I’m going to kiss my Ladybug and send it to Okajima. -Wh- I- Don’t do that!”    

Seeing her friend’s surprise, Hayami knew she made a mistake. It was uncommon for her to get excited over something, and she had tried to keep her composure the whole conversation. But, how could she stay cool over this. The idea of Nakamura kissing Ladybug- it’s not like she talked about some distant celebrity after all. And then thinking that Okajima could do the same… Now that was giving her chills. 

“My, my, seems like someone is jealous.” Nakamura playfully reacted by swinging her nesoberi in front of Hayami. “Do you want to steal a kiss? I’m willing to share~ -That’s not the problem.” Hayami replied as calmly as she could. “Oh, so perhaps you want to kiss m- -It’s unhygienic,” Hayami interrupted her, knowing very well how her friend would twist her words if she let her speak, “and you’re going to give him bad ideas. -Eh, I’m probably not the first. Heck, I bet someone among those who got the first fifteen have done it at some point.”

Hayami immediately thought about the Black Cat nesoberi in her room, and had to focus back on the conversation before having any weird ideas. She was too mature for that. She couldn’t- No, she should think of something else. Plenty of people might have kissed my effigy at some point. Yep, that sure calmed her. Oh, how she wished she never had this conversation. Popularity was terrifying sometimes.

“Akuma alert.” A voice resonated through the speakers of the mall, interrupting the girl’s inner troubles. “Our customers are invited to go walk to the nearest exit. No need to panic. We repeat- -Urg.” Nakamura’s face soured. “Goodbye, relaxing afternoon. Let’s go before we get caught up in the crowd. -I…” Hayami started to speak, while her mind was getting into a highly alert mode. She needed an excuse “We didn’t pay for our drinks, go ahead while I do it, I won’t take long. -What? Hayami, you can’t be seri- -It’s important! No need to argue, we’re only losing time. Trust me, I will leave right after. -Geez, why do you have to be serious like that… Alright, but only if you go along with me the next time I get a fun idea. -Accepted.” Hayami was certain she would regret it. “See you in a few minutes.”

She didn’t wait for an answer and went right into the shop, straight to the bathroom, while getting pushed on the way by intrigued people trying to leave. Thankfully the stall was empty; she opened her bag, from which flew a very familiar red creature. 

“It’s too bad,” Tikki lamented, “you finally had a day to relax… -No need to feel bad about it. Tikki, spots on.”

The familiar surge of power filled her body as her clothes changed for her more practical hero suit. Time to get into Ladybug mode. It wasn’t complicated, honestly. The focus, her shifting perception, the strength that filled her muscles, everything contributed to her feeling like an entirely different person. Maybe the glamour supposed to make her unrecognisable played a part too.

Still, I need to play it safe. She counted the seconds in her head, and when she felt she had waited long enough, left the shop’s bathroom. Nobody was there anymore. Good. She didn’t have time to think of excuses for anyone who might have seen the young girl enter- she had an akuma to deal with.

--

Ladybug walked around the mall, ready to react to any upcoming attack and directing any civilian she saw toward the exit, when she finally spotted an unnatural thing. In front of her stood a giant foggy pile of inconsistent color, minuscule spots of black, white and grey all mixed together; it kinda reminded her of TV static, in a way. The pile, if that was the right word for an accumulation without a specific form, didn’t seem to have any weight to it, as if it was superposed to the air rather than a solid mass, but she knew better than to touch it to verify. Who knew what it did.

She saw a black silhouette move from the corner of her vision, and, sure enough, when she turned her head her partner jumped to her side. 

“Good afternoon to you,” Black Cat greeted her, then immediately switched to the main topic. “Any information on our villain of the day? -No, I just arrived.” Ladybug informed him, hesitating to say anything more, then decided she was silly for doubting her every word. “I’m glad you could come. I was wondering if you would be able to show up before the fight. -Yeah, I wasn’t sure I would be on time either,” admitted her partner. “I was nearby, but surrounded by… well, it’s not important.”

Ladybug looked at him, but said nothing. Civilians, friends, family… Many ways to end the sentence, and none that mattered. They couldn’t talk about their true identity.

“What do we do with this?” She pointed toward the foggy obstacle with a move from her head. “Good question.”

Black Cat looked around, his eyes settling on a deserted chair from some shop on the side. Ladybug already understood what he was thinking about, and didn’t feel any surprise when he walked toward it only to throw it into the fog.

“Doesn’t seems solid, but I didn’t hear anything hit the floor. -Try to see with another chair what happens if you only put one partially? -That was the next step of my experience, yes.” Black Cat smiled at her.

Despite the situation, Ladybug couldn’t help but feel her heart warm up at the boy’s soft face. They might be in potential danger at any point, but at least she got him by her side, and he seemed to appreciate them thinking alike as much as she did. Well, maybe not as much, but at least a little? It sure made things easier for both of them.

“Hmm, it doesn’t seem to melt.” The second chair, that Black Cat put partially in the fog, still was intact when they pulled it away. “I guess it’s like smoke? Let me try putting my hand in it.” He looked at Ladybug for approval. “…It might not be safe. -All the more reason that I do it rather than you. Plus, you can always heal me afterward. -…That’s not wrong, but…” She would rather not see him get hurt, of course. Surely he could understand that? “Don’t worry, it’s just a test.” He put his left hand in the fog- it would only be silly to risk his ring hand, after all- and took it out. “See? Nothing happened. Actually, I didn’t even feel any pressure or change. It might be safe to walk in. -Even if it’s some kind of gas, it might be toxic.” Hopefully no civilian was caught in the middle of it. “Hmm.” The boy nodded, his green eyes still on the fog. “Only one way to know.”

Black Cat took a step forward, and soon his head disappeared in the smoky thing. Ladybug was uneasy about this- her partner always was the one who took risks in those situations. It was logical, of course, she was the one with the power to fix everything, and so had to be the last standing at the end, but… she didn’t have to like it. What did the boy think about it? Was he secretly resenting her for this? This didn’t seem in his personality, yet it was still a possibility.

I wonder how the previous Ladybugs felt about it.

Multiple times her and Tikki had spoken about the precedent heroes. Their powers, their strategies, their allies; most notably, how they still found time to relax and have fun. But as for their feelings… It was a subject Hayami didn’t want to bring up. Even if they were different people, it would break her heart to hear they didn’t get along with their partner. What if it was the case, and Black Cat heard about it from his own kwami? Would he assume she was the same? Even though I love him. No, it wasn’t even that. She cared about him. More than her crush, he was the partner she had come to rely on. Anyone could feel attracted to him, but their bond was special, important, in a way that would be hard to explain. If he told her he loved her, but couldn’t trust her… that would be just as terrible as the opposite.

The boy eventually got his head out of the fog, his face expecting something. 

“…So?” Ladybug asked, unsure what he was waiting for. “…Didn’t you hear me? -No? Did you say something? -Yes? That’s weird. I can breathe inside just fine, but I can’t see anything. Or hear, now that I think about it. And I guess you couldn’t hear me either? Wait, let me check again.”

Once again the hero’s head disappeared in the fog. Did that thing block all light and sound? That would be inconvenient. What if the akumatized was waiting for them insi-

“Ladybug, behind you!!!” 

It was only thanks to her quick reflexes she was able to react immediately. Her full body rotated, her hand in a fist ready to hit, but the person quickly jumped out of the way, a jump too big for a normal civilian. An akumatized. The villain made no sound when his feet hit the floor, which was, as Ladybug suddenly noticed, covered in the same foggy substance as the one behind her. So that’s how they were able to approach without me noticing, this removed the sound of their steps.

She looked around quickly on what was the source of the voice that alerted her. A very familiar voice… Barely hidden behind a pillar, she apperceived Fuwa and sighed internally. The girl had said she wanted to start investigating for the Ladyblog, and nothing Hayami had said had been able to convince her it was a bad idea.

She gently tapped Black Cat’s arm to alert him of the change in situation, as he probably hadn’t been able to hear anything, but her eyes were fixated on the villain, who didn’t move from his spot. Which was for the best, as they were closer to Fuwa if they had wanted to take her hostage.

The most noticeable thing in the akumatized’s appearance, the one that immediately popped out, was the giant color bars on the chest area of the suit. Like a malfunctioning TV, Ladybug thought despite never having seen the phenomena -it was a thing of movies, on older televisions. The rest of the costume, on the opposite, was all monochrome, mostly grey with little square spots of black and white, white the extremities of the limbs were all black.

When she finally looked at their- at his face, Ladybug finally recognized who was her adversary. No way she couldn’t- they might not talk on a regular basis, but Mimura was a classmate, and he sat next to Nakamura in class, so the both of them sometimes spoke while she was around.                         

“Another class E student,” Black Cat commented next to her. So he recognised him? Uh. He must have a good memory. “Right, it’s as if alienating and bullying a specific group made them more likely to have negative emotions.” Ladybug deadpanned as an answer. “…Seems like you feel a lot about this, uh?” Her partner replied in a sympathetic tone. “I just don’t like their school’s system.”

She couldn’t allow herself to say more. She couldn’t make it personal. Even just mentioning she was part of that school, no matter the class, would be too revealing. So Ladybug bit her lips and did what she had always done when she felt helpless about a situation: focus on the work she could do instead.

“Show’s over, you guys.” Mimura spoke to them in a harsh tone. “Hand over your Miraculous. -…Why do akumatized even ask this? Of course we won’t give them to you. -Maybe they expect us to make a special offer if they insist enough.” Black Cat joked. “’Congratulations, you’re the 100th akumatized, here’s a special prize for you!’”

Ladybug would have rolled her eyes for joking in this situation if this was anyone else, but she couldn’t help have a little smile instead. It was part of her partner’s charm to make silly jokes and puns in a serious moment. Their current adversary didn’t seem to appreciate it, though; he seemed ready to attack, whatever that would mean for him. Did he have another power besides that weird static-like fog? It was hard sometimes to tell with akumatized what skill sets did they have.

“I know where the akuma’s hidden in!” Fuwa shouted, momentarily distracting Ladybug. “It’s in his l-“

Before she finished her sentence, Mimura jumped on the heroes, filling the space between them with the static-like substance from earlier.

Then, only darkness and silence.

[zenonaa]

Read here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18851575 Comments: It has been a while since I wrote something for ML, aha.

***

As magical ice spread through Paris, gradually consuming everything and everyone, Ladybug and Chat Noir stood on a building, side-by-side. Though their new transformations protected them from falling victim to the akuma’s magic, a frostiness nonetheless hung between them.

“Chat Noir, we need to set up a trap for whoever turned the city into a giant ice rink,” said Ladybug. She hurled her yo-yo. It cut through the air with a loud zip sound, and she readied herself to dash off. Her knees bent. Her brow furrowed.

Next to her, Chat Noir turned his head away and folded his arms over his chest.

“My feline instincts prefer to track and observe before I attack,” he stated. Ladybug hesitated and turned back.

He slid down the roof to a ledge, pointedly refusing to so much as glance at her. His arms uncoupled to dangle by his sides, and he puffed out his chest.

“You go your way,” he said, glaring at the distance, “and I’ll go mine.”

Confusion crumpled Ladybug’s features, and even after she had apprehended his statement, the tension in her face remained. In a purposely light tone, holding back her exasperation as best she could, she said, “Please don’t tell me you’re mad about the rose.”

The rose that he offered to her, and the rose she rejected. Chat Noir tensed, telling her that she was on the mark.

“There may be a certain chill now between us,” he replied stiffly, and he finally looked at her again.

They were so not doing this right now. Ladybug restrained a sigh.

“I get it, but we should really focus on saving Paris right now,” she said. She flicked her wrists, facing her palms up.

Chat Noir’s lips pursed.

“We don’t always have to do everything together. After all, it’s not like we’re a couple,” he told her with a harshness to his eyes.

Then, without waiting for an answer, he jumped down, landing on the pavement. Ladybug leaned forward and reached after him, but of course by that point, he was out of range.

“Chat Noir!” she cried out. She retracted her arm and shook her fists, slouching her shoulders. “Don’t get all pouty on me!”

He skated away, not looking back once. With every stride, the ice hissed as his skates collided with it. The lack of a thud, second set of scraping or whistle of wind told him that Ladybug hadn’t chased after him. Well... good. And just what he expected. And wanted. Yep.

The ice had transformed Paris into an eerie blue realm devoid almost entirely of life. It encased postboxes, lamp posts, cars and people. He passed a woman who had her leg elevated, partway through stepping forward. Near her, a man’s face was scrunched mid-scream. Some people hadn’t realised what was happening, but others seemed to, their faces suspended in indefinite terror.

Silver breaths puffed out of him. His chest still felt tight, even with the increasing distance between himself and Ladybug. After he hurtled through a couple more streets, he skidded to a stop and decided to take to the rooftops. At a greater height, Chat Noir would be able to more easily locate the villain, secretly gauge the guy’s movements and then, at the right moment, strike. He darted into an alley and sprung between two walls, propelling himself higher and higher with every leap until he popped out at the top and arrived on a roof.

Once there, he approached the edge, shielded his eyes with his hand and surveyed the area. No movement, at least in this part of Paris, and other than the wind, no sound. Chat Noir would have to be vigilant as he explored. The lack of activity everywhere didn’t just mean the villain would stick out if nearby, but Chat Noir would too.

While he could flit around the city undetected if he stayed on ground level, being up high provided a less obstructed view and as long as he paid attention to his surroundings and didn’t bound around without checking things out first, he would be better off keeping to the sky. He swiveled his head, eyes screwed up, and deeming it safe, jumped to the next building. The Eiffel Tower stood in the distance. That would be a good place to investigate so Chat Noir started heading there.

Only, once he landed on the next building, he heard a familiar voice.

“Stay back!” cried out not Ladybug, but someone else he knew, who he had been with all day. Kagami.

His eyes widened. He changed direction, sprinting and soaring from building to building as he pursued the voice. Soon, he touched down on a roof and sure enough, there was Kagami, not frozen like most of the residents in Paris. However, she was standing on a small section of uncontaminated roof that rapidly shrunk as the magical ice closed in on her.

Chat Noir rushed forward. Kagami whirled around and she had just laid her eyes on him when he scooped her up. Holding her with one arm, he gripped his baton with his other and extended it. They vaulted onto another building, then he hopped them across a few others all completely covered in ice. The reason he moved them was in case Frozer decided to check on the commotion.

Track and observe. Confront later.

He judged that they were far enough away from where he found her and stopped. Kagami pushed herself away from his chest and he adjusted his hold so he supported her with both arms. She gazed up at him wordlessly. A small smile tweaked the ends of his lips, but her lips didn’t even slightly quiver from their grim arch.

“That was a close one,” he said, for lack of anything else to say.

Silence greeted him initially. Kagami didn’t answer right away.

Then,

“Don’t you have a city to save?” she asked bluntly.

He gave a twitch then laughed. It came out forced, because it was.

“Yes, but I couldn’t let you become frozen too,” he explained.

Kagami shrugged, still with that same stern expression. “Why not? You and Ladybug will save the day and restore everything afterwards. I wouldn’t mind.”

She made a valid point, but the mention of Ladybug drew his lips into a pout.

“Why does it have to be me and Ladybug, together?” he asked. “We don’t have to do everything together. We’re not a couple.”

“But you’re a team, aren’t you?” she pointed out.

His pout flattened into a grimace.

“And I never said you were a couple either,” she replied. She cocked her head, eyeing him closely. “It sounds like you have some issues that need resolving after you save Paris.”

He turned his head to the side, clenching his jaw.

“Did you fall out with her?” she asked him.

Her gaze wouldn’t yield.

A beat passed. “Kinda,” he admitted.

Kagami blinked calmly.

“Listen, I don’t know you well enough to give advice, and if I’m honest... I don’t care,” she said.

That stung. Chat Noir winced. When Kagami resumed talking, she spoke with no inflection indicating regret or pity.

“But you have a duty to protect everyone, and if your emotions are getting in the way, then it becomes other people’s business. You mustn’t let your emotions dictate your actions or cloud your judgement,” she said.

At that moment, Chat Noir glimpsed his father in her face, and he felt like he was caged up in his bedroom at home.

“I’m not!” Chat Noir snapped, and right away he realised what he did. He cringed, and softer, he said, “Kagami, I’m sorry, I...”

“Please, you didn’t offend me in the slightest,” she said, unaffected. “The person you should be apologising to is Ladybug, because it sounds like you’re the one who went frosty on her, not the akuma.”

His frown deepened.

“You don’t seem to have good control over your emotions,” she added.

Chat Noir opened his mouth to respond but the first word got caught in his throat. At first, he thought she was wrong. Completely wrong. When he transformed, that was one of the few times he could act out and let loose his emotions. Adrien had to keep them all in, had to be perfect and not let any of his feelings escape lest someone scold him and make him feel ashamed of them...

... ah. Maybe bottling his emotions up wasn’t controlling them, or even managing them. At least, not properly. Not well. When they slipped out, he almost always fell to pieces. He wished he could speak his mind more, and be more open without fear of judgement, punishment or rejection, like... like Marinette, who always stuck by her beliefs, who didn’t just do what was expected of her. Who would go against the crowd if it meant being honest and true to herself.

Marinette... His heart skipped as he imagined her smile, her laugh, her lively unfiltered chatter... She had been at the ice rink too, so probably became frozen near the beginning of the akuma attack.

Luka was a lucky guy to have Marinette’s interest.

“I know it sucks when someone doesn’t return your affections,” Kagami said, drawing him out of his thoughts. She averted her eyes from his face. “In my case, it’s because there’s someone else.”

“Oh...” It escaped him in a breath.

“A person can change their target, but it’s not so simple as saying that,” she admitted, hunching her shoulders. “Even if it makes sense, the heart doesn’t always follow. And if your heart doesn’t want to redirect... dating someone else anyway who you’re not really interested in, and leading them on, maybe hoping you fall in love with them later, will only create a relationship full of cracks.”

Chat Noir was silent. Kagami shifted her gaze back onto him.

“Their heart’s compass may point to you with time, but until then, all you can do is wait and keep your heart open, because you might find someone just as good, or even better, instead,” she said. “You can’t rush it.”

He nodded, and they almost had a moment. Kagami hardened her features and prodded his chest.

“Also, seriously, apologise to Ladybug and save Paris,” she said. “You’ve been a brat. She doesn’t owe you anything.”

Chat Noir flinched, but then smiled a bit.

“I will,” he said, and he chuckled. “And I have been a brat today. Ladybug’s rejection really hurt, but I shouldn’t have lashed out at her for it. We’re a team, and we’re best friends. That means a lot to me.”

Agrestes were soloists in all aspects of life. His heart, therefore, could only be for one person, Ladybug, but he could still appreciate what Kagami told him even though it didn’t apply to him.

“Thanks, Kagami,” he said. He looked away, and his soft smile flatlined.

The Eiffel Tower stood in the distance.

Kagami seemed to read his mind. “You can put me down now.”

Chat Noir tensed. His eyes flickered.

“But...”

“You need to save the day,” she said firmly.

A pause.

“Okay,” he said.

Chat Noir put her down carefully and dashed off. Ice began to crawl up Kagami’s legs. She ignored it, staring after him, and her pensive expression remained on her face when the ice devoured her whole.

[chrysaliseuro2019]

We go Slavic

Our brief and enjoyable sojourn in Trieste was over and it was time to head for our hire car and the next stage of the trip. We continued to consider southern Italy (East Coast to the boot) vs our original plan Croatia. Googling various potential stops on the way south in Italy (a trip of at least 1000kms) suggested a lot of naff destinations on the way there. What seemed like acres of beach umbrellas and not so many of the quaint little fishing villages or smaller seaside towns which we found in Greece. In this neck of the woods mass tourism is prevailing it would seem. Still, southern Italy the real goal if that's the way we decide to go ie bypass the North and we can always hit the motorways south to speed up the journey. Croatia seemed to have some of the same problems with some pretty busy places. Anyway step 1 which might end up being the prevailing influence on which way we go was would budget rent-a-car let us move countries with the car at a reasonable price. Liz had a bit of a headache in the morning, may have been the spritz or the marginal glass of rose the night before, so had a snooze while I sussed out trains and buses. It's Sunday so we can get a very cheap train ride to the airport (where we pick the car up). 3.30 euros each. That's about A$11 for the two of us compared to taxi fare of 58 euros/A$100 No brainer and only takes half an hour. A taxi would take longer. Liz managed to make breakfast at the hotel which was the same frenetic scene as the day before and we headed for the station about 150 metres away around 11.45. The train train departed at 12.15 and by 1.00 ish we were in the short queue for the car. Very helpful and friendly Budget guy confirmed that no additional cost for travelling into Croatia or Slovenia and no problem taking the car on a ferry. We are now thinking Croatia first, followed by ferry to southern Italy from possibly Split. As ever we had a cheapo car and they were offering a Fiat Panda. Our bags would not fit in the boot so the budget man helpfully then moved us "up" to a Fiat Punto at no extra cost. Budget like thrifty seem to flog their cars a bit more than hertz so they are a bit older. Our car needed detailing given it was a late switch which he swiftly did (well, he vacuumed and cleaned the windows) and we were off with both bags stowed in the boot section. We were headed for Slovenia first, just to pass through on our way to Croatia. Our Budget man advised that we needed to get a pass for 15 euros for the Slovenian freeways or face a 400 euro fine but we could buy one at any garage en route in Italy. We always, where time permits, avoid freeways in favour of more interesting backroads but "Narelle" the trusty voice of Apple maps seemed to have us on toll roads. The hefty fine very much in mind we headed for the town of Muggia in search of the elusive Slovenian freeway pass as somehow no garages appeared on the first part of our journey. Muggia had a pretty pleasant central section and we tried to stop for lunch but like so many small towns in Italy (at least by the sea) there was nowhere that we could find to park so we continued on our way searching for that damn petrol station. We were following the coast around towards Slovenia which was not far away and feeling frustrated that we couldn't buy the pass. The coast road was one long car park with narrow beaches and cars parked much of the way along as people enjoyed the beach and sea. It was Sunday afternoon so we presumed that that was one cause for the crowds though stinking hot around 33 degrees and quite humid. We got to the border and there was a duty free shop which thankfully sold the pass so we could continue on feeling reassured. Of course it is probably a waste of money as we passed through Slovenia and totally avoided the motorways though the pass lasts for a week so who knows? We laughed to ourselves. At around 3.00 we reached Slovenia (no customs) and around 3.45, after a slowish crawl of 20 -25mins in a traffic jam to get through Croatian customs, we were in Croatia. Not hard to move countries and so quickly. Where to now? We headed for Umag which had good crits on various travel sites and reports. After a couple of circumnavigations of town we were not enthused. As a local said to us a few days later. It's a bit industrial looking - and it was. Obviously some nice sections but we either missed them or it just didn't hang together. We moved on. Liz saw the smaller town of Novigrad (Croatian) or Citinova (Italian) - same place. We headed there. This immediately ticked the buttons it seemed smaller, also on the coast but looked quaint and attractive but also quite lively. Now around 4.15. We decided to stay. We parked up and Liz started looking at booking.com. She quickly identified an apartment with good crits (10/10) at an acceptable if not exactly cheap price and we went for it. Other rooms looked pricier. Obviously a town in some demand. While we were looking for a room we had tried to pay an hour or two's parking so we could deliver our bags to the rooms but it was proving tricky to crack the system. My fault partially as I was inserting 2 Kune (local currency) coins instead of 10 Kune so no wonder a prob. However we were also getting some conflicting advice from s local on whether we should be parking where we were. Luckily we had our eyes peeled and the traffic warden was wandering around booking people so I legged it down and explained that we were still in the process of acquiring (not a word I used with him) - ticket so no prob. Close shave. Meanwhile Liz was communicating with the guy at the apartment who was keen for us to get there so he could hand over the keys and no doubt sorph off for tea. He advised that we could go to a local larger car park and park for 24 hours for about A$10/11. We found the park which was absolutely full. A couple of navigations later we struck lucky and were in but still not sorted. Despite our hosts affirmation that we could pay for 24 hours the ticket machine stubbornly refused to allow anything past midnight. A few patrons were gathered around trying to crack the system to no avail. Luckily I had gone into a bar to ask for some advice and the guy had told me you can go to the parking office around the corner and pay there. Liz was still getting angst from our host who was wondering where the heck we were. All a bit of a farce. I called her to advise of my probs getting my hands on a ticket and got a bit of relayed angst. Anyway, I found the parking office, went in, the guy spoke impeccable English said yes he could help and 1 minute later I'm on my way with a 24 hour parking ticket. They don't make it easy. He said the machine would not allow you to do that even though it indicated it would. Ha! I returned to an agitated Liz keen to get the apartment bloke off our back. We grabbed the bags, backpacks, various other bits and pieces and trundled down to the apartment just 200 metres or so away. It was still stinking hot at around 5.30 so arrived in a lather. We had just wasted an hour or so, really on nonsense. Anyway, all good. Apartment guy was very friendly and helpful. Apartment nowhere near 10/10. He must have got his mates to do the crit. Still, adequate and quite roomy and excellently located right smack in the centre of town. Had to laugh after a few hours on the road I needed to visit the facilities and the cheapo plastic seat on the loo was not affixed properly. I nearly fell in. The whole contraption fell apart later and I had to do a reco. It was not a seat for sitting on really unless you were motionless which seems a real contradiction in terms. We decided to head off promptly so had the quickest of showers and then hit town. A drink was in order and we found a nice bar by the sea. Sunset could be watched and passing promenade of people. A nearby restaurant similarly situated by the sea also looked good and we opted for that. I had the sea bass fillet and Liz crusted Tuna. Bass was magnificent, tuna good but a little less rare than Liz would have liked. Portions quite large though and neither of us could fully finish. The wine is better here than in Greece though they seem to follow the Italian style with measures which are restrained to say the least. Glasses with 0.10 mls. In Greece they give you that as a taster. Though wine basic in Greece. We had a great night, relaxing, good food. Great atmosphere. The town was pretty lively too without being over the top. Post dinner we walked around the little funfair which had dodgems which were hilarious to watch with cars crashing and backing into each other and much jolliment amongst the patrons Also other madcap rides which for us would have seen dinner re-appear. Finally we strolled back along the beachfront sort of up on the prom. Our host had said there was a bar where music was played and we found it. We didn't go in just sat on the wall above it for probably 45 mins listening to the two person female band. Both on guitars and one with a very powerful voice. They sang a variety of love ballads but not schmaltzy, some quite funky and quite a few that you knew but couldn't quite name. Shazam was employed. Really nice end to the evening. One fortuitous thing we did was literally stumble across a little hotel as we wandered around town. The Santa Marija. We asked if they had a room for the following night and yes they did including breakfast. Price acceptable. Smack in town and certainly the establishment looked better than our current joint. We couldn't check the room until the 10.00am the following morning but it was going to be a no-brainer. The lady said she would hold it for us. The next morning Liz was down there just after 10.00 and the deal was sealed. We left our digs not long after and checked straight in at the Santa Marija this was more like a 10/10, the other place - 8.0 based largely on location and certainly not the fragile latrine. Our biggest task now was to find a beach seat. Straight down there and there was plenty of choice at around 11.00. Liz went in search of some breakfast (toasted sandwich) and brought me one to the beach. We just did the usual and read, slept, blogged, watched the passers by and generally chilled for the rest of the afternoon. Heading back to the digs around 6.00pm. Dinner was very pleasant. Different place. Sticking largely to the seafood. Liz the grilled squid which was excellent and me the sea bass with grilled vegetables which was the same. Not really large portions but very rich and very filling. Liz risked the Rose which I had to polish off though was a notch up on Greek offerings. Really friendly waiter too. We had front row seats just off the prom and just soaked it all up. Post dinner bought some ice creams and floated around town ending up above the same bar as last night but different musos tonight. We were in for a treat. 3 man band, good sound and lead singer had a great voice and was the most manic guitar strummer we have ever seen. He set the place alight and second song was of all things " Men at Work - Down Under". The bar was fuller tonight and after each song applause were pretty loud. Of course we loved MOW but plenty more - "Without Love - The Doobie Bros" comes to mind so just lots of rock classics all belted out and the guitar thumping. We headed home pretty happily after a great day. We are realising how much we are enjoying smaller towns rather than the big ticket places. Also we are feeling less inclined to head out of our way to see the Roman ruins etc and other sights unless of major significance. Little villages/ small resort towns are our preference if we can find them. The car is pretty handy here as you can stop or go a you please. Liz did very well sniffing out Novigrad as it really doesn't get too many mentions in travel blurb (including Lonely Planet) yet for us was a gem.

[jesus-otaku]

Title: La Pucelle et la Coccinelle (Prologue)

Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug

Word count: 938

This is just a prologue chapter for my almost 40K Big Bang fic; I’ll be posting more chapters over the next few days (probably like 2 a day, that’d make it a week to post the whole thing). You can also find the fic on my AO3 account here {x} if you’d like to read the fun facts I include in the author’s notes.

St. Joan of Arc has always been a favorite saint of mine, so when I found out that Astruc had made her one of the previous Ladybugs in the ML universe, I really wanted to write a fic about it. She was honestly such an inspirational person and I wanted to do her story justice by depicting her in as historically accurate of a light as possible. This fic is the result!

Huge shoutouts to @australianotaku for being my beta and to @professaurus for some absolutely gorgeous cover art (which you can see here {x})!

“France will be done for at this rate,” the great guardian went on.

Long, long ago, magical jewelry was created which could grant its bearers incredible powers—the Miraculous. Throughout history, this jewelry has been used time and again by heroes for the sake of humanity. The most powerful of the Miraculous are the ring of the black cat, which carries powers of destruction, and the earrings of …

“Tikki.”

Nestled inside her Miraculous, the ladybug kwami stirred. She recognized the great guardian's voice when she heard it, and she knew he would never call her without a very good reason. The jewelry box holding the earrings was opened moments later. Tikki, now released from her Miraculous, flew up to hover before the great guardian.

It was evident that she hadn't been released in a long time. The last time she had spoken with the great guardian face to face, he had been a middle-aged but still very spry man, just beginning to gray at the temples, with all the energy of his youth intact. Now, however, his hair was a shock of gray, and prominent crow's feet framed his eyes. He had always been careful about handing out the Miraculous to new wielders, but this, she thought, was a little much. If she had to guess, she would have estimated the time since her last release to be a span of about sixty years, maybe more. His expression was grim.

“Master,” she greeted him. “What's wrong?”

“It's the war, Tikki,” he explained without preamble. He had always been like this, so direct, so open with his concerns. It was a good quality, one Tikki thought suited his role as the guardian quite well. She'd have thought he hadn't changed at all in the past sixty years if it weren't for the weariness in his voice that wouldn't have been there sixty years ago. Ah, she thought, something had broken him. Perhaps he and Wayzz were no longer able to fight on the field as they once could. He was getting old, after all, and even with the extended lifespan granted him by Wayzz, being ninety-something years old would make serving as a knight difficult at best.

“France will be done for at this rate,” the great guardian went on. “The duke of Orleans was captured years ago, and the dauphin has lost nearly all of the northern territory to the English. There's not even a king on the throne anymore.”

“The king died?” Tikki asked. Having been tucked away for so long, she couldn't bring herself to feel much sorrow for the unknown king's passing, but she did feel for the country which was without a king, without military prowess, and now without hope. “Why hasn't the dauphin been crowned?”

“He can't make it to Rheims for that.” The great guardian's lips were drawn into a grim frown. “He's surrounded by the English on all sides. Not to mention that King Henry V took the throne from the last king before he died. His son is next in line for the French throne now. The dauphin doesn't have a single chance.”

Tikki frowned. The great guardian had always had a way of presenting the facts without bias, but he was painting a rather bleak picture. “You must think he has at least the slightest chance, though, or you would not have called on me.”

He looked towards the window. “It is a very, very slight chance. And it may come to nothing. Even I can't be sure. But there is a girl here in Domremy who may be able to help.”

“A village girl?” Tikki blinked in surprise. That wasn't what she had been expecting. Girls weren't knights. Neither were villagers, for that matter. Knighthood was something left to the aristocracy here in France; they were the only ones who could afford it. “Who?”

“The people here like to call her Jhennette.” For the first time in their conversation, the great guardian's face took on an expression that was at least somewhat akin to a smile. “She's a wonderful child. Very pious. She's scolded the churchwarden for not ringing Compline faithfully enough, can you believe? She doesn't take part much in singing or dancing or any of the other children's games, but they love her all the same. I think you'll like her too. She has a sort of solemnity about her. A conviction, if you will. And I believe she intends to do something about what has been happening.”

“But she's just a child,” Tikki protested. She may not know all the details of what was happening in the war at the moment, but she at least knew that it would mean certain death to throw a mere child into the midst of a battlefield.

The great guardian shook his head. “Joan is young, but she is not 'just a child.' You'll see, Tikki. Trust in me. She has more than merited your Miraculous. And in the midst of all this destruction, I believe what the dauphin will need, more than anything, is your powers of creation.”

Tikki nodded in understanding. If he saw something more in Joan than she could glean from his description, she would only learn the truth of the matter once she met her new master. Besides which, he had a point. The dauphin could use all the help he could get—even from a poor village girl who had probably never so much as seen a sword before. Tikki could guide her, help her learn what she would need to know to be of service. It might just be enough to keep Joan alive until her part in the war was over. “Take me to her.”

[nbanalytics]

Ranking the NBA Teams with a Genetic ML Algorithm

Ranking the NBA Teams with a Genetic ML Algorithm

Which team is the best in the NBA? A question that most of us basketball fans think we know the answer to yet often we find it so hard to come to a consensus. In the ever-popular world of basketball analytics, I would argue that mathematical team rankings are probably the most popular and contentious problem that people try to “solve”.  About two years ago I attacked this topic of debate in my very first foray into the world of basketball analytics. I was naive and inexperienced at the time, but my eventual failure led me to continue to explore the world of basketball data, statistics and machine learning…

From a math point of view there are lots of ways to approach the problem developing a computer ranking system. I will begin by establishing that the goal of any NBA ranking system should be to predict playoff success. If two teams are paired together in a playoff bracket, the higher ranked team should win more often.  Additionally, the larger the difference in rating scores, the more likely the favorite team should win the playoff series. Here are a couple of simple models one might use to predict playoff success. I will use these as baseline models to which I compare my own ranking system.

The most basic way to measure team quality from the regular season is winning percentage.  Below we see a plot of playoff wins versus regular season winning percentage.

There is definitely a positive and statistically significant correlation of  0.571, but can we do better? The percent of the variance in playoff success explained by regular season success alone is only 33%. Not to mention that half of the NBA champion teams fall outside of the 95% confidence interval for prediction.  Obviously there are other factors that should be taken into account when predicting postseason success.

Another way to measure team quality and a popular one with computational ranking systems is average margin of victory.  Below is a plot of the average margin of victory versus playoff wins.

This metric also has a positive correlation with playoff success with a statistically significant value of 0.599, which is slightly better than using regular season wins to predict playoff wins.  The percent of the variance explained is also slightly better for margin of victory at 36%.  However, this model also fails to include many of the champions in the 95% confidence band.

So how can be expand our ranking system to better predict postseason success? Similar to my take on measuring home court advantage, I believe that any ranking system needs to take into account the various strengths of the opponents that each teams play as well as the quality of performance in each of those games relative to an average team would against the same opponents.

From this simple criteria I developed 10 performance measures that could be included in the ranking of every team in two different categories for every game they play:

Strength of opponent

Total opponent winning percentage at time of the game

Opponent winning percentage at site of game (home/away) at time of the game

Opponent’s avg. margin of victory

Opponent’s avg. margin of victory at site of game (home/away)

Opponent’s winning percentage in last X games

Quality of play in each game compared to expected performance

Margin of victory

Over/under opponent’s points against avg.

Over/under opponent’s points for avg.

Over/under opponent’s points against avg. at site (home/away)

Over/under opponent’s points for avg. at site (home/away)

I added a few other factors to consider in the ranking algorithm as well. Overall winning percentage was included because it is a standard baseline for team rankings. Additionally, the opponent’s recent level of play could port be factored into the strength of the opponent, as well a discount factor for how long ago games were played.

From these factors I created a linear function to combine the Strength of Opponent factors and Quality of Play factors with coefficients.

These two larger factors are then linearly combined with how recent the game was to the current point in time and the overall team winning percentage, again, with coefficients.

For a final team ranking, the score of every game is summed and the teams ordered from highest to lowest.

The value of each of these factors and how I combined them is debatable.  Any ranking system is going to have some inherent subjectivity and assumptions based on the system designer and the data feed into it. The reason that I support this model is not because of the factors it takes into account, but rather that the factors can be combined in an infinite number of ways in an effort to fit the model to historical results.  The theory behind the model is that the coefficients will shed light into what actually matters in winning basketball games.  If defense is more important than offense the the coefficient X with be fit to be larger than the coefficient W.  If performance on the road or performance at home matters, then the site specific coefficients with be large and they will be close to zero if site-specific performance is irrelevant. 

This raises the question of how to best train the coefficients on historical data.  At the time that I did this study, I had zero training in machine learning, so I hacked together an algorithm of my own creation that would generate random starting coefficients and search through the infinitely sized set of coefficients looking for the most predictive set.  I was inspired by nature’s own machine learning technique and used breeding, mutation and natural selection to move through the coefficient search space. 

The steps of the genetic algorithm were as follows:

I populated a number of “parent” sets of coefficients.  I used my basketball knowledge to create coefficients I assumed would be near the optimal values for some of the parents, but randomly generated others so that my population would attack the problem from multiple “perspectives” as my intuition is not necessary what is best.

The parent sets were then “breed” with each other, two at a time, to create a large population of “children.” Each child received half of the coefficients from two different parents.

Each coefficient for every child was given the opportunity to “mutate” into a value other than that of the child’s parents.

Each child set of coefficients was then used to calculate the end of season ranking for every playoff team during the 2002-2003 through 2011-2012 NBA seasons.  These rankings were used to see if the children accurately predicted the winner of each of the 150 different playoff series that occurred during those ten seasons with extra weight given to predicting the eventual champion. 

The top 10 most predictive children sets were “naturally selected” to be the parent sets for the next “generation” of the algorithm.

The algorithm stopped when it accurately predicts all 10 NBA champions or reaches a pre-specified maximum number of generations.

After creating the algorithm I sat back and let it run for a while to see what kind of results would pop out. It was good to see that my “expertly” chosen coefficients accurately predicted the result of most playoff series but the algorithm quickly found a better combination.  In general, the the algorithm asymptotes very quickly just above 70% prediction accuracy for all playoff series.  However after just a few generations, it struggles to improve itself and never seems to predict more than 4 out of the 10 championship teams before the start of the playoffs, but it does predict 8 out of the 10 winners given the Finals match-up.  

More importantly it appears that the set of coefficients that produce relatively high accuracy has many local maxima, as very different sets of coefficients produce very similar accuracy results. It was interesting to see these various formulas that my genetic algorithm converged on.  Perhaps this sheds some light into being able to forecast post-season success. Either some playoff series are easy to predict (this makes sense for first round match-ups, but not for later rounds) or there are many ways to create quality teams. To avoid getting stuck at the first local maxima encountered, the algorithm allows for every child to have a random mutation that differs from either of the parents.  Just as in nature this allows for innovation and diversification of the population.  Along these same lines, one of the keys for arriving at the best model in light of many local maxima is to have a suitably large population to breed from. The more parents in the population, the more diverse the population, and the more opportunity the algorithm has of finding the true most-predictive model. 

I investigated the impact of having a larger population, in spite of the extra computation time, by increasing the parent population size and the number of children produced each generation. As an example, here is a plot of the progression of the model over each generation with a population of 100, rather than the 10 shown above.

The variance in the population of models accuracy increases any time the population size is increased.  It also takes more generations for the population to converge toward a homogeneous level of accuracy. More importantly, changing the population size does not increase the models ability to converge to a global optima as the total accuracy does not change much for any population size of at least 10. It was disappointing that the model very quickly reaches its most optimum set of coefficients regardless of the model parameters. 

I after investigating the effect of changing the population and it’s effect on convergence, I ran the model one last time and the genetic algorithm found the most predictive model. Here is the final rankings of the model compared to the baseline models’ rankings for the 2012-2013 season.

Overall the rankings of all three are pretty similar. This is not too surprising given that my model is linear combinations of values that are for the most part derived from winning percentage and margin of victory.  The teams with the largest changes in my ranking from the baseline rankings are either teams that were doing much better or much worse in their most recent games. So this is how the teams fall into order during regular season, but does it translate into playoff prediction?

Here are the predictions for the 2013 NBA playoffs for he three models along side what actually went down….

In this particular season, my model is no better than the simple predictive models based on regular season wins and regular season margin of victory.  Only the wins model was able to predict the champion by ranking Miami first before the start of the playoffs.  However, the goal is not to have the highest accuracy in a single season but have the model generalize to be the most predictive in any future season.  Here is how the my ranking model predicts the results over the ten seasons to which the model was fit. The assumption of a linear relationship was used just as with the baseline models earlier.

My ranking system scales each team’s score to fall between 0 and 100 where the 30th ranked team has a score of 0 and the top ranked team a score of 100. As expected this team score is positively correlated with playoff success with a statistically significant value of 0.525. This is unfortunately worse than the baseline models despite being the model that the genetic algorithm found to be most predictive of postseason success. The percent of the variance explained is also worse at only 28%.  But, it turns out that the team’s score it not the best metric from my ranking system for predicting playoff success because team scores are scaled based on the teams’ stats for that season.  So scores can not  be accurately compared with one another across seasons, and it is more realistic to predict playoff success based on the teams’ rank for that season.

This performs better, as expected, but it is still worse than the baseline models of regular season wins and regular season margin of victory. The correlation is only 0.553 and the percent of variance explained only 31%. 

In light of these results, there are certainly areas where this model could  be improved. Because of computation time, many of the algorithm iterations were done with too small a population and converged on local optima too soon. I did not play with any of the parameters around the randomization of the coefficients to mutate or how the parents that were “mated” were chosen.  I suspect that there are ways to create population clusters or engineer other algorithm features to make the genetic algorithm converge on the best optima quicker.  However, the real problem with the model has to do with the choice of a genetic algorithm to begin with.

If I were to re-do this analysis with my skill set today, I would use a different method to optimize the linear model coefficients.  Ordinary least squares optimization would converge more quickly to the best-fit coefficient values, but it unclear how to set up the data set to accommodate this method and a squared error penalization may not be the best assumption in this situation.  Another option would be to use an expectation maximization algorithm to converge the parameters to the best fit values from my initial assumption values.  This would be an interesting experiment and is more similar to my original concept. Of course, something more powerful such as Random Forests or Neural Networks could prove more accurate with enough input information, but these methods are not for fitting parameters to an assumed model structure, but rather black-box model generators that sacrifice model interpretability. My choice of a genetic algorithm was driven by personal curiosity, and as a novice in machine learning I was unaware of what tool would be best suited to the task. 

One last way to improve model would be to include more information such as, number of days rest, injuries and how types of teams match-up with one another.  

In conclusion, it seems noble in the scientific sense to try and put a formula of the results of the NBA playoffs and be able to measure the quality of a basketball team, but the truth is really the old cliché, basketball games and trophies aren’t won on paper, but rather, on the hardwood.  I learned a few analytics lessons. More complex models are not guaranteed be better than the simpler models they hope to improve upon, and any data scientist needs to know when to use the right model for the given problem. While I never expected a genetic algorithm to be the best way to fit my model, it turns out that it was never properly suited to the task given my evaluation measure and the computation time involved.

As fan of the port I have come to realize that this is actually an encouraging result.  It should not be easy to change conventional wisdom or predict the future. I am glad that there is the white noise randomness of blown charging calls and streak-shooting that make each game dramatic and exciting. Sure there are better measures of the true quality of a team beyond winning percentage or margin of victory, but if we knew with any certainty the outcome of a basketball, why would we even bother to watch?

This analysis was done in Matlab and the results processed in a combination of Matlab and R.

All of the data was courtesy of basketball-reference.com 

More general information about genetic algorithms can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm

Other computer ranking systems for NBA teams can be found at:

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/nba/sagarin/

http://www.teamrankings.com/nba/ranking/overall-power-ranking-by-team

http://espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/powerrankings

Feb 7

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What started out at a hobby trying to separate basketball facts from opinion has led me to a career in data analytics. Perhaps I should share some of my mathematical musings...

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[cryptocoingrowth]

Chainlink Price Prediction 2020: From $3 to $1k – What Do the Experts Think?

The decentralized oracle project Chainlink was one of the big winners in the 2019 cryptoeconomy, particularly on the fronts of adoption, partnerships, and price action. The rise is not necessarily surprising: Oracles are tough to build and highly in demand, and Chainlink is one of the earliest efforts to make interesting headway in the arena. One of the largest milestones yet in the project’s young history came last year when Chainlink went live with its mainnet activation. With that rollout, attention around the middleware oracle system and its associated crypto, LINK, have surged around the space. Chainlink Partnerships Indeed, the newfound scrutiny led to the Chainlink team locking down a slew of new partnerships in 2019, including with the likes of Celer, Harmony, Hedera Hashgraph, Matic, Ocean Protocol, Synthetix, Zilliqa, and more. The year also saw LINK listed on influential exchanges like Coinbase and Binance.US. Major enterprises took note of the project last year as well. The Google Cloud team devised a way to create “hybrid blockchain/cloud apps” using the Ethereum + Chainlink stack. The startup arm of software giant Oracle partnered up with Chainlink to help startups sell their data. And Thomson Reuters began work on a proof of concept (PoC) that would meld the firm’s Contract Express service with smart contract tech using Chainlink. Some of Chainlink’s Partners, Image from Exploring.link If such embraces weren’t interesting enough, key Chainlink researchers advanced a new privacy technique in 2019 dubbed “Mixicles,” which uses oracles to bring privacy to smart contracts. Amazing Year for LINK With no shortage of Chainlink action then, the LINK price went for an upward run on the year, having risen 500 percent from $0.29 USD to $1.80 between January 1st, 2019, and January 1st, 2020. The buzz around the crypto also helped to push LINK to a new all-time high of $4.36, which was achieved briefly last summer. But that was last year, and a new year is upon us. Will 2020 be another ripper of a year for Chainlink and its crypto, or will the next 12 months prove steady for the project on the heels of it advancing so far so fast? These questions are on the minds of many Chainlink stakeholders, and opinions are abounding accordingly. Let’s survey some notable predictions on where the project could be heading in the short-term to get a better feel for what its horizon might look like. Other Price Predictions Bitcoin Price Prediction 2020 Ethereum Price Prediction 2020 Litecoin Price Prediction 2020

Ryan Selkis: Be Mindful of “Dumpenings,” Competition

Ryan Selkis is a crypto commentator and a co-founder of the Messari crypto research hub. Following up on a tradition started in 2019, Selkis recently published his second new year ecosystem write-up, “Crypto Theses for 2020.” In one section, Selkis predicted that treasury “dumpenings” — or major project-backed selling pressure — was in store for token projects that had big 2017 ICOs but still hadn’t gone public.

Ryan Selkis, Image from YouTube In making that estimation, Selkis brought up the already public Chainlink as among examples of token projects that had large treasury war chests that could be sold off relatively fast. His suggestion? At least live projects with live users would be more resistant to such selloffs compared to their still-unlaunched token counterparts. As Selkis put it: “I said we’d see most tokens grind down 99%+ from their all time highs, mostly due to the incredible amount of selling pressure that would hit most token markets once teams and inside investors began liquidating positions. By this metric, XRP has a could-be-market-dumped liquid treasury of $2-3 billion, XLM has a could-be-market-dumped liquid treasury of $800 million, and Chainlink has a could-be-market-dumped liquid treasury of $600 million. Those are some of the publicly traded assets. For token projects that raised gobs of money at nosebleed valuations in 2017, things could get very ugly, very quickly once they start trading.” Of course, Selkis didn’t make a hard Chainlink prediction in that passage. Yet as a related aside, the reference does bring to mind rumblings that the Chainlink team reportedly sold off 14 lots of 700,000 LINK last summer. That is to say, its builders have seemingly dipped into the treasury before and will do so in the future as they see fit. As Selkis hinted at, at least the Chainlink project is positioned to reasonably weather that kind of acute sell pressure. In the very least then, it’s worth keeping in mind that if the LINK price performs well in 2020 like it did last year, the project’s treasury may be dipped into anew. Selkis did have more specific comments for Chainlink in his “Theses,” too. He later noted that he could envision oracle competition heating up and Chainlink accordingly losing ground to others, suggesting it’s in the realm of possibility the project gets steadily edged out going forward: “I’m baffled by Chainlink. Is it the solution to the evasive Oracle Problem? Or is it an overhyped project … Tech giants Oracle and Google recently announced plans to use Chainlink’s network for data sharing purposes … But I still don’t understand the economics of the token itself? And I definitely don’t understand them at $1.3 billion in network value. Outside of Chainlink, various DeFi protocols – MakerDAO, Compound, and UMA among them – also introduced new oracle designs in 2019 to remove the layer of trust associated with their price feeds.”

Tanya Abrosimova: $2.5 to $3

Tanya Abrosimova is a crypto analyst at forex trade publication FXStreet. On January 8th, 2020, the chartist estimated that a sustained move over a LINK price of $2.3 could pave the way for an eventual run up to $3. At press time one week later, LINK was in fact trading just above that $2.3 mark. Could that run really be lining up, then? As Abrosimova had explained days prior: “verall bullish sentiments on the cryptocurrency market helped the coin to smash an important resistance at $2.0 reinforced by SMA50 (Simple Moving Average) daily. Once this breakthrough was confirmed, the upside momentum started gaining traction. At the time of writing, LINK/USD is testing SMA100 daily at $2.3. We will need to see a sustainable move above this handle for the upside to gain traction with the next focus on psychological $2.5 and $3.0.”

Timo Harings: ~$4 + Barclays Speculation

Timo Harings is a Chainlink community pundit who’s decidedly bullish on LINK. In early December 2019, Harings tweeted out a chart projection that put LINK as heading into the new year between the $3 and $4, saying at the time that “Here is where smart money accumulates.” The despair is bad within the #Chainlink community rn. It's shaking off a lot of the dumb money that got on board since Google and Coinbase news. RSI is at a hard low right now, price is still extremely high since the start of the run. Here is where smart money accumulates more. pic.twitter.com/tAv1vPQiYE — Timo Harings (@DLTPandu) December 2, 2019 That price range didn’t pan out by January 1st, but only a few days after later a new wave of acute buy pressure throughout the cryptoeconomy and around LINK has put $3 in the direct sights of traders. With that said, Harings is presumably just as bullish as he was in December and would accordingly think $4 absolutely remains in play in the near future. Beyond price, Harings published a January 15th op-ed wherein he speculated that signs were pointing toward a collaboration between banking giant Barclays and Chainlink. That may never pan out, but if it does, an acute boon for LINK would be far from surprising.

WalletInvestor: $4.35 in 1 Year, $12.9 in 5 Years

The machines are bullish on LINK. Well, WalletInvestor’s machines are. The crypto prediction site, which uses Machine Learning (ML) techniques to forecast crypto prices, is hot on Chainlink at the moment. At the time of this article’s writing, WalletInvestor projected that LINK would rise to $4.35 in one year’s time and to just shy of $13 in five years’ time. Of course, WalletInvestor can’t account for all sorts of developments that will occur in the months ahead, so take these predictions with a grain of salt.

Top 10 Coin to Top 5: $5.7–$10

One thing commonly discussed in the Chainlink community is LINK potentially becoming a top 10 crypto per market cap. There’s no indication it’ll happen in 2020, but might things look if it did? At the time of this article’s writing, the market cap of LINK was right at $850 million, a position which makes the crypto the 19th largest in the cryptoeconomy presently. For LINK to crack decisively into the top 10 biggest coins at the moment, its market cap would need to double to near $2 billion. If that happened, the LINK price would appreciate around 135 percent. Alas, with LINK’s current price at $2.43, that means such a climb could put the token’s price just short of the $6 mark. Alternatively, for LINK to become a top 5 coin right now, its market cap would have to climb to near the $6 billion mark. That hypothetical rise could put LINK above $10 a pop. That’s all speculative napkin math, of course, but both scenarios are in the ballpark of what some bullish LINK investors are eyeing. Much more would have to happen for LINK to mount such ascensions, but if the project becomes increasingly reputable, such rising is in the realm of possibility.

CryptoSponge: It’s Really About 2021

Pseudonymous Chainlink analyst CryptoSponge put together one of the best and most comprehensive 2019 review posts on the oracle project that we’ve come across. At the end of that review, the author concluded with an eye to the long-term that they were excited for 2020 but thought the real prize for Chainlink would be in positioning itself for 2021 and beyond: “As a Chainlink supporter, it’s hard to not be excited about 2020. The team is firing on all cylinders, and it’s become increasingly obvious that they are planning many quarters ahead – seemingly always timing their moves to dovetail with the development of the wider market. As promising as 2020 appears, I’ll be striving to mirror Chainlink’s mindset of thinking beyond twelve months. Reaching the next milestone is exciting, but positioning yourself ideally for 2021 and beyond will be the ultimate reward.”

No, Not $1,000!

LINK $1,000 incoming? The meme is strong with this one. For most, it’s a bullish joke made in good fun. For those very few out there who think $1,000 LINK isn’t out of the question in the foreseeable future, don’t get your hopes up. Hitting 1/100th of that mark is considerably more realistic in the near future and would still be quite impressive and bullish. Sure, let’s circle back on the joke if Chainlink starts revving up toward helping to secure trillions of dollars daily like the SWIFT payments system currently does now, but that would-be bar is astronomically far away at present. And that’s fine, too. Rome wasn’t built in a day. For Chainlink to achieve mainstream adoption, its builders and community must be diligent in the here in now.

Conclusion: All Eyes on Staking, DeFi, and More Mainstream Partnerships

As Chainlink continues to mature, the biggest thing on many of its stakeholders’ minds is the imminent launch of staking, which will allow LINK holders to stake their tokens to earn more LINK in exchange for helping the network. While the details of when staking will be activated are still fuzzy, staking pools like LinkPool are already cropping up to service the community. Look for more pool efforts to proliferate going forward. Another point of interest that Chainlink watchers are looking out for is more DeFi embraces, like the Synthetix partnership in 2019. For example, in early January 2020 the DeFi oncomers and “flash loan” innovators behind the Aave protocol announced they had partnered with Chainlink for powering the Aave oracle network. Like other Ethereum-based efforts that have taken similar leaps, the Aave team said it would have been difficult and out of the way from their project vision to build an in-house oracle solution; thus after deliberation, Chainlink was chosen as an ideal fit. Look for more DeFi projects to follow the same kind of logic going forward, i.e. wanting to rely on Chainlink rather than building out their own oracle tech. Another wrinkle of interest on the minds of many Chainlink proponents is the prospects of further major adoption developments. To be sure, the Google Cloud, Oracle, and Thomson Reuters news was extremely legitimizing for Chainlink for 2019 and could portend similar mainstream embraces to come. Maybe Barclays, maybe not. But it wouldn’t be surprising to see another big name jump on the Chainlink train after the developments we saw in last year. Perhaps Microsoft is a low-hanging fruit in that regard, but we’ll all just have to wait and see.

References

https://messari.io/pdf/crypto-theses-for-2020.pdf https://www.fxstreet.com/cryptocurrencies/news/chainlink-is-about-to-smash-sma100-daily-for-the-first-time-since-november-2019-202001080810 https://messari.io https://medium.com/@timo.harings/why-i-think-barclays-is-working-with-chainlink-c840393adf29 https://walletinvestor.com/forecast/chainlink-prediction https://medium.com/aave/the-aave-oracle-network-powered-by-chainlink-is-now-live-45bb8a5a8c4e https://staking.linkpool.io/help https://defipulse.com/ The post Chainlink Price Prediction 2020: From $3 to $1k – What Do the Experts Think? appeared first on Blockonomi.Original Article - Blockonomi.com Read the full article

[jbaquerot]

As we enter the latter part of 2017, it’s time to take a look at the common challenges faced by companies interested in using data science and machine learning (ML). Let’s assume your organization is already collecting data at a scale that justifies the use of analytic tools, and that you’ve managed to identify and prioritize use cases where data science can be transformative (including improvements to decision-making or business operations, increasing revenue, etc.). Data gathering and identifying interesting problems are non-trivial, but assuming you’ve gotten a healthy start on these tasks, what challenges remain?

Data science is a large topic, so I’ll offer a disclaimer: this post is mainly about the use of supervised machine learning today, and it draws from a series of conversations over the last few months. I’ll have more to say about AI systems in future posts, but such systems clearly rely on more than just supervised learning.

It all begins with (training) data

Even assuming you have a team that handles data ingestion and integration, and a team that maintains a data platform (“source of truth”) for you, new data sources continue to appear, and it’s incumbent on domain experts to highlight them. Moreover, since we’re dealing mainly with supervised learning, it’s no surprise that lack of training data remains the primary bottleneck in machine learning projects.

There are some good research projects and tools for quickly creating large training data sets (or augmenting existing ones). Stanford researchers have shown that weak supervision and data programming can be used to train models without access to a lot of hand-labeled training data. Preliminary work on generative models (by deep learning researchers) have produced promising results in unsupervised learning in computer vision and other areas.

The adage “think about features, not algorithms” is another useful way to assess data in the context of machine learning. Here’s a friendly reminder: data enrichment can potentially improve your existing models, and in some situations, it can even help ease the cold start problem. Most data scientists probably already enrich their existing data sets with open data or through third-party data providers, but I find that data enrichment can sometimes be overlooked. Obtaining external data, normalizing, and experimenting with it is not considered as glamorous as model and algorithm development.

From prototype to production

In many use cases the goal is to productionalize a data science project. We’ve pointed out that a new job role—machine learning engineer—has recently emerged to streamline this process. There are also a new set of tools to help ease the transition from prototype to production and to help track context and metadata that accompany analytic products.

We are still in the early stages of deploying machine learning into products, and best practices are just beginning to emerge. As advanced analytic models get more widely used, there are several considerations to keep in mind, including:

Deployment environment: You’ll likely need to integrate with the existing logging or A/B testing infrastructure. Besides being able to deploy robust and performant models on a server, environments increasingly include the questions of how and when to deploy models to the edge (mobile devices are a common example). There are new tools and strategies for deploying models to edge devices.

Scale, latency, freshness: How much data is needed to train the models? What is a reasonable response time for model inference? How often should models be retrained and data sets be refreshed? The latter implies you have reproducible data pipelines in place.

Bias: If your training data is not representative of the current population, you’ll get poor (and even unfair) results. In some situations, you might be able to use propensity scores or other methods to adjust your data set accordingly.

Monitoring models: I think people underestimate the importance of monitoring models, and this is an area where people trained in statistics have a competitive advantage. It can get tricky to figure out when and how much models have degraded. Concept drift might be a factor. In the case of classifiers, one strategy is to compare the distribution of classes predicted by your models to the observed distribution of predicted classes. You can also have business goals that are distinct from the metrics used to evaluate machine learning models. For example, a recommendation system might be tasked to help surface “dark or long-tail” content.

Mission-critical applications: Models deployed in mission-critical settings will need to be much more robust than your typical consumer application. In addition, machine learning applications in such settings need to be designed to run “continuously” for months on end (e.g., without memory leaks).

Privacy and security: Generally speaking, users and companies are more likely to share data if you can convince them their data is secure. And as I noted, data enriched with extra features tend to lead to better results. For companies conducting business in the European Union, one issue looms over the short-term: GDPR is set for May 2018. On other fronts, practical research in adversarial ML and secure ML (including being able to work with encrypted data) are beginning to appear.

Model development

Model and algorithm development get much more media coverage, but when you talk with data scientists, most of them will tell you lack of training data and productionalizing data science are more pressing concerns. Often, there are enough straightforward use cases that you can start with your favorite (basic or advanced) algorithm and tweak or replace it later.

Learn more Because tools make it easy to apply algorithms, as a first step it’s good to brush up on how to evaluate the results of machine learning models. With that said, never lose sight of your business metrics and objectives as they need not completely coincide with having the best-tuned or best-performing model. Follow developments pertaining to fairness and transparency that are beginning to be examined and addressed by researchers and companies. Privacy concerns and the rise of devices are giving rise to techniques that do not rely on centralized data sets.

Deep learning is slowly becoming part of the class of algorithms data scientists need to know about. Originally used in computer vision and speech recognition, there are starting to be examples and use cases involving data types and problems that data scientists can relate to. Challenges include choosing the right network architecture (architecture engineering is the new feature engineering), hyperparameter tuning, and casting problems and transforming data so they lend themselves to deep learning. (Coincidentally, one of the more interesting large-scale data products I’ve encountered this year isn’t based on deep learning.)

In many cases, users prefer and favor models that are explainable (in some settings, black box models simply aren’t acceptable). Given that their underlying mechanisms are somewhat understandable, explainable models are also potentially easier to improve. With the recent rise of deep learning, I’m seeing companies use tools that explain how models produce their predictions and tools that can explain where a model comes from by tracing predictions from the learning algorithm and training data.

Tools

I won’t attempt to create a list, as there are simply too many tools to enumerate. The ecosystem of tools that help you with data ingestion, integration, processing, preparation, and storage, as well as model deployment, are all critical. Here are a few observations on machine learning tools:

Python and R are the most popular languages. Keras is the most popular entry point for those wanting to use deep learning (Keras now comes bundled when you install TensorFlow).

While notebooks seem to be the model development tool of choice, IDEs are popular among R users.

There are a lot of libraries for general machine learning and deep learning, some are better at easing the transition from prototype to production.

Ease of scaling from a laptop to a cluster is an important consideration, and Apache Spark is a popular execution framework for making that happen. It’s also often the case that after a series of data wrangling steps you are able to fit your data set into a single, beefy server.

Vendors are starting to support collaboration and version control.

At the end of the day, you may need data science tools that seamlessly integrate with your existing ecosystem and data platform.

This is a great time for companies to assess what problems and use cases lend themselves to machine learning. I’ve attempted to summarize some recent trends and remaining bottlenecks, and your main takeaway should be that you can start using machine learning. Start with a problem for which you already have some data. The fancy models come later.