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kakiastro · 5 months

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Jupiter + the type of husband you will have

Hey yall! It literally took me a couple of weeks to make this post because I believe I’m experiencing burnout 😫 I think I’m going to take a mini break😅anyway, I hope you had a an amazing holiday!! Today I’m going to be talking about the traits and type of husband you will have based on your Jupiter.

Jupiter traditionally rules the husband. For those who are seeking a husband or husband-like partner, Jupiter is the planet to look at.

Look at your:

1. Jupiter sign

2. Jupiter degree

3. Jupiter house placement

4. Jupiter aspects

Also look at your Jupiter persona chart for deeper details as well!

Jupiter sign and house breakdowns:

Aries/1h

- may love to wear athletic brand outfits, have tattoos, prominent forehead, may have bangs or hair just cover their forehead, thick eyebrows, strong sex appeal to them

-their bold and confident

-may work in military, law enforcement, medical field dealing with lab work(blood draws, blood disease researcher), entrepreneurship and being the boss, welding or anything dealing with metals, butcher, working in a gun store.

-could be athletic or loves the gym

-loud or outgoing

-may lack impatience and tend to be impulsive

-always on the go, they have to always be doing something

-loves hot or spicy food

-may love debates and may come off as argumentative

-risk takers, they make quick decisions based on impulse. This can can either back fire or work in their favor LoL

Taurus/ 2h

-may have Venusian look to them so curly hair, smooth skin, very pretty. They may look like they can be a model, they look good on camera. Might have a mole, birth mark or a tattoo on their neck, something about their neck stands out. They’ll have an attractive voice

-money matters such as dealing with money by working in a bank. Working in the culinary industry so owning/working in a restaurant, working for a company that deals with food. Working in real estate or in the housing industry, working the arts such as fashion, painting.

-may be stubborn and like to take their time in doing things

-loves going out to eat especially to their favorite restaurants. If food is involved, they’re going!

-very sensual, loves to wear good smelling fragrances, dressing nice. These are the type of husbands that loves to buy flowers for you just because.

-loves physical touch such as holding hands, cuddling, arm around the shoulder types.

-very charming, may have a lot of friends but only a few close ones.

-loves passion and romance

-listening to lots of music

Gemini/3h

- you may meet them through a close friend, siblings, someone close to your neighborhood, library, school, they can be a former or current classmate

- they may have a unique laugh that catches your attention, may have smile that appears mischievous, may wear glasses for reading or prescriptions, messy hair do

-loves to talk as long as it’s airy and fun

-speaking of fun, they’re down for whatever, very outgoing person.

-may have lots of friends or know lots of people

-loves to read or write books or blogs

Cancer/4h

-may have a prominent chest, moon face that’s round or crescent shape, pouty lips, big round watery eyes. They may be wearing comfy clothing

-can come from a close knit family or they are family oriented. Can be close to his mom or has motherly figures in their life.

-may prefer to be at home

-may be proud of their ancestral roots and would want that displayed in there home

-loves home cooked meals

-very private person

Leo/5h

-Leo energy has a strong aura, they give A list celebrity energy so you may noticed them right away due to that, something about there hair may stand out to you. Likes dressing and looking good

-have a lighthearted warmness to them like their ruler the Sun

-may be well known, not necessarily famous (although they could be) but they have a lot of friends or they’re known for something.

-really artistic and love the arts such as theater, entertainment, dancing. They could also work in these fields

-may be intuned into there inner child, not necessarily childish but they know how to have fun

-may love children. Work with children or children is apart of their lives.

-may be overly dramatic about certain situations in their life

Virgo/6h

-may work in the medical field or is interested in medical stuff

-daily routines are important! These are the type of husbands who have a scheduled routine everyday lol

-may be workaholics, work is important to these hubbies. Now work doesn’t always have to mean their career/job either, working around the house, doing a project, fixing a car. They’re always doing some type of work!😅

-just like Gemini, virgoes love to read as well. The difference is Virgo loves to read things that has lots of detail. They need to know the who and why while Gemini just need the overall story and they can fill in the details themselves lol

-can be critical and judgy, mostly of themselves though, they can project on others if they’re not self aware.

-health is important to them! They may read up on different dietary recipes that can improve help.

-they either love animals to a fault or run away from them. There’s no in-between 😆

-could be managers or have a lot of co-workers as friends

Libra/7h

-very elegant and put together. May wear cologne or nice smelling body wash

-very charming indidvial, know how to swoon you

-flirtyyyyyy

-don’t ask them where they want to go eat because they don’t know😫it’s best to just remember their favorite food and go from there Lol

-may be business oriented or wants to own a business

-partnership is very important to them. Libra is a people person so close relationships are ideal

-doesn’t like unfairness at all. If you’ve been mistreated, they are the type to defend you if they feel like you’re being treated unfairly. They’re very much social justice warriors

-having some sort of balance in there life is key!

- may also like fashion things

-family may also be important

Scorpio/8h

-intesnse stare. You may feel intimidated by them at first but really are sweethearts when you get to know them

-there really private people, they don’t trust others easily at all. Once you have their trust then then you have there heart forever

-power dynamics with friends, family, lover may be themes

-they have sexual appeal

-they may have strong jealous tendencies. If they are self aware and put in the work to address these feelings then they are fine not if their the crazy jealous type, that’s not good and leave

-money may also be a theme, shared finances

-loves the color black

-may work in mortuary science, funerals, graveyard, taxidermist, finances, psychology, therapy, detective, forensics

Sagittarius/9h

-may be from a different culture, city or country from you

-may work in overseas, as a judge, historian, in a church, as a pilot/airline employee , cruise ship, writer, professor

-loves traveling, may have a lot of knowledge on different cultural backgrounds

-religious or is interested in religion. They could study theology

-these people love adventures, no matter how big or small it is the adventure is. Going to target can be an adventure because they’ll make it one 😅

-love reading books especially books that educational or something that broadens their minds to different ideals and ethics

-May have some good lucking legs 🦵. They may have a history of doing track or love running/jogging

Capricorn/10h

-there may be an age gap and it doesn’t have to be a huge one. Maybe a few years older. They can also be very mature or has a lot of life experience for someone their age.

-very ambitious, they don’t climb ladders, they climb mountains and will make it to the top every time

-respect and status is important to them. It doesn’t always mean fame status but status in a “I just want people to look up to me in a respectful way.” They may be managers or bosses, they can just carry that energy as well

-they may look put together, clean clothes that matches, hair groomed. They just look like they have their life together even if it’s currently a mess😅

-they have a jawline that was crafted by the Gods 🤌🏾

-family is important to them as well! Building a solid foundation that can be passed on to the next generation is a huge thing for them. They may be the patriarch of the family

-very close with their grandparents especially grandma. If their still alive and well, You’ll probably meet their granny before their parents

Aquarius/11h

-may have started off as acquaintances, then really good friends, not thinking much about dating until feelings starts to develope

-yall could of met while on a dating app.

-this is a cute, adorable, quirky, and weird husband. They may have different interest than you but that’s what you love about them!

-these partners are the type who will give you your space if you need it, they’ll actually encourage it!

-they may know lots of people and you’ll meet lots of new people through them.

-rules? What’s that? Lol they don’t mind breaking a few if they feel the need too. These people definitely live their life by the beat of their own drum.

-may be involved with humanitarian work, tech, science, astrology

Pisces/12h

-your connection my feel “divine” or like this person was handpicked for you specifically. There’s a spiritual connection between you two. You may dream a lot about each other.

-may also be from an unknown or foreign culture or country.

-water related things may be a theme such as the beach/swimming in the ocean, taking a cruise, kayaking, yacht, traveling to a water based city like Venice, Italy

-spiritually discussions can be part of your relationship

-creativify such as singing, writing songs or filming could be careers. Also being a healer like a spiritual teacher

-you may worship the ground they walk on and put them on a pedestal. Just try to make sure you don’t wear colored glasses and see them for who they are right now and not who you want them to be

-telepathic connection

Any married people here? Does some of this describe your hubby?

I’m not married yet but when I do, I’ll reblog this and let yall know 🫡

#astrology #astrology community #knowledge #love astrology #astro observations #kakiastro #jupiter #jupiter in astrology #advanced astrology #beginner astrology #birth chart

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evergone · 3 months

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Lonely

Theodore Nott x Legilimens! reader

Warnings: Swearing.

Description: The reader has no friends until destiny (in the form of a boy named Theodore Nott) does everything to make her feel like she belongs.

In your first year, you were put in a dorm by yourself. You heard so many times that this was a gift — a sign of your good fortune, Professor Trelawney said — as everyone else in your year group had to share with someone else, but you, the introvert you were, were left to your own devices. Despite these assumptions, you quickly discovered that sharing a dorm was central to establishing friendships, and you spent the vast majority of your high school life friendless and alone.

At times, your boredom and your loneliness were so all-encompassing that you would read the minds of the first years who you knew wouldn’t be capable of sensing the imposition upon their thoughts. None of them thought of much. The boys were preoccupied with daydreams of girls and music (most of them were very into hip-hop as was the popular culture of the nineties), and the girls were nearly all stressing about parties and school work.

You were as much at ease with your situation as one could possibly be. You were of the mindset that if there was nothing you could do about it, why bother? Everyone had their cliques, their friends, and you were just the one to be left out. Your only goal was to get through the remaining year, then you would leave school, rent a house somewhere obscure, become a writer or an archaeologist or something else fun, and start your life over again. But it appeared that destiny had other plans.

Destiny, that supreme, omniscient, omnipotent concept that dwindled above and twisted within the interactions of all peoples, came to you in a free period you were spending in the library. The period before had been Charms, but that was of no consequence, neither was the fact that you had no more classes until later that night when you would make the journey to the Astronomy tower. You were sitting at a desk in the far left corner of the library, tucked between the pages of a number of books written by Z-named authors of some incredibly niche portion of history when Madam Pince’s high-pitched and troubled voice disturbed your rather unproductive attempts to finish your homework.

Ever bored, and hardly ever entertained, you leant to the side to see around the long bookcase. To your surprise, your eyes immediately met with a pair of blue ones. The irises were mere spots lost in the oceans of colour and they darted between you and Madam Pince, desperate for assistance. Behind those eyes, you could hear his mind asking for your help. If you was slightly smarter, you would’ve avoided this person’s gaze altogether and returned to your work.

“Madam Pince,” you said before allowing yourself a moment to think, and the frustrated librarian’s head turned to you in owl-like frustration, “Is everything okay?”

“Not at all,” she said, her voice an angry whisper, “Mr Nott should be in class, instead, he’s here violating my books!”

You glanced at the owner of the eyes. The green lining of his robe told you he was from your house, so you knew him even if only from afar. He hung out with the big group of your housemates most of the time, but you’d observed that he often sat by himself in the common room and the others intruded on his personal time. He was tall — probably six feet or so — and thin, with hair that was darker than blond, but most definitely not as dark as some of his friends’ hair. In the traditional sense, he was handsome, but you’d heard him speak in class before, and his voice bore an awkward intonation as if to speak was to curse which made him seem almost as nerdy as yourself. Despite this, every movement he made seemed elegant no matter his emotion, this was so inherent of a feature that even in that moment — when he was so clearly itching to turn and run — he was like a swan. His name was Theodore Nott, and you’d never spoken to him before.

“He’s supposed to be helping me with my homework,” you blurted out and Madam Pince quirked a pencilled-on eyebrow, “You know I’m terrible with, uh, Ancient Runes.” You both had that class together.

“Yeah,” nodded Theo as he stepped around her and stood by your side, “The professor said it was okay, I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.”

“As am I,” she frowned, “Tell her not to let this happen again.”

“Yes, Madam.”

With an irritated hum, she left the two of you alone. Theo turned to face you once she was out of earshot, and let out a sigh of relief before sitting down on the edge of the desk you were at.

“You’re in Slytherin,” he said obviously, “What year?”

You sucked in a breath of air, “Sixth. Yours.”

“Oh.”

His brain exploded with a million thoughts at once, his conscious and subconscious fighting for dominance. You could hear the embarrassment as he reprimanded himself for not knowing, and the confusion as he searched his memories for some sign that he had, in fact, seen you before.

“We have Potions together, and Astronomy, and Divination, and Ancient Runes, and… most of our classes, actually.” You shrugged without a care.

Theo cringed, “Sorry. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed you before.”

“I don’t really make my presence known,” you said, “So don’t worry about it.”

“I’m Theodore Nott,” he introduced himself, hand outstretched towards you, “What’s your name? I don’t want to make the same mistake next time.”

“Y/n L/n,” you said and shook his hand. It was soft and had no callouses at all.

“I best be off, I’m missing Arithmancy.”

“Boring.”

“You’re telling me,” he chuckled and left the library.

Over the course of that afternoon, you were unable to tear your mind away from Theo, and none of your homework was completed as a result. You didn’t go to dinner in the Great Hall. Your mind was much too preoccupied to eat.

At eleven-thirty, your alarm sounded, and you washed your face in preparation for Astronomy. Professor Sinistra demanded that all her students wore their uniforms for her classes, even if said classes were at midnight, but there wasn’t a single person who ever did that other than Hermione Granger. Everyone else tended to pull their robes overtop their pyjamas and call it a day, yourself included.

The lesson wasn’t all that interesting as Sinistra had the class chart some stars for the whole hour. However, you barely managed to get anything done because you were so distracted by Theo who was sitting peacefully at the opposite side of the tower amongst his friends. Including Theo, there were five of them (you didn’t include Crabbe and Goyle, who you always thought were less friends than goons, or Millicent Bulstrode or Tracey Davis, both of whom you knew were periodically hated by the others). Two girls, three boys.

Pansy Parkinson, Daphne Greengrass, Blaise Zabini, Draco Malfoy, and finally, Theo. At seventeen, his hair was a mostly consistent length of woody brown curls that sat fluffily on his head — if anything it was maybe a bit shorter on the sides. His eyebrows were thick as they always were, and in that particular Astronomy lesson, they were hard pressed against the tips of his long eyelashes that seemed almost too feminine to belong to him. By far the most intriguing and attractive aspect of Theo was, of course, the prominent mole on his left cheek that stole your attention away from a tight-lipped smile he had thrown your way.

Your immediate reaction was to blush and avert your eyes, but upon glancing back and noticing he was still staring, you offered him a short wave. He nodded in response before turning to Draco and saying something too far away for you to hear.

The next morning, or, perhaps, later that morning is the right expression, you went to breakfast in the Great Hall. Not having eaten dinner the night prior had left you so completely starving. You could’ve eaten a pegasus. You sat down on the edge of the Slytherin table by yourself, and loaded a plate with two eggs, about five slices of bacon (it very well could have been more, your memory isn’t perfect), a piece of toast, and a spoonful of baked beans.

“Where are all your friends?”

You looked up to see Theo standing over you chewing on the end of a breadstick.

“Why do you ask?” you questioned.

“Because you’re sitting here by yourself and it looks a bit pathetic, L/n,” laughed Theo teasingly.

“I don’t really have any friends.”

“Oh,” said Theo, “Sorry I asked.”

You shrugged, and as he glanced to the middle of the table you shoved as much of the baked beans into your mouth as possible, and quickly swallowed them. Merlin’s beard, you were so embarrassed.

“Give me a sec,” he said absentmindedly and you almost thought to use your Legilimency on him, “I’ll be right back.”

He placed his breadstick in front of you as if it were a deposit meant to reassure you that he’d be back, but you weren’t fazed either way. You watched as he jogged over to his group of friends and started chatting with them, but never sat down. With his right hand, he motioned back at you, and you glanced away as the rest of them turned to get a good look at you. Suddenly, you were concerned about how well your makeup was applied, and if your uniform looked good, and if there was still too much food on your plate. And then, all of them stood up with their plates, and followed Theo over to sit around you.

Most of them sat on the other side of the table, but Theo sat next to you, and Blaise by his other side. He introduced you to everyone: Goyle, Crabbe, Draco, Pansy, Daphne, Blaise, himself (“but you know me already,” he’d joked).

“It’s crazy to think we don’t know you despite being in the same house as you for the past six years,” said Daphne and Pansy elbowed her in the waist, sending her a death glare.

“Excuse her,” Pansy smiled awkwardly, “She’s a bitch.”

Your ears tickled at the word. You weren’t used to people calling those they were friends with such vulgar names… You weren’t used to the idea of friends at all.

Draco started rattling off about half-bloods and “that darn Potter,” spurring his friends into a rather heated conversation. They laughed and cackled loudly at each other, entirely easy around you as if it didn’t matter at all that they didn’t know you.

“Is this okay?” Theo asked you in a whisper once the group had moved on to another topic of conversation.

“Yes, this is nice,” you responded with a blush over your cheeks as you tried not to smile, “I don’t remember the last time I spoke to so many people.”

Theo’s eyes softened, glazed with a thin layer of water that informed you of his empathy. He felt your loneliness as if it was his own. The image of a young version of himself locked in his bedroom, wailing for his long deceased mother, flashed in his memories and seeped into your brain. An involuntary consequence of your extraordinary Legilimency talent.

When Saturday finally arrived, you slept in the whole morning. You only awoke at the sound of a knock on your door followed by a series of laughter at ten o’clock. You rolled out of bed, and for a moment stopped in horror of your hair in front of the mirror to quickly tie it up, and then opened the door.

You were surprised to see Pansy and Daphne there, but even more so when Daphne asked, “It’s Hogsmeade day, why aren’t you ready?”

“Huh?” You said, squinting at the light of the hallway.

“Theo sent us up to grab you, get some clothes on and let’s go,” said Pansy as she pushed past you and slipped into your room, Daphne hot on her heel, “Merlin’s beard, there’s absolutely nothing in here.”

“Yeah, uh, I’ve got it all to myself,” you muttered.

“Oh, that’s got to be terribly boring,” said Pansy.

Both of the girls made themselves at home as they rummaged through your drawers looking for something nice to wear. They were both dressed very well themselves, and it made you a little self-conscious to think they were going to see all your cheap clothes.

Pansy threw a sheer white shirt you didn’t know you had and a pair of bootleg jeans onto your bed while Daphne kicked over some matching joggers and a big white handbag you’d stolen from your mother.

“It is terribly boring,” you said.

As the three of you descended the stairs (after you got dressed, of course), you could already hear the sounds of masculine voices teetering on yelling at one another. One of them you knew to be Theo’s, and while you weren’t particularly familiar with them, you were inclined to assume the other two voices were Draco and Blaise. At the bottom step out of the girls’ dormitory hallway, you were proven correct when you saw them bickering like old men at a weekend golf tournament.

Draco was the first to notice the three of you, and his grey eyes lit up at the sight, “L/n, come settle an argument for us.”

You walked to join the small group and stood beside Theo, your handbag held meekly between your fingers, the nails of which had magenta paint flaking off them.

“Your mate Theo here—” Draco gestured to him with an uninterested hand, and you nearly laughed at the idea that Theo was your mate more than he was any of the others’— “Thinks that we ought to have a Legilimens registry like we have for Animagi. Frankly, I think it’s absolutely blasphemous that we even have one for Animagi; let them run wild, I say! What are your thoughts? Don’t mind the coincidental pun.”

“I’m afraid I’m a bit biased in this conversation,” you spoke quietly.

“How do you mean?”

The faces of the group stared at you with raised brows, and eyes that glistened with interest, and you were red from the attention.

“Well, I’m a Legilimens,” you admitted, “So, I’d have to disagree with you, Theo, for my own sake.”

“Are you really?” Theo asked to break the silence, and you nodded shyly.

“That’s so cool!” Daphne all but squealed, “What number am I thinking of?”

“Seven.”

She brightened with delight, and slapped Pansy’s arm, encouraging her to try your magic out like a little game. Pansy did just that, and you ended up going around the whole group, describing what they were thinking of. Eight. Twelve. Bakery. Seven. And Theo was questioning why you weren’t already on the way to Hogsmeade.

With that final thought, they grew disillusioned by the game, and you began the walk to Hogsmeade.

You’d never been into town with other people before, not that you went much at all. You usually stayed in your room, or wandered the halls, towering over the first and second years who weren’t allowed to go on weekend Hogsmeade trips yet. But there you were, forming one kink in a string of knots engaging in stimulating conversation about the current condition of the world, and even boring conversation about the homework for Defense Against the Dark Arts which, to you, seemed so thrilling even if only for the fact that it was verbal discourse in some form. You’d forgotten what it was to converse with others.

“Is there anywhere you need to go once we get there?” said Theo once you were nearing the end of the path and closing in on the town.

“I would have been awake before Daphne and Pansy got to my room if I planned to go anywhere today,” you joked and he smiled, “If you don’t mind, I might just go wherever you go.”

All he offered in response was a hum, and it left you thinking that you’d somehow made the air around you awkward. You’d later come to learn that he was just like that, never much of a talker if he thought the situation didn’t call for it.

Almost instantly after you passed sign that read ‘Welcome to Hogsmeade,’ the group dispersed, and Theo and yourself were left to do as you pleased.

Your companion, it seemed, didn’t have much he wanted to do either, so he led you to the Three Broomsticks. Kindly, he offered to pay for a butterbeer or two, but you didn’t think you were close enough for that, so you humbly told him it was alright. You sat in relative silence until our drinks arrived when Theo struck up some conversation.

“What have you been doing all these years by yourself, L/n?” He asked.

“I don’t know… Stuff…”

Theo laughed, and you laughed along with him. Your mind was frazzled by the alcohol, which kept refilling itself as you chatted on, and every so often you found thoughts that didn’t belong to you creeping into your mind, but you couldn’t place who they belonged to. It was just the odd word — sad, or pretty, or damned, or Y/n.

“Nott, are you and Malfoy good friends?” You asked.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t we be?”

“You seem to argue quite a bit.”

“He’s just like that,” said Theo, “Likes to start shit for no reason, that one.”

You giggled, and he grinned happily. Another person’s thoughts seeped into yours once again, that time a full sentence: ‘I love her laugh.’

The bell that hung over the entrance to the Three Broomsticks jingled, and though you couldn’t see it behind you, you watched as Theo’s expression morphed into one of guilt. You turned over your shoulder, and made out the figures of the four people who had come with you. Each of them were wearing a disappointed look on their faces.

“What in the name of Merlin are you two doing?” asked Pansy, her tone equal parts concerned and amused.

“Nothing,” said Theo.

“Yeah, if ‘nothing’ is code for drinking all day,” said Blaise, “Snape’s gonna have your asses for this.”

The others guided yourself and Theo back to the castle. Your hand was attached to Pansy’s forearm, Theo’s arm was slung over Draco’s shoulder. By the time you reached the Slytherin common room, You were sober enough to move on your own, and thus, started your way up to your dorm.

“Where are you going?” Theo asked curiously. He was far away enough that you couldn’t smell his breath which stunk like the vomit he’d expelled from his body halfway through the walk back.

“My room,” you said.

“No, no, no.” He shook his head and then closed his eyes from the dizziness. “It’s sleepover night. You have to come to our dorm, I made room for you on my bed.”

“I used to sleep there because he’s got the best mattress out of the three of them, but we figured you might prefer to sleep beside him than Blaise,” Daphne explained.

“Oh,” you breathed, “Do I need to contribute anything?”

You hadn’t had a sleepover before. You didn’t know the proper protocol. You assumed one would need to bring at least their pyjamas and a pillow, maybe some sweets of some kind to share. But Theo shook his head, and you were in the boys’ room before you knew what was happening.

The boys’ dorm room was the opposite of yours. So exquisitely full, and intricately messy. The three beds were all the same size as yours with dark green bed hangings, and each about a metre apart.

Closest to the door and to their small shared bathroom was Theo’s bed. On the right, beside the door to the bathroom, he had a tower of books that acted as a wall. His sheets were black, but his pillows and blanket cover were a dark oceanic blue-green. There wasn’t much room, but you spied a large mess under his bed which you assumed was what he’d removed from the bed to make space. On his bedside table sat a small lamp that provided the only light in the room before Daphne declared it was far too ‘dark and gloomy’ and turned on the central light.

On the floor, directly under the light, there was a large medieval-style rug that bore our house crest, and the others sat on it lazily, ushering you over.

“I need a smoke,” said Draco, and he walked over to the window where the ashtray was.

“Me too,” said Theo as he also moved to the window, “You want one, L/n?”

“I’ve never smoked before.”

“Then I shouldn’t get you in the habit,” he smiled, “It is such a terrible habit to have. Costs more than it’s worth.”

He pulled a box of cigarettes from his pocket and offered one to Draco, and they both lit them with their wands.

“Does it taste nice?” You asked.

“Not particularly,” said Theo.

“Why do you do it then?”

“You’re so curious, L/n,” Draco teased.

Theo playfully slapped him on the chest, “Leave her alone,” he said, and then turned to you, “I’m an addict.”

“That’s got to be bad for your lungs, Nott,” you frowned, suddenly concerned.

“Don’t you worry about him,” said Pansy, a knowing smirk on her lips that told you she was well aware you’d continue worrying.

The night went on much shorter than you wished for it to. You’d hoped, perhaps too eagerly, that none of you would ever sleep. Far too much did you enjoy being awake with those people who you’d met too late in yout life. You were truly happy to have met them because for all the simple joys you’d managed to discover in your time alone, none were half as happy as those grand joys you found with them

You all took turns getting changed in the small bathroom (Theo lent you a shirt to wear), then you all slid into our respective beds. You were nervous about sleeping beside Theo because, in truth, you didn’t really know him. But he placed a pillow between you, and only faced you for a moment — a moment in which there was a look in his eyes that you couldn’t decipher, a moment in which you attempted to read his mind all too late — and then he kissed his fingers, and he touched them to your head, and he turned the other way.

“Did you sleep well?” Theo said once he noticed you were awake the next morning.

“I’ve never slept beside someone before,” you explained nervously, “I think it was a decent experience. I hope I didn’t move around too much.”

“Not at all, L/n,” he said.

A hum escaped your mouth, and you were acutely aware that Theo was watching you as you stared up at the roof of his room. Painted on it, Sistine Chapel-style, was a beautiful lush green forest.

“L/n. It’s so formal to call you by your surname.” Theo let out a disapproving tut.

“I call you by yours?” You said as you looked at him from the corner of your eye.

“You’re the only one who does.”

“It’s your name!” You raised your voice slightly before lowering it again so as to not wake any of the others up. “What else am I supposed to call you?”

“Theo,” he said, “That’s what everyone calls me.”

“And what false-name shall I bear, then?”

He chuckled quietly as he finally sat up. He raised his long arms in a stretch that exposed the bottom of his stomach and his V-line, and you glanced away until he returned his arms down to a cross in front of his chest. You took notice of his hair, which was awfully messy in the morning, and you thought he should get his hands on a bonnet to take care of it, but then you thought he probably shouldn’t. A silk pillow would’ve done him wonders, though.

“A nickname for Y/n,” said Theo, “How about Y/n/n?”

“I suppose that will do,” you said as nonchalantly as possible, but inside you were screaming with excitement. A nickname! You’d never had a nickname before.

“Oh, you suppose, do you?” he teased.

Your amused smile betrayed your insincere attempt at a pout, “Don’t make fun of me.”

“Don’t let anyone else call you Y/n/n, alright?” said Theo, and you crossed your brows in question, “I want it to be just an us-thing. They can call you your full name at most.”

He was extraordinarily bossy. But it was sweet. Heartwarming, even.

“Wait, but if everyone calls you Theo, I want something just for us, too!” You blushed at how overly familiar that sounded, but Theo’s rosy cheeks filled you with conviction. “How about Teddy?”

Giddily, he smiled at you, “Say it to me in a sentence.”

You frowned, but obeyed, “I like being your friend, Teddy. — How was that?” He nodded happily, “You say one for mine, now.”

He thought for a moment, trying to decide on a sentence to say.

“Read my mind, Y/n/n.”

Always, he had to boss you around. But, again, you really didn’t care. It was just nice to have someone to boss you around. To think that only at the beginning of that week, you had no friends at all… Now you had so many, and all thanks to destiny. All thanks to your Teddy.

A breath, and then you forced your way into his mind. There was a picture there waiting for you, a memory from Monday. A memory of you, except, you seemed to glow. You’d seen yourself in a million mirrors and memories over the course of your life, but never had you looked so beautiful. And then, there were words.

“I’d like to go on a date with you, Y/n/n.”

Your eyes snapped open as you left his thoughts to belong to him alone.

“What?” You asked, your ears red.

“I think you’re absolutely brilliant, Y/n/n. Please, go on a date with me?” Theo smiled.

He inched closer until your noses touched and you could barely tell each others’ features apart. Each of you were just blurs of colour.

“I’d love to go on a date with you, Teddy.”

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milf-harrington · 6 months

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i read a fic yesterday (return of the king) where Steve swapped with Eddie at the last second at the end of s4 and ended up being the one who died and had to be left behind and then he came back as a vampire and it just got my brain TICKING.

So role-reversal AU where steve is the one who comes back basically kas-ified as is the common trope with eddie, but where eddie goes to steve, steve goes to robin.

lets say, for funsies, that they managed to kill vecna and max only ended up hospitalised for a broken elbow and a twisted ankle (from falling on it), so everyone has the time and space to grieve.

Steve’s death hits Robin the hardest because he was her person. He was her i-wish-we-could-just-merge-into-one-being. Her ride or die. Her soulmate. And he’d been taken from her, torn apart and left to rot in the very world he’d tried so hard to protect her from.

The others give her space to let her mourn quietly in her bedroom, dressed in steve’s clothes and listening to his music like if she just tried hard enough she could still merge them together and let him use her lungs to breathe, her heart to pump his blood, her head to share his thoughts. that she could single handedly go from a me to a we.

And then, one day, Robin starts acting weird. She doesn’t know the Wheeler’s phone number and on her way to find it in the phone book, she found the Munson’s first, and when Eddie picks up it’s too a very chipper Robin asking for a lift to the shops where she proceeds to buy an alarming amount of red meat and refuses to answer any questions.

And she’s just- happy. She’s weird and happy and keeps calling Eddie to ask him about Dungeons and Dragons lore and if he can take her to the library or to the butcher and if he can let her borrow his jumper please? I get cold easily. And then she just keeps stealing clothes, from everyone. Sometimes she asks, sometimes she’ll just take a jacket off of the back of a chair and act like nothing happened, sometimes she just sneaks off to go rooting through washing baskets.

Then comes the day she invites Eddie over, probably a week or so after her initial journey into Weird-Ville, nervously rambling about nothing right up until she closes the front door behind them and runs into Eddie’s back because Eddie’s just spotted Steve-fucking-Harrington peering at him from around the corner.

Apparently, a not-exactly-dead-anymore Steve crawled through Robin’s window one night and has since taken up residence underneath her bed.

“He was kinda- not all there, at first.” She tells him, chopping a steak into cubes and dropping them into a blender. Steve, winged and fanged and tailed, leans against the counter and watches her with sleepy eyes. “But we’ve been working on it.”

After the initial pants-shitting shock of having her dead best friend re-appear as a creature of the upside down, Robin had simply accepted it and moved on. Happy to have Steve back no matter what it looked like.

And what it looked like was blending raw meat, and reading together in the bathroom to bring back his ability to talk, and stealing clothes for the veritable nest Steve was building in her closet. The next step in her plan to re-domesticate her best friend, had been to introduce him to another person: Eddie, evidently.

Steve promptly spends 5 minutes being a feral little creature, scenting Eddie within an inch of his life like he’d done to Robin, and then attempting to plant him in his nest like a little ornament.

Just. idk. feral kas!steve seeking out robin for safety, who slowly re-introduces him to his humanity and then his future boyfriend.

#stobin #platonic soulmates #also a bit of #steddie #as a treat (for me)#monster steve harrington #steve harrington #robin buckley #eddie munson #this has been plaguing me all day #fic ideas

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luveline · 8 months

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𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐨𝐥 𝐢𝐟 𝐢 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝? | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧

Eddie asks you out on your very first date, indulging you in huge philly cheesesteaks, a vanilla milkshake (with two straws), a largely neglected bucket of popcorn, and a sugary first kiss. requested here. shy fem!reader, 3.2k

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

I'm actually going to die here, you think morosely.

This was a very bad idea on your part, and perhaps a worse one on his. What possessed Eddie —ripped jeaned, silver-chained, aspiring heavy metal rockstar Eddie— to ask you on a date? Perhaps you'd appeared more formidable outside of Hawkins library than you usually did.

You were in a particularly bad mood after a chilly fall afternoon spent checking the quality of the returns, and the prospect of walking home in the cold was a dismal one. You'd been glaring at nothing when a big, hulking bucket of a van slowed to a crawl beside you, thumping bass leaking from the closed window. It rolled down, the music quieting with it, and out came a head of inky dark curls.

"Hey, sweetheart," Eddie said, pet name rolling around in his mouth, "you heading home? Do you want a ride? It's a long walk."

Somewhere between the library and your driveway, Eddie asked you on a date. You genuinely can't remember what you talked about or how it happened, your adrenaline high enough you could've used it to climb Everest. You do remember the quiet way he'd asked, as though he was waiting for an impending rejection, and his smile bordering goofy when you breathed out, "Yeah, okay."

You rub at the seam of your cream sweater over and over, the pad of your thumb numb. The wind runs through you, ruffling the skirt of your black dress against your thighs. I'm an idiot, you think. Hypothermia might kill you if your racing heart doesn't.

Eddie holds a similar sentiment, "What the fuck are you doing out here?"

You flinch embarrassingly hard. He wasn't there a moment ago. Eddie cusses and holds his hands out to you before you can slip backward off of the low brick wall you'd been waiting on, his fingers shooting tingles down into the epidermis of your skin like wild golden sparks where they grab you, hoisting you up into a more secure standing position.

"Fuck, I'm so sorry. Like, really really sorry, I didn't mean to scare you, just– it's like, minus ten out here? What are you doing?"

"I–" You give him a more petrified look than you mean to. "You said to meet you here?"

Does he not want you here? Was it a joke?

Eddie laughs out of the side of his mouth like he's holding a cigarette between his lips. "Well, yeah, but I meant inside. I've been waiting for you at the table." His amusement dissipates as he feels the chill emanating from your clothes. "Jesus, I'm sorry. Are you ready to come in?"

Minus ten was dramatic. It's a solid 30 Fahrenheit, but the cold wind makes it feel colder. As soon as you enter the diner you're warm, heat nibbling at your fingers as the blood starts to pump. Eddie takes you to the side of the restaurant away from the noise of the games machines and the bathrooms, slipping into a booth where a worn paperback book is waiting.

"I left that in case someone decided to steal our table."

"What if they stole your book?" you ask, sliding into the booth seat opposite.

"They'd love it," Eddie says. He leans forward with a mischievous air about him. "It's about a bullied teenage girl who loses her shit and gets psychic powers. I think she's gonna kill someone." He blinks. "Not that that's cool."

"It's just a book, right? You're not a murderer."

You wonder why the fuck you'd say something like that, but he nods his agreement breezily. "Exactly."

"Plus," you add, eager to say something he'll like, "it's hard not to root for the underdog."

His smile twitches with an emotion you can't name. "Exactly," he says again.

A waitress with thick rings of eyeliner comes to take your order. She has a sunny attitude, like Eddie in that way, an exterior some might say was intimidating and a bright smile. You're nervous from the get go and you have a cliche worry, watching Eddie interact with her from the corner of your eye.

"For you?" she asks you.

You stammer. What you'd thought about on the walk here this evening can be pinpointed into two simple lines of inquiry —what should you say to Eddie, and what should you say to the waitress. Shy to the point of aching, you'd rehearsed your order ten times, but all that comes out is hot air.

"Um," you say, wishing you'd paid more attention to what Eddie said rather than how he looked at the waitress, "could I have, uh. Just the same? As he had, please."

"Are you sure?" Eddie asks, nothing but patience in his tone. "Do you like pink lemonade?"

You don't want anything carbonated tonight, nauseous enough. "Um, the same but with water instead, please."

The waitress writes a short sentence with a big flourish. "Water," she reads, giving you and Eddie each a glowing smile. "No worries, I'll bring your drinks right out, food in twenty at most."

"Thank you," you and Eddie say together, in starkly different tones.

Eddie waits for her to leave before he shucks off his jacket. He puts his elbows on the table and runs his knuckles up and down the length of the opposite forearm, smudging the whorls of his inky tattoos, the skinny silver chain around his wrist catching the light. "You know, I don't mind doing the talking, if you don't want to."

You can't describe the embarrassment that bites at you, then. "It's– I'm sorry, I just couldn't think of what I wanted–"

"I'm sorry," Eddie interrupts. "I should've told her to come back in a minute, I didn't give you chance to read the menu. I swear that's the only time I'll make a dick move tonight."

You cough. He grimaces, teeth sinking into the pink of his bottom lip as he laughs it off. "Not like that. Or, not not like that. No dick moves," he says, "I just wanted to talk to you over a table rather than that pillar of a desk in the library."

"It's a really tall desk."

"It's so tall! I get that they want us to have somewhere to put the books but they have to go down to you guys anyways when you stamp 'em."

"I don't know what the idea was behind them," you say.

"Maybe they hired a bunch or very small librarians initially," Eddie says. He spies the waitress approaching with your drinks and leans back to accommodate her. He thanks her, but as soon as she leaves he's staring at your tap water with critical eyes. "It looks a little cloudy. You want my lemonade, instead?"

"No, it's okay," you say, though drinking it feels like a bad idea. There's a whirlpool of scum at the top like clouds circling a mountain peak, ice cubes drifting in slow laps beneath.

"I can take it back–"

"Please don't," you say, "I'd be so embarrassed, it's only water."

"I get you. Maybe I can get you something else, then. I'd say we should get hot cocoa but it's weird having hot cocoa with cheesesteaks." Eddie knocks the table. "I'm really sorry I asked you here."

Your heart could be likened to a balloon popped by a sharp pin. You knew he'd regret asking you, knew it was too good to be true–

"We should've gone somewhere nice. Like Enzo's or Bullock's. Hey, we even could've gone into Indianapolis. And I have to say sorry double 'cos I should've asked you if I could give you a ride, I really messed it up."

"It's not messed up," you say. "It's not."

Eddie smiles at you, his most stripped back to date.

Things are awkward and you theorise that it's your fault, but Eddie doesn't let you flounder in it. He asks questions, he says kind things. You have no choice but to relax and laugh at his ill-conceived jokes. You almost choke on your sub and he goes as far as to say, "Hey, you even make choking look good," having leapt up to pat your back. It's too much but it's weirdly nice at the same time. It's almost worth dying if it means Eddie's gonna rub your back with a big, unflinching hand.

He wanders off when he's sure you're alive and you catastrophize: choking is far from attractive. He saw the way your nose wrinkled and your jaw went soft in your coughing and jumped ship. You dab the tears (from choking, though they could change at any moment) away with a napkin, sniffling. Your throat hurts and your sandwich doesn't look as appetising now.

"Here," Eddie says, placing a tall glass in front of you grandly.

"What is it?" you ask, though it could only be one thing.

"Vanilla milkshake. Benny uses full fat cream, it's basically ice cream and nothing else. Is that okay?"

You take a sip through a red and white striped straw without answering, the cold soothing your raw throat. A second straw stabs you in the cheek.

"That ones for me," Eddie jokes.

You swear you're gonna catch fire, putting the milkshake down with a thunk. "Oh," you say.

"I'm kidding," he says.

"No, I mean, if you want to share–"

You're offering in the interest of being polite, but the look on Eddie's face reminds you of the more romantic connotations. "You sure?" he asks.

You could say no. "Yeah. Of course."

Between sips, you talk. Your conversation begins to feel like the unwinding a tight knot, unravelling defences you were unaware of, like a tapestry you never agreed to shaken out. Sure, you're shy, but you're interesting, and you have things to say. Eddie's eager to hear them; he won't stop pulling on the thread.

Your throat tickles intermittently with scratchy pain. Eddie tucks a rather lustrous curl behind his ear, exposing a small stud earring and a hoop behind it.

"I never noticed you have your ears pierced," you say, leaning forward to take another sip.

Eddie pulls his straw from the glass to hit at yours teasingly, the slope of his eyebrows arching steeper. "Then you should look at me more often," he says. He stabs his straw into the glass and meets your eyes. To the outside observer, you're sure you look like partners getting gooey. "Notice anything else new?"

Your pulse tangles in on itself, a snag in the thread. "Um, well…" You glance over his pale cheeks, their gentle caress of freckles. "You have freckles… and," —there, nestled between his lashes like a tiny dotted star— "a beauty mark under your eye."

He doesn't smile, but some sweet softness plays in his eyes, his lashes kissing as they close ever so slightly. "You're prettier up close," he says quietly. "I didn't think you could get much prettier, but I've never been this close before, I guess."

You take another sip to avoid further mortifying yourself with a stammering answer, but Eddie has a similar idea, leaning in. More awkward to pull apart, you share your drink and try not to bump his nose. The drink slurps and crackles as you finish it off together. Sitting back with twin smiles, awkward and flushed and not knowing what else to say, you fluster. There's a lot of stuff you want to ask him, but now he's finished his food and the milkshake is empty, you might not have time.

"Did you, like, wanna catch a movie or something?" Eddie asks, sounding for a second not quite as confident as he appears.

You like metalhead Eddie, but you're starting to love this earnest version of him too.

"Yeah, I'll see a movie with you," you say quickly.

"Yeah? I know that's weird to plan more date in the middle of the date, I'm not trying to pressure you."

"I've never been on a date before, so. This is setting the precedent."

"The precedent," he says. "For future dates?"

Is he hopeful? You open your mouth without thinking. "With you."

His lips purse to one side, tamping down a big smile. Your cheeks hurt from how much you've smiled tonight. Is it always like this? Being with someone, dating, is it always unnervingly pleasant? You're eager to find out, and Eddie's eager to show you.

"Let me go track down our waitress and we can probably get to the Hawk before the seven thirty," he says, clambering sideways out of the booth.

You and Eddie are fifteen minutes late for a slasher movie, but you get there. Dark, two lone seats at the back are your only options, and you cram into them together with a frankly ridiculously huge bucket of popcorn to share. Eddie keeps whispering even when it's quiet and ticking off your rowmates, but he's being so sweet on you that you forget where you are. You forget to worry about what people are thinking.

It's bliss.

"Look at that," Eddie says, a handful of popcorn to his lips. "Ew, that's bloody. Shit, sweetheart, don't look at that."

Sweetheart. "What do you think that is?" you whisper.

"The fake blood? Isn't it pig's blood?"

"Is that legal?"

Eddie almost drops the popcorn as something super gross happens, a silver flash and a spray of sticky orange movie blood coating the protagonist. "Holy fuck," he says, much too loudly as he puts the popcorn in your lap and covers your eyes.

You laugh in surprise, "Woah, wait a second!"

Someone shushes you loudly (and deservedly) from the row in front.

"Sh, we're at the movies!" Eddie whisper-shouts. "Don't be inconsiderate."

You peel his hand from your eyes. It doesn't drop entirely, long fingers slipping slowly down your cheek, turning your face to his. He's close, the nature of the small seats and your low conversation, his skin glowing with a red-pink and dappled white as the movie plays to your left.

"Can I kiss you?" he whispers.

On the walk to Benny's, your mind had drifted to the fantasy of a kiss. Eddie and his hands, the small silver bands of his rings and their heavier signets, how he'd offer to drive you home, walk you to your door, and peck you chastely in goodbye. He'd smell like his cologne that you tend to notice when he returns his borrowed books on Saturday mornings, chamomile and something deeper you've never been able to identify, no matter how long he stood there chatting. His lips would feel solid and cold from the weather, and here's where you stopped yourself from thinking any further, blood rushing to your wind-bitten cheeks.

It's not so simply condensed, here.

"I've never kissed anyone before," you whisper.

"I'll have to set a good precedent, then," he says, rubbing the hollow of your under eye tenderly. "Or you can say no. That's okay, too."

You shake your head, "I want you to."

The eagerness that's been simmering behind his eyes all night rears as he ducks in for a kiss. It's not what you're expecting, but it isn't bad; it's lots of things, his hand on your face and your elbow, your hands vying for him in startled delight, the popcorn between your knees tipping dangerously to the side as your lips give under his.

He doesn't smell like chamomile at first, but hairspray. He presses against the seam of your lips and only as they part, forcing you to suck in a breath through your nose, do you smell it on him, close now. The cologne must linger on his shirt.

He pulls away to shush you gently but urgently, Don't get us kicked out, it seems to say.

And he's kissing you again. Nothing heavy, charged all the same, the barest taste of sweet popcorn shared between you. His hand does half the work, the tracing of his fingertips and the soft line they draw as he slots them behind your ear puttyifying you, like jelly in his warm palm. You make an unsure sound and he pulls away a second time, sugary brown eyes widened in concern.

"Bad?" he whispers.

"Am I doing it right?" you ask.

The concern becomes adoring. You feel like you've been injected with manic butterflies, having a guy like Eddie looking at you like that. "You're doing it super right," he says, so quietly you can barely hear him. "I'd tell you practise makes perfect 'cos I'm dying to do it again, but it was already perfect. You lying to me?"

"No, of course I'm–"

"I was kidding," he says, his side pressed heavily to the back of his chair as he drops his hand to your elbow casually.

"Oh. I knew that."

He pats your arm, sympathetic, a tad condescending but he's hot enough to get away with it like this, lips kissed rosy and a glossy black curl falling into his eyes.

You look down at his lips. Eddie doesn't make you beg, but he does gesture you forward, your hand landing atop his thigh as you angle up for another kiss. It's unlike you, but it's such a rush of feeling, you don't give your hokey-pokey brain time to consider the things you'd usually worry about.

That being said, you pause just before your lips connect. You close your eyes too hard, head listing to the side self-consciously.

Eddie must see it, whispering reassurances with a rough scratch, "Hey, it's okay. You can kiss me. You worry a lot for such a pretty girl, you know that?" He takes your hand. "Don't overthink it."

"I can't," you say.

"Take the night off. Let me worry…" His breath fans over your lips. "I'll take the lead," he suggests, closing the short gap between you.

Your hand goes limp in his.

—

The flowers are delivered to your desk sometime in the mid-afternoon. Pearly white lilies with green spots creeping toward the soft edges. Your chest yawns open and your lips curl into a smile like you've been hooked, rubbing a thick petal between your thumb and your forefinger.

There's a long note folded and tied to one of the stems.

Y/N,

I am so, so sorry. So sorry. I am the sorriest boy who has ever lived, and I would love to make it up to you. Please call me when you get the flowers and tell me if they're a sufficient apology, or don't call me and I'll send you more. I know you said it was fine, but still.

Yours, Eddie Munson.

P.S. did the flashlight guy have to be that mean? He pretty much blinded us with that thing. And did he have to make fun of my jacket?

P.P.S I promise I will get you unbanned from the Hawk. Best date ever, yeah?

You'll call him. Getting kicked out was a joint effort, after all, and you really want him to kiss you dizzy again, even if you found it hard to look at him on the drive home.

Maybe if he kisses you enough, you'll forget how it felt to be shepherded out of the movie theatre like a common criminal.

You drop the note between the pages of your current read with a sigh. "Best date ever," you say.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

thank you so much for reading! i really hope you enjoyed ♡ if you did, please considering reblogging, it means the world and makes a difference :D

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson oneshot #eddie munson scenario #eddie munson drabble #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fanfiction #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things #stranger things fic #stranger things x reader

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punisheddonjuan · 3 months

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How I ditched streaming services and learned to love Linux: A step-by-step guide to building your very own personal media streaming server (V2.0: REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION)

This is a revised, corrected and expanded version of my tutorial on setting up a personal media server that previously appeared on my old blog (donjuan-auxenfers). I expect that that post is still making the rounds (hopefully with my addendum on modifying group share permissions in Ubuntu to circumvent 0x8007003B "Unexpected Network Error" messages in Windows when transferring files) but I have no way of checking. Anyway this new revised version of the tutorial corrects one or two small errors I discovered when rereading what I wrote, adds links to all products mentioned and is just more polished generally. I also expanded it a bit, pointing more adventurous users toward programs such as Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr and Overseerr which can be used for automating user requests and media collection.

So then, what is this tutorial? This is a tutorial on building and setting up your own personal media server running Ubuntu and using Plex (or Jellyfin) to not only manage your media but to stream your media to your devices both locally at home, and remotely anywhere in the world where you have an internet connection. It’s a tutorial on how by building a personal media server and stuffing it full of films, television and music that you acquired through indiscriminate and voracious media piracy ripping your own physical media to disk, you’ll be free to completely ditch paid streaming services altogether. No more will you have to pay for Disney+, Netflix, HBOMAX, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Peacock, CBS All Access, Paramount+ Crave or any other streaming service that is not named Criterion Channel (which is actually good) to watch your favourite films and television shows, instead you’ll have your own custom service that will only feature things you want to see, and where you have control over your own files and how they’re delivered to you. And for music fans, Jellyfin and Plex both support music collection streaming so you can even ditch the music streaming services. Goodbye Spotify, Youtube Music, Tidal and Apple Music, welcome back unreasonably large MP3 collections (or FLAC collections).

On the hardware front, I’m going to offer a few options catered towards various budgets and media library sizes. The cost of getting a media server going using this guide will run you anywhere from $450 CDN/$325 USD at the entry level to $1500 CDN/$1100 USD at the high end. My own server cost closer to the higher figure, with much of that cost being hard drives. If that seems excessive maybe you’ve got a roommate, a friend, or a family member who would be willing to chip in a few bucks towards your little project if they get a share of the bounty. This is how my server was funded. It might also be worth thinking about the cost over time, how much you spend yearly on subscriptions vs. a one time cost of setting a server. Then there's just the joy of being able to shout a "fuck you" at all those show cancelling, movie hating, hedge fund vampire CEOs who run the studios by denying them your money. Drive a stake through David Zaslav's heart.

On the software side I will walk you through, step-by-step, in installing Ubuntu as your server's OS, configuring your storage in a RAIDz array with ZFS, sharing your zpool to Windows with Samba, running a remote connection into your server from your Windows PC, and getting started with Plex/Jellyfin Media Server. Every terminal command you will need to input will be provided, and I will even share with you a custom #bash script that will make the used vs. available drive space on your server display correctly in Windows.

If you have a different preferred flavour of Linux (Arch, Manjaro, Redhat, Fedora, Mint, OpenSUSE, CentOS, or Slackware etc. et. al.) and are aching to tell me off for being basic using Ubuntu, this tutorial is not for you. The sort of person with a preferred Linux distro is the sort of person who can do this sort of thing in their sleep. Also I don't care. This tutorial is intended for the average home computer user. This is also why we’re not using a more exotic home server solution like running everything through Docker Containers and managing it through a dashboard like Homarr or Heimdall. While such solutions are fantastic and can be very easy to maintain once you have it all set up, wrapping your brain around Docker is a whole thing in and of itself. If you do follow this tutorial and enjoyed putting everything together, then I would encourage you to maybe go back in a year’s time, do your research and and redo everything so it’s set up with Docker Containers.

This is also a tutorial aimed at Windows users. Although I was a daily user of OS X for many years (roughly 2008-2023) and I've dabbled quite a bit with different Linux distributions (primarily Ubuntu and Manjaro), my primary OS these days is Windows 11. Many things in this tutorial will still be applicable to Mac users but others (e.g. setting up shares) you will have to look up yourself. I doubt it would be difficult to do so.

Nothing in this tutorial will require feats of computing expertise from you. All you will need is a basic level of computer literacy (e.g. an understanding how directories work, being comfortable in settings menus) and a willingness to learn a thing or two. While this guide may look overwhelming at a glance, this is only because I want to be as thorough as possible so that you understand exactly what it is you're doing and you're not just blindly following steps. If you half-way know what you’re doing, you’ll be fine if you ever need to troubleshoot.

Honestly, once you have all the hardware ready it really shouldn't take you more than an afternoon to get everything up and running.

(This tutorial is just shy of seven thousand words long so the rest is under the cut.)

Step One: Choosing Your Hardware

Linux is a light weight operating system, there's almost no bloat and there are recent distributions out there right now that will run perfectly fine on a fourteen year old i3 with 4GB of RAM. Running Plex/Jellyfin media server isn’t very resource intensive either in 90% of use cases. We don’t an expensive or powerful system. So there are several options available to you: use an old computer you already have sitting around but aren't using, buy a used workstation from eBay, or what I believe to be the best option, order an N100 Mini-PC from AliExpress or Amazon.

Note: If you already have an old PC sitting around that you’ve decided to use, fantastic, move on to the next step.

When weighing your options, do keep a few things in mind: the number of people you expect to be streaming simultaneously at any one time, the resolution and bitrate of your media library (4k video takes a lot more processing power than 1080p) and most importantly, how many of those clients are going to be transcoding at any one time. Transcoding is what happens when the playback device does not natively support direct playback of the source file. This can be for a number of reasons, such as the playback device's native resolution, or because the source file was encoded in a video codec unsupported by the playback device.

Ideally we want any transcoding to be performed by hardware, which means we should be looking for an Intel processor with Quick Sync. Quick Sync is a dedicated core on the CPU die designed specifically for video encoding and decoding. This makes for highly efficient transcoding both in terms of processing overhead and power draw. Without these Quick Sync cores, transcoding must be brute forced through software which takes up much more of a CPU’s processing power and takes much more energy. But not all Quick Sync cores are created equal, and you need to keep this in mind if you've decided either to use an old computer or to shop on eBay for a used workstation.

Any Intel processor after second generation Core (Sandy Bridge circa 2011) has Quick Sync cores. It's not until 6th gen (Skylake), however, that those cores support H.265 HEVC. Intel’s 10th gen (Comet Lake) processors support 10bit HEVC and HDR tone mapping. And the recent 12th gen (Alder Lake) processors give you AV1 decoding. As an example, while an 8th gen (Kaby Lake) i5-8500 will be able to transcode a file encoded with H.265 through hardware, it will fall back to software transcoding when given a 10bit H.265 file. So if you’ve decided to use that old PC or to look on eBay for an old Dell Optiplex keep this in mind.

Note 1: The price of old workstations varies wildly and fluctuates frequently. If you get lucky and go looking shortly after a workplace has liquidated a large number of their workstations you can find deals for as low as $100 for a barebones system, but generally an i5-8500 workstation with 16gb RAM will cost you somewhere in the area of $260 CDN/$200 USD.

Note 2: The AMD equivalent to Quick Sync is called Video Core Next, and while it's fine, it's not as efficient and not as mature a technology, only becoming available with first generation Ryzen and it only got decent with their newest CPUs, we want something cheap.

Alternatively you could completely forgo having to keep track of what generation of CPU is equipped with Quick Sync cores with support for which codecs, and just buy an N100 mini-PC. For around the same price or less than a good used workstation you can pick up a Mini-PC running an Intel N100 processor. The N100 is a four-core processor based on the 12th gen Alder Lake architecture and comes equipped with the latest revision of the Quick Sync. They offer astounding hardware transcoding capabilities for their size and power draw and otherwise perform equivalent to an i5-6500. A friend of mine uses an N100 machine as a dedicated retro emulation gaming system. These are also remarkably efficient chips, they sip power. In fact, the difference between running one of these and an old workstation could work out to hundreds of dollars a year in energy bills depending on where you live.

You can find these Mini-PCs all over Amazon or for a little cheaper over on AliExpress. They range in price from $170 CDN/$125 USD for a no name N100 with 8GB RAM to $280 CDN/$200 USD for a Beelink S12 Pro with 16GB RAM. The brand doesn't really matter, they're all coming from the same three factories in Shenzen, go for whichever one fits your budget or has the features you want. 8GB RAM should be enough, Linux is lightweight and Plex only calls for 2GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD is more than enough for what we need as a boot drive. 16GB RAM might result in a slightly snappier experience, especially with ZFS, and going for a bigger drive might allow you to get away with things like creating preview thumbnails for Plex, but it’s up to you and your budget.

The Mini-PC I wound up buying was a Firebat AK2 Plus with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. It looks like this:

Note: Be forewarned that if you decide to order a Mini-PC from AliExpress, note the power adapter it is shipping with. The one I bought came with an EU power adapter and I had to supply my own North American power supply. Thankfully this is a minor issue as a barrel plug 30W/12V/2.5A power adapters are plentiful and can be had for $10.

Step Two: Choosing Your Storage

Storage is the most important part of our build, and the most expensive. Thankfully it’s also easily upgrade-able down the line.

For people with a smaller media collection (4TB to 8TB), a limited budget, or who will only ever have two simultaneous streams running, I would say that the most economical course of action would be to simply buy a USB 3.0 8TB external HDD. Something like this Western Digital or this Seagate external drive. One of these will cost you somewhere around $200 CDN/$140 USD. Down the line you could add a second external drive or replace it with a multi-drive RAIDz set up as detailed below.

If a single external drive the path for you, move on to step three.

For people who have larger media libraries (12TB+), who have a lot of media in 4k, or care about data redundancy, the answer is a RAID array featuring multiple HDDs in an enclosure.

Note: If you are using an old PC you already have as your server and have the room for at least three 3.5" drives, and as many open SATA ports on your mother board you won't need an enclosure, just install the drives in your old case. If your old computer is a laptop or doesn’t have room for more internal drives, then I would suggest an enclosure.

The minimum number of drives needed to run a RAIDz array is three, and seeing as RAIDz is what we will be using, you should be looking for an enclosure with hree to five bays. I think that four disks makes for a good compromise for a home server. Regardless of whether you go for a three, four, or five bay enclosure, do be aware that in a RAIDz array the space equivalent of one of the drives will be dedicated to parity at a ratio expressed by the equation 1 − 1/n i.e. in a four bay enclosure equipped with four 12TB drives configured in RAIDz we would be left with a total of 36TB of usable space (48TB raw size). The reason for why we might sacrifice storage space in such a manner will be explained in the next section.

A four bay enclosure will cost somewhere in the area of $200 CDN/$140 USD. You don't need anything fancy, nothing with hardware RAID (RAIDz is done entirely in software) or even USB-C. An enclosure with USB 3.0 will perform just fine. Don’t worry about bottlenecks, a mechanical HDD will be limited by the speed of its mechanism long before before it will be limited by the speed of a USB connection. I've seen decent looking enclosures from TerraMaster, Yottamaster, Mediasonic and Sabrent.

When it comes to selecting the drives, as of this writing, the best value (dollar per gigabyte) are those in the range of 12TB to 20TB. I settled on 12TB drives myself. If 12TB to 20TB drives are out of your budget, go with what you can afford, or look into refurbished drives. I'm not sold on the idea of refurbished drives but some people swear by them.

When shopping for harddrives, look for drives that are specifically designed for NAS use. Drives designed for NAS use typically have better vibration dampening and are designed to be active 24/7, they will also often use CMR (conventional magnetic recording) rather than SMR (shingled magnetic recording) which nets them a sizable performance bump. Seagate Ironwolf and Toshiba NAS drives are both well regarded. I would avoid Western Digital Red drives at this time. WD Reds were a go to recommendation up until earlier this year when it was revealed that they feature firmware that will throw up false SMART warnings telling you to replace the drive at the three year mark when there might be nothing at all wrong with that drive, and when it will likely be good for another six, seven or more years.

Step Three: Installing Linux

For this step you will need a USB thumbdrive of at least 6GB in capacity, a way to make it into bootable media, and an .ISO of Ubuntu.

First download a copy of Ubuntu desktop (for best performance we could download the Server release, but for new Linux users I would recommend against using the server release as having a GUI can be very helpful, not many people are wholly comfortable doing everything through command line). 22.04.3 Jammy Jellyfish is the current Long Term Service release, this is the one to get.

Download the .ISO and then download and install balenaEtcher on your Windows PC, balenaEtcher is an easy to use program for creating bootable media, you simply insert your thumbdrive, select the .ISO you just downloaded, and it will create a bootable installation media for you.

Once you've made a bootable media and you've got your Mini-PC (or old PC/used workstation) in front of you, hook it in directly to your router with an ethernet cable, and plug in the HDD enclosure, a monitor, mouse and a keyboard. Now turn that sucker on and hit whatever key it is that gets you into the BIOS (typically ESC, DEL or F2). If you’re using a Mini-PC check to make sure that the P1 and P2 power limits are set correctly and not arbitrarily lowered, my N100's P1 limit was set at 10W, a full 20W under the chip's power limit. Also make sure that the RAM is running at the advertised speed. My Mini-PC’s RAM was set at 2333Mhz out of the box when it should have been 3200Mhz. Once you’ve done that, key over to the boot order and place the USB drive first in the boot order. Then save the BIOS settings and restart.

After you restart you’ll be greeted by Ubuntu's installation screen. Installing Ubuntu is really straight forward, select the "minimal" installation option, as we won't need anything on this computer except for a browser (Ubuntu comes preinstalled with Firefox) and Plex Media Server/Jellyfin Media Server. Also remember to delete and reformat that Windows partition! We don't need it.

Step Four: Installing ZFS and Setting Up the RAIDz Array

Note: If you opted for just a single external HDD skip this step and move onto setting up a Samba share.

Once Ubuntu is installed it's time to configure our storage by installing ZFS to build our RAIDz array. ZFS is a "next-gen" file system that is both massively flexible and massively complex. It's capable of snapshot backup, self healing error correction, ZFS pools can be configured with drives operating in a supplemental manner alongside the storage vdev (e.g. fast cache, dedicated secondary intent log, hot swap spares etc.). It's also a file system very amenable to fine tuning. Block and sector size are adjustable to use case and you're afforded the option of different methods of inline compression. If you'd like a very detailed overview and explanation of its various features and tips on tuning a ZFS array check out these articles from Ars Technica. For now we're going to ignore all these features and keep it simple, we're going to pull our drives together into a single vdev running in RAIDz which will be the entirety of our zpool, no fancy cache drive or SLOG.

Open up the terminal and type the following commands:

sudo apt update

then

sudo apt install zfsutils-linux

This will install the ZFS utility. Verify that it's installed with the following command:

zfs --version

Next, it's time to check that the HDDs we have in the enclosure are healthy, running and recognized. We also want to find out their device IDs and take note of them:

sudo fdisk -1

Note: You might be wondering why some of these commands require "sudo" in front of them while others don't. "Sudo" is short for "super user do”. When and where "sudo" is used has to do with the way permissions are set up in Linux. Only the "root" user has the access level to perform certain tasks in Linux. As a matter of security and safety regular user accounts are kept separate from the "root" user. It's not advised (or even possible) to boot into Linux as "root" with most modern distributions. Instead by using "sudo" our regular user account is temporarily given the power to do otherwise forbidden things. Don't worry about it too much at this stage, but if you want to know more check out this introduction.

If everything is working you should get a list of the various drives detected along with their device IDs which will look something like this: /dev/sdc. You can also check the device IDs of the drives by opening the disk utility app. Jot these IDs down we'll need them for our next step, creating our RAIDz array.

RAIDz is similar to RAID-5 in that instead of striping your data over multiple disks, exchanging redundancy for speed and available space (RAID-0), or mirroring your data writing two copies of every piece (RAID-1), it instead writes parity blocks across the disks in addition to striping, this provides a balance of speed, redundancy and available space. If a single drive fails, the parity blocks on the working drives can be used to reconstruct the entire array as soon as a replacement drive is added.

Additionally, RAIDz improves over some of the common RAID-5 flaws. It's more resilient and capable of self healing, checking for errors against a checksum. It's more forgiving this way, and it's likely that you'll be able to detect when a drive is on its way out well before it fails. A RAIDz array can survive the loss of any one drive.

Note: While RAIDz is indeed resilient, if a second drive fails during the rebuild, you're fucked. Always keep backups of things you can't afford to lose. This tutorial, however, is not about proper data safety.

To create the pool, use the following command:

sudo zpool create "zpoolnamehere" raidz "device IDs of drives we're putting in the pool"

For example, let's creatively name our zpool "mypool". It will consist of four drives which have the device IDs: sdb, sdc, sdd, and sde. The resulting command would look like this:

sudo zpool create mypool raidz /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde

If for example you bought five HDDs and wanted more redundancy, and are okay with three disks worth of capacity, we would modify the command to "raidz2" and the command would look something like the following:

sudo zpool create mypool raidz2 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde /dev/sdf

An array configured like this would be able to survive two disk failures and is known as RAIDz2.

Once the zpool has been created, we can check its status with the command:

zpool status

Or more concisely with:

zpool list

The nice thing about ZFS as a file system is that an array is ready to go immediately after creating the pool. If we were to set up a traditional RAID-5 array using mbam, we'd have to sit through a potentially hours long process of reformatting and partitioning the drives. Instead we're ready to go out the gates.

The zpool should be automatically mounted to the filesystem after creation, check on that with the following:

df -hT | grep zfs

Note: If your computer ever loses power suddenly, say in event of a power outage, you may have to re-import your pool. In most cases, ZFS will automatically import and mount your pool, but if it doesn’t and you can't see your array, simply open the terminal and type sudo zpool import -a.

By default a zpool is mounted at /"zpoolname". The pool should be under our ownership but let's make sure with the following command:

sudo chown -R "yourlinuxusername" /"zpoolname"

Note: Changing file and folder ownership with "chown" and file and folder permissions with "chmod" are essential commands for much of the admin work in Linux, but which we won't be dealing with extensively in this guide. If you'd like a deeper tutorial and explanation you can check out these two guides: chown and chmod.

You can access the zpool file system through the GUI by opening the file manager (the Ubuntu default file manager is called Nautilus) and clicking on "Other Locations" on the sidebar, then entering the Ubuntu file system and looking for a folder with your pool's name. Bookmark the folder on the sidebar for easy access.

Your storage pool is now ready to go. Assuming that we already have some files on our Windows PC we want to copy to over, we're going to need to install and configure Samba to make the pool accessible in Windows.

Step Five: Setting Up Samba/Sharing

Samba is what's going to let us share the zpool with Windows and allow us to write to it from our Windows machine. First let's install Samba with the following commands:

sudo apt-get update

then

sudo apt-get install samba

Next create a password for Samba.

sudo smbpswd -a "yourlinuxusername"

It will then prompt you to create a password. Just reuse your username password for simplicity's sake.

Note: if you're using just a single external drive replace the zpool location in the following commands with wherever it is your external drive is mounted, for more information see this guide on mounting an external drive in Ubuntu.

After you've created a password we're going to create a shareable folder in our pool with this command

mkdir /"zpoolname"/"foldername"

Now we're going to open the smb.conf file and make that folder shareable Enter the following command.

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

This will open the .conf file in nano, the terminal text editor program. Now at the end of smb.conf add the following entry:

["foldername"]

path = /"zpoolname"/"foldername"

available = yes

valid users = "yourlinuxusername"

read only = no

writable = yes

browseable = yes

guest ok = no

Ensure that there are no line breaks between the lines and that there's a space on both sides of the equals sign. Next step is to allow Samba traffic through the firewall:

sudo ufw allow samba

Finally restart the Samba service:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

At this point we'll be able to access to the pool, browse its contents, and read/write to it from Windows. But there's one more thing left to do, Windows doesn't natively support the ZFS file systems and will read the used/available/total space in the pool incorrectly. Windows will read available space as total drive space, and all used space as null. This leads to Windows only displaying a dwindling amount of "available" space as the drives are filled. We can fix this! Functionally this doesn't actually matter, we can still write and read to and from the disk, it just makes it difficult to tell at a glance the proportion of used/available space, so this is an optional step but one I recommend (this step is also unnecessary if you're just using a single external drive). What we're going to do is write a little shell script in #bash. Open nano with the terminal with the command:

nano

Now insert the following code:

#!/bin/bash CUR_PATH=`pwd` ZFS_CHECK_OUTPUT=$(zfs get type $CUR_PATH 2>&1 > /dev/null) > /dev/null if [[ $ZFS_CHECK_OUTPUT == *not\ a\ ZFS* ]] then IS_ZFS=false else IS_ZFS=true fi if [[ $IS_ZFS = false ]] then df $CUR_PATH | tail -1 | awk '{print $2" "$4}' else USED=$((`zfs get -o value -Hp used $CUR_PATH` / 1024)) > /dev/null AVAIL=$((`zfs get -o value -Hp available $CUR_PATH` / 1024)) > /dev/null TOTAL=$(($USED+$AVAIL)) > /dev/null echo $TOTAL $AVAIL fi

Save the script as "dfree.sh" to /home/"yourlinuxusername" then change the ownership of the file to make it executable with this command:

sudo chmod 774 dfree.sh

Now open smb.conf with sudo again:

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Now add this entry to the top of the configuration file to direct Samba to use the results of our script when Windows asks for a reading on the pool's used/available/total drive space:

[global]

dfree command = home/"yourlinuxusername"/defree.sh

Save the changes to smb.conf and then restart Samba again with the terminal:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

Now there’s one more thing we need to do to fully set up the Samba share, and that’s to modify a hidden group permission. In the terminal window type the following command:

usermod -a -G sambashare “yourlinuxusername”

Then restart samba again:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

If we don’t do this last step, while everything would appear to work fine, and you will be able to see and map the drive from Windows and even begin transferring files, you'd soon run into a lot of frustration. As every ten minutes or so a file would fail to transfer and you would get a window announcing “0x8007003B Unexpected Network Error”. This window would require your manual input to continue the transfer with the file that was next in the queue. It will reattempt to transfer whichever files failed the first time around at the end, and 99% of the time they’ll go through, but this is a major pain in the ass if you’ve got a lot of data you need to transfer and want to step away from the computer for a while. It turns out samba can act a little weirdly with the higher read/write speeds of RAIDz arrays and transfers from Windows, and will intermittently crash and restart itself if this group option isn’t changed. Inputting the above command will prevent you from ever seeing that window.

The last thing we're going to do in this part before switching over to our Windows PC is grab the IP address of our Linux machine. Enter the following command:

hostname -I

This will spit out this computer's IP address on the local network (it will look something like 192.168.0.x), write it down. It might be a good idea once you're done here to go into your router settings and reserving that IP for your Linux system in the DHCP settings. Check the manual for your specific model router on how to access its settings, typically it can be accessed by opening a browser and typing http:\\192.168.0.1 in the address bar, but your router may be different.

Okay we’re done with our Linux computer for now. Get on over to your Windows PC, open File Explorer, right click on Network and click "Map network drive". Select Z: as the drive letter (you don't want to map the network drive to a letter you could conceivably be using for other purposes) and enter the IP of your Linux machine and location of the share like so: \\"LINUXCOMPUTERLOCALIPADDRESSGOESHERE"\"zpoolnamegoeshere"\. Windows will then ask you for your username and password, enter the ones you set earlier in Samba and you're good. If you've done everything right it should look something like this:

You can now start moving media over from Windows to the share folder. It's a good idea to have a hard line running to all machines. Moving files over Wi-Fi is going to be tortuously slow, the only thing that’s going to make the transfer time tolerable (hours instead of days) is a solid wired connection between both machines and your router.

Step Six: Setting Up Remote Desktop Access to Your Server

After the server is up and going, you’ll want to be able to access it remotely from Windows. Barring serious maintenance/updates, this is how you'll access it most of the time. On your Linux system open the terminal and enter:

sudo apt install xrdp

Then:

sudo systemctl enable xrdp

Once it's finished installing, open “Settings” on the sidebar and turn off "automatic login" in the User category. Then log out of your account. Attempting to remotely connect to your Linux computer while you’re logged in will just result in a black screen!

Now get back on your Windows PC, open search and search for "RDP". A program called "Remote Desktop Connection" should pop up, open this program as an administrator by right-clicking and selecting “run as an administrator”. You’ll be greeted with a window, in the field marked “Computer” type in the IP address of your Linux computer. Press connect and you'll be greeted with a new window and a prompt asking for your username and password. Enter your Ubuntu username and password here.

If everything went right, you’ll be logged into your Linux computer. If the performance is too sluggish, adjust the display options, lowering the resolution and colour depth do a lot to make the interface feel snappier.

Remote access is how we're going to be using our Linux system from now, outside of some edge cases like needing to get into the BIOS or upgrading to a new version of Ubuntu. Everything else from performing maintenance like a monthly zpool scrub (this is important!!!) to checking zpool status and updating software can all be done remotely.

This is how my server lives its life now, happily humming and chirping away on the floor next to the couch in the corner of the living room.

Step Seven: Plex Media Server/Jellyfin

Okay we’ve got all the ground work finished and our server is almost up and running: we’ve got Ubuntu up and running, the storage is primed, we’ve set up remote connections and sharing, and maybe we’ve moved over some of favourite movies and TV shows.

Now we need to decide on the media server software to use which will stream our media to us and organize our library. For most people I’d recommend Plex, it just simply works 99% of the time. That said, Jellyfin has a lot to recommend it by too even if it is rougher around the edges, some people even run both simultaneously, it’s not that big an extra strain. I do recommend doing a little bit of your own research into the features each platform offers. But as a quick run down, consider some of the following points.

Plex is closed source and is funded through PlexPass purchases while Jellyfin is open source and entirely user driven. This means a number of things, for one, Plex requires you to purchase a “PlexPass” (purchased as a one time lifetime fee $159.99 CDN/$120 USD or paid for on a monthly yearly subscription basis) for access to certain features, like hardware transcoding (and we want hardware transcoding) and automated intro/credits detection and skipping, while Jellyfin offers this for free. On the other hand, Plex supports a lot more devices than Jellyfin and updates more frequently. That said Jellyfin's Android/iOS apps are completely free, while the Plex Android/iOS apps must be activated for a one time cost of $6 CDN/$5 USD. Additionally the Plex Android/iOS apps are vastly unified in UI and functionality across platforms, offering a much more polished experience, while the Jellyfin apps are a bit of a mess and very different from each other. Jellyfin’s actual media player itself is more fully featured than Plex's, but on the other hand Jellyfin's UI, library customization and automatic media tagging really pale in comparison to Plex. Streaming your music library is free through both Jellyfin and Plex, but Plex offers the PlexAmp app for dedicated music streaming which boasts a number of fantastic features, unfortunately some of those fantastic features require a PlexPass. If your internet is down, Jellyfin can still do local streaming, while Plex can fail to play files. Jellyfin has a slew of neat niche features like support for Comic Book libraries with the .cbz/.cbt file types, but then Plex offers some free ad-supported TV and films, they even have a free channel that plays nothing but Classic Doctor Who.

Ultimately it's up to you, I settled on Plex because although some features are pay-walled, it just works. It's more reliable and easier to use, and a one-time fee is much easier to swallow than a subscription. I do also need to mention that Jellyfin does take a little extra bit of tinkering to get going in Ubuntu, you’ll have to set up process permissions, so if you're more tolerant to tinkering, Jellyfin might be up your alley and I’ll trust that you can follow their installation and configuration guide. For everyone else, I recommend Plex.

So pick your poison: Plex or Jellyfin.

Note: The easiest way to download and install either of these packages in Ubuntu is through Snap Store.

After you've installed one (or both), opening either app will launch a browser window into the browser version of the app allowing you to set all the options server side.

The process of adding creating media libraries is essentially the same in both Plex and Jellyfin. You create a separate libraries for Television, Movies, and Music and add the folders which contain the respective types of media to their respective libraries. The only difficult or time consuming aspect is ensuring that your files and folders follow the appropriate naming conventions:

Plex naming guide for Movies

Plex naming guide for Television

Jellyfin follows the same naming rules but I find their media scanner to be a lot less accurate and forgiving than Plex. Once you've selected the folders to be scanned the service will scan your files, tagging everything and adding metadata. Although I find do find Plex more accurate, it can still erroneously tag some things and you might have to manually clean up some tags in a large library. (When I initially created my library it tagged the 1963-1989 Doctor Who as some Korean soap opera and I needed to manually select the correct match after which everything was tagged normally.) It can also be a bit testy with anime (especially OVAs) be sure to check TVDB to ensure that you have your files and folders structured and named correctly. If something is not showing up at all, double check the name.

Once that's done, organizing and customizing your library is easy. You can set up collections, grouping items together to fit a theme or collect together all the entries in a franchise. You can make playlists, and add custom artwork to entries. It's fun setting up collections with posters to match, there are even several websites dedicated to help you do this like PosterDB. As an example, below are two collections in my library, one collecting all the entries in a franchise, the other follows a theme.

My Star Trek collection, featuring all eleven television series, and thirteen films.

My Best of the Worst collection, featuring sixty-nine films previously showcased on RedLetterMedia’s Best of the Worst. They’re all absolutely terrible and I love them.

As for settings, ensure you've got Remote Access going, it should work automatically and be sure to set your upload speed after running a speed test. In the library settings set the database cache to 2000MB to ensure a snappier and more responsive browsing experience, and then check that playback quality is set to original/maximum. If you’re severely bandwidth limited on your upload and have remote users, you might want to limit the remote stream bitrate to something more reasonable, just as a note of comparison Netflix’s 1080p bitrate is approximately 5Mbps, although almost anyone watching through a chromium based browser is streaming at 720p and 3mbps. Other than that you should be good to go. For actually playing your files, there's a Plex app for just about every platform imaginable. I mostly watch television and films on my laptop using the Windows Plex app, but I also use the Android app which can broadcast to the chromecast connected to the TV. Both are fully functional and easy to navigate, and I can also attest to the OS X version being equally functional.

Part Eight: Finding Media

Now, this is not really a piracy tutorial, there are plenty of those out there. But if you’re unaware, BitTorrent is free and pretty easy to use, just pick a client (qBittorrent is the best) and go find some public trackers to peruse. Just know now that all the best trackers are private and invite only, and that they can be exceptionally difficult to get into. I’m already on a few, and even then, some of the best ones are wholly out of my reach.

If you decide to take the left hand path and turn to Usenet you’ll have to pay. First you’ll need to sign up with a provider like Newshosting or EasyNews for access to Usenet itself, and then to actually find anything you’re going to need to sign up with an indexer like NZBGeek or NZBFinder. There are dozens of indexers, and many people cross post between them, but for more obscure media it’s worth checking multiple. You’ll also need a binary downloader like SABnzbd. That caveat aside, Usenet is faster, bigger, older, less traceable than BitTorrent, and altogether slicker. I honestly prefer it, and I'm kicking myself for taking this long to start using it because I was scared off by the price. I’ve found so many things on Usenet that I had sought in vain elsewhere for years, like a 2010 Italian film about a massacre perpetrated by the SS that played the festival circuit but never received a home media release; some absolute hero uploaded a rip of a festival screener DVD to Usenet, that sort of thing. Anyway, figure out the rest of this shit on your own and remember to use protection, get yourself behind a VPN, use a SOCKS5 proxy with your BitTorrent client, etc.

On the legal side of things, if you’re around my age, you (or your family) probably have a big pile of DVDs and Blu-Rays sitting around unwatched and half forgotten. Why not do a bit of amateur media preservation, rip them and upload them to your server for easier access? (Your tools for this are going to be Handbrake to do the ripping and AnyDVD to break any encryption.) I went to the trouble of ripping all my SCTV DVDs (five box sets worth) because none of it is on streaming nor could it be found on any pirate source I tried. I’m glad I did, forty years on it’s still one of the funniest shows to ever be on TV.

Part Nine/Epilogue: Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr and Overseerr

There are a lot of ways to automate your server for better functionality or to add features you and other users might find useful. Sonarr, Radarr, and Lidarr are a part of a suite of “Servarr” services (there’s also Readarr for books and Whisparr for adult content) that allow you to automate the collection of new episodes of TV shows (Sonarr), new movie releases (Radarr) and music releases (Lidarr). They hook in to your BitTorrent client or Usenet binary newsgroup downloader and crawl your preferred Torrent trackers and Usenet indexers, alerting you to new releases and automatically grabbing them. You can also use these services to manually search for new media, and even replace/upgrade your existing media with better quality uploads. They’re really a little tricky to set up on a bare metal Ubuntu install (ideally you should be running them in Docker Containers), and I won’t be providing a step by step on installing and running them, I’m simply making you aware of their existence.

The other bit of kit I want to make you aware of is Overseerr which is a program that scans your Plex media library and will serve recommendations based on what you like. It also allows you and your users to request specific media. It can even be integrated with Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr so that fulfilling those requests is fully automated.

And you're done. It really wasn't all that hard. Enjoy your media. Enjoy the control you have over that media. And be safe in the knowledge that no hedgefund CEO motherfucker who hates the movies but who is somehow in control of a major studio will be able to disappear anything in your library as a tax write-off.

#long post #streaming #plex #tutorial #linux #piracy #major works

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