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aaleaqlania · 1 year

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al haitham calls the machinations he will put in place the reappacification plan; first of all, he will gather as much mora as a bag could scoop, and make a note with all the flourish kaveh would want and need, a confession of his wrongdoings. verbatim, it will simply recite a plain I WAS WRONG and, paired with the money, it should be good.

problem is, the comb encounters two snags in its path.

the first one is that nilou, kaveh’s best friend, is horrified by the method the scribe picked to restore the peace: her ( polite ) instistence that he changes it is met with equally polite confusion, as al haitham knows the flaw in it. he patiently lets her explain, through stutterings and trying extremely hard to not be rude, that sending kaveh money when he has been accused to only care for it would be counterproductive.

they discuss the matter over a picnic, outside of the city, and the stoic man can only agree with nilou that he has to take another route. when al haitham makes her privy to a particular thing weighting on him, he finds himself wrapped in an hug and having secured her help.

( he’s a bit confused as to why he didn’t had the need to lead her into a pre-crafted plan. still... success...? )

the second one is that his wealth doesn’t deplenish further, aside from his daily spendings. this makes him raise his brows, until rumors bouncing between the akademiya and the adventurer’s guild reveal that the idiot is careening head first into disaster: running back and forth with increased desperation between commission to sustain his spendings with hard-earned mora, instead of the easy fortune he has access to in al haitham’s name; and lacking time to complete his project.

he’s proving me wrong, al haitham registers with time and keeping an eye on the gossips. for once, those prove useful. still, this is the less bothersome thing to solve. there’s even some admiration for how stubborn and independent kaveh is trying to be after his accusations.

being the scribe allows him consistent access to the akademiya, even when specific sectors are supposed to be closed at certaint hours. it takes him nothing to slip back into the grandiose building, using his multi-purpose key to open the office of the darshan in need, and to slip a parchment in a different calligraphy in the lone papers over a particular desk...

however, kaveh is in clear need of help. and help from above comes.

to everyone’s surprise but his, the door of his office is nearly torn off the hinges the next morning by the breathless, dishreveled head of the kshahrewar darshan. ‘ the funding... ‘ they gasp, nearly aghast with surprise, ‘ grand acting scribe! t-the funding! we have received an-an important funding offer for our latest project! ‘

‘ oh? let me see, ‘ he takes the parchment that he wrote the night before, scanning it with measured calmness. ‘ a generous offer indeed. as far as i know, your darshan has been lacking funders. ‘

‘ and we haven’t had any breakthroughs in that... ‘ they agree with a sigh, short of puppy-eyeing him. ‘ it’s not like kshahrewar has been having any supporters recently. i wonder who suddendly decided to donate for our researches? ‘

‘ perhaps miss dunyarzad? ‘ he suggests, innocent-looking. ‘ as far as i know, after certaint events, she has been eager to help. there’s a chance she has been informed of this new project, and is impatient to see it done. ‘

and then comes the pleading. ‘ please? could you approve it, just this time? there’s an important project that one of our seniors is developing in the desert, and... ‘

if he gave in now, it would be suspicious. his reputation precedes him in an all-too-familiar script. a sneer, a vague promise to look at it later. still, he can’t dawdle too much on it. ‘ as i said: you’re in luck today. my workload isn’t massive, and it’ll give me time to look at this. let half a day pass, then come to see me. i should be done tracing back the document to the anonymous funder, and i’ll start the procedure. ‘

( of course, after those words, the head darshan keeps peeking nervously over his door every half an hour. it’s irritating, but he can endure it. it’s how it’s supposed to go. it’s not the first nor the last time he’ll be distrusted. )

and when they finally come in, all brighg eyed and speechless, they admire the fluid movement of al haitham’s hand resting the paper on his desk, and stamping it with the green ink signaling an approval. ‘ here you go, ‘ he says, almost pleasantly.

the squeal after and how the darshan’s head wrap around him to spin him in place, before they snatch the parchment and speed out of his office, is the second hug he has received in a few days that he’s caught by surprise for.

( ... he’s starting to think that there’s just something huggable about him, and he isn’t sure if he likes it or not. )

however, his plan has been set in action. the paperwork he faces today seems a little more lighter.

#( ic ) ━ scribe at work.#DEVELOPMENT. MAN

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dragongirl642 · 3 years

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I really love your writing and noticed your asks are open (i think). And, I checked your masterlist and didn't see RE8 listed as a universe you write for, so you can ignore this if you want. But, could I request Heisenberg, Donna, and Lady Dimitrescu reacting to a male dragon-shifter reader who has decided to make the character's residence their hoard, and as such, going to extreme lengths to protect them and the residence?

OOOHHH 😮😳 How did you know dragons (and by extent dragon shifters) are my favourite things in the whole wide world!!!!!

As a treat, you get all four of the Lords' reactions. 😎

For extra drama, the dragon-shifter (you) basically crash land nearby (after a loooooonnnngggg flight) and decide to take up residence in the nearest abode while you rest, and end up getting comfortable and liking the area so decide to stay.

You have a full human form, fully dragon form, and an in-between form.

Also, you have like saintly levels of patience.

Heisenberg

It takes him a minute of staring to figure out that the giant dragon in the factory, is not a hallucination, induced by either the drinking he was doing the night prior, or a trick of Mother Miranda's trying to destabilize him mentally.

However this quickly turns into a lot of yelling "what the F are you doing in my factory!" and "What the F are you!" while chucking metal at you.

You melt the more dangerous pieces and yell at him to "Cease this nonsense! You can't hurt me like this."

Heisenberg.exe has stopped working.

He's partially re-evaluating his life like...did I just get sassed by a giant lizard.

You take the initiative to tell the small angry man telekinetically chucking metal around to chill. "Listen, I'm just going to rest here a few days then leave. You leave me alone, and I won't Incinerate you."

He quickly weighs up how much he doesn't want you here vs how much it will piss Mother Miranda off if he uses the giant dragon crash landing in his factory as an excuse to do absolutely nothing for her.

He's a bit annoyed about you taking up all the room by the forges so he can't make new soldats but...

Hate for Miranda wins!

He actually uses this as an excuse in his next report and Mother Miranda comes to 'get rid of the problem herself since Heisenberg cannot'...you almost incinerated her and she checked out. (He's putting that down as one of the best days of his life).

Since he now has nothing better to do he either leans on a nearby balcony or stands on a floating gear and starts trying to get your attention.

Will ask you everything from your name and where you came from to your favourite colour and if you have a specific favourite scale on your body.

You're distrustful and annoyed at first but soon warm up to this obviously lonely man.

You get so comfortable you decide you just might never leave.

The first time you feel comfortable enough to shift back to your human form Heisenberg is like (o_o) hot person! Two for one deal, annoying Mother Miranda plus Eye Candy!!!!

Makes a joke about having you turn into your dragon form again so he can keep making excuses to Mother Miranda. Which gets you curious and you ask about her, and he explains about the cadou, the experiments, and what she did to him.

He will make a bunk for you, so he can get back to work and you can stay near the heat of the forges, (absorbing the energy from the flames speeds up recovery and/or keeps you charged at 100% so you're always ready to burn a b1tch...specifically Miranda).

You both talk about whatever while he works. Lots of late night chats. One time he accidentally doused the forges and you just blew into the chamber and they re-lit immediately. (Mechanical Heart Eyes)

Since you start considering the entire factory to be your hoard, sometimes you claim a random object as your specific favourite piece for the day, maybe one of his tools or a specific piece of scrap. If he needs to use it, you won't let him and a small argument can be had. A solution is soon found though, you can't have a conflict of interest if your favourite item is him.

When you protect him, he's super flattered and hypes you up.

Cue him on the sides cheering you on.

If you two have started dating he will definitely yell "that's my boyfriend!" and gush about you to whoever happens to be standing next to him. (Bonus points if it's any of the other Lords. Especially Miranda, she is dying!)

Definitely makes a sign saying 'Beware of Dragon' to put on the fence.

Sometimes you jump to his defence even when he's in the middle of handling the threat. He gets huffy, saying he can take care of himself. You respond by telling him you won't let anything harm what's yours and once again, Heisenberg.exe is experiencing an error.

Alcina Dimitrescu

She is absolutely dismayed and angry at the giant lizard that barged its way through the doors and took up residency in her hall. It's tracking in mud and snow, burned the curtains, and took a good chunk of the wall, (letting in the cold).

Her daughters can't handle the cold, damn you!

Tries to fight you...fails. Turns out she's not immune to incineration and loses quite a few limbs (they grow back...eventually).

When she sees you shift to your human form, she's doubly-incensed...not only did you barge into her home but your also a D I S G U S T I N G M A N T H I N G !

You shift back whenever she tries to kill you so eventually she just gives up. (According to her she's waiting for the right opportunity NOT giving up.)

Wants to kill you, calls Mother Miranda for help and well, the same thing happens if you had crashed in the factory...she checks out!

Refuses to leave the castle for any reason, she's not leaving you along with her daughters.

Resigns herself to yelling insults at you from the balcony.

You respond in kind and it slowly devolves into a competition to come up with the most creative insults.

Your dragon form radiates heat...like...a lot. (Even counteracting the cold coming through the hole in the wall, which you attempted to fix.) This of course attracts the Dimitrescu daughters to the hall (against their mother's will).

If Alcina sees you lying their in dragon from, her three hive-mind children chattering away happily with you encouraging their curiosity, (Bela is half-asleep by your side, Daniela is complimenting your claws and asking about your bone structure, while Cassandra proudly proclaims her mother's are better than yours), she partly reconsiders her stance on you being a filthy, horrible, disgusting lizard man thing to just a filthy lizard man thing.

Seriously, your filthy, take a bath.

You quite enjoy all the little luxuries that can be found in the castle and decide to stay. Alcina almost shreds her hat in exasperation.

You get more comfortable and she starts to tolerate your presence, although she will take a swipe at you if she thinks she has a chance at killing you in your human form.

Jokes on her you can partially change and still fit through the hallways.

You never told her you've claimed the castle and the Dimitrescu family as your hoard but she does notice you being oddly friendly to her and she is "suspicious!"

You've met a few vampires and have a few suggestions for a more sustainable food source (buying blood donations from villagers instead of killing them). She's skeptical but considers it.

The first time you defend her is actually against Mother Miranda...over the phone. You have sharp hearing...and you don't like what you're hearing.

She's both flattered you would defend her so, and disgusted with herself for accepting a man thing's help.

When she realises she likes having you around, she starts to rationalise to herself that you're not just any man thing, you're her dragon man thing and therefore okay.

Gets more comfortable with leaving you with her daughters. You treat them well and keep them entertained?! That's a free babysitter if ever she's seen one.

When she sees the more extreme lengths you will go to protect the castle and her family, she is impressed and flattered and a little scared, and acts like it was her idea to have you stay.

"Oh, haven't you heard, that's the Dimitrescu Dragon."

Definitely rubs it in Heisenberg's face that she has a dragon and he doesn't.

Donna Beneviento

What are you!?!?!

To protect Donna, Angie is ready to fight you or die trying!

Just kind off avoids you and sends the pollen at you to make you leave.

The only one of the four Lords most likely to actually defeat you.

When you speak though, telling her to "release (your) mind, witch, or (you'll) incinerate everything", she's surprised and scared enough to actually do so.

Asks if you'll be her friend. Angie is cussing you out.

You see how scared and lonely she is and just *adoption mode activated*.

You only need to rest a few days, why not do so on friendly terms with your host. (keep telling yourself that).

It takes a day for you to shift to human form, partially because you don't want to have your measurements taken because Donna wants to make you a giant bonnet, (You reason it's a waste of resources, you'll only be here a short while).

Jokes on you, this is your home now.

You've never hoarded dolls before, but there's a first time for everything.

You will spend most of your time in human form since your dragon form kinda scares her.

Even though she's still scared of it, Donna does find your dragon form interesting and will ask to sketch you (from a distance...no fire please).

Make various over-exaggerated poses and joke about "draw me like one of your french girls" and she will laugh, (even though she doesn't get the joke).

She makes a plush doll of you. It turns inside out to shift between human and dragon.

The first time you protect her, she's scared. The flames take her straight back to her childhood, she's crying and she hides. You shift back to human form very quickly and find her, holding her close and apologising for scaring her over and over.

Will tear a man apart in human form to avoid this (or almost human form).

She slowly works up to being comfortable in your dragon form, the first time she falls asleep against your side is a good day.

You start insisting on accompanying her to meetings and escorting her whenever she has to meet another Lord. They start talking sh1t, they get hit (or burned...you let Donna choose).

Angie cheers you on.

Salvatore Moreau

He is terrified of you when you first show up.

You basically tear your way into the mines for shelter and he is frantically plugging the entrance to his home with the enzyme to hide.

Calls for "mother" to save him and that's how you find him.

You see this small deformed fish man crying in the mine and think, "i'm not gonna ask."

You settle in the slightly larger chamber and just lie down for a rest.

He soon realises your not going to attack him and ventures out to stare at you. He just keeps staring at you for like an uncomfortably long time, peeking around a doorway.

Eventual you snap and ask him to stop staring.

He slowly comes out of hiding and starts asking the basics.

"You can talk?" "Who are you?" "Why are you here?"

Seeing no reason not to, you tiredly answer all his questions.

Hearing about your long journey has him curiously asking about the places you've been to.

He quickly figures out you must have some sort of human form since you end up on the topics of favourite foods or movies and your favourites are all distinctly human. (He's the fastest at figuring this out and the least surprised when you shift).

Terrifying (hideous) creature going through an unnerving transformation into a humanoid form...he can relate. Although he's slightly jealous of how 'normal' you look when you shift to human form.

You two have a movie night where he proudly shows of his collection. It is in the middle of him analysing the context of THAT ONE SCENE that you decide, Yes...This one is mine.

The entire reservoir and mine is your territory and if anything comes anywhere near it they will be ash in 30 seconds.

When you protect him from danger, he's shocked that someone cares enough about him to f-ing incinerate a lycan for even looking at him weirdly.

You act like its natural and eventually he starts to get used to you.

Has self doubt and questions your motives...you tell him he's worth it or that he's your jewel.

C O N F I D E N C E B O O S T

Starts talking back to the other Lords when they insult him. It's easy with you hovering menacingly behind him, veins glowing with barely contained R A G E.

One source of friction however, is the fact that he doesn't like that you keep trying to kill Mother Miranda and he will latch onto you sobbing until you agree to spare her (for now...you'll get her when he's not around).

However, the longer you two know each other, the more self-confidence he gains and the more you talk through what Mother Miranda did to him and why he deserves better, (pointing out her manipulation, analyses whether she's ever 'cared' about him, etc...), the less bothered he gets. (Give it a few years, he'll cheer you on alongside Heisenberg).

Bonus:

The second you see Mother Miranda...it is on sight. (Especially if you know what she did to the Lords).

Cue you shifting to dragon form and preparing to unleash a volley of flame, "I smell the blood of children on you."

You may be comfortable(ish) with the actions of your housemate but you have STANDARDS.

Alright 😊 Hoped you like these headcanons, jaychirps. They were really fun to write and grew quite a bit. 😅

(I feel like Moreau's a bit ooc but I don't know enough about him to dispute that claim....)

Oh and p.s. ... asks are open.

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hahanoiwont · 3 years

Note

I am awaiting the inevitable shock and existentialism Fell will feel when he realises that Frisk is no longer in stripes. Patiently. Cheerfully. >:D

okay so imagine. imagine ur fell. imagine with me. let's stand in his shoes.

You are Papyrus. You are also known as Fell.

Your childhood was rough and isolating. You were alone often, and when you did see other people it was overshadowed by resentment or just a violent experience overall. You killed someone before you could reasonably be called an adult, and your brother, whose visits were already few and far between, nearly vanished from your life. You didn't know where he went, but you can only assume he had some other life where he pretended you'd never even existed, and he'd left you to dust alone. The only sign that he still remembered you at all was the food in the pantry, and you started wondering if maybe he wouldn't always be there to bring it. Then one day he came home half dead, and suddenly you're the one putting food in the pantry, having to navigate a world you've only seen glimpses of. Things are rocky. You know intellectually that your family dynamic is fairly gentle, and you could consider yourself lucky...but you remember when he loved you. And he doesn't act the same anymore. You think that maybe he loved you as well as he was able, but once he realized what you are he couldn't care for you anymore. Maybe there is something so terrible in you, so cold and ruthless, that even your gentle, patient older brother couldn't stand to be around you. Maybe you did this to him.

No, you decide. You know better. Perhaps this is partially because of you, but it is also because of the things Sans can see that no one else can--a tally of pain inflicted by every person he meets. You watch him come back to life just for something to break inside of him, seeing all of those numbers tick up. Something in him drives him and he mutters that every single monster deserves to die. But that gentler Sans is still there, staying his hand. He never could stand to hurt anyone. Neither could you, once.

You should probably take this as an indication that things only ever get worse and you will never have anything better. You do not. You're going to change this world. Some small corner of it will be safe, and maybe then Sans will find it in himself to forgive you--for what, you don't know. For existing, or for being a monster, or some sin of your personality. You tell yourself that you'll be satisfied even if Sans never loves you like he used to again, as long as he's not in pain anymore. He's dying. You need to save him. You don't have the luxury of being a softer person.

A softer person comes along.

With a human soul, you could break the Barrier. You could give it to Sans and let him leave this place. You could surrender it to Asgore and the reward would see you and your brother safe for a long time, maybe even safe enough to go far away on the Surface and never see another monster again. There are people you would miss, but it would be worth it to rest in safety.

The time comes to kill them.

They are a child.

You don't ask Sans whether he has even bothered trying to kill them--their budding adoration tells you that he hasn't. They whisper to you that he offered them mercy. You try not to be glad for that stupid mistake. Still, there are more important things--Sans is likely to hate you for killing a defenseless child, but Sans has hated you for greater and lesser crimes, and this is for him. This is for both of you; your ticket out. This is a golden chance. You just have to kill them.

They are a very flattering child. Sans has never cared to notice your fearsome armor or malignant traps. They are a creature of superior taste.

You have to kill them. Things will be so much better if you just kill them.

Your attacks become more dramatic. You switch out the swift and lethal attacks for the showier, cooler attacks. The human is impressed. You think that they are having fun--to your surprise, you find that you are, too. You regret that you have to kill them.

They are surprisingly difficult to kill. It reminds you of practicing your bone attacks when you were a child, waiting for Sans to finally come home so you could show him, waiting for him to be so proud of your progress that he would stay with you this time. You find that it's more fun with a partner. You bring out some sequences that you've discarded for being all flash and no substance. The human loves them.

You don't want to lose this, you realize. You don't want them to die.

You find that you are sorry for hurting them. They have seemed fearless, but they have sustained great deals of damage to their tiny HP count. You can't see the numbers like your brother can, but it can't be greater than 40 total. You have harmed them.

This tiny, innocent creature...you have harmed them. You did not have to. They were not forcing you to fight. But you harmed them.

You apologize. The human seems surprised, but pleased. They offer you a big grin and instant forgiveness, because they are a child. Living in your world, this is likely the best anyone has treated them.

Not anymore.

You bring them home. Sans is there, watching the doorway for your return with hopeless eyes. Perhaps he thinks you will not notice how they brighten and his whole face softens when he sees your LOVE, unchanged, and the child, alive. The child does not seem to recognize the difference, but greets him like a dear friend. He fakes ambivalence and disappears to one of his sentry stations.

You have a child, now.

This is a Concern.

You were hardly a child, yourself--how can you possibly provide the things that a child may need? Most especially a human child, who may need all sorts of things that you have no way of knowing about. You have seen them eat, so you can assume that they need to be fed; they are wearing clothes, so you can assume they need to be clothed; but what of entertainment? Affection? Training? What sorts of guidance will they need?

You have doubts. One of the only things that you are confident of is that the child does not need doubts. You must choose to be bold. If you are denying the very murderous nature of monsters by taking in a child, then so be it: you will not do this in half measures.

You set about creating the optimal environment for child-rearing. Plenty of doors and windows that lock only from the inside. Enrichment in the form of attack training. Weapons for self-protection. You make it clear that you will always have time for them, no matter what else may be at hand. You will interrupt even the most important of work days to tend to their childhood accidents--a stray stab wound here, or a timely rescue there. You prepare to put the changing of your world on hold for as long as it takes to see this human into adulthood.

You wonder what kind of adult they will be. Bold and strong like you, or wry and clever like Sans, or as passionate as Undyne--or none of the above, perhaps. If you raise them right, maybe they will be different from all of you. Maybe they will stay small and loving forever.

You do not look forward to seeing their heart break, seeing their first kill, seeing them turn to LOVE. These rites of passage seem suddenly gruesome. But you want to be there, all the same--you want to take them home afterwards, and see them find their feet again every time they stagger. There is a whole tiny person in your home, and you can ensure that they are never alone.

Then, the world changes.

Perhaps you will not need to guard them so fiercely. Perhaps you will be able to devote your efforts instead into becoming something softer and kinder. You will finally find the words to say when they are lonely, or frightened, or when you have been too harsh and their eyes fill with tears. You will no longer be too harsh. You cannot ever be human, but perhaps you can raise one nearly as well as another human would. For the first time, you feel as if there is love in you--in all of monsterkind.

Then, the child dies.

Sans said he would bring them home. He left to go retrieve them. And they disappear forever. His guilt is plain to see, but you allow him to fool you--he says that he has killed a child, and you sympathize with him. You provide comfort. You do not realize.

Several people take you aside, one by one by one, to gently break the news to you. Sans encountered the human, they say. The two of them had a disagreement. Sans took them somewhere and he came back alone. The evidence is clear--you have Sans's confession, even.

He would not have snuffed that tiny life out. He loves them. You have seen him come back to life by inches, resurrecting the brother you thought you'd lost. This cannot be.

You wait for Sans to tell you that.

He does not.

Your brother has stolen your child's life. Your tiny sibling, who you have sworn to protect--who each of you have promised to raise gently, to treat well, to absolutely spoil with safety and affection, as much as you can. You finally had a warmth in your heart and in your home, and so did Sans. But he smothered it. He killed them. You cannot believe it. But, you think of the creeping insanity that you thought had been defeated in him, and you don't know. You don't know what he is capable of anymore.

Sans used to stand for mercy--if not for its own sake, then because killing is not a virtue. He was the only person who believed LOVE was not a good thing, and now, he is the only person who is not changing his mind.

You're furious. You're betrayed. You're heartbroken. You want to confront Sans. You never want to see him again. You want your sibling back, to protect them better this time, to do things differently so that somehow it goes right. Sans would not do this. You must have caused it somehow. You identify your failings after a week: you were too slow.

The world was changing, but not fast enough. Sans took his own action first.

You leave. You intend to come back, when you have changed the world into something Sans can stand, when your fury has calmed--you leave. That is what matters.

You do come back, once. Sans's pantry is empty. You fill it. You do not think that there are any grocers willing to do business with him, not with the worries about food shortages. Not with what everyone knows he's done.

In his basement, you discover something odd: hope. A skeleton with your face who claims to have seen your sibling, calls them "Frisk." They never shared their name with you. You had hoped they would, in time; but they did not, and now they cannot.

But perhaps they will.

Perhaps you have not lost that child, that place of warmth in your home and heart. If grief is love with no one to direct it to, then you no longer need to grieve. They are alive. Your brother has done an awful thing, but not what you feared. You can get them back. You will not miss the landmarks that were not to be. You would give anything to scoop them up and hold them again.

You find them. Finally, you find them again--or they find you. They approach you, and you approach them, and at first you are puzzled by this human: a grown, adult human, standing half in front of a skeleton who is almost your brother but not entirely, and watching you with caution that turns to unbridled delight when they realize who it is they have been brought to meet. Your phone begins ringing. You ignore it. The skeleton who is not your brother is watching your stats with a sort of horror. You ignore that, as well. This human looks at you with warmth and trust that you have only seen from...

It's your sibling. It's your sibling, and you have them back, they are just in front of you, and you have missed them. You have missed so much of their life. The child you were raising is gone, with no hint of them in this human's scarred HP and protective stance. They do not have your boldness or Sans's wit or Undyne's passion or even the sheltered softness you had secretly hoped they would keep...you weren't there to shelter them.

You have the human back, but not the child. They don't need you anymore.

In this moment, you have the realization: searching for them, you have met people who are gentler than you, cleverer, kinder, less awkward and violent...all of them who counted your sibling as part of their own family. They have had such a life beyond you that you cannot grasp the whole of it. With so many better selves, so many better brothers...

They don't need you any more. Why on earth would they want you?

#undertale #whither then fic #i crossposted this on ao3 #bc it's a long boi

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gamecube11 · 3 years

Text

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presently I need to return to that

misinterpretation I was discussing the

misinterpretation is that the Box

sustains regulator differences

individuals say the case is coming into the

conflict

sixteen years late into the game and

this regulators got wonderful details

in all cases this is what's off-base

with that rationale under the current framework

you have a lot of individuals endeavoring

for flawlessness what I mean by endeavoring

for flawlessness is you can never reach

flawlessness your strategies can never reach

that ideal 10 an ideal 10 which the

box has would be liberated from self-assertive

you can't hit 10 yet you could hit nine

point nine so that is the thing that all of you endeavor

for you take a stab at that in to be definite

for offices that is the thing that we're going

to go over in this video four distinct

things that you're searching for that nine

point nine in however when you have a

bundle of individuals taking a stab at flawlessness

this means you have one person

with a nine out of one detail while another

fellow has a two in that progression you have

one person with a 8 of every one detail and a four

in another detail so it's not harmful for a

regulator to have dreams come true across

the board since dreams come true ought to

have been the norm regardless and

what I will do in this video is

I will give you those dreams come true

I will settle what's up with the

the norm since individuals rush to

point fingers at the case while they

hide business as usual where no one will think to look and

this will be efficient to be

definite it will cost both of you dollars

which I won't be the beneficiary of for

whatever that is worth and it's going to

give you usefulness dissimilar to anything

you've at any point played with before as you

might have speculated this will be

done on a product level since that is

the lone humanly conceivable approach to accomplish

this currently I'm giving you reasonable admonition

this video will toss anything

taking after custom out the window however

to me custom should be

undifferentiated from with denying ourselves a

better experience Nintendo didn't

look 16 years into the future and make

these regulators as per our requirements

these folks required scuffle to sell and that

was that they required sufficient

regulators for playing this game we're

searching for a bit above and beyond

here and that is the thing that we will get

before the finish of this video with that being

said how about we look at what's happening

in the background of when you play scuffle

also, look at the personal satisfaction

bundle that will change the game

in rivalry components of haphazardness

are evidently impeding stumbling for

model was a minister deliberately

added a few fights to keep it from

heading toward the path Meili did the

incongruity is that inside Meili we play with

a component of irregularity that was probable

inadvertent it very well might be more inconspicuous your

character will not noticeably fall over yet

the idea is a similar when you endeavor

to run in reverse in skirmish you're taking

a colossal danger each time as you can get

unfortunate and play out a pivot

rather can have amazingly

inconvenient impacts on ongoing interaction as

getting a pivot can mean having

your developments stuck up which you can't

stand to have occur in undeniable level play

not at all like stumbling your scramble back progress

rate lies in your regulator the

potentiometer that peruses your x-hub is

what decides your regulator is worth

for this situation - Mac achievement rates can

range from around 40% to 95

percent I for one consider 80% to be

the absolute minimum you can contend with

which as of now makes just a small portion of

regulators suitable yet that being said the

benefit of playing on a 95 percent

regulator is exceptional it's a totally

diverse game I would effortlessly be willing

to dish out $500 or somewhere in the vicinity for a 95%

regulator as they are progressively

slippery these days that is on the grounds that to make

matters more regrettable a regulators capacity to

run back can debase and when it does

the expedition for another one is on

which isn't simple in any event, for our most

conspicuous figures there is no store to

get one or reasonable purpose for finding

one so karma assumes a gigantic part in other

sports this would be viewed as a joke yet

inside scuffle this is a the truth there's

been discussion about fixing - back through

the game's code yet individuals are

at last against this is on the grounds that it alters

with scuffle itself that leaves us with

the alternative of fixing it inside our

regulators to get to the base of the

issue we should investigate what's

causing a scramble back to bomb what you're

taking a gander at is the network of a GameCube

regulator and what I've laid out are

the three segments of the x-pivot

in the no man's land which

takes up about 30% of the stick all

values inside the no man's land are

identical to zero it's the explanation you

can move your stick a bit without it

successfully either side of the

zone is slant turn which takes up about

half this is the place where you walk and afterward

crush turn is the last 20% at all things considered

end this is the thing that you need to reach to

run to run back you need to go from

the no man's land to crush turn in one edge

the issue with this lies in the reality

that the game is perusing your

regulators input 60 times each second

since skirmish runs on 60 FPS since your

stick makes some movement memories you need to

actually move it to crush turn however in the event that

the game decides to peruse your regulator

while you're getting over slant turn

you'll bomb your scramble back since this is

humanly difficult to represent it

makes a karma factor on the off chance that you're

inquisitive what a decent - back regulator is

doing its potentiometer is really

skipping values en route giving it

a lower shot at being perused while it's

in slant turn eventually however it's

difficult to completely kill this karma

factor because of the actual idea of

what's happening and long as there's a

travel time the opportunity is consistently there

which is the reason regulators cap out at

around 95% thinking about how much cash

what's more, time goes into this issue alone it's

very simple to fix

we modified the regulator to reject

to peruse slant turn inputs until the

second edge of activation this is all it

takes to make a regulator incapable to

fall flat - back as the one casing of slant

turn that ordinarily ruins it is currently a

dead information permitting your regulator to

avoid directly from the no man's land to

crush turn this change has unnoticeable

cutthroat drawback as scuffle is played

as a rule by running instead of

strolling

allow me to show you that it is so natural to

deceive the overall population on March 19

functional undertakings we did funfact your -

speed is on normal one to two percent

quicker on a crate than it is on a GameCube

regulator when he's proposing is that

the crate can point at the most extreme

cardinal worth of 1.0 while GameCube

regulators can just sensibly point at

0.98 75 the worth before it

mistakes and reduce basically bounced on

the chance to not just spread this

data yet depict in a way that

brought the container's hairpiece ality into

question now actually prior to making an

claim like this I'd basically take

an opportunity to test a couple of GameCube

regulators how about we see what happens when

I do that on the main regulator the

https://gamecuberom.com/

amazing 1.0 is mysteriously absent however

on the second regulator 1.0 is the as it were

esteem I get this implies that the container is

the solitary regulator with inconvenience

presently regardless of whether the case is better at this

than the GameCube regulator it's

very insincere to not make reference to

that a few regulators are incredible at this

in certa

#jason toddred hoodInjustice 2gamingeditjasontoddeditvideo gamesgamesothereditsyeah i play injustice 2 just for one character what about i...

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bad-charma-blog · 6 years

Text

Guest Lecture from Geshe Kelsang Damdul la

Today Geshe Kelsang Damdul la came to teach our class. Geshe la has been the director of Tibetan works and archives since 2005. Before that, he was the religious assistant and English translator for HH Dalai Lama for 16 years. Throughout his time with HH Dalai Lama, he traveled with him and learned from him. Geshe la left his job to become director so that he could extend the wisdom of HHDL and serve as his global representative.

In his lesson, he taught about the concept of Bodhichitta. Geshe la began the class by asking what we wanted in life and for how long. The class collectively answered “we want happiness and forever.” He jokingly called us greedy, then proceeded into his lecture. Geshe la explained that we are born with an inner urge for long-lasting happiness, for unconditional love and care. Through secular ethics, we can learn to give unconditional love. Firstly, however, unconditional love must begin with the self. We care for ourselves because we want happiness, not suffering. Once we understand and love ourselves, we may extend ourselves to include other sentient beings. If we understand sentient beings as part of our body, we may understand that we are part of an interdependent system. Through this interconnectivity, we pay back what we receive.

Geshe la continued to explain that happiness is ephemeral. Although we have enjoyed happiness for many lives, we can only use our minds to achieve eternal happiness. Bodichitta is the mental consciousness that all sentient beings can achieve this full awakening; this universal joy that extends to others. In our current lives, we can only conceptualize material pleasures. We like to say that we are busy, but often what we are busy with is not important. We are working quickly, but not efficiently. Discovery comes through meaningful meditation and contemplation, rather than running towards pleasure.

At Barnard/Columbia, I often find this concept of valuing an instant destination over a contemplative journey. Although I am so inspired by my peers' hard work and many commitments, there is a tendency for students at Barnard/Columbia to brag about how busy they are. If you try to plan a lunch or dinner with someone, they often will share with you their packed their schedules to explain how little time they have. I certainly fall into that habit — I tend to make myself seem busier than I actually am so that I can keep up with the pace of others. The reality is, many of us are truly busy, myself included, but I don’t believe that we are as busy as we appear to be. We chose to fill our time with action rather than contemplation. Action is absolutely essential and, ultimately, the only measure of productivity. Contemplation, however, can give our actions greater purpose and, therefore, efficiency and effectiveness. I feel that people on campus don’t use their time effectively — they push forward and grind without a healthy pause and step back. I envision this tendency like a treadmill — we run on a defined machine, speeding faster, calculating our pace, but, ultimately, remaining in the same position. I believe that it is important for us to take a moment to touch foot to ground; to control our own speed, rest, and path. We must control our pace to actually cover ground and move forward.

On a separate note, Geshe la’s lesson also reminded me of a medieval concept that KP had taught me in english. Through studying medieval literature, we learned about the concepts of cupiditas and caritas. Cupiditas is a lower love for fleshly things; caritas is a higher love for spiritual things. This dichotomy, although stemming from medieval times, persists throughout literature. In Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” Caliban, the vile monster, embodies cupiditas, while Miranda, the pure daughter, embodies caritas. More simply, you could look at Archie comics — Betty exudes caritas, while Veronica basks in cupiditas. Ultimately caritas is associated with the spirit/mind and cupiditas is associated with the flesh/body. This duality also ties back in to the Buddhist concepts of self — both as mind and body. One’s consciousness persists through reincarnated lives, while one’s body remains impermanent.

Anyways, returning back to the lecture, Geshe la continued that to find true happiness, we must have compassion. We should understanding suffering within ourselves, to understanding that we are all humans. Through love, we minimize fault. We learn not to criticize the wrongdoer, but rather their wrongdoing. Compassion for others teaches us that humans are malleable. Of course, this conversation also has interesting implications in understanding of law and punishment. Regardless, through focusing on our individual enlightenment, we can eventually learn to properly help others. We must kill our ignorance for the benefit of all sentient beings.

If we remain self-centered, we risk seeing our own problems disproportionately. Instead of dwelling in self-centered problems, we must change our mindset and practice positivity. For example, instead of understanding the hot, humid weather as uncomfortable, perhaps we could view it like a sauna. Glass half empty/half full. Our interaction with the world is wholly relative, our minds alone determine our suffering. Dwelling on suffering is only excess baggage. We cannot change upsetting actions in the past, but we can effect the future — the concept of attachment also brings unhappiness into play.

In cultivating a healthy mind, we can find joy in making life meaningful. We learn to improve the self, to improve society. Negative emotions are narrow minded; as Geshe la said, anger creates a target to shoot at. If we focus on others, our inner mind becomes liberated. Enlightenment is for the goodness of all beings.

After the lesson, we were able to ask him several questions. I asked him, “do you believe that our increasingly individualized society is sustainable? How do you envision this trend? Should we remedy it?” Geshe la responded, that, in the long run, maintaining an interconnected life will be more sustainable than a lonely one. This concept has been demonstrated through many experiment, one from Harvard which demonstrated that those who live balanced family lives achieve more than those who prioritize work. We cannot find productivity in this unhealthy system. Although it is efficient in the short run, it won’t lead to human advancement.

This question of individualization also ties back into questions about the internet. Have our physically disconnected communities driven individuals to seek community online? Can we substitute actual connections with virtual connections? Will the internet exacerbate or diminish our loneliness?

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imagineclaireandjamie · 7 years

Text

The Last All-Clear: (2)

Notes from Mod Bonnie

This story is a series of vignettes following the premise: “Imagine if Jamie travelled through the stones, but instead of finding Claire in Boston he found himself having arrived years too early, when the War was still happening and Claire had yet to meet him... What would he do?”

Formatting note: Bolding in Jamie’s letters = underlining

Previously:

(1) September 17, 1942: A Rusty Nail

(2) December 3, 1942: Comb and Glove

5 9 6

How you’ll laugh, one day, mo ghraidh, when ye should read this, when I’m able to tell ye myself:

that the Jamie ye knew once is the same that spends the greater part of his wages...

upon cosmetic dye for his hair.

I MUST laugh, Sassenach, even if only here on this page by the dawn light, write to a you that is verra far away indeed. There is so little laughter in my heart, these years, and to be able to find it here, upon the hope of your spirit? It is sustaining to my own in a way that I know you’ll understand.

Seamus Dubh, I suppose I now am. My da would like hearing of that, I suppose. It serves my purposes, but ‘tis nasty stuff, the dye, with a reek that makes me feel as though I’m half-gone with the worst drink money might buy. I’m obliged to awaken before dawn and go to the wood, that I might go about my task undiscovered. I’ve just come from doing just so—in the bloody, blistering cold, no less—and found I wished to tell ye of it while I wait for the rest of the company to awaken.

Wearing the bonnet as often as I do, I can go quite a space of time between re-darkening the hair on my head, but the beard: that, to my constant aggravation, I must manage every week for fear of the red sh //

C. E. B. Randall

Camp Nightwing, France

3 December

An infestation of rats discovered early this morning in the medical supplies. God bless Danton, today’s undisputed hero, who had the little bastards routed in no time. That man isn’t daunted by anything in the world, save eye contact and words of more than one syllable.

Must say, though, (with no little pride) that yours truly can wring a SMILE from the bloke if she endeavors hard enough. He’s really a kind soul, beneath the beard and the smell, just gruff and painfully shy. Nancy and the others still tend to treat him like a plague patient.

I rather think he just needs a friend.

-CEBR

Is it only the pitiful hope of a long-lonely man, Claire, my love, that ye seek me out especially, of late? That you’ll go out of your way to meet my eye and give me a smile, when ye see me passing?

True, we’ve scarcely spoken since that evening ye stitched my arm, and the times when we have, it’s been orders and camp business: ‘Could you move this man’s bed, Danton?’....‘Monsieur Danton, Major Swenson bids you report to G-block’... or, to take a more recent example, ‘Danton, thank God!!! How are you at killing rodents??’

And yet, you’ll always smile at me while doing so; take the time to ask if I’m well, and mean it; and I canna help but be warmed by your attention and kindness. Still less can I rightly decide if I am more at peace or less, now that there is this acquaintance between me and you this past-you.

On the one hand, there is the truth of these past six hundred days: that lack of you has been a constant ache in my soul, that having you again—even if only in these fleeting moments, as though in a dream—is balm.

Yet, on the other, there is that verra same unease that bids me dye my hair and beard—that of which I was endeavoring to write before I was called up so suddenly to dispatch your wee rats.

If we should meet here, now— develop a friendship here, as we did at the time of our first acquaintance, as much of a momentary comfort as it would be, I canna think but of the destruction it would almost certainly put into motion.

Do ye see it too, Claire? The potential for disaster to us? To our life and our marriage?

Imagine that the man ye ken as Danton should vanish tomorrow, never to be seen again; and soon after, a red-haired, clean-shaven Scot saunters into camp and strikes up a rapport with a certain brown-haired sassenach lass. Imagine that such a rapport develops into a friendship, a warm, fond one that lasts to the end of the war; or suppose simply that he’s known to ye, memorable enough to be noted favorably in your wee book. When the time comes that we should meet, after ye fall through the stones, that night when ye mended will mend my shoulder....ye might recognize me, no? think to yourself, “Lord, but he’s so like that other Scotsman I once knew...”

Harmless enough, perhaps....

Only I canna banish the notion that such memories and questions might impact, somehow, the way ye’ll see me, in those earliest days of our knowing one another; how I seem to ye at Leoch, and on the road with the rent party. Might it make ye more eager to get to know me? More trusting? Or, as I fear, less? Might it make ye so leery of me, even if ye canna quite place why, that we never—. Think ahead to Paris, when you’re tending the hand ye so skillfully mended...Might ye not think of another such crippled hand ye saw once, back during your war? Perhaps that case mightn’t matter quite so verra much as the first, with the both of us knowing full well of the stones by that time, their miracle and myst

Mo chridhe: I’ve just sat with my face in my hands for minutes upon end, uncertain I should be able to bring myself to take up the pen again, for I’m bested by the limitations of my own mind at every turning. For, say you should swear on your life in Paris that you’d kent me before, and we agree that by some means or manner, I—or a man as alike to me as a brother—had been there in those these years. Still, I would not be able to recall them them, they not yet having come to pass in my own life. Whether it be from you or me or both, might the wondering, the trying to reach a logical explanation, somehow impact the events and the years that we had together, our choices and their consequences, such as I remember them now, in this moment? And would such changes be for the better? Or the worst possible eventualities? What if I could

It baffles every thought and sense and shred of reason, Claire. Each time I think upon it overlong, I find myself in drink not long after. For that reason, I must keep such wonderings at bay. You already have had cause to know from Paris, after all, the depths of my infallibility— the devastating consequences of presuming to have the measure of such things as time and stones and actions and choice.

But what I do ken, mo nighean donn, is that just as much as I have deemed it my duty to be near ye, to watch over ye in these years in whatever small ways I might, I canna take any chances of causing harm through simple negligence. Hence, I wear the glove, always, that ye might never see your own handiwork; I comb dye into my hair and beard; I keep both long to hide my face and features (THAT above all); I feign a frenchman’s birth that my voice will be a stranger’s to ye when we shall meet in that darkened hovel four years hence. It is neither convenient nor simple; but it is the only way I ken to be near and yet still preserve our life; both the one we had and the one we shall have when the Claire I married comes once more through the stones.

And yet still, my heart quickens when ye say that stranger’s name.

#;mod bonnie #The Last All-Clear #see? this isn't as angsty of an AU as you thought!#....not yet #it's really more of a thinking series than an angsty one.#I just really love letting Jamie muse on these cerebral time travel conundrums #all while missing his sweet sassenach #while also interacting with her #and spending a lot of time confused

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triflesandparsnips · 4 months

Note

Just popping in to let you know that “my blood remembers when it ran through both our veins” is one of the most devastatingly beautiful things I have ever read and it’s had me REELING all day. Thank you for putting that feeling into such earth-shattering words, I honestly feel ~changed as a human being <3

AW JEEZ, THANK YOU.

For everybody else-- this is referring to the tags on this post. But taken separately, you could read them (or hear me read them) as a poem called, maybe, "when actors press into their kisses":

I love it when actors just go full-body like that because yes kisses with LOTS OF SPACE in between is a thing that happens! but they're not the only kind and there is a very particular message about a full-body one especially on screen and that message is 'somebody said we must live in two separate bodies- but my skin says it misses you- and my blood remembers when it ran through both our veins- and every part of me just wants to prove a motherfucker wrong - so let's kiss and kiss - until our bodies become one again- and we can finally take a full deep breath of air instead of the lonely half-measures that sustained us for all the years it took to find our other halves again'

#Aristophanes called and he wants his theory of love back #poetry #triflesandparsnips writes things #apparently!#podfic #sort of?#related to #our flag means death #our flag means death s2

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ngop3 · 6 years

Link

If you don't hire juniors, you don't deserve seniors

https://dev.to/isaacandsuch/if-you-dont-hire-juniors-you-dont-deserve-seniors-48kb isaacandsuch profile image Isaac Lyman Sep 22 #career #management #recruiting Let me tell you the story of a very successful company that made a very big, dumb decision.

We don't hire junior developers or interns...if you don't get a puppy, you don't have to clean up its messes.

~ Netflix

I'm flabbergasted that some corporate schmuck figured out a way to cast puppies in a negative light and people kept listening. I mean, puppies are the purest beings on planet Earth. Literally made out of playtime and fur. Bright spots in a lonely world. But I digress.

A lot of companies have followed suit with a "we only hire seniors" strategy. When asked why, they'll offer responses like:

We don't have the time or resources to hire junior developers; we're moving too quickly. The company can afford senior developers, so there's no need to hire juniors. We can't afford to make mistakes at this point. The stakes are too high. Our organization gives a lot of autonomy to its employees. We aren't set up for the kind of hand-holding that juniors need. We want to get our base software product in place before we hire anyone inexperienced. The implication here is that junior developers are a liability, something that a company takes on out of a sense of duty or because of an ailing budget. And the implication of that is, well, maybe other companies can afford to do corporate charity projects and substandard work, but we sure can't.

By the way, there are over 100,000 tech companies in the US, and I've never heard one single CEO say "our mistakes don't matter a lot" or "we need a way to spend some of this loose cash we've got sitting around." So, all you "senior developer only" outfits, whatever shortcut you think you're taking, whatever system you think you're cheating, the reality is that you've hallucinated the entire thing. There's no competitive advantage to shutting out juniors. And you've outed yourself as a poorly-managed company.

April Wensel@aprilwensel Hostility to junior developers is an easy way to spot a toxic company culture. 14:57 PM - 01 Aug 2017 Twitter reply actionTwitter retweet action36Twitter like action95 The way you hire and treat junior developers is a valuable proxy measure for the health of your organization, your product line, and your internal culture. Senior developers know this. And if that isn't compelling enough, hiring a fair balance of junior developers is a smart financial decision as well.

Preventing messes

If you refuse to hire junior developers because they make "messes," you're sending a strong and unintended message about your company culture: no mistakes allowed. You're painting yourself as the company that fires somebody every time a server goes down. Regardless of how much you pay, nobody wants to work in an environment where job security is touch-and-go. And trying to initimidate developers into making less mistakes spreads a culture of fear and initimidation, which is disastrous for mental health and productivity.

You might argue that this attitude encourages developers to be cautious and implement processes that guard against error: automated testing, QA, failovers, access protection, and reversible code changes, to name a few. But this theory is entirely backwards. If company guidelines encourage the use of failsafes like these and the company provides the time and resources for developers to implement them, the "no mistakes allowed" culture isn't necessary or valuable; most issues will be caught long before they reach production. And every developer, junior and senior, thrives in an environment where strong development processes protect them from worst-case scenarios.

What about the errors that make it past every layer of prevention you've put in place? Think of them as valuable opportunities to shore up your defenses. Junior developers, admittedly, usually uncover these opportunities sooner than senior developers. So the only question is, do you want to debug your process sooner or do you want to debug it later? "Never" is not a choice, as any experienced developer will tell you. If something can go wrong, eventually it will. No amount of experience can prevent human error.

Naturally, you'll need a few senior development and ops leaders to lay the groundwork and set precedents for an error-resistant development cycle. Nobody's saying you should only hire junior developers. But if you truly have a workplace that cares about mistakes--that is, a workplace where mistakes are caught early and often--junior developers will fit right in. And developers of all levels will enjoy higher job satisfaction, since error resistance liberates them to build great software (instead of constant firefighting) and protects their nights and weekends.

Saving money

According to Indeed, a Junior Software Engineer makes an average salary of $55,394, while a Senior Software Engineer makes an average salary of $117,374. A Senior costs more than two times as much as a Junior.

The cost is often justified. Senior developers are expected to be more productive than junior developers. That's not the whole story, though, and thoughtlessly writing it off as the cost of doing business is both lazy and expensive.

Not all application code requires years of experience to write, or even to write well. Every program includes "glue code" that connects various inputs and outputs in a mundane way. It doesn't matter a lot who writes it. You can pay someone $28 an hour to do it, or you can pay someone $59 an hour to do it. Either way it will come out about the same. If you only hire seniors, you're paying a premium for a great deal of entry-level work.

Code also varies significantly from application to application, and familiarity is a key factor in productivity. In most cases, a junior developer with six months of experience on a team will be more effective than a senior developer who just signed on, for no other reason than familiarity with the domain.

The aforementioned glue code and domain-specific code account for at least half of all development work. What remains is code that truly demands and benefits from the expertise of a senior developer. And even for this code, a junior developer can do outstanding work if they have access to sufficient educational resources and the guidance of an experienced mentor.

For these reasons, a pairing of one junior and one senior developer is generally equivalent to two senior developers, and comes at less than 75% of the total cost. If your goal is maximum productivity for minimal expense, this junior/senior pair should be the fundamental molecule of your organization.

As an aside, one factor that's impossible to account for in these numbers is the widespread tendency of senior developers to debate about topics that end up being trivial--such as algorithms, microsecond optimizations, and code style. If an organization hires only seniors and doesn't have a rock-solid decision-making process in place, hundreds of payroll hours can be lost to these arguments. Junior developers rarely have this kind of problem.

Building careers

If you don't hire junior developers, another message you're sending is that you don't know how career progression works.

Kate Heddleston@heddle317 Sometimes when companies say they're not hiring junior developers I want to shake them by their hoodies and yell, where do you think senior developers come from?! 02:17 AM - 13 Sep 2018 Twitter reply actionTwitter retweet action254Twitter like action1013 Again, this isn't about corporate citizenship or "doing your part" in the tech community. This is about making your company a decent place to work so that developers will join your company and stay long enough to make an impact.

I've heard a few developers say "I'm done changing job titles. I just want to be a senior developer forever." However, I've never heard one say "I hope I never get a pay raise or learn something new or get recognized for my achievements ever again." And, inconveniently, the resources necessary to sustain ambitious ladder-climbers and complacent but passionate senior developers are about the same. You need ways to measure and recognize a job well done, plentiful educational resources, and a variety of projects young and old in your development pipeline. You need to create a sense of progress, even for those few who don't want a promotion.

But don't get stuck on those folks. They're a minority. Most people in tech aren't planning on being senior developers for 40 years straight. We dream of being software architects, team leads, CTOs, and founders. And a company that advertises its blatant disinterest in career progression is going to rank dead last on our list of prospective employers.

Reginald Braithwaite@raganwald I only recruit senior devs.

The trick is, I recruit some of them earlier in their career. 15:46 PM - 17 Sep 2018 Twitter reply actionTwitter retweet action488Twitter like action2612 One of the most impressive things a developer can hear as they walk into a job interview is, "Hi, I'm a team lead, I've worked here for eight years and I joined the company as an intern." Impressive and very rare. That person is intensely valuable to the company--they know the product line in and out, they've seen code from every project within a 100-yard radius, and they've worked alongside everyone in the organization. They can innovate within that company in a way that very few can. And the company is earning inestimable dividends on that person's work because they figured out how to keep them interested for eight years--about one tenth of their life expectancy. That's a sign of success for the company's culture. It marks a workplace where morale is high, good work is recognized, and interesting projects are waiting around every corner.

Saying "we don't hire juniors," on the other hand, is an open admission that your company isn't prepared to be part of someone's career. It essentially advertises stagnancy: the company expects experienced and talented developers to join the company and contribute indefinitely while getting nothing but a paycheck for their efforts. Some might be willing to do that, but you'll never see their best work.

If your company is truly committed to career growth, on the other hand, an arbitrary restriction against junior developers only serves to shrink your hiring pipeline and shorten the possible tenure of your employees.

Making great software

Junior developers have several unique traits that their more experienced colleagues have usually lost. One of these is blind optimism. Another is a willingness to follow. But perhaps the most valuable trait juniors bring to the table is their lack of baggage. Senior developers have seen technologies come and go, projects fail, teams dissolve into infighting, and all the other trappings of the technology sector. They build up strong opinions and often overgeneralize, assuming that what worked (or didn't) for one team or one project must be equally effective for another. And this can manifest as a reluctance to learn the nuances of a new problem space.

DHH@dhh Companies so eager to only hire senior people often forget that unlearning what doesn't apply can take longer than learning what does. 14:12 PM - 31 Jul 2017 Twitter reply actionTwitter retweet action821Twitter like action1984 Sometimes a project manager's job is to say "I know that didn't work there, but maybe it will work here." And a junior developer is usually the best person to test that theory--they can build a proof-of-concept or a prototype without bringing along any of the biases that senior developers have built up over the years. As a junior developer I frequently took on this kind of work, trying out new tools and technologies, rebuilding things in a different way, proving out ideas that everyone else had judged too quickly. I often discovered better ways to build and the company's software was materially better as a result. There were cases where page load time improved by an order of magnitude; multiple pages were condensed into one, saving weeks of future maintenance; or the company was able to rule out insufficient technologies that could have led to a lot of wasted time. The benefits provided by a clean slate and a fresh perspective are impossible to ignore.

Many companies can get away with putting a bunch of senior developers in a room and letting them fight through to a consensus over how to solve problems and build things. But adding a few juniors to the mix, developers whose time you can afford to spend on one-off experiments and wild ideas, will turn up surprising improvements to your products.

When it comes to software quality, junior developers also do an important form of work that generally goes unappreciated: they place limits on the heady, overengineered code that their senior colleagues may be tempted to write.

Jamon Holmgren@jamonholmgren One underrated programmer attribute is the ability to write code that average or mediocre engineers can easily read, modify, and extend. 00:25 AM - 17 Sep 2018 Twitter reply actionTwitter retweet action34Twitter like action90 If you replace "average or mediocre" in the above tweet with "junior," you can see how this works. A codebase is an abstract record of the way its contributors think critically. A healthy mix of junior and senior contributors creates opportunities for simplification, which makes features easier to build as time goes on.

In summary, the widespread "seniors only" attitude in tech undervalues junior developers. It's a detriment to everyone, especially the organizations that mistakenly think they can make things easier by shutting out inexperienced candidates. Although some of these companies have been financially successful, the waste of money and opportunities they've absorbed is likely massive.

If your company is ahead of the curve on this issue--if you know how to hire, train, and retain junior developers--you're reaping benefits I've only begun to describe here. Your company has lower turnover, higher diversity, and less overhead than the competition. Your software is less likely to break and more likely to delight. There are, of course, other factors at play. But a positive approach to junior developers is an important mark of a quality workplace for developers at every level.

173 50 87 DISCUSSION (16) dev.to is where software developers stay in the loop and avoid career stagnation. Signing up (for free!) is the first step. isaacandsuch profile Isaac Lyman+ FOLLOW Maker of Edward the App (https://edwardtheapp.com). Find more of my writing at isaaclyman.com/blog. twitter isaacandsuch github isaaclyman link isaaclyman.com #ITPro #SoftwareDeveloper

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glenmenlow · 6 years

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Shawn Achor: Whey We Should Take Others On Our Journey To Success

I spoke to Shawn Achor, author of Big Potential: How Transforming the Pursuit of Success Raises Our Achievement, Happiness, and Well-Being, about why he wrote the book, the connection between his last book and this one, how our potential is influenced by who we surround ourselves with, how to unlock your true potential, how different countries view potential and his best career advice.

Shawn is one of the world’s leading experts on happiness, success, and potential. His research has graced the cover of Harvard Business Review and his TED Talk is one of the most popular of all time, with over 15 million views. Shawn spent 12 years at Harvard before bringing this research out to nearly half the Fortune 100, including places like the Pentagon, impoverished schools in Africa, and the White House. His interview with Oprah Winfrey and his PBS program have been seen by millions. He now serves on the World Happiness Council and continues his research.

Dan Schawbel: After writing The Happiness Advantage, why did you decide to pursue this new book on human potential? What’s the connection between the subjects and what was the inspiration behind Big Potential?

Shawn Achor: I have now spent nearly a decade sharing positive psychology research showing that creating and sustaining individual habit changes can significantly increase our levels of optimism and happiness. During this time, the CDC has found that depression rates have doubled and suicide rates for every age group—including 8 year olds—have doubled as well. When I read that study, my heart broke. We are going the wrong direction. I believe some of that change is due to hypercomparison on social media and hypercompetition for zero sum success in our schools and work. During this time, I became a father, which changed the focus of my happiness from me to another. And I became fascinated with Big Data and how it reveals that nearly every dimension of potential is interconnected. The conclusion I came to was this: while I believe happiness can be a choice, it is not an individual choice—it is an interconnected choice. When we choose to be grateful or optimistic even when life is hard, we give others the license to be grateful and we make it easier for them to be positive around us. This creates a virtuous cycle where it is easier to choose happiness. Happiness is a team sport. But, it wasn’t just happiness, if we stop trying to pursue success individually, we can lift the burden of feeling like we are alone. The pursuit of happiness and success must not be a lonely road if we are going to see our full potential. And thus Big Potential was born.

Schawbel: Why and how is our potential influenced by those we surround ourselves with at home and at the office?

Achor: If you stop smoking, your health improves, but if everyone around you is still smoking, you will never see your full health. Similarly, initial research coming out of the famous Framingham heart study revealed that not only was happiness “contagious” so was obesity, heart disease, divorce, smoking habits, and depression. Thus, our happiness, health and success are interconnected with others. Moreover, think about it, you are more creative around certain friends. You are funnier or more extraverted around certain people. Yet, when science has measures you, we make you take creativity and personality tests alone and in isolation. We have been measuring potential incorrectly. Now with Big Data we can see that even moral choices spread. If you donate a dollar with a group of strangers, those strangers give a quarter more in their next group, and that group then splinters out into third tier groups that give a nickel more. You may never meet those people two degrees separate from you, but you have influenced them, and they you. We also know that productivity, energy, sales are all interconnected traits. And from the Happiness Advantage we know that the greatest competitive advantage in the modern economy is a positive and engaged brain. Now that’s contagious too.

Schawbel: What are a few of your strategies for unlocking our potential, while not giving up our happiness? What’s the trade off between potential and happiness?

Achor: First, surround yourself with people who bring out the best in you not the stress in you. In other words, look at the eight people you spend the most time with and see if they deplete or supply energy to you. Then spend more time with–or recruit more people into—the part of your social support network that supports your success. The goal is to not separate ourselves from others. Stars in isolation collapse in on themselves. You can see this in sports. You can see this with kids who ace exams at Harvard in isolation then can’t manage a team or bring a product to market because it requires others. Second, if your “ecosystem of potential” predicts your success, you need to activate them. When we do this we usually praise, but in my work, I’m finding that we don’t praise, we compare—you were the best sales person, you worked harder than anyone else, you’re the smartest kid. Bringing only the top performers up on stage diminishes the 95% who are not on stage. The worst kind compliment I get is “you were the best speaker today.” Sometimes I’m standing next to other speaker friends who were just diminished, and often I won’t be the best speaker, so now I’m unbalanced in the future. It is better to praise qualities (like comedic timing) rather than engage in comparison praise. And we need to refract the light; if you receive praise, accept it but also shine it on someone who got you there. You like my book? My wife Michelle Gielan is an amazing editor. Your daughter scored a goal…thanks to mom getting us out on a rainy day and her brother cheering her on. We need prism praise not comparison praise. Finally, all the happiness habits from my TED talk can be done WITH others instead of alone. Share your gratitudes at the dinner table. Exercise with someone instead of alone. Meditate with a group, etc. This magnifies the benefits.

Schawbel: After studying 50 countries, what have you learned about the differences and/or similarities by how different cultures measure their own potential?

Achor: I’m only starting to understand this, but with my limited knowledge now, I’d say that some Western cultures often judge potential by how much better you are than everyone in a group. Whereas I believe a better approach is to not just see who the fastest on the team is, but who makes everyone around them play better. At BYU researchers found that shooting percentage did not predict wins nearly as well as the ratio of assists to turnovers. The better you are at assists, the stronger the team. I don’t just want my son to be creative, I want him to make others around him creative too.

Schawbel: What are your top three pieces of career advice?

Achor:

Don’t try to pursue happiness and success alone. Happiness is a team sport, and the majority of our potential can only be unlocked with others.

If you want to do something, tell everyone. I learned this from my mentor Tal Ben-Shahar. I have found this really opens doors.

Happiness is not pleasure, it is the joy we feel pursuing our potential. If you know this, you’ll be okay feeling discomfort and having to push hard because we can find joy and growth even when life isn’t fun.

The post Shawn Achor: Whey We Should Take Others On Our Journey To Success appeared first on Personal Branding Blog – Stand Out In Your Career.

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markjsousa · 6 years

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Shawn Achor: Whey We Should Take Others On Our Journey To Success

Schawbel: Why and how is our potential influenced by those we surround ourselves with at home and at the office?

Schawbel: What are a few of your strategies for unlocking our potential, while not giving up our happiness? What’s the trade off between potential and happiness?

Schawbel: After studying 50 countries, what have you learned about the differences and/or similarities by how different cultures measure their own potential?

Schawbel: What are your top three pieces of career advice?

Achor:

Don’t try to pursue happiness and success alone. Happiness is a team sport, and the majority of our potential can only be unlocked with others.

If you want to do something, tell everyone. I learned this from my mentor Tal Ben-Shahar. I have found this really opens doors.

The post Shawn Achor: Whey We Should Take Others On Our Journey To Success appeared first on Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career.

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rochellespatial · 7 years

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Reflection on Thesis

“While commencing this body of research I was simultaneously struck with my most intense personal encounter of mental health issues and consequent loneliness. Exactly as Popova (2015) describes; the issues I was facing took control of every aspect of my life making it difficult to see past what I was experiencing. Instead of dwelling on the issue and allowing it to hinder my progress I embraced it and channelled it within my research; this is my journey.”

“This focus on my own experience does not endeavor to imply that everyone will encounter or cope with the issues that I have in the same manner. However, I do believe that this incredibly personal and individual exploration of loneliness can support an authentic and comprehensive discourse surrounding the issue.”

This second half of this project will begin from the launching point left at the end of last semester in the fact that it will follow my own experience and needs - not to design simply for myself but in order to validate an authentic exploration and solution that may also be suitable for others.

“A space that would have respected my state of mind and nurtured me.”

“It is important though to understand that despite any intent within a design of a space its sociology cannot exist entirely without the participation of the inhabitants (Sommer, 1967).”

“Aligned with Sommer’s theory of participation in space (1967), caring spaces cannot and will not exist entirely without the participation of the subjects and the performance of these self-caring acts. We must provide for ourselves what we want and need from our spaces in order to reveal the spaces that can care for us. “…we take what is built for us, and build upon it” (Luckert, 2013, p. 9).”

All space and objects cannot be activated and experience without that of the user. The needs and wants of the user should be at the forefront of all design.

“Nonetheless it made it apparent that many experience the city alone, and that this experience of being alone within the city should be of essential consideration when designing the city.”

This concept of being alone is not always bad and therefore how can public spaces be converted and transformed into private spaces for an individual in order to choose and be alone at any time they may wish.

“Within this shift comes a necessary consideration of the terms used, ‘recovery’ versus ‘renewal’ (Donovan, 2013). The use of the term recovery implies that over time and once recovered one will return from their current state to their previously obtained state. Whereas renewal, despite holding similar meaning, goes further to imply the potential to propel one forward into a new position within their future; potentially better than it once was (Donovan, 2013).”

How can, rather than healing, spaces and objects become an essential element of this renewal stage and assist with preventative and restorative rituals and routines?

“Borasi and Zardini’s proposed shift requires a transition from medicating issues and instead implementing preventative measures (Borasi & Zardini, 2012, Winch, 2014). If we compare the frequency in which we medicate injuries and symptoms that we can physically identify with how often we acknowledge and heal the symptoms and injuries we sustain mentally and emotionally; there is a huge imbalance (Winch, 2014).”

To acknowledge and heal our mental and psychological injuries one may think this only requires the brain however if experiencing such injuries the mental state may not be in a position to recognise and assist and therefore how can the spaces and objects we use and inhabit everyday - in a ritualistic way, assist us?

“Learning to care rather than cure ourselves will equip us with the skills to deal with the situation again rather than the distress of a relapse; having expected the issue to disappear once cured the first time (Winch, 2014).”

The potential space or object will not be used only once - instead it will embrace and harness the fact that solutions to such mental health issues and wellbeing maintenance are not simply one offs and instead they are installed within routines and eventually become rituals - if found effective by the individual - as preventative solutions. They care for rather than cure.

“Of relevance to this notion of caring and advising one other is Borasi and Zardini’s (2012) concept of ‘breathing well’. This concept emphasizes our need to understand and care for ourselves before we can ever hope to be successful in caring for and enabling others to care for themselves. Experience influences further experience (Borasi & Zardini, 2012). It is these concepts that reiterate the necessity of self-care.”

This emphasizes designing for the self as if something would not be used by you or be effective on you, how can one validate that it will work on others? We cannot help others without helping ourselves.

“As a self-proclaimed introvert I like to spend copious amounts of time on my own and when those around me used to perceive my isolation as impolite and excessive I would in turn become offended. It was not until I took a step back and interpreted my acts of solitude that I realized I was not accomplishing anything through this act.”

“The success in these moments of solitude should not be measured in physical accomplishments but rather in how much we learn about ourselves (Tiwari, 2013). Solitude is equally as important as moments of social interaction and connection as if we don’t teach ourselves to be alone we run the risk of setting ourselves up to feel nothing but lonely (Turkle, 2012).”

“Author Pico Iyer (in The art of stillness, 2014) compares actions of being still within our lives to the beauty of pauses in music, literature and poetry. This emphasizes the importance of not rushing through our lives and requests us to compose our lives the way we would a piece of music or writing. We need to let ourselves breathe more, take deeper breaths, leave more space between breaths, treasure and truly experience life.”

There is a balance needed between moments of solitude and connection, the solution ultimately found throughout this project will not be an attempt to isolate individuals further but it will assist moments of solitude that happen ritually but ensure that these moments enhance moments of reflection, contemplation, enlightenment and renewal.

#reflection #journal #thesis #S2 #wk3

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d-a-v-i-d-j-o-n-e-s · 7 years

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We're The Jones' | Chapter 63 |

Rated M for Sexual Reference Trigger Warnings: Depression, Mourning, Death Mention

Featuring David Jones and his domestic life. Meeting the lady of his life and building a home and family with her…

—————–

In some ways Winter held a certain level of dismay in people’s’ minds. But in other ways, it also held many qualities that could cloud the bitter, miserable weather and bitey chills.

When was there a better time to gorge on Hot Chocolate and excuse staying at home or even tucked up in bed. It was a season of togetherness, families, couples, flocks of seagulls. Everybody and everything was moving quickly, shuffling through ankle deep slush, wading through powdery layers of snow. It was a time that definitely brought us all closer together, with the nature parks & swimming pools out of the question. It meant indoors stoking the fireplace or tediously notching up the boiler dial was the place to be.

Lucky for them, David’s apartment was particularly well insulated and fitted with sufficient heating. Even the towel racks and tiled floors heated to keep them warm. It meant nothing really changed for them. Still able to skip about in the nudey freely as they wished.

Iman found it an amusing clash. David Bowie. Creator of Ziggy Stardust. Fashion Icon in the music world. Known widely for pushing the boundaries with clothing, dresses, kimonos, platform boots…

It turned out that he actually revelled in the glorious freedom of his home, freedom of clothes. He was pretty relieved to be free of itchy labels and any form of restriction. It was a rare occasion he might pull on a pair of boxers if the mailman came or a friend was due. But otherwise it was nothing out of the ordinary in his household, now, their household.

Currently David remained almost completely still as he squinted from the window, cuddled up against Iman’s front. Legs either side of hers, allowing Iman to continue running her fingers through his hair.

“It’s going to be a home day today.”

David mumbled against her, turning his head to look her way again.

“Well I don’t have anything to do today, luckily..”

Iman replied with a relieved sigh, feeling just as lazy and lethargic as David looked slumped against her with a pout of sorts. Home day didn’t mean bed all day, but simply spending time together whatever they got up to. Housebound was no chore to them. It was nice to take days off from the outside world, a steady recharge before stepping out in front of judging eyes and dishonest cameras.

It could get frustrating sometimes, when they went out together intending a discrete day out or quiet meal together. Wherever they went the nosey paps tagged along. But it was nowhere near as bad as David’s hometown where the Artists were tagteamed the moment they woke up to when they went to bed.

Which is why he unfortunately, couldn’t go back to stay. He wouldn’t settle in England with his familiarity there. He had no idea how to remain anonymous there so he wouldn’t even try. New York had always been an interesting location for him. He’d always wanted to live here and now he did, and had been in and out a few times.

The culture and locals were a whole new wonderful bunch. Around Soho & Manhattan. It was littered with unique and interesting shops, bookstores, record stores, it was a musicians galore. And not quite as in your face as other places he had been to in the past. Possibly one of the more settled places of all, Berlin being another, Switzerland probably one of the quietest. He still owned his retreat there, so him and Iman could go skiing. But living there, it could get lonely in the little remote villages.

“Come on hun, I’ll make you some breakfast.”

Iman eventually found herself fidgeting to get up and start the day, but she was stuck under the big warm trancing lump, David. He was delayed in response, but he lifted up and let her scooch out and pad around. While faceplanting into her pillow himself, still too out of it to face the day. But he rolled out of bed after her a couple of minutes later, despite his lazy, tired form. Slouching around, grabbing his gown and tugging it on as he walked through to the kitchen space.

Iman already had the pan on the stove, milk carefully measured, and stirred consistently so it didn’t curdle. The kettle sitting waiting, steaming. She worked efficiently and quickly in the kitchen, it was almost a hidden passion, her time spent cooking. Obviously, David hadn’t been quite as interested but then she understood the way he would get by, less cleaning and waiting when going out to restaurants or heating pre made meals.

But she was determined to keep him healthy, those meals were packed full of carbohydrates and not good enough to sustain him. Occasionally, but not daily. He didn’t need those though. Iman made larger portions of things to stow away so when he came wandering in he’d have options but also well prepared home cooked food.

Freezing pasta sauces and stews. Iman made him breakfast every morning, and he ate leftovers for lunch most days. Goodness knows what he’d do without her. When she left for work, he needn’t sit and ponder. She knew that the other side of his unhealthy diet before their meeting was forgetting to eat or not doing so to avoid cooking.

David sleepily leaned against the wall, quickly greeted with a hot steaming mug of coffee and his cigarettes, a lighter. She was more than used to his unchanging routine by now, and she realised how important it was for him not to tamper with it. He didn’t like change, he was a creature of habit. It made everything simpler, minimal effort required from his brain so he could function until he finished his first cup of coffee.

“Thank you darling.”

He muttered before gratefully taking his first sip, testing the temperature before gulping instead. He could drink it almost straight from the kettle. And the sooner he got his caffeine, the sooner he could start his day.

It followed the usual hum of content as he drank the coffee pretty quickly while Iman was shifting around the kitchen preparing their breakfast. She regularly bought in fresh products to make meals with, fruits and vegetables, specialised breads. Though David tried to get away with just syrup in his porridge, she littered the top with berries and fruits to keep him healthy.

Iman was the more assertive one of the pair, once she had stepped into his life, he had taken quite a backseat and always followed along with her because she was usually right, looking out for him. It was quite the change for the usually assertive, confident and cocky London boy in him. But he actually found comfort in being the observer.

It didn’t mean his cheeky confidence wasn’t there. He just knew Iman had certain tasks she had to do herself too. Sharing control and responsibility between them. It took some of the pressure off.

“It’s hot, be careful.”

Iman warned him with a raise of her brow as she grabbed their bowls and handed him his, following after him padding through to the lounge space to slump down on the sofa. He switched the TV on and idly flicked through the channels to the news before taking his first mouthful.

He had looked at her with a raise of his own brows, he drank his coffee scalding hot. But he was puffing and waving his hands in seconds, struggling to swallow his food. Iman snorted and shrugged, it had been boiled and cooked through at a high temperature, higher than he was expecting.

She was carefully blowing upon her own spoon, and he was quick to sit up and make more effort to cool his own. His gaze upon the television as he was soon enjoying his porridge after burning the roof of his mouth. It was the same old political nonsense really, false promises, or pumping negativity into the populous.

He was soon to change the channel, and finish his breakfast, laying back into the sofa and sighing softly, eyes half closed. Iman looked over at him quizzically, he was easy to read, there was something on his mind. But before she opened a can of worms, she took care of their bowls and let them rest to soak in the sink.

When she returned David had disappeared, and she had to make a decision. Follow after him or let him have some space. She knew he was quite inward sometimes, letting thoughts gather or rather unreleased feelings. He could get clammed up and when he used to live alone, he’d just sit upon it until there was a release. He didn’t have to hold it all in anymore, and that was something he was still getting used to because he didn’t like to offload in fear of affecting his confidant. In this case, Iman.

She noticed his office door was open and decided to peer in quietly. He was sat in front of the window, trancing out upon the skyline aimlessly, wearing a slight frown and folding his arms. He was definitely not right, he was too busy, too impatient, it was rare he ever sat down and did so little. He always needed to have something to do and would work copiously or fill his time with whatever he could to not let himself sit dormant. Otherwise, this is how he ended up, lost in thought, facing everything his work and hobbies had been tucking away.

Even on his days off, if he didn’t have anything else planned, he ended up working again just to fill the void.

“David.”

Iman slipped into the room and approached him, settling herself down right next to him and taking up one of his hands to rest between both of hers. He was hesitant to look her way, she could see the mask slipping, he always tried to put on a brave face. Even when he was convincingly smiling and goofing about, deep down, he may not feel that way at all. But around Iman, he let his guard down. There were only a handful of people in his entire life that got that close to him, intimately, it was very intimate for him to share his thoughts and feelings.

“Talk to me.”

She spoke quietly, encouraging him, as he looked down at his feet and his whole expression diminished quite quickly. There was a glaze upon his eyes, a sadness in his drooped head and almost inaudible sighs.

It remained silent for some minutes, but she didn’t push him to open up, or talk. It was his choice, but she had made it very clear that she was there by his side and there to stay, as long as he needed.

He did look her way, there were small glistening streaks down his cheeks, little droplets clinging onto his chin. You’d think, how could somebody with so much going for him, so much success and luxury, comfort…

How could he feel depressed? How could he get down when his life was so high, everything was going for him. Well. There’s a very simple answer to that. He is only human. As the rest of us. It would be freakish of anyone to never get down, never feel blue.

Iman held his gaze, seeing him leaning forward and coming to catch him in her arms, kissing his forehead softly, letting his face rest against her neck. She could feel the fresh tears seeping and dripping upon her skin, gulping and trying to remain strong for him. But something had really broken him. Even in his lower moods, she never saw him cry, it was such a rare occasion.

She held him close and rubbed his back, he was almost starting to hyperventilate when she did lift his head and touch noses with him, forcing him to look at her this time.

“David, look at me, look, what’s wrong, did something happen?”

She held his chin, her tone and look sincere, this wasn’t just him feeling low, what had she missed?

“It’s n- I… I don’t usually get like this.”

He grimaced and wiped at his tears, stumbling upon his words and gulping audibly to try and gather himself.

“I uh.. It’s um, my father’s birthday to-today.. I’m sorry… It’s nothing serious.. I don’t know why it got to me.. He’s been dead twenty years now, I don’t usually get like this..”

David stuttered, confused, letting Iman wipe fresh tears away with her thumbs delicately, he drew a sad smile, but his lips trembled as he broke down again.

Iman held him tightly again, kissing just behind his ear as he trembled in her arms. He was quite collected and calm usually, so this was a moment that, without it coming across as strange or sadistic; she cherished seeing his emotional side because she knew he never gave anyone else even a hint. It reminded her of how special she was to him, to have that bonded trust, and the fact that he wasn’t just scrambling to hold it all in. Because it was unhealthy, and against the nature of a human being.

It was cherished for his sake, the more he got off his chest, the better, in her eyes. Even she wasn’t always sure just how much emotion he kept pent up inside. But she’d soon realised that he was an ever so emotional man. So emotional that he constantly moved between rooms, going into the office to throw it all down on paper rather than shout, or throw his weight, or show any such unpleasant behaviour. Which he had never done, she’d seen him annoyed, and frustrated, but never angry.

“You have nothing to be sorry about hun, it’s hard, I know you were closer to him than your mother. I’m sorry I didn’t realise sooner.”

Iman told him, as he lifted his head again and started to smile instead. He was focusing on the memories of him, the good times.

“I remember once, I had just got home from school and I was sitting in the living room. He came stomping through the door with a big old dusty crate and threw it down in front of me and Terry. We both looked at each other, because he just left the room without saying anything, and obviously, we wanted to know what was in the crate. Turns out he’d spent almost all of his cash on record for us, we fought over a few of em’, me and Terry.. That’s the sort of man he was.. I’d like to think I took after him in some way.”

David shared his anecdote with a change of moods, becoming animated as he explained, a big smile growing. Iman smiled sweetly, an arm around him, pouting and eyeing him when he showed a little doubt.

“David, Robert, Jones. You are the most beautiful. Interesting. Generous. Loving. But also frustrating man, I’ve ever met. Look, come on, look.”

Iman planted kisses on his jaw to punctuate her sentence, cheering him up as he formed a tiny blush and smiled when she did so. She took up his left hand with hers and held it up in front of them both.

“Look. Do you really think we’d be wearing these if you weren’t all those things.”

David gazed upon their rings with such bliss, his toothy grin shining, looking to her with a cheeky glower.

“Probably not..”

He muttered cutely, his eyes rolling up and down, between her lips and eyes, before he leant straight for her and engaged in a ceremonious kiss, where they leant upon another heavily, starting out innocent, but this is Iman and David we’re talking about here.

David gasped against her lips, smiling, both of them giggling a little bit when their eyes caught another’s again, noses still pressed; they weren’t finished yet…

#we're the jones'#chapter 63 #fanfiction #david bowie #iman abdulmajid #tw depression #tw mourning #tw death #romance #love #grief #relationship #nyc

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martechadvisor-blog · 7 years

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Are Marketing Clouds Finally Ready to get Social Media Right?

Ryan Holmes, CEO Hootsuite discusses how once again, major players like Oracle, Adobe and Microsoft are turning their attention to buying up social media tools for their marketing clouds. This time around, they’re confident that things will turn out better than the last buying spree

Earlier this month, Oracle spent almost a billion dollars on a marketing tool that few people had ever heard of. Moat is used to audit social media ads and ensure that they’re showing up on Facebook and Google, as promised. But the exact function is largely beside the point.

What’s important is this: Once again, big-time software players like Oracle, Adobe and Salesforce are turning their attention to buying up social media and related tools for their marketing clouds. And this time around, they’re confident that things will turn out better than the last buying spree.

Let’s rewind five years or so. Back in the early 2010s, the concept of the unified marketing cloud—a single collection of integrated tools for marketing teams, embracing everything from email to analytics, campaigns, ads and more—was still fresh. Adobe had been among the first to the scene, but other industry heavyweights were racing in with their own alternatives.

At the same time, social media as a business tool remained a novel concept. Facebook had been around for years, but companies were only just beginning to explore how social networks could be used as a part of a serious marketing strategy. Early social media management tools promised to solve their pain points: simplifying publishing of messages across multiple networks; “listening” to social buzz to pick up and identify consumer trends; and spitting out analytics reports to measure the impact of social campaigns.

It was in that uncertain climate that some of the biggest names in software began dropping literally billions of dollars on emerging social tools. In fast succession, Salesforce acquired social listening tool Radian6 in 2011 for $326 million and social publishing tool Buddy Media in 2012 for $745 million. Adobe scooped up Context Optional and ad tool Efficient Frontier for a rumored $400 million in 2011. In 2012, Oracle acquired social marketing startup Vitrue for $300 million. All of these technologies promised to add a robust new social media component to existing marketing clouds. Press releases touted the coming social business revolution.

Then, crickets. After news of the high-priced acquisitions died down, eager CMOs waited … and waited … for these new social tools to roll out. Some were mothballed almost as soon as they were bought. In other cases, integrations took years, with results that were patently underwhelming.

What went wrong the first time?

The post-mortem on the first wave of social cloud applications reveals a host of fatal errors. For starters, social media itself was misunderstood. At the time, it was still thought of as a siloed function within a business: the domain of a lone social media manager and small team of social savvy millennials. There wasn’t yet an appreciation for how social pervades the entire buyer’s journey, from product discovery to consideration, purchase and advocacy.

Precisely because social media was thought of as an “add-on,” it was relegated to a peripheral role in early marketing clouds. Rather than being part of the central “brain” of these platforms, it was treated as simply another system of engagement — no different than an email application or a messaging service. Customer data from other parts of the cloud didn’t flow freely into social tools. Nor were these tools engineered to gather and organize insights from customers.

On top of this, the initial crop of social media marketing tools were largely untested. It’s important to remember that the early 2010s were still the nascent days of marketing technology. The promise of automating and refining mundane marketing tasks—and finding ways to track revenue from campaigns—had whipped marketing teams at companies big and small into a buying frenzy. (Gartner famously predicted that CMOs’ tech budgets would soon outpace CIOs’.) Big software companies were eager to get in on the action. So Salesforce, Oracle and their peers ended up doubling down on tools that may not have been quite ready for primetime.

The combined result was disappointment. These new social media additions were hard to use, non-intuitive and not well integrated—afterthoughts, rather than central pieces of the marketing cloud. As a result, marketers who wanted serious social media tools were forced to look outside the big clouds and instead rely on more targeted point solutions … which kind of defeated the purpose of buying a comprehensive marketing cloud in the first place.

Social cloud redux

Just five years later, however, the situation has changed markedly. Social media has proven less a technological fad than a cultural sea change. Thanks to mobile technology, the average user now spends two hours on social media every day. Teens (i.e. tomorrow’s consumers) spend up to nine hours a day. Companies have come to recognize social media as possibly the central tool for reaching customers—both B2B and B2C—and guiding them from discovery to purchase.

Likewise, social media management platforms available today have matured substantially from the earlier wave of acquisitions. AI-powered analytics tools enable separating “signal from noise” in a way inconceivable just a few years ago—sorting through millions of data points to identify trends and consumer sentiment at a glance. Meanwhile, with social ad spend now surpassing TV spend, new ad buying tools have emerged to launch, automate and maximize ad campaigns across social networks. Social platforms have likewise evolved to serve not just the narrow needs of marketers but also sales and customer service teams.

Perhaps most importantly, the role of social media within marketing clouds is being fundamentally reconsidered. Far from an add-on, social media is increasingly being appreciated as a system of record, fully integrated with other cloud features and capable of gathering and receiving data. Because social affords direct, sustained contact with buyers throughout the customer lifecycle, it’s well positioned to act as a kind of backbone for marketing clouds.

So, will all of this translate to what CMOs have been asking for all along: stronger marketing clouds with better social tools and more intuitive features? Time will tell. It’s noteworthy that, in addition to Moat, Oracle (with its new marketing cloud GM Laura Ipsen and marketing-minded data-cloud leader Eric Roza) have made a flurry of marketing technology acquisitions in the last year. Similar signals are coming from the likes of Adobe, where digital marketing head Brad Rencher and his team recently scooped up video ad platform TubeMogul for $540 million.

It also seems that Microsoft is again exploring its own marketing cloud options. Their recent $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn represents a valuable social media addition to Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM solution for enterprises. And some commentators have speculated that Microsoft’s recently announced partnership with Adobe’s Marketing Cloud could be hinting at an outright acquisition down the road. After a half-decade partial hibernation, in other words, it appears the big software companies may be gearing up for another MarTech buying spree.

Considering their first foray into social, Oracle, Adobe, Salesforce, IBM and other software leaders are being considerably more cautious this time around. But the holy grail—an integrated social platform that just works as part of a marketing cloud—may well be within reach this time. The key: a dawning appreciation that the right social media application isn’t just another marketing widget, but the primary interface to engage the next generation of buyers.

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor

#martech #marketing #technology #business #cmo

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merciful--valkyrie-blog · 7 years

Text

Feathers plucked, and an angel that fell.

It was the tremble through the earth that she had grown accustomed to. Weeks being in the world that had shown little of remorse to the lingering life of civilians that hid where they could. Food rations that had been delivered from care packages were either scarce, or apprehended by packs of rebellious militia members. Claiming what had been meant for those clinging to little fat that was left to bones and flesh, hoping for the drop of water to quench their parched tongues. If it wasn’t the shortage of food, it was the constant threat of attack from marksmen that stood like eagles waiting for the prey to step into their sight. At night sleep became scarce; the flutter of an eyelid from exhaustion was always replaced with frantic jolts. Fearful as lambs that did not have the protection of their ewe, fearful that the wolf lurked ready to drag them to the shadows. No matter the bleating, they were lambs that followed the lonely shepherd trying what she could to gather her flock and protect them from the storm. Sleep was little, she felt it chipping away slowly at her strength. The slow rise of the sun was nothing more than gray light barely filtering through the dusty clouds of smoke. The explosions had wrecked havoc on the earth leaving deep pockets of burnt ground behind. The coffee that had been brewed was old; the bitter taste clung to her tongue and refused to leave no matter how long she tried to ignore it. But under the threshold of the near skeletal structure that once was an apartment complex, she still watched the pale sun rise into the sky. Angela Ziegler. Once a young child genius, with the gift of being able to help turn the tide of death and illness. To reverse injuries sustained that would otherwise leave a body crippled, or a mangled heap. She was the gift to humanity, and with that gift came the cost of so much more. The explosions that became the heartbeat of the city ravaged by violence, would have at one point in her life left her trembling. If it had been years ago where she still found her mother and father’s faces haunting her dreams, she would have succumbed to fear. She would have succumbed to the rapid heart palpitations that only became a slow tremor as the weeks had gone on. If she had been any lesser to the woman who she had become; she would have never agreed to willingly visiting the city that was nothing more than a hollow husk. They had cried to her, they had begged for help to come to them from any nation that had the capability for medical intervention. Any help that would be given to those clinging to their pathetic existence. Their cries finally reached her, and it in turn became her purpose and demand that she take to the dangerous mission. A suicide mission to help save those that could not save themselves. Either stupid or brave… she wasn’t sure which it had become. Lifting the canteen to her lips, she took another gulp of the bitter, burnt coffee. It was no longer the need of caffeine that she chased. It gave her some grounding to reality, some lulled comfort in a part of her mind that maybe she would awake in her office. That she had fallen asleep at her desk, with a pile of papers damp with drool would be and the buzzing of the florescent light above being the only sound, instead of the violence that was thick within the city. But, as she took that sip, she found nothing of waking up in the safety of Overwatch’s Headquarters. She found nothing of the sheltered embrace of protective walls, and those that carried guns inside making sure the halls were safe. All that she found was the world around her still remaining. A dusty canvas of gray and black. It was the sound of boots scuffing against concrete at her side, joining her at her shoulder was one of the Overwatch agents. His name was Dan, and he had enlisted to the help of Overwatch with hopeful dreams in his eyes. Only those dreams became dashed, and instead of the starry gaze that looked to make the world a better place, she found a hollow gray gaze. He stood a head taller than her, he was built with wiry muscle, but his wrists had become frail and thin with lack of caloric consumption. He stared ahead, refusing to meet her wintry gaze. “Doctor Ziegler,” he breathed out steadily, still refusing to turn his attention directly to her. “We need to move from this location. It’s no longer safe. If we stay even half the day… we’ll be overtaken and all your work is going to be lost!” The Swiss doctor watched his face closely. Knots formed in his jaw as he tried to remain resolute, and firm. Trying to keep the facade of a confident soldier, but it was breaking, fracturing under the threat that became constant and so very real as the seconds lingered. She knew what he said was true; they were at very heavy risk of being overrun by enemy forces. They would sweep in, either taking her patients as hostages, or killing them where they lay on the makeshift cots. They would seize her equipment. Her medical supplies, and then they would turn on her. She couldn’t risk moving her patients out of fear of their health. They were fragile souls and creatures, relying on her ability to do what she could with limited and dwindling supplies. To those that had succumbed to fever and infection; she sat by their bedside with their hand gently clasped within her own. She couldn’t move them… and she couldn’t abandon them. Blowing out a breath, defeated, and trying to find answers as her gaze turned outward to the horizon. She tried to find absolute answers in the twisting dirty plumes of dirt and smoke. “Allow me then to prepare them to be moved.” She began to say. “Doctor Ziegler! We do not have time to take all those you’ve been caring for, they will just di-” His words were cut off sharply when she lifted her hand, signaling for silence from him. Her blue-hues turned onto him, slender brows creased forward in determination that burned fiercely. “As I was saying before you interrupted!” She chided him with the faintest narrowing of her eyes. Brief gratification was given when he shifted uncomfortably at her side, and she lessened the severity of the glare upon him. “As I was saying; allow me to prepare them to move. I know… that many of them will not survive being moved from here to the next camp. But I have to try. I can’t leave them here to suffer.” And there she found her voice falling and the moment of pained reality sinking deep. They would die no matter what she did. The stretch of time within the hours was quickly met with organized chaos. What she had managed to make her medical wing within the burnt out structure of the apartment complex, quickly became a flurry of soldiers and field medics. Near to the shelter of the walls, away from the shards of glass from blown out windows, her patients watched. Their eyes were lit with curiosity as they watched the woman move back and forth. At her back the responsive wings flexed. The hiss of expelled air humming in ready response to lift her from the ground. Even in the gray low light that was given, the glow from her crafted suit gave a the golden shine to their tired eyes. “Careful, careful!” She barked when she saw a soldier dismantling a defibrillator and putting the piece of tech into a crate far to roughly for her liking! “If we are to go to another camp, I will still need my equipment! Do not break it!” From the cots, patients were pulled onto stretchers to be carried downward, into the convoys that awaited to take them away from the building they had claimed as shelter. They had time; she reminded herself. They were moving far better than she had anticipated, and hope began to flitter at her senses leaving her almost tentatively smiling. Perhaps she wouldn’t lose a patient in the relocation… perhaps she stood lucky for once that all would end well! Perhaps she was a hopeful fool… and nothing ever went according to plan. It happened quickly, and it was sudden. She found one of the Overwatch agents loping inward, turning into the room and his words quick and almost frantic. Sweat lingered at his brow and his pupils were small pinpricks. “We have to leave now! Take what is in your hands, and go! If they aren’t in the transport then leave them! Enemy forces are here!” His words were not directed to her, but his gaze flickered to her in that panic and she found him looking at her, begging for her to see reason. It was the grisled woman that had been appointed to lead and issue orders to the agents that sucked in a rattled breath. She took that spell of a second to measure what it was worth, and finally turned towards her. Angela found her eyes meeting the distant pools of brown. The gaze was not warm, the gaze was not friendly, the eyes that stared at her were that of a soldier that knew what was spoken were all to familiar. “Doctor Ziegler. We must leave now. You are far more important, and you are our priority to keep alive. We must leave now!” The Agent’s words were punctuated when she crossed the distance; her hand landing on her bicep and squeezing roughly. “Strike Commander has issued me to keep you safe. I will see to it that my job is completed, and you are kept absolutely safe. Please, do not make this harder than it has to be.” Those words only caused the passionate pacifist to swell within her. Pulling her arm from the iron clad like grip, she found herself backing away. Like a mother hen to her chicks that flocked to the shelter of her wings. She shook her head, the strands of pale gold and honey swaying around her. “Then Jack will understand. I can’t leave them behind!” Angela began to argue, finding her voice rising as the pulse that throbbed within her veins rose. “We do not have time! They are upon us, we have to leave now!” The Agent protested back, stepping forward to apprehend the doctor. Angela had barely opened her mouth to deny the woman right to taking her with her by force. It was the tremble beneath her boots that sound found shaking upward through her legs. From a slow vibration, it became a violent torrent that consumed her senses and left her struggling to stand. Dust billowed inward through the corridor, obscuring her sight and choking her with the breath she drew. She heard the screams around her; panic gripped her patients only for the crumbling of the world around her. Over her head she found the ceiling caving inward. The explosion that took the apartment engulfing it, and destroying the barely lingering support it had. Down upon them, and her, the building came. Where there had been screams, fear, and confusion. Silence followed with the debris that became the graveyard to what had been the camp. To what had been the Swiss doctor that had once begged to go to the country ravaged by bloodshed, and death. Under the shambles of stone, and concrete slabs of debris- nothing moved.

#Overwatch #Overwatch rp #Overwatch roleplay #Starter #Roleplay #Rp #Writing #Roleplay starter #Mercy #Angela Ziegler #Anyone is welcome to respond to this either comment or message.

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