#took me like an hour to two to figure out how to bulk replace code within an application using python script

[evg]

in so deep into modding sims 3 that I made a script to mass change 2000 cc files' hex header 😭😭😭😭😭

[starkeristheendgame]

maybe unrequited!peter jerking off in tony's lab while he isn't there. esp knowing tony has cameras, security etc (ty if ur up for it!)

Okay, so I had to message you to figure out the unrequited bit, but: Here we go! I hope that you like it and that I did it justice! Thank you so much ❤️ This is literally shameless voyeurism and smut. I have literally no excuse except for the fact it was requested. 

TW/Tags: (Not) unrequited love | voyeurism | Under-negotiated sexual content

People liked to joke about Tony Stark’s lack of impulse control; about his knack for bad decisions or spur-of-the-moment acts. It was funny. It was a thing. Tony could show up one day with a gold-coated camel or something and people would just roll their eyes and go ‘there he goes again’. 

Peter? Peter was a kid. Easily excusable. He tried his best to think things through and to be the responsible adult he was trying to convince everyone else he was. And he felt he did a good job. Sure, here and there he might have fucked up a little or jumped into action when he ought to have stepped back and thought a little more. 

But if anything, people put those moments down to one of two things: ‘Oh, he’s just a kid. They do that.’‘Too much time around Tony, that’s what that is. Taking after his mentor.’

Tony could not, at all, be blamed for this. Nor, really, could the fact that he was younger. Not when ‘this’ was being splayed on Tony’s main workbench, head thrown back, legs apart like a whore, one hand shoved down into his boxers. Really, it couldn’t be blamed on anything except Peter and Peter’s desperate love and need for Tony. 

“F-Fuck. Bad idea. This is a bad idea,” he ground out, squeezing his eyes shut as he ran his thumb slowly over the slit of his cock, thighs trembling. The pleasure was a low, slow burn in his gut. He hadn’t been touching himself long. Hadn’t meant to be touching himself at all. 

It was the videos that had done it, and the suits. God, the suits. Tall and imposing, lending Tony bulk and strength enough to compete with Peter’s abilities. And that was not to disregard the formal Tom Ford’s and the Gucci two-pieces. The sharp lines and soft fabric that made Tony equally as imposing as the metal. 

“J-JARVIS. How long until Tony returns?” Peter whimpered, curling onto his side like he was wounded as his cock jerked in his grip, dribbling a glob of cum into the silk fabric of his boxers. Boxers that Tony had bought him not even a month ago, as part of a sleek suit for the 2019 World Trust Fund Gala. 

“Based upon my estimate, you have roughly two hours and thirteen minutes before Sir is likely to return.” JARVIS sounded prim, indifferent to the fact that Peter was touching himself. It made Peter glad for the fact that JARVIS was code, and not a real Butler. It would have been significantly more awkward to ask such a thing in his current state. 

He gave a jerky nod, rolling over onto his back and letting his hips rut up against his hand and forearm with a shaky groan. The scent of Tony’s aftershave was still lingering, mingled with oil and metal. The husk of his words as he told Peter he’d back soon, to stay as long as he liked. The squeeze of Tony’s hand on his hip. 

Peter knew it was just Tony. Knew that intimately taking a person apart and flirting and using body language was just coded into him at this point. That the brushed of his knuckles between Peter’s shoulders didn’t meant the same as when he did it to the attractive news caster at whatever world-saving event had happened then. 

“I should stop,” he mewled into his arm, slowing the rocky movements of his hips for all of four seconds. He should. He ought to. This was wrong. Jerking off over a man who saw him as a son. In his own workshop. 

“Fuck.”

It was a statement he repeated when he let his arm fall away, and found that he was staring straight up into one of the cameras that littered the space, designed to capture Tony’s movements and experiments and breakthroughs. The lens shifted minutely within the frame, focusing. Peter knew it was automated, but he still gasped, spine arching as pleasure stabbed between his thighs. 

He was being recorded. On camera, right now, was a digital copy of him, with his hand around his cock and his mentor’s name on his tongue. He lay trembling on the workbench, gaze fixed on the camera, hand still moving in tiny little twitches over his sensitive dick. 

Tony wouldn’t see it. Peter could scrub the footage the moment he was done. Tony wasn’t looking at the cameras, he was too busy schmoozing pretty ladies and promoting Stark Industries latest clean energy movement. 

But Peter could pretend. 

“S-So hard. Mr. Stark. Its so hard. I can’t help myself,” he murmured, feeling both aroused and stupid as he begun to fuck into his fist again, imagining that Tony was actually there. In the penthouse, perhaps. Cradling a neat whiskey, dark gaze on the camera screens. Watching him. 

“I - I want you to touch me, Mr. Stark. I need you to touch me. I’m not enough. Need your hands. Your mouth. Your c-cock,” Peter threw his head back on the last word, hips stuttering into his tight grip as his other reached down, shakily pulling part his belt and his jeans to squirm them down around his thighs, flushed skin lay bare for the camera. 

For the Tony in his mind. 

He lost the ability to speak for a short while, lost in the desperation of his fingers squeezing his pulsing cock, the dripping cum that soaked his hip and pooled on the bench below him. The clouded haze of pleasure. He was getting closer. He felt so dirty, so wrong, and yet…

“Feels so good. Thinking about you. You watching me. Not as good as you being here. But good. M’gonna - Fucking myself to the thought of you, Mr. Stark. Though you should be fucking me. Right now. B-Buried so deep,” he cried into his forearm, whole body ignited with desire, pleasure. 

He was so close. He could feel his cock getting even harder, could feel his thighs burning with the effort of not cumming, the hot slide of pleasure through his veins. “G-Gonna cum, Mr. Stark. All over myself. All over your workspace. That’d be naughty of me,” he muttered, gaze locked on the camera, thumb digging into the slit. 

He was about to cum. About to fall into the crescendo of pleasure, to submit to the vision of Tony’s hands all over him, his voice low in his ear, his cock balls-deep. He almost snapped himself in half when the Mark L powered up on the opposite wall, eyes igniting a glacial blue, head turning an inch to focus on him. 

He scrambled onto his elbows, knees drawing towards his stomach with a yell as the suit took a slow, calculated step off its podium, like it was testing the ability to walk. And then it begun to stride towards him with purpose, thunk-thunk-thunk on the workshop floor. Peter tried to scramble further across the space, but the suit was faster. 

It caught him by the ankle, indifferent and emotionless as it dragged him half-naked and still hard down the bench, other hand reaching to find his shoulder. He let out a terrified cry as it flipped him, careful and quick. 

On his stomach it dragged him closer, until he slid mostly off the bench, folded over the edge of it and cock trapped painfully between the edge and his hip. 

“JARVIS! What the- Help me!” he cried, but the room around him remained silent as the Mark L grasped his wrists tightly and stepped closer, until it pinned him there. In such a position he couldn’t gather himself enough to break free, writhing like an angry snake in its grasp, spitting a variety of terrified pleas and creative curses. 

He didn’t even hear the workshop door open. Had fallen limp and exhausted in the suits grip, still half-hard. Knew nothing of his companion until the suit’s fingers flexed, until warm, living ones slid around the space they had held as they withdrew. 

Peter jerked in surprise when the cold, hard body was replaced by a warm one, soft fabric against the bare swell of his ass. 

“Y’know. Its mighty rude to jerk off in another man’s workshop. Especially without inviting him.”

Tony. 

But of course, who else could it be? 

Mortified, Peter twisted in the space Tony allowed him, looking wildly up into dark, calculating eyes that softened at the sight of him, grip loosening. “Oh, Peter. I didn’t mean to - I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have scared you. I just wanted to stop you from finishing before I could get here.”

Peter’s brain short-circuited, a definitive blank space as he blinked wet eyes at Tony, trembling in his hold, hips tilted away to hide his shame. “Y-You… What?” he rasped, fingers flexing against the edge of the workbench. 

What kinda sick punishment was that? Cockblocked as well as whatever horrific intentions Tony had for him? 

“All those things you were saying, Peter. Drove me insane. You’re right. Fuck, we shouldn’t. But you’re right,” Tony breathed against his jaw, thumb stroking the inside of his wrist as he ducked down, pressed gentle kisses along Peter’s cheek and jaw, soothing. 

“You should stop me. But I really hope that you don’t. I couldn’t - Seeing you like that. Calling out my name while you touch yourself. In my space.”

“You’re not mad?” Peter managed weakly, limp in Tony’s hold, unable to compute anything beyond what was immediately happening. Tony’s lips on his skin, stubble scraping, his voice a rough thrum in Peter’s ear. 

“Mad? Sweetheart. Only thing I’m mad about is how guilty I know I’ll feel after this. But… I can’t help myself. I’m a glutton. I’m shameless. At least in the moment. God, kid. I’ll hate myself for this. But I’ll hate myself more if I don’t,” Tony rasped into his ear, fingers stroking along his arms, body inching closer until Tony’s hard cock was insistent against his ass, the scrape of fabric and zipper biting into his cheek. 

“Don’t - Don’t hate yourself. Please. Mr. Stark just…Touch me? Please. I need you to touch me.”

Tony obliged with the scrape of teeth against his jugular, hips grinding forwards gently, coaxing Peter into peeling himself from the edge of the table, to allow his poor dick some room to breathe. It ached, both from its entrapment and how dizzyingly hard he was. 

“No idea what you looked like, kiddo. When JARVIS said you were calling for me… Thought you’d hurt yourself or something. Damn near activated the suit there and then, sweetheart. When I saw you… What you were doing…” 

Tony trailed off, hand making a slow and sure path down his body, fingertips digging into his hip before finally, finally wrapping long fingers around his cock. 

Peter jerked in his grip, head tossing back and almost taking Tony out as he shook, biting hard on his lip to stave off the need to cum as Tony squeezed him gently, exploring. The tip of his thumb pressed against the sensitive underside of his tip and he mewled, ground back against Tony’s arched body. 

“You were watching me.”

“JARVIS told me you were in a ‘predicament’ and calling out my name. God, Peter. Thought you were in pain. Not pleasure. Staring straight up at the camera. Fuck; did you know? Were you asking?” Tony ground out, rough and debauched against his shoulder. 

“N-No. Thought… Was fantasising. Pretending. I didn’t know,” Peter answered honestly, shaky and high. Tony stroked him harder, rougher, hips steady against the backs of Peter’s thighs as they ground together. Tony cooed softly at him, moved a hand to pet at his hair gently, to wipe under his eyes. 

“Oh, sweetheart. I’m going to show you the real thing. It’s so much better.”

[thiskryptonite]

Date: Various. April 19th, 2015 - January 13th, 2019

Location: Ashbourne: Mortuary, Libary, and The Pit

Word Count: 1703

Triggers: Death, Murder, Blood, Violence, Mentions of Suicide

Summary: August reflects on the loss of his mother, and the loss of the Undertaker who took him in. Completed for Writing Prompt: Nostalgia

Nov. 13th, 2018

It was not his first funeral.  

Though this one was significant in that it stood out from the rest. He still managed in his same way, August kept his smile, kept his composure. There was a lot of work to be done. There had been a lot of loss. More than he’d ever seen at one time, and that was a lot considering that for the young man’s age, he’d been doing this for a long time. A lot longer than most people realized.

It shouldn’t have been just him today, the Old Man always liked to work a big crowd, took some sort of joy out of making masses feel better. His predecessor had taught August the tricks of the trade here in Ashbourne, truthfully the young witch had never intended to someday have to take over for the Mortician. He’d have been fine simply working in the other’s shadow, there were so many people looking to him now to say something. To say the right thing.

When the truth was, all he wanted to say was: I lost someone too.

This funeral is harder though, August knows the man in the casket. His face a reconstruction of the man he once was, work, that August spent hours painstakingly performing. He’d always thought the old man had such a hideous face, recreating that hooked nose was terrible, stitching back that yellowed leather-like skin was a chore, but in the end, you’d never have been able to tell that the undertaker had been nearly ripped apart by a berserker the night the ceremony went awry.

He had spent more time with this man than nearly anyone else, August had never told him what he had meant to him, and now he was never going to get the chance. He watched them lower the casket into the ground, a sermon followed before dirt began to fill the grave, like it had so many times before. August did what he could to keep a straight face, but when it was done he went back inside the funeral home and simply, sat, or stood, but he just kept moving from one room of the house to another.

Nothing felt right, nothing was the way that it should have been. This place was too empty now. August had always wanted his run of the place so that he’d be free to do whatever he wanted without fear of having to keep it hidden from the old man. Now that freedom also came with a burden of responsibility, and maybe that was the old man’s biggest joke before he kicked it, leaving August with more work than he had ever wanted to do.

The foyer had been the place where August spent the bulk of his time, his eyes always wandering the pages of his mother’s words, either her journal or her grimoire. He was obsessed. More so since coming to the town than he’d ever been before. It had been Willow who led August to the funeral home, and it had been the Old Man who gave her things over to him and brought her to where she was buried.

August looked out the window at the rows of graves and felt darkness bubbling within him, a wonton desire to hate, to burn, to avenge, to tear down everything that ever meant anything and start again. He hated it here. He hated everyone here. His eyes shifted to the loathsome tree at the top of the hill and his mouth contorted deeper in discontent.

April 19th, 2015

“How did she die?”

August had asked, once, years ago when he knelt contemplatively in front of his mother’s grave. In deep letters spelt her name Viktoria Knight.

His eyes looked to the old man, whose face looked quite grave, she’d died years ago, but he seemed to remember it still. His expression told August more than he wanted to know, but he needed to hear it. He needed him to say it.

But he didn’t. Instead he handed August the faded journal which detailed her years spent in this town, though there were parts of it that were worked into some sort of code, the ending was clear. Suicide.

That evening August found himself in the ring opposite a particularly vicious looking beast. His magic had been weaved to give his fists a greater impact, to make his skin a little tougher, to make his blood a little less appealing. His eyes wandered dangerously over the creature, this was his third match of the night and he was barely standing but an almost delirious smile kept the young witch standing.

“Is that all you got?” The crowd cheered as August outstretched his arms to either side, his one eye was swollen shut and he’d tasted blood during the second match. His energy was tapped out and whatever magic he had worked was fading, the adrenaline was still pumping however, and his opponent only snarled before they lunged. His fist connected with August’s face and the witch immediately saw stars as he stumbled back and hit the fence, though he smirked and spit blood out beside him.

A sort of scarlet static that was getting to be familiar in his fights danced across the skin of his exposed upper body and moved towards his fists as he swung out, his opponent easily dodged the sloppy movement and August went down. His field of vision danced around him as he laughed and felt the beast’s heavy feet connecting with his ribs, felt one crack.

Everything went dark and he awoke the next night in the hospital, apparently, August had been left outside. His cut from the first two fights in his pocket.

January 13, 2019

Again, August has found himself in the library, once again. He’d brought his mother’s grimoire there before in the hopes of unlocking hidden meaning or secrets, but the return of the dead from the forest had inspired him. Things were never as they seemed, and in parts of her journal, words became disordered or disorganized. Various sigils and symbols lined the margins and for years he’d simply assumed that they were just the rantings of a mad woman whose mind had been taken by this place.

The night before however he’d knocked it over and a page had spilled out, when he turned it over he found words jammed into the spaces between lines, upside down and swerved. It read, for my son: I love you.

Had she known he would end up here some day?

The question taunted him nearly as much as the secrets hidden within her grimoire, he’d come to the library with renewed purpose. August was looking for anything else that she might have written while she was here, or anything that might have been written about her. He knew now that she followed a dark path, one that she returned to when she came to Ashbourne, and one that August was content to follow as well until he unraveled the mystery surrounding her death.

August thought to one of the last conversations he’d had with the undertaker.

October 30, 2018

“What is the meaning of this!?”

August looked incredulous at the old man, how could a human possibly understand? That’s all the man was, just like his worthless father. An innocent man who’d been made to rot in prison. The lives of humans were so pliable, they could be shifted easily and forever altered from their intended course.

“I thought you’d left for the evening.” August asked, his childish sort of ambivalence to answering questions in a straightforward way had come to irritate the old man.

“I’ve told you before, I won’t stand for this. You’ve gone too far this time August.” The undertaker was a stern man, one who would not allow August to stray from the intended path of a Trillium Witch, at least not under his watch. He’d tried to assume to role of father figure, but

“You literally have no idea what you’re talking about, you’re just another ignorant old fool.” August shot, his eyes menacing as he gripped the knife he’d just been using to practice carving the symbols from his mother’s grimoire into a piece of skin he’d taken off a cadaver.

“It was a mistake taking you in. I’m going to turn you in for this.”

With a few short words the air was all but sucked from the man’s body as he was lifted off the ground. His skin sunk in as if he’d been petrified in a way, though August had merely woven a spell that would preserve him temporarily. August didn’t want to kill him, yet. “I’ve killed people for a lot less, if you think I’m going to allow you to turn me in, you’re mistaken.” Rarely did he perform magic in front of people, and even rarer still did they live long afterwards. Secrecy was very important to a witch.

He went through the motions of drawing a circle for banishment, it was a specialty of his, locking things away in a hidden place. One that he’d created a long time ago to hide the things that were worth hanging onto, or the things that could tie him to unfortunate deeds. From behind the old man’s bondage he was yelling, but it was little more than heated air against August’s resolve.

He shushed him.

“You should have just minded your own business, it didn’t need to end up like this. Really, I like you, we had a good thing going but, the truth is you never would’ve taken me in had you known I’d probably killed enough people to replace all those missing bodies in the grove.” August joked, he was always a bit unhinged in these moments. He couldn’t wait for this to be over.

“Anyways, this is it.”

He spoke the incantation and in a brilliant display of red light, the old man was sucked into himself and vanished. It was only good timing that the ceremony with the tree went wrong only days later, it made it that much easier to drop the still-living-breathing body in the path of a freshly turned berserker.

[topicprinter]

Hi r/startups! This is a 1,600 word blog post I wrote on my experience finding a technical co-founder, going full time on my startup, and pivoting. I've formatted it for Reddit below, but there's a much better reading experience available on Medium.On the hunt for a technical co-founderIt had been two months since our October launch and Dovetail had 200 users, of which 20% were active each week running real studies. This felt like good traction at the time but I still had 99 problems. I needed to restart the app every 6 hours due to a memory leak and the scheduling system was unreliable during restarts since it wasn’t idempotent.The MVP was built by a Polish agency, so I hired them once again before a holiday to the US. I couldn’t get the original developers and ended up with another developer who quit the agency one week into my project (unrelated to me!). The whole project dragged on as the client manager tried to find someone else to complete the work. Meanwhile, I was debugging a memory leak in code I could hardly read without the people who wrote it around to help. I spent parts of my holiday debugging and I eventually figured it out. The leak had a simple fix after a lot of investigation: the library that inlined CSS for emails was caching the entire application’s CSS. The fix was splitting the email CSS into a separate stylesheet.I got back to Sydney and decided this would be the last time I outsourced development. Outsourcing might work to build a simple MVP to validate your idea and the market demand, but to move forward I needed someone who could architect the code, do the bulk of the development, and stick around to help when things got hairy. I needed a technical co-founder, and I made that my main goal heading into the new year.By this point I had been pestering Brad for several months. Thankfully my refined pitch, the traction Dovetail had from launch, and the positive customer reception was enough to convince him to join as a co-founder. We had a lot of discussions about how we would work together. If I were to summarise the ‘ideal co-founder relationship’ in bullet points, I’d say:Complimentary skills. Development is just one aspect of a startup. Someone has to design the product, run marketing, customer support, keep track of expenses, apply for grants, talk with investors, do customer research, etc. Complimentary skills enable Brad and I to run fast.High trust and respect. One of us will be the ‘expert’ and the other person just has to trust the expert. I need to trust Brad with technical decisions, likewise, he has to trust me with design decisions. Of course we have sparring and discuss things in detail, but because we move quickly we don’t spend too long on trivial decisions. The relevant person makes the call and we move on.Similar experience levels. One person feeling like they are the ‘noob’ all the time isn’t healthy. Brad and I are the same age and we’ve been in the workforce for a similar amount of time. We’ve both got 8 years of Atlassian experience between us on a variety of teams.Compatible personalities. You will be spending an insane amount of time with each other, so you must get along. At the moment I spend more time with Brad than I do with Lucy.Going full timeBrad and I were still working full time and coding Dovetail in the evenings and on weekends. As I talked with more customers, I became more confident and excited about the opportunity for better software in the research space, but it was clear we needed to give Dovetail our fullest attention to have a chance at success.After four years of putting in 110%, I was burned out from Atlassian. At the end of (Australian) summer I took two months off work. I needed a break, but I also wanted to see whether I would go crazy working at home. I didn’t. In fact it was pretty awesome. At the end of this mini sabbatical it was clear my passion had shifted to Dovetail and the decision to leave Atlassian was tough. I was certain I wanted to try and ‘bootstrap’ instead of taking investment, so obviously a lot of considerations were financial.We did a lot of due diligence before making the final decision to leave our paying jobs. We see Dovetail as a financial investment but also an investment in ourselves. We’re both ready for different challenges and we’re in a stage of our lives where we can take risks. Brad and I looked at our expenses, talked about ‘salary’ expectations, and ran some exercises to check we were on the same page. In one exercise we each described Dovetail in three years and compared. For me, it was critical we both had the same expectations — the last thing you want is one founder imagining a ‘lifestyle business’ and the other dreaming of a billion-dollar IPO.A successful startup is the result of making informed decisions, not counting on luck. We had just launched pricing, so I forecasted how many customers we would need to break even. This information plus our growth rate gave me the numbers I needed to model our runway based off an initial investment Brad and I put in. I had worked on Dovetail myself for a few months before Brad joined, so I looked at how much time I had invested and multiplied that by the market rate for a senior designer in Sydney. Brad would invest the same ‘seed’ as me plus extra to make up for that time spent. We each own 50% of Dovetail.Once thing we’ve learned is that researchers do not run diary studies very frequently. Customers sign up to a paid plan for the duration of their study, then cancel once it finishes. Brad and I decided to go back to the drawing board and start working on features that encouraged repeat use. We needed to expand beyond the diary studies MVP I created with the outsourcing agency, and into a product that solves more common researcher problems.Reality checkI dislike the word pivot. It often has negative connotations (“oh, you didn’t get it right the first time around?”), and the reality is that startups are always pivoting anyway. You never get it right the first time. One huge benefit of a startup is that you are extremely agile and can pivot all the time if you haven’t found product-market fit. Also, its definition is unclear—you can ‘pivot’ the core feature set or marketing message dozens of times while continuing to target the same problem space. Is that a pivot?In saying all of this, I had gone down the diary studies rabbit hole and lost sight of our mission statement. Brad, with somewhat of a fresh perspective, convinced me we needed to evolve into something that researchers could use more than a few times a year. Ideally every day. We scheduled a bunch of customer interviews to help us figure out what that looks like, and for the past few weeks I’ve been sharing sketches and designs with our customers to see what they think.It’s possible we could double down on diary studies and eventually become profitable. I don’t think we would be very profitable, and that journey would be tough. So we’re pivoting the feature set while still going after the same general problem space of qualitative research.Moving to a new stackAs part of this new work, we’re taking the opportunity to incrementally rewrite the original outsourced code. Ruby on Rails was great at getting us where we are, but the new features we’re building demand a more modern stack, particularly on the frontend. Real time collaboration and a single page app with no page refreshes are two features people take for granted.The temptation to rewrite everything is strong, but stupid. We’d spend our whole runway rewriting code and not moving forward. We won’t move off Rails completely any time soon. Instead we’re slowly replacing components and services with React, Node, and GraphQL. It’s exciting, I’m personally learning a lot, and our frontend is much happier with the modularity and reusability that React brings to the table.We’re working to get a usable alpha of our new stuff out the door as quickly as possible, while making technical decisions that help us speed up development and build experiences people will love. We hope to launch our new version of Dovetail over the next couple of months. Stay tuned because I think you’re going to love it.Original post on Medium