#NOT TO MENTION. i have sent a total of like 5 messages in that server. and all of them were at LEAST half a year ago.

[moonstandardtime]

im 17

[yoichichi]

Modern!au Jean Best Friend Headcannons

Modern!au Jean Kirschtein x bestfriend!reader

a/n: i want to be bestie’s with Jean so bad! I jus couldn’t stop thinking about it so please enjoy some headcannon’s of what I think it’d be like to be buddies with Jean! I might make a part 2 someday to add onto these cause I have so much more to say but I had to stop myself before I wrote a full fledged essay sdkjalkfjbajfb, let me know if you guys are interested! Or if you jus wanna come in my inbox and talk with me about Jean Kirstein, I’m always free to do that. Anyways, enjoy!

gif not mine, credit to owner

Ok, I had a dream about Jean being my bestie and I have not stopped thinking about it since then LMAO

Ok, so for starter’s, I truly believe he would be such a good friend like the type to be listening to you in a group conversation and encouraging you to go on when you feel like no one is paying attention

“I’m listening :)”

Or the type to stop next to you while you tie your shoe and wait and just keeps talking to you

VERY much big brother energy, like I feel like he’d have that sincerity that bestie Armin would have but he’d be a little more of the type to always be looking out for you and being a tad overprotective at times, but more on that later back to attentive Jean :)

This man is SO attentive it’s unreal

Bad day? Yeah he could tell before you mentioned it and he’s buying you your favorite snack and driving you around until you talk about it constantly giving you the 👀😗 look

Feeling lonely? You never get the chance

This man is CONSTANTLY blowing up your phone with notifications from snapchat, instagram, tiktok, and facebook messenger if he’s feeling particularly clingy - it’s usually just some strange sticker of a fucking koala or somethin like “hi :)”

SNAPCHAT

You guys don’t have “streaks” but you still have a streak from how often he’s snapchatting you

Most of the time it’s just a video of his face where he slowly zooms in cause he’s bored in class - the amont of snapchat’s you got from him where you can hear is Econ professor lecturing in the background is in the hundred’s at this point

The other times it’s usually Connie and Eren acting like absolute idiot’s while him and Armin are behind the camera like 😐 - they usually end with Armin sighing and stopping them from doing something probably a little illegal

INSTAGRAM

Ok you have a groupchat for studying purposes with all your buddies but if it’s specifically Jean messaging you it’s most likely cause Eren said something stupid and Jean needs someone to laugh with him (yes, you, Jean, Sasha, and Connie do have a separate groupchat where you bully Eren - but it’s with love so it’s ok)

TIKTOK

This man will send you a whole FYP but won’t let you open any of them until he’s with you, then y’all scroll through them together on one of your phones

the type to look at you when you’re on a tiktok he sent you that he thought was really funny to see your reaction

Sends you SO many “challenge” tiktoks that he’s adamant on doing with you

You know the one where someone puts their arm in between the other person’s legs and tries to lift them? He was persistent with that one

“I’m literally jacked c’mon you’ll be fine, I just want to know if I can do it. I mean I know I can, but, like, you know? Just c’mon.”

Yes you gave in, no you didn’t fall, yes Jean wouldn’t shut up about how “yolked” he was for the next 15 minutes

If you guys posted it people are definitely asking if you’re a couple and he just replies to every single one with “no” HE SEEMS SO INTENSE PLS

Ok you’re his best friend? Then you’re definitely close with his family. Like, two holidays every year type close.

You learned to drive when he did cause you’re his bestie and you guys should totally learn together (he was nervous and needed support ok)

PLAY FIGHTING

While I don’t necessarily see him as someone who would playfully bully too much, he is a fighter LMAO

And I’m talking like fucked up sibling fighting

It always starts off “fun” it’s totally a little passive aggressive and then someone smacks a little too hard or throws an elbow that wasn’t needed and next thing you know someone’s in a headlock

If he has you in a headlock he WILL try to tickle you until you borderline piss yourself - until he realizes said piss would get on him and then he’ll let you go like 😎 yeah. I won

If you have him in a headlock PLS take a snapchat if you can and send it to Mikasa

He will pout for like 10 minutes and then get over it when she replies with a black screen and “lol what a dork”

Once you guys are done fighting - cause SOMEONE takes it too far - you just go on your phones until someone peeks over and you’re both like lol hi :),,, are you hungry? I think I still have some pizza rolls :)

Endless hoodie supply from all the sleepovers and the following cold mornings

He is always buying new ones cause he just feels wrong asking for them back? Like, is that his brand new nike hoodie? Yes.

BUT you’re wearing it and clearly you need it if you didn’t bring a hoodie so fine, you can have it, he’ll just buy another one he’s a little bit of a rich boy it’s ok

Although he is wondering where tf his other 6 hoodies you stole went

Late night study sessions in your dorm buildings lounge area - it’s almost embarrassing how often an RA is waking the two of you up to go to your rooms instead of sleeping on the couch and floor

Jean ALWAYS brings an extra water bottle for you in case you forgot one

You’ve definitely stolen your fair share of notes from him - they’re just so easy to understand!

They’re not exactly pretty but they’re just naturally organized into subsections and all the keywords are underlined with a little definition in the margin - if he’s feeling a little spicy he might even add a glossary at the end of his notes asjnffna;irje

Sometime’s he gets too nervous to ask for a girls number and then when you convince him to do it he’s all stuttering and stumbling over his words but he still gets it and he’s convinced it’s ‘cause you’re his lucky charm - really it’s just cute to see Jean all huffy and his ears getting all red while he says some stupid pick up line that he’s immediately apologizing for and now he’s rambling and - oh the girl is shoving something into his hand

“Y/n!! Look!! I got her number!”

Yeah, see Jean acting all cocky for the rest of the day like he got it cause he was smooth and NOT cause he was an adorable flustered mess

He does not like giving out your number if anyone asks him LMAO

He’s just like ,,,,, and why couldn’t you ask them yourself? He just hates it LMAO cause you’re great and if this idiot can’t ask you yourself then they don’t deserve you, they should be CONFIDENT in his mind

BUT he does make it mandatory you tell him everything there is to know about ANY current crush, love interest, fling, anything

Not just cause he likes the gossip but cause he feels like he has to approve - there’s the big bro energy we were talking about

BULLYING EREN BULLYING EREN BULLYING EREN

PLS his favorite thing is to play games with Eren and you and whoever else cause you two will always gang up on Eren and he gets so mad and Jean finds it HILARIOUS

The three of you and Connie were all in the same Minecraft server once and you and Jean just could NOT stop making your dog’s attack Eren and blowing up his house

He was getting so heated and Jean and Connie were laughing so hard it sounded like their mics were blown

Eren had to pull his headset off and step away so he could take a 5-minute break cause he just couldn’t handle it - especially with the three of you dying at how mad he got

Let Eren spell something wrong in the group chat on Instagram or mispronounce a word,,, Jean is on him SO fast and you’re there right behind him - it’s becoming Jean’s favorite hobby and sometimes he says it’s his favorite part of being your best friend LMAO

———————

Ahhhh!! Bestie Jean, hand him over please 🤲🏼🤲🏼‼️‼️ i jus wanna bully eren with him so bad 😭 let me know what you guys think!! Or just come to chat :) love you guys!! And let me know if you’d like to be added to my taglist!

-🐇out

taglist: @plutowrites

[prettywordsyouleft]

To Be Continued - Part 1

Summary: As an author, you had created Brian Kang for your current trilogy series to represent the ultimate man that everyone would love, along with Charli Evers - your female protagonist. What you hadn’t expected was for him to find a way out of the story and begin shaping up your world instead

Pairing: Brian Kang x female writer (ft. Park Sungjin)

Genre: writer au / romance / fantasy

Warnings: fictional characters coming to life / a bit of angst here and there / Sungjin as a cop (or does that only affect me?) >_>

A/N: this story idea was created from receiving two prompts for Brian in the YouxIdol drabble game I was completing this year. In this part, you can find prompt #186, “You don’t have to answer right away. I’d wait an eternity for you.”

Word count: 2252

Preview | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Epilogue

Brian cupped her cheek tenderly with one hand, smoothing out any worried lines across her forehead with the other. He smiled encouragingly, tears threatening to spill from his eyes with his heightened emotions. “You don’t have to answer right away.”

“I don’t?” Charli breathed back, knowing that her response to his question was already formed. Yet it wasn’t the right time for any love confessions right now. Despite this, her answer rushed to the back of her throat, where she tried to swallow it back down repeatedly.

Brian already knew and nodded softly to let her know of this. “I’d wait an eternity for you.”

“Isn’t that a bit too cringe-worthy?” you wondered, pausing to read the words upon the screen with a frown. It wasn’t out of character for Brian Kang and Charli Evers. And it certainly wasn’t the first cheesy line you’d thrown into Captivated either. Still, you mulled over the scene a little longer, deciding whether or not it should be removed.

“What would Charli do in response?” you asked out loud to no one in particular, a flurry of action from your fingers taking place immediately. You followed the scene until completion before taking a break, switching out of the word document and over to your Discord server.

Smiling as you scrolled through the new comments about the upcoming sequel you were in the later stages of writing for Brian and Charli, you let out a rattle of a cough from your chest, groaning at your illness dampening your mood.

“I’m trying to finish this final chapter tonight,” you spoke out into the universe, casting your eyes to the heavens for effect. “I’ve battled through this cold for a week now. It won’t take me down just yet!”

Reaching forward for more cold and flu medicine, you swallowed the capsules down with a painful gulp of water and then felt your forehead. It was hotter than before, though you waved it off as you answered a couple of messages and returned to the final part of the story.

Captivated was the second story in your new trilogy series since your last series Destined had become an overnight sensation. When you sat down to pen the soulmate idea into something more than thoughts in your head, you hadn’t expected the tale to touch so many people over the world. Nor had you believed you would follow it up with To Love You, Forever, And Always either.

You originally felt that Destined was the reason why Brian and Charli’s first story Encounter was easily shared around. The protagonists had their own charms though and you could tell the fan base for this series was different from the last. They were just as eager, however, to find out when the pair would shake free from the star-crossed lovers’ trope and finally give in to the evident love they had for one another.

“Part three it’ll be,” you surmised proudly and somewhat exhaustedly after typing The End onto the electronic manuscript. Leaning back in your chair, you finally allowed yourself to succumb to the illness plaguing you. In a moment of disillusion, your mind conjured up Brian standing before you with concern etched in his eyes. You let the novel scene play out in your head, wishing he was actually here to help you out of your writing office, down to your bedroom and tuck you into bed.

Swinging gently from side to side in your desk chair, you hummed with delight. Brian Kang was your biggest self-indulgence character. You had created Park Jinyoung in Destined to infuriate your main protagonist, but Brian was the ultimate fictional guy. He was playful and kind, caring and thoughtful. He knew when Charli needed him to stand up in her weak moments, and he fought for what he felt was right even when all odds were against him. He also allowed Charli to see his vulnerability and his honesty, gaining him many fans around the world. And if all that wasn’t enough, Brian Kang was incredibly attractive.

You had really created the holy grail of a dream man.

Laughing to yourself in your sick-induced state, you smiled lazily. “Dream men are just that, Y/N. Brian Kang would never exist in this world.”

You nodded to yourself, agreeing with the proclamation, feeling more single in the moment as you did so. It was funny really, you were a successful author of Young Adult romance novels and yet you hadn’t experienced the touch of a man, let alone any ardent confessions since your university days.

“Right, it’s time for bed,” you decided before your mood plummeted further into despair. However, your limbs felt too heavy to move and so you simply closed your eyes once more, hoping a little nap would help you regain some energy to head off to bed later on.

When you opened your eyes next, you found yourself in your darkened bedroom, smiling gently at bringing yourself to bed sometime during the night that you couldn’t remember. Sitting up slowly, you allowed your gaze to adjust to the dim morning light filtering through the small gap in the curtain, before reaching onto your nightstand for your phone.

You blinked. Instead of finding the device, you saw a kitchen bowl and face cloth resting over the edge of it.

Did you bring that with you in the middle of the night? Surely if you had been attempting to bring down your own fever, the face cloth would have been strewn somewhere in among your bedding after falling asleep with it, not neatly placed back upon the side of the bowl. Looking beyond that, you found a bottle of water with a third of the liquid missing. You did vaguely remember sipping on some water overnight, and that eased your mind from your initial confusion.

Shaking your head, and swinging your legs over the side of your bed, you placed your feet in your slippers before padding back into the office in search of your phone. Maybe you had help overnight after all, and you wanted to check if your mother had come over at your request. She had done that one year when you caught a nasty virus and couldn’t cope on your own anymore. Motherly love was definitely needed, and now that you had completed your obligations with Captivated and sent it off to your editor Lily, you would have no restrictions on who entered your creative space.

“Huh,” you said when you saw your laptop screen still open. You had a habit of closing the screen every night after turning the device off and approached it now with some confusion, trying to recollect what you last did the night before. Nothing rose to the surface immediately and you reached for your phone, blindly hitting speed dial on your mother’s number. And when her greeting rang down the receiver, you were more than perplexed.

“Hey, did you come by last night?”

“No, why?” she answered and then gasped. “Y/N, you sound awful! Did you keep working even though you were sick?!”

“You didn’t come here?” you repeated, fingertips reaching for the sticky note upon the computer screen. “Maybe it was Lily.”

“Lily is out of the country isn’t she?” your Mum reminded and you blinked several times before focusing enough to read the note you held.

 You shouldn’t have worked so hard to complete it! Your health is important too. How will I cope if you get any worse? Make sure you rest up well and drink a lot of fluids. I need my best writer in tip top shape to see where my world continues.

I made you breakfast. It’s not much, but make sure you eat before you sit down at this desk, hm?

- B.

 Dropping the note, along with letting your mouth fall ajar momentarily, you stuttered out a hasty farewell to your mum before hanging up the phone and looking to the doorway. Cautiously, you walked through your house to the kitchen where you stopped in your tracks at seeing a tea towel covering something on the bench. Gingerly peeling it back when you finally approached it, you gasped when you found several dishes underneath, along with instructions on how to heat it up.

For a split second, your mind conjured Brian up again, imagining him in your kitchen preparing all this. It would totally be just like him to make sure Charli was well fed to regain her energy from any illness.

But, you weren’t Charli Evers.

In fact, you hadn’t even based her off your personality at all, rather, a close online friend of yours who you admired a lot. So, whilst Brian would definitely go to all this trouble for Charli, you sure were clutching at straws thinking of yourself in the same situation.

Who came into your home then?

Distractedly, you heated the porridge and brewed up the tea the mystery person had prepared as well. You carried the tray of food over to your dining table when it was done and sat down before taking your first mouthful.

And then you mulled over who could possibly step into your house that had the initial B.

Maybe it wasn’t a B, you concluded when you realised no one had access to your house with that letter, even as a surname. Climbing back to your feet, you rushed to your office where you had discarded the first note and held it up to inspect the handwriting.

“It could be an R,” you mentioned out loud, then shook your head immediately. Even if the handwriting was looser than most that you knew of, it couldn’t be anything other than a B.

After examining it for a few minutes, you sat down with a huff. You’d never seen the handwriting before.

You didn’t know whether or not to be alarmed.

Had there been an intruder overnight?

Jumping back up, you persevered through the dizziness that plagued you from moving so fast, heading down the hallway to the front door. The chain was still latched and there was no sign of forced entry. Again, making your way to the back door, everything was in order.

As was every possession you owned – minus the kitchen where the food had been prepared. But even then, the dishes that had been used were rinsed and stacked by the sink.

You jumped when you heard a sudden mewl at your feet and clutched at your heart, before stooping down to pick up your cat Binks. The black cat nuzzled into you affectionately before meowing again. “I guess you want to be fed, huh?”

Walking around the counter, you stopped when you found his bowl with some food remaining. You knew Binks wouldn’t leave food overnight. Glancing at the cat, you frowned. “Who did this, Binks?”

The feline merely yawned and settled down to nap in your arms. It certainly brought the saying, cat’s got your tongue, to mind and you rolled your eyes at the infuriating situation.

Sitting down on your couch, you stared at the wall ahead of you as you tried to find an answer to all the evidence. Stroking the purring animal in your arms, you nodded determinedly.

“The only answer is that I did it in a sleep-induced state,” you announced and Binks opened his eyes to look up at you before rolling around to start licking at his back leg. You sighed. “Right, Binks?”

You were certain your cat thought you were insane. However, it was all you could find to be the answer.

“I got up and I took myself to the kitchen and prepared the ice water to cool down the fever. And went to bed. Then maybe I got up again, which is when I placed the cloth on the bowl and prepared the food. I washed my dishes, including the ones I had piling up from being too busy with work and-”

Binks leapt from your lap then, sauntering down the hallway from your side. Getting up to follow him, you ended up back in your home office, where he pounced up onto your desk, standing on the keys to your laptop. “Hey! Get off!”

Swatting the cat away from the device, you noticed that it hadn’t been turned off overnight. That was not like you at all. Logging into your account, you sat down in your desk chair and shifted back suddenly when you found a new document open.

 I bet you’re in disbelief about now, right? I guess I would be too. It wasn’t you who looked after you all night long, and did your dishes. Wow, you get behind in things when you’re focused on writing.

Don’t worry. I didn’t look around - much.

Your fever went down over a couple of hours whilst I moved back and forth helping you out. It’s the least I can do after you’ve spent so much time with me. Well, we’ve yet to officially meet.

One day.

- B (your biggest fan)

PS. I fed Binks. He really does have quite the personality.

 “Okay!” you sounded in an octave higher, laughing a little to yourself at the same time. “Someone was definitely here. Who is B and how does this person know so much personal information?!”

You were too preoccupied to realise the document to Captivated was still open behind the other one.

And instead of saying The End as it once had, it had been deleted and replaced with To Be Continued.

_________________

Part 2

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[power-of-friends-games]

Okay, if it’ll stop the Anons, the following is why Dev Finn was fired at the start of september. This is the last thing I will be saying on the matter, as several people are now getting messages from them or asking what’s going on.

We had set up a schedule as a team to have certain things done by the end of July. This is a screenshot from the programmer-only channel in our dev server where I had given them the list of things they needed to do.

A couple days later they sent this, which at the time made I and the other programmer laugh. 

And then the day after I asked them if they could send the files back to me.

I was at this point entirely understanding, the majority of the team has classes, mental health issues, physical health issues, busy work schedules, etc. All I asked for was that these things be communicated to me when there were weeks Finn couldnt work, so that someone else could be using the files. At this point we were already going to be behind schedule on programming, so I decided I would just do most of their list for them and give them an easier, faster task that shouldn’t take them too long so when they had time to do it they could.

This was the message I sent asking for this job to be finished before September. Now in that time, I had been told by Finn they were having internet issues, and I was willing to work with that. This was the response to the above message:

And then a few days later:

In that last image you see me multiple times trying to offer help to get them on GitHub where the current files were located. In at least one of these I was *in call in that server* and willing to help them right then. During this time period they had also tried out for TGS and posted a ton of art in the public server, so I knew they had time and wifi to do it. In that last message there we were also nearing the end of that month and none of this task had been done. They finally logged into GitHub and the following conversation happened:

Again, I was willing to work this out. Now that I knew they were actually getting into the files I wanted to help them get it done. We were now almost a month past when this should have been done. The following conversation was the first time I started actually getting after them for this:

Let me show you that last part again.

Finn was aware I would remove them from the team if this wasn’t done. Any job would have. We were a month away from release and they hadn’t done this job yet. I then gave them this final week to make up for it- with a job that literally takes 3-5 hours to do in total.

With this by the way, none of us that have looked through the files since have found any of these interactions. If they were ever there, they aren’t now. Finn uploaded in such a way that I can’t see what the changes were. Here is the github page for that upload:

This was the last time he spoke in that channel. As was the deal, I removed him from the team for not finishing the task in the agreed time and gave the job over to one of my artists who happened to have the program, and they finished it in one all-nighter. At this point we had agreed as the remaining devs that if Finn’s situation improved they would be added back to the team for Meridian. 

And then thats when the messages started.

At first they were fine, I found out they had been grounded but, since it was still the deal and it was a job that should have been done months earlier, I still stand by my decision. 

I wasn’t fully responding due to being busy irl, anyone that’s friends with me knows im bad at responding to DMs anyway. 

This wasn’t responded to because again, I was busy and also it came across as a little guilty. Besides, I had again told them I was removing them from the team, and the team had decided they could come back *for Meridian* if their situation had improved. 

As you can see, I was still responding when I had the ability to, and I tried explaining that the status of the search for a new programmer was really no ones business that wasn’t on the team. This is akin to getting fired from Walmart and then walking up to the manager a week later to ask if they had gotten a new cashier yet like. You don’t do this.

This was the last time they spoke to me on discord, there was a brief message when I had reblogged a couple of their pieces that hadn’t been reblogged onto there that I cannot get as they are now blocked as of last night but that went along the lines of “Are you trying to tell me something”

The following is the actual conversation in our public server’s moderator chat upon the announcement that they were off the team:

We had decided as a group to leave Finn alone long ago. In fact, none of us planned to publicly talk about Finn. I even stayed quiet about them posting an Endscape spoiler as a Wiki page ((mostly because I deleted it as soon as I found out)) and told everyone in the team and mod team not to harass them or send them any ill will. Until I got this message:

This is what prompted yesterday’s post. And what followed it. 

So let me be very clear. None of the team has anything truly against Finn other then the fact that they continue to not let this drop. And until the guilty messages and this current development, we were more then willing to let them come back. But due to several anons in our inbox, a team member being messaged this morning with a “Blake is a liar” rant DM that I haven’t seen nor will I expose the team member due to privacy, and the fact that even though they joined the team promising to not leak info they still managed to leak a massive Endscape spoiler onto their Wiki, it’s very unlikely we will actually let them come back anymore.

Now that this rant is done, I will no longer be discussing the issue. Do NOT send hate or harassment of any kind to Finn, as they are a minor and deserve to learn and grow from their mistakes as all of us did when we were younger. All of their art, dialogue, mentions, and the special event they programmed for one of the boss’ attacks have all been removed from the final version of the game. And no one in team plans to talk about them. 

Now if you will excuse me, I have a game to release in ten days. 

-Dev Blake

[silyabeeodess]

Hey, Fusion Fellas: As heartbroken as many of us still are over the DMCA shutdown, it’s nice to see so many fans of the game continue to carry on in whatever way they can.  I’ve kept up with whatever news appears as much as I can, seeing the news spread and more people come together to find ways to enjoy something that was such a big part of their childhoods.  There’s some stuff I’d like to say, regarding my personal thoughts and what I plan to do since I know some of you follow me for my fanwork of the game.  The first half is largely negative so, if you like, you can skip over that: I’ll have things written in bold to mark where this starts and breaks off.  

I’m still angry at CN.  I know about the guy spreading lies to the network and I understand that they have to protect their IP.  That’s not what I have a problem with.  What I have a problem with is a multi-million dollar company targeting a harmless, fan project over a piece of their IP that they themselves have confessed they aren’t planning on doing anything with--effectively keeping it vaulted where no one is allowed to touch it: Targeting a group of devoted fans who’ve shown more love and care for this franchise and the fanbase (along with the shows its attached to) than their own hired creatives have.  Beyond a matter of law, this is a matter of respect--and CN has lost all of mine. 

Take a game like Undertale and its creator, Toby Fox.  You have a small team making a game that boomed in popularity, similar to FusionFall back in its hay-day.  The difference is people can still buy UT and the game continues through the AU that is Deltarune while there’s no possible way for fans of FusionFall to ever experience it without a server.  So how do these two separate creators--Toby Fox and CN--react to their fans?  Toby Fox says, “Hey fans!  Go make your fanart!  Make your fan games, so long as you don’t try to make money off of it.  You can even make your more mature content, just please tag it separately from the game’s official title.”  Here, you have someone at greater risk of financial loss; understanding that what the fans create, they create out of love; giving as much allowance as he can to the people that enjoy what he started.  Cartoon Network?  “Yes, we know you love this game and although we’re never going to touch it again, you can’t either. How about you watch our awful reboots instead?  We know you didn’t want them and that you don’t like them, so we’ll be sure to call you names and spit on you if you have anything negative to say about us.  Because we don’t actually care about you.” This is a company that doesn’t think of its fans beyond the dollar signs they see attached to them. The fact that they’ve apparently only addressed one person over the course of weeks despite the countless emails and messages sent to them regarding FusionFall is also terrible--like they’re waiting for people to give up so the whole issue can be swept under the rug, like they think we’ll simply forget.

That post I made before about this?  I still mean it.  Cartoon Network doesn’t respect us, so why would I want to support them? Moneygrubbing, Hollywood empire Disney has shown a better attitude toward people than CN has as of late--and I can’t stand a large bulk of what Disney’s done over the past several years!  Everyone can make their own choice regarding the company--I’m not calling for a boycott--but I’ve stopped watching their shows and I’ve cancelled my plans for purchases I was going to make for their newer merchandise.  Even if I could make a few exceptions for them, their behavior overall is too horrible for me to want to give them so much as a dime of ad revenue from watching a video.

Because of this, I’ll be perfectly honest, I don’t even feel like making fanart anymore or writing the headcanon posts I’ve been covering.  I’ve enjoyed them, but they have been always solely for fun and it’s hard to want to make anything when all that’s happened is on the forefront of my mind.  Part of what makes it so hard on a personal level is that I loved what Cartoon Network used to be--and admittedly does still exist in small fragments of their content now. The creatives that wanted to push the envelope for animation and storytelling: Not the trash banking on old shows and jokes that were dated the moment they uttered them in hopes of getting a cheap laugh because there’s nothing better on TV.  (Not even realizing how doomed for failure they are as things move toward streaming because then people can shift through the garbage that much easier.)  When I was a kid, I watched the PPG on a regular basis and Numbuh 5 from KND was the person I wanted to be.  In middle school, I planned my afternoon schedule around episodes of Total Drama Island and bounced on a trampoline while singing Are You CN This? like it was the top single of the year.  In high school, our theatre members’ turns backstage were shared watching Steven Universe.  Now, I feel nothing but bitterness and disappointment, like someone who’s lost a friend that changed for the worst.

So, how will this effect what I post?  I did have a bunch of stuff planned, but I keep going back and forth on what I want to do.  It’s hard to truly enjoy making stuff, as mentioned before, but at the same time I’ve never been one to drop anything easily (even if it takes me years to actually get something done, as some of you who follow me for other things already know.)  

Some of you may have noticed that I didn’t post a fic for last month’s prompt and haven’t posted any new prompts for this month.  I did start writing my story for April, but ended up leaving it hanging when everything hit. I don’t know about finishing it, and since I’ve been the only person working with the prompts from what I’ve seen, it seems pretty pointless.  Since I kinda began an arc with a few of them, I might try to at least wrap that up, but I just don’t know.

For the comic, since I already have some work done on what would’ve been the first chapter, I might go ahead and finish that.  (Just know that it’s several pages long, meaning it’ll still take some time to finish... and that you’ll need to be braced for wave of posts when its done.  It’s got about eleven pages now: I would have more done, but since I backtracked on the script to cover the tutorial rather than jump straight into a totally original plot as first intended, some of that stuff had to be put aside.)  Keep in mind thought that it really might be just that chapter.  Without the drive and with being so backed up on other projects--and since we don’t have the game to rely on for references as easily anymore--I just don’t know how long I could keep working on it.

With the headcanons, I could still do a fair amount of research to get those done, but it’s just not the same.  If I made more, the masterpost would still be updated; however, tags on the posts themselves would be limited to FusionFall rather than include the cartoons.  I don’t care about traffic: I don’t want any confusion from anyone thinking I’m supporting CN’s current work.  (Petty? Most likely, but at least there’s no question where I stand.)

Even if I don’t post as much FusionFall stuff, people are still free to send me asks about the game. So long as the asks follows the terms I’ve set up for my blog, it’s perfectly fine.  I’ll try to answer them as usual.  

Overall, at least for now, expect these posts to wane: Not dropped entirely, but definitely less frequent.  I’ve said it multiple times already: I just don’t know.  I’m upset that the game’s gone.  I’m upset at those involved for its shutdown.  I’m upset at those who don’t care about the fans and those who act like the fans are wrong for caring.  I’m upset at those in the community going at each other’s throats when people are trying to salvage the fanbase as much as they can.  The whole thing is just plain sad and I don’t feel like there’s much I can do except sit at my desk, pick up my pen, and push myself to do what I’ve always done: Focus on my work. 

[yogpetshame]

“Interview” with a Sjin Mod

Special project today, a series of conversations in ThatMadCat’s discord with a former Sjin mod (they might beg to differ, but I digress). I wasn’t actually present in any of these conversations, they were mostly spurred by some guy called Allosaurus - 

Do you think I spend any time talking to you people? Don’t flatter yourself.

Anyway, commendably they don’t ban Allosaurus when he initiates conversations about how Sjin is a pedophile. But rather, Sjin’s Discord and Twitch moderator, Sieopolitan, runs her mouth willy nilly every time he is brought up. 

What follows is one conversation from October, and then two much more recent discussions. I’m going to do the conversations in order, but I will remix the order of the posts for readability.

The results I think you will find enjoyable. And I’ll drop links to the unabridged conversations at the end.

I’m writing this part before I get to the rest but I already know this is going to be VERY long, so here’s a once-in-a-blue-moon Keep Reading.

So, here’s the start, our main players are Sieopolitan, the mod, and this fiesty dude Allosaurus. Green names are moderators, the more red-toned your name is the more you post. I think.

Allosaurus obliges, and the rest of the conversation takes place in a different channel, where he welcomes Sieopolitan first.

Every time this guy posts I swoon. Unfortunately, I’m going to abridge him a lot in the interest of time. Just know for the most part he’s the one who was asking these questions.

Here’s topic one:

Why does Sjincord still exist?

Boy-oh-boy. This is already on my nerves.

Keep in mind, Sieopolitan admits here that Sjin fucked up. That’ll come up later.

I mentioned this before, I believe, but I also mod a Discord community. Larger than MadCat’s server, and Sjincord. And it’s older.

And if we experienced a moral, structural failure on the scale of Sjincord, and couldn’t delete or commandeer the server, we’d ban everyone and then ban ourselves.

This “they are my family!!!” line is bullshit. Make a new server. Puppy appreciation club. If they’re actually your family, and not a half-assed dependency, they would go with you.

Given you could move somewhere else, why don’t you shut Sjincord down?

Tell that to Caffcat’s discord mods. Allosaurus explains that that’s hardly an excuse when Caff’s team stopped modding for him and closed the server.

Sieopolitan... dodges the question.

Woosh, question dodged. Line for line: Claw was passive but yes, they did what they needed to to apologize for their role in unwittingly aiding Caff. Sjin using the server is not relevant. It’s a Pedophile-Theme Server. Full of people who like a pedophile. Sieopolitan, head deep in the sand, is unsurprisingly one of those people who thinks Sjin just chatted up a few consenting adults. But I guess we all should have known that. And yes, “Sienna” is gonna call out someone who hasn’t done anything to her. Because that’s called empathy for the people he has predated on and it’s the job of the mod.

Everyone in Sjincord has an extremely good reason to walk out.

What do you believe, Sieopolitan?

Sieopolitan thinks Sjin got fired for flirting.

I feel like we need Lewis to come forward and say, we wouldn’t fire people for flirting, that’s stupid. You get fired for sexual harassment.

Hell, Hannah doxxed a child and never actually got the axe. But he you think Sjin got fired for flirting? But...

Haven’t you seen the screenshots? Or any of the stuff former Yogscast moderator Mighty_Claw had seen?

I’m confused as to why you think Sjin got fired for talking to people and yet Mighty_Claw and JaneDash seem to have, not just screenshots, but firsthand experience with the contents of the reports people made. Even “Skylan Torchwick,” with the stupid name, was apparently worth enough to see Caff’s text messages. Why are you out of the loop on what Sjin was fired for?

My personal theory is that Sieopolitan may have even been sent some of these reports and was helping to silence them, because that seems to be the only possible fucking way on Earth you could be in such a position of trust and still stick to the ���official” line. Why are you relying on Lewis to know? How are you this out of the loop? Why are you relying on screenshots? Aren’t you Sjin’s mod?

How can you take such a hard line stance in favor of a pedophile when you seem to know the least of anyone?

Oh okay, it’s fine when you’re blinding yourself.

Aren’t you jeopardizing future victims?

Why? Why have faith? You claim to expect future contact with the man! Why all the hope and faith?

He’s been doing this bullshit for eight. Fucking. Years. He got a warning already in 2016. How many second chances does he need, exactly? How many female bodies do you intend to let him walk over?

Anyway, skip forward several months and we’re talking about Sjin streaming.

Yay... redakdal is back...

Isn’t it weird that Sieopolitan expects to talk to Sjin about how he wants to stream, and isn’t thinking at all “Oh, if he’s going to talk to me, I NEED to ask him if he is in fact a pedophile because under these circumstances I would NEVER EVER RISK MODDING FOR A PEDOPHILE?”

Like, how is this conversation going to go?

“hi after months and months away it’s me sjin the p- i mean sjin the totally not a pedophile”  “glad to hear it how do you want chat to go”

And not

“hi its me sjin th-” “Are you a pedophile” “what haha :3” “I can’t mod for you if I don’t know what you actually got fired for, or else the guilt will follow me for an eternity.” “haha i was flirting :3″ “you got fired for flirting” “yeah haha :3″ “Go fuck yourself.”

How is this a response?! Sjin is not your family. If I had an actual flesh and blood pedophile in my actual family I report them to the police and never talk to them again. And if the various British incels in your shitty dead Discord would all go away if you took a stance against pedophilia, then good fucking riddance.

So why is protecting Sjin even necessary if you and your incels are such a close “family”?

You’ve kept a closed mind, as I said before, because there is no way in hell this information couldn’t have been given directly to you if you had asked for it.

I mean, fuck. I’ll call on any former mod, Janedash, whoever. I bet you could reach Sieo and give her the skinny. And I bet she would not listen to you.

It’s not a special server. I’m sure that’s something every angsty fucking teenager on earth wants to say, “Oh, they’re my real friends, they helped me,” but if your friends enable a pedophile, fucking walk. And then maybe take an introspective look at yourself and wonder why you got helped by the pedo-helpers.

Why are you ignoring advice from people who know more than you?

Oh, I can see that. You take it seriously by worrying about what mode to set his chat in when he comes back.

Allosaurus quote out of context, just because I like it.

So you feel no imperative to protect anyone from Sjin?

Again, explain that to Caff’s moderators. This is not a valid excuse whatsoever. Allosaurus has good suggestion:

Yogscast employees knew Sjin was up to this pedophilic shit for the last eight years and didn’t move on it. They received many of the same reports in July 2019 they’d already seen in 2016, and even 2013, and they received the report that Turps got fired for two years before they were forced to acted on it.

They have a very, very long track record of ignoring the fuck out of fireable behavior, and as seen below, Sieopolitan appeals to some mystery entity within the Yogscast who is reputable, when Lewis has been here the whole time, abiding Turps and Ridgedog and Sjin and stifling all reports.

And Sieopolitan, I expect, will keep on running.

Anyway, that’s all I got for now, as promised the full caps will be below. If you pick out anything from them you want me to talk about, you don’t have to try and send me the screenshot, just quote from it and I’ll pull it myself.

Oct. 29, 2019 5:22 AM

Oct. 29, 2019 5:31 AM

Oct. 29, 2019 5:41 AM

Oct. 29, 2019 5:47 AM

Feb. 4, 2020 7:39 PM

[fategrandorderimagines-blog]

Who are the top 5 servants in your opinion who you'd think would be chilling out and looking at memes/old vine videos with you?

TOP FIVE SERVANTS WHO WOULD CHILL AND WATCH VINES/MEMES WITH YOU

yes i answered ask, woah look at me go..

1. Achilles

-okay do i even have to elaborate on this one, he is literally the one who will ask beg you to watch videos with you

-especially loves cursed photos and videos

-after watching vines you can bet your ass he will be a walking vine vendor for the next week,

       “hey babe can you hand me the tortillas in the outside fridge i forgot to bring them in”

      *achilles proceeds to shuffle run to the garage and grab the tortillas while screaming* “HURRICANE KATRINA, HA MORE LIKE HURRICANE TORTILLA”

                                needless to say you are not amused

-also, he can and will use the printer to print useless images of random shit that hold no context and tape on your wall, his wall, and everyone's fucking wall

-joins meme discord servers on the weekly and you always know hes on call when you here him shouting “ON JAH BRO FR” from his room

2.Merlin

-of course it will probably end up with him asking, “what is the vine” and you proceeding to show him the epitome of earth’s finest history it has to offer, “enough history and prosperity to rival great britain” is all you can reply with

-i think he’d be pretty confused at first but then slowly understand and become the bro to watch vines with

-did i mention he really likes vine, like he really likes it

-in 2019, he would get tik tok, and he would be famous, but only by winning his entire following on the basis of his ‘make vine great again’ campaign that literally involves multiple letters to many people asking for sponsorship to create a new vine, and it would probably end up in a super weird raid at a rite aid like seen previously with the area 51 raid

-also when he finds out about the area 51 raid, he shows up as the incel he is and dominates, he made it in 

-this man knows what is inside area 51 and will not tell anyone

-all in all he really becomes attached to vine to the point of addiction and da vinci will have to figure out a way to block him from all vine content on chaldea pcs

3.Musashi

-okay maybe this is just me, but i think that she would love meme comedy

-she would probably open a social media meme page shortly after being introduced to memes as well

-now owns one of those private e girl meme pages that has like 112k or some bs like that

-really loves to cuddle up on the couch and blast callmecarson, quakity, or soothouse videos 

-this leads to her wanting to play minecraft and you cannot change my mind

-by the way she gets really good at playing minecraft

-practically a+ gamer girl

4.Robin Hood

-he is amused by mortal comedy

-one must understand nothing to comprehend such glory

-he goes hard with this shit ngl

-LOVES cursed videos and sees vines as the treasury of human kind

-2am, you look down after getting a notification, ‘robabe with the hoodie’ has sent you a message,

“holmes when we dealt with camelot”

“don’t tell holmes istg”

-one will never recover the lungs from such feats of glory

-he somehow finds super old vines that make no sense but are stupid funny and should’ve been appreciated

-has designated days on the calendar based on moon cycles and political events for watching memes, don’t even ask i still don’t even know how he does it

-basically fills his entire camera roll with the same photo of obama and regularly asks what his last name is

5.Gawain

-thot boy of the round table googles ‘wtf is a cursed image’ after he overhears you talking about it

-he instantly gets hooked

-not only is it fucking hilarious but it’s a great way to bond with master

-finds peace and happiness when he is laying on the couch with you after laughing his ass off all day at cursed videos, memes, and tik toks (oh yes my greatest fantasy this is totally not why i included gawain)

-lazy sundays of vine watching makes his entire months, never doubt this

-sometimes he prints out spongebob or kermit appreciation posts and sticks it on your mirror so you'll see it in the morning

-very classy gawain, now we know why he’s so charming

[forexcrypt-blog]

Mike Watkins (Mike Indigo)

Who?

Mike Watkins / Michael Watkins / Mike Indigo. Michael Watkins Director of Indigo Digital Asset Management Limited Company number 12156748. Michael Watkins Director of Blocktraders Limited Company number 11731915. Website: Theholistictrader.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/HolisticTrader

Mike Watkins Background

Firstly - have a watch of this video - I am now facing the same situation from Mike Watkins - https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=33&v=kGFuz1As-mQ&feature=emb_logo Here are the comments from that video...

Youtube comments https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=33&v=kGFuz1As-mQ&feature=emb_logo This is then further backed up by the same person who made that video https://www.publish0x.com/cryptocurrency-educationblock-traders/my-crazy-crypto-story-4-months-of-slander-defamation-modifie-xdrzrn It is exactly what I am now going through with Mike Watkins. This is an insane situation - how has he been allowed to get away with all of this? What can I say... Tonight 14/04/2020 Mike Watkins has sent me multiple emails telling me he is going to sue me - I can only think it is in relation to putting him in the Scam list - for good reason - Mike Watkins has stated that he is FCA regulated - so everyone can see for themselves - have a look at these two screenshots...

Theholistictrader.com - "First FCA regulated Crypto fund in the UK"

Mike Watkins Twitter HolisticTrader - "CEO of an FCA Regulated Hedge Fund" Just to avoid any claims of impropriety here is the Google page results..

FCA REGISTER Now if you check the FCA register Mike Watkins / Michael Watkins nor the two companies he is a director of are FCA authorised/regulated for Financial Services Activity. - Mike Watkins is not FCA authorised nor regulated for financial trading activities. - Indigo Digital Asset Management Limited Company number 12156748 is not FCA authorised nor regulated for financial trading activities. - Blocktraders Limited Company number 11731915 is not FCA authorised nor regulated for financial trading activities. Stating you are FCA regulated when you are in fact not, is fraud. He has even tried to backtrack on these claims after I have exposed him, I have taken a copy of his website and his Twitter page for the FCA.

Abuse, harassment and stalking begins...

Tonights nonsense - 14/04/2020 Tonight I got a series of emails from Mike Watkins - I am posting them here for you all to see. Mike Watkins has fraudulently claimed he is FCA regulated and claimed A* J***** Limited are suing me. As you can read below as the evening progressed - he has then backtracked on both claims. EMAIL 1

EMAIL 1 EMAIL 2

EMAIL 2 - this came in after - note the timestamps - my email server must be rubbish... "We are now pursuing". Plus the GDPR stuff is nonsense - his name and address are already online. EMAIL 3 In this email he attached a document he thinks covers him for his FCA claim - it doesn't. It only mentions the Cayman Islands - as you will read in "email 4".

EMAIL 3 EMAIL 4

EMAIL 4 EMAIL 5

EMAIL 5 EMAIL 6

EMAIL 6 - backtracking on his FCA claim. EMAIL 7

EMAIL 7 EMAIL 8

EMAIL 8 EMAIL 9

EMAIL 9 - Now he sends this nonsense - classic behaviour. SUMMARY This shouldn't need much commentary - you can make your own assumptions up. This is almost a carbon copy of behaviour I get online in forums - almost word for word - I have seen it over and over again when I expose stuff - they genuinely lose it. When I say I get nothing for doing this I mean it, this chews up a stupid amount of time. Oh well maybe I will be rewarded in the after life or something.

UPDATE 1 15/04/2020 12:54pm

A* J***** Limited have responded to an email I wrote them this morning verifying Mike Watkins claims - I will not be sharing that email for confidential reasons (this mornings email is in addition to the one I copied them in on last night as above in EMAIL 3).

A* J***** confirm Michael Watkins is lying As you can read here above A* J***** is not suing me. As you can read above in EMAIL 1, Mike Watkins said, "Myself and my Fund Managers, A* J***** are formally launching Libel and Slander Legal proceeding for extensive damages due to your post" - it is a lie.

UPDATE 2 15/04/2020 14:00PM

Mike Watkins has now sent this and a bunch of emails claiming he has sent a writ to my address and that North Wales Cyber Crime Unit are investigating off the back of a "Fraud UK" report - its all bullshit. EMAIL 10

EMAIL 10 - claiming he has lodged a complaint with Action Fraud.

UPDATE 3 16/04/2020 08:36am

Site has been DDOS'd since this post went up. Note the spurious request used by the attacker? "GET /?s=fraud".

DDOS attack from 1400 16/04/2020 onwards. We finally got the site stable around 0200 16/04/2020. Since posting & sorting the DDOS, Mike Watkins has sent in a stream of emails. EMAIL 11

EMAIL 11 - "I will see you in Court". EMAIL 12

EMAIL 12 EMAIL 13

EMAIL 13 EMAIL 14

EMAIL 14 - claiming he is suing me... EMAIL 15

EMAIL 15 EMAIL 16 & 17

EMAIL 16 & 17 EMAIL 18

EMAIL 18 EMAIL 19

EMAIL 19 - Mike Watkins again tries to change tack and cover himself - it is still fraud. He knew what he was doing and has not changed his Twitter nor his Website - its fraudulent use of the FCA Authorisation/Regulation title. EMAIL 20

EMAIL 20 - Mike Watkins still claiming civil disputes are criminal offences and claiming North Wales Cyber Unit are involved. EMAIL 21

EMAIL 21 EMAIL 22

EMAIL 22

UPDATE 4 16/04/2020 11:49am

To say Mike Watkins is obsessed is an understatement. I cannot log into Facebook as it has been temporarily removed. See what Mike Watkins posted on Twitter...

Mike Watkins knows my Facebook page has been temporarily removed in the last few hours - why? Is this an admission from Mike Watkins? EMAIL 23

EMAIL 23 - more harassment from Mike Watkins.

UPDATE 5 16/04/2020 14:09pm

Now Mike Watkins has started following the backup page and sent me an abusive message with it. He has also been sending bizarre tweets, more emails - Totally Obsessive (Harassing) / Stalker behaviour.

Mike Watkins now following back up site as we had to copy data over whilst being DDOS'd.

UPDATE 6 17/04/2020 15:30pm

Mike Watkins has just sent in 20 emails in 47 minutes - More harassment and stalking - it all just gets added to the list. Note - Mike Watkins has already confirmed he lied above that he was FCA regulated. EMAIL 24

EMAIL 24 EMAIL 24 - 44

EMAIL 24 -44 - There are more above this up to 14:27 pm today

UPDATE 7 17/04/2020 - Twitter abuse and harassment

Screenshot of Twitter 17/04/2020 - abuse and harassment from Mike Watkins

UPDATE 8 17/04/2020 17:48pm - confirmation Mike Watkins lied about speaking to police

Here we have confirmation that Mike Watkins hadn't spoken to North Wales Police Cyber Unit - as I pointed out in "EMAIL 4" it was bogus, here you have confirmation that Mike Watkins has lied (again)...

UPDATE 9 17/04/2020 18:12pm

More harassment from Mike Watkins

RECAP 17/04/2020 17:00pm

Just to recap - since 14th April; -Mike Watkins has sent me abuse, harassment and is stalking me for posting that he is not FCA authorised/regulated. -After Mike being exposed ((and "A* J***** telling him") he is not FCA regulated) - he has now admitted that he is indeed not FCA authorised/regulated. - Mike Watkins has made false claims A* J***** were suing me. A* J***** confirmed they are not suing me, it was all made up by Mike Watkins. - Mike Watkins has made false claims he had spoken to North Wales Police Cyber Crime Unit. You can see the evidence above, where he has contradicted himself and clearly hasn't. - Mike Watkins says he has logged an online complaint with North Wales Police Cyber Unit. - Mike Watkins says he has logged an online complaint with London Metropolitan Police. - Mike Watkins has repeatedly made false allegations about me and/or what is on this website - you (including law enforcement) can all read what I have written - no laws have been broken by me. - This website has been DDOS'd twice - amazing coincidence. - My Facebook page was taken down - amazing coincidence. - Mike Watkins has spammed my email and Twitter with streams of abuse and harassment. As you can read from the Youtube video comments above - this is not an isolated incident by Mike Watkins. This is not my first rodeo - this is exactly the same behaviour I have encountered from people like this. The ones at the lower end of the scale are the most volatile. The false claims of Police involvement etc are a carbon copy of a case I faced 2 years ago. It should be abundantly clear to anyone now why I remain anonymous. You can see how dangerous it is if Mike Watkins finds out who I am - Mike Watkins is desperate to get my name and address. As I have pointed out in other posts; - I have nothing to sell. - Nothing I do is malicious - I am simply blogging about scammers committing fraud. All of Mike's actions are simply desperate attempt to get me to take the factually correct information down - that he is not FCA regulated when he has been selling & advertising on the basis he is. All the information is being collated and stored securely - the website is currently stable.

UPDATE 10 17/04/2020 18:32pm

Further lies and harassment from Mike Watkins - You have to make a report to your local police force first. In both cases (Met Police & North Wales Cyber Unit) - Mike Watkins hasn't done this.

Mike Watkins lying - you have to contact your local Police to file a crime. Also note the threat. Mike Watkins also posted this... and subsequently deleted it when I posted that he is the one fraudulently claiming he is FCA regulated.

My Twitter reply... Mike Watkins also posted this below - its just further lies. The Police have to investigate to see if a crime has been committed - Mike Watkins will have to supply evidence - of course there has been no crime committed by me. Mike Watkins is simply desperate to get my name and address - he is hell bent on a "court date" - obviously that's not how things work.

Tweet from Mike Watkins A stream of abuse/spam/harassment Tweets on Twitter. There is pages and pages of it. He has spammed my Twitter and my email with this - it is clear who did the DDOS.

Tweets from Mike Watkins

Tweets from Mike Watkins

Tweets from Mike Watkins

More abuse from Mike Watkins

Also in the tweets... In the Tweet in the left, Mike Watkins says he is in Cornwall - yet if you look on the right, the very same day 16/04/2020, the IP address he sent that abuse via Wordpress.com is his home IP in the North Wales area. So yet another lie - this lie is that he doesn't have access to computers.

UPDATE 11 17/04/2020 19:35pm

Alleged Fraud? Huh?????? So far Mike Watkins "says" he has contacted; - Action Fraud (Police Fraud Intelligence Bureau) - London Metropolitan Police. He should contact his local Police force. - North Wales Cyber Crime Unit. He lied about having spoken to them the same day, Action Fraud will not have redirected him that quickly (he said he reported me to Action Fraud - for what I do not know) - this is now confirmed by the above. Now, after never having spoken to North Wales Cyber Crime Unit, apparently North Wales Police have redirected him to the Financial Investigation Unit. - and now he says he has contacted North Wales Police - as you can see here they have re-directed him to the Financial Investigation Unit. Note the bit above about "Alleged Fraud" and having to log a case to Action Fraud - huh, what fraud, by whom? himself? Are these all photoshop or what? Remember so far - all I have done is said, "Mike Watkins has lied - he is not regulated by the FCA". Everything you read above is a result of that. I welcome any Police investigation so they can see the facts. I had already spoken to North Wales Cyber Crime Unit 15/04/2020 & 16/04/2020 via their social media channels to make them aware of the situation - I gave them the blog. Remember - all Mike Watkins wants is my name and address.

UPDATE 12 18/04/2020 11:00am

Mike Watkins has DDOS'd the site after posting this https://forexcrypt.com/mike-watkins-harassment-update-18-04-2020/ He also posted this to his Twitter - I was correct - it was him that had my Facebook page down - look how many reports he made. Further harassment. Mike Watkins shared this on Twitter - he is not very bright, he is sharing evidence of targeted harassment.

UPDATE 13 18/04/2020 16:50pm

More nonsense from Mike Watkins via twitter (and he's deleted all the abusive tweets he sent - I have a copy of the page for Law enforcement).

Tweets from Mike Watkins EMAIL 45

EMAIL 45

UPDATE 14 18/04/2020 17:53pm

Admission from Mike Watkins it is him DDOS'ing this website. (It was blatantly obvious with the request signature and timing).

UPDATE 15 19/04/2020 14:50pm

Here is evidence of him DDOS'ing the website

DDOS stats from cloudflare

DDOS stats from cloudflare

DDOS stats from cloudflare Mike Watkins is using bots/paid for reviews & followers for his social media - the further I investigate the worse it gets. Mike Watkins has been caught falsifying Police reports.Mike Watkins has been caught falsifying claims of a company called A* J***** Limited suing me.In the video above from Youtube you can see he doctored Thailand SEC emails. You can watch it here - https://www.publish0x.com/cryptocurrency-educationblock-traders/my-crazy-crypto-story-4-months-of-slander-defamation-modifie-xdrzrn I don't believe anything Mike says or publishes to be true. The Police reports are all vexatious/lies - he has been logging them from burner accounts and just posting the screenshots. Hence he deleted the FCA email - it showed his burner account. He is simply posting Vexatious Police reports as a scare tactic. I got an email to say look at Mike Watkins Youtube and Twitter followers rising by hundreds per day - its not possible if you search for him online - you can find little about him, there is no way its real traffic. To confirm this - have a look at this below - this is his Youtube - all fake likes. You don't get 4 likes per comment like that - this is all paid for/bots doing this.

You tube with fake likes striped uniformly across his page There is absolutely nothing real to this guy is there? I suspect this goes a lot deeper than we can see. He sits at home watching his CCTV of his front driveway from his back bedroom - if it wasn't already obvious from his behaviour above - there is something very, very wrong here. To be clear - I have done nothing wrong, no law broken. All I did was post correctly, Mike Watkins was fraudulently using the FCA Regulated title as a sales tactic - look what has happened since. I welcome any Police investigation from any country/agency. I will gladly help put this guy away - this is obscene. I have sent pdf copies and/or links to this page and the harassement page on Mike Watkins to; North Wales Police Cyber Unit 16/04/2020North Wales Police 18/04/2020London Metropolitan Police 18/04/2020

UPDATE 16 19/04/2020 15:27pm

Mike Watkins has just spammed my account with harassment - sending 24 tweets in under 5 minutes. He is also doxxing (sharing personal information - address & phone number) for the purpose of harassment.

Twitter harassment I have contacted Twitter support.

UPDATE 17 22/04/2020 14:19pm

I am keeping a tally of harassment here https://forexcrypt.com/mike-watkins-harassment-update-18-04-2020/

UPDATE 18 22/04/2020 16:51pm

Further harassment via email from Michael Watkins with yet MORE vexatious reports to the Police. EMAIL 46

EMAIL 46 What fraud?What theft?What lies?What harassment? Of course there is zero evidence - its all lies by Michael Watkins as a scare tactic. Everything on this page is presented as 100% fact by me. Its in the screenshots - you cannot contest it. If anyone wants to, we can have a third party forensically verify everything on here is 100% fact? North Wales Police have been sent this blog and have a copy of it in pdf format. I have been transparent with them and welcome any investigation so they can see the facts - Michael Watkins is a harasser, a stalker, and a fraud - It is explicitly clear to anyone reading this blog. This yet another vexatious report by Michael Watkins full of lies. Why would anyone share (Crime Reference Numbers) CRN's over the internet? - They wouldn't unless they are used as a scare tactic. Further, he is still desperate to get my address in the belief the Police will hand over someones address for civil dispute. He keeps talking about court... Michael Watkins has now stated he has lodged reports with; – Action Fraud UK (UK Police Fraud Intelligence Bureau)– North Wales Police UK– North Wales Police Cyber Unit UK– Australian Cyber Security Service (Australian Govt)– Queensland Police (Australia)- The Financial Conduct Authority UK All bogus/Vexatious reports. I am keeping a tally of harassment here https://forexcrypt.com/mike-watkins-harassment-update-18-04-2020/ EMAIL 47

EMAIL 47

UPDATE 19 22/04/2020 20:46pm

Mike Watkins' Twitter account @holistictrader is in the sin bin for sending harassment (should be permanently banned but there we go). Tonight Mike Watkins has sent abuse from fake account @ken_williams012 I checked the profile picture... The profile picture is stolen from Blockchain Bob (@riskfreeswinger) an actual trader with real signals. After uncovering Mike Watkins he blocked me on the @ken_williams012 account. Note Mike Watkins has now changed the picture on @ken_williams012 Mike Watkins is a proven Fraud. To top it off - he then sends tweets to himself from @holistictrader to @ken_williams012

Mike Watkins under fake burner account @Ken_Williams012

Blockchain Bob the original photo

showing that Mike Watkins changed the profile picture - he stole it from blockchain bob.

Sending tweets to himself from @holistictrader to @ken_williams012

CONCLUSION 23/04/2020

Pending any more harassment... This is the final post on this nonsense - what the fucking hell did I get into here????? 8 days of sustained harassment for writing the truth, Michael Watkins was listed on the scam warning page for fraudulently using the title, "FCA Regulated" - when he wasn't. I was 100% correct, everything stated is 100% fact. It has been confirmed by his "fund managers" - They are simply a third party fund setup vehicle who would setup a Cayman Islands Limited company for him (AKA the fund). Here is his email 19 again - I have pointed out issues with it;

Email 19 with my notation. In the contract he signed (yes he signed it, so cannot plead ignorance/misunderstanding) it explicitly states;

Phase 5 in contract he sent me in email 2 "Infrastructure Proposal"

Michael Watkins signed the above where it explicitly states formation at phase 5. Now, I checked the Cayman Islands company register for 'Indigo Digital Discretionary Limited' - it doesn't exist. His fund setup vehicle partners confirm here below he never got to phase 2 as he had stalled on them. READ THAT AGAIN. MICHAEL WATKINS NEVER EVEN GOT TO PHASE 2 out of an 8 PHASE PROCESS to onboard clients as a Cayman Islands registered Limited Company (AKA the 'fund') under CIMA regulation.

email back to Michael Watkins from his fund setup vehicle partner A* J***** So there you go, Michael Watkins is a fraud. Michael Watkins stated he was an "FCA Regulated Hedge Fund Manager" - that is a total lie - its actually 2 lies. - No Fund. - No FCA regulation. It isn't an oversight, it isn't a misunderstanding - he has sent me the contract (Infrastructure Proposal) in email 2 to 'prove' he had a "UK Hedge Fund"...

Email 2 - lies yet again. Even better - he has lied in the email he says he sent North Wales Police - email 13. (note wasting Police time for a civil dispute...)

email 13 where Michael Watkins lied to Police - his company was not managed by any Fund Manager - he never set up Indigo Digital Discretionary Limited! Fraudulently using the title of FCA Regulated when you are not, as part of a sales tactic is a scam, it is fraud. Not only is he a fraud - he is a serial liar, a harasser, a stalker, a cyber bully and misuses computers by spamming and sending DDOS attacks. Everything here is 100% fact & independently/forensically verifiable. North Wales Police have been sent this blog - I will not tolerate any harassment/bullying from Michael Watkins.

UPDATE 20 26/04/2020 15:49pm

The abuse and harassment has not stopped. Today I have caught Michael Watkins holistictrader faking positive reviews of himself in an interview on Youtube with New Kids on the Blockchain. He has used exactly the same accounts - I have created an article here and asked New Kids on the Blockchain for comment. https://forexcrypt.com/michael-watkins-holistictrader-featured-on-new-kids-on-the-blockchain-caught-faking-positive-reviews/

Request for Information if you have been scammed

People are sending me information that they have on Mike Watkins - if you have more please send it in - I will keep this page updated and hopefully we can all collate something for the regulators/agencies to see and put this to bed - No one should have to endure abuse, harassment, stalking or threats from scammers like this - this is obscene - the agencies/regulators are failing us if they cannot get a grip on people like this. If you have been scammed you need to contact the local financial regulator and Police Fraud department in your area. Read the full article

[hetbigbang]

2019-2020 Rules & FAQ

Welcome to the Het Big Bang!! The HetBB is an opportunity for authors and fanworkers to create stories and fanworks, from any fandom, for any het pairing! General Information What is a Big Bang? A Big Bang is a writing challenge that prompts authors and fanworkers to work together, to create a story and fanwork that go together! The HetBB focuses on any heterosexual (male/female) pairing, from any fandom and original works are also welcome! We have two word goal options: 20,000 for the Big Bang and 10,000 words for the Little Bang! Big Bang stories are qualified to receive a fanwork through the claiming process on HetBB. Stories and fanworks must be posted, in their entirety, during the due date period. (Check the Schedule for when this is!) There will be no exceptions made to post before the reveal date. If, for example, your story is 100k with 19 chapters, all 19 chapters and 100k words must be posted during the due date period and ready to be revealed by May 1st. What is Allowed for the Het Big Bang: Any het pairing, any fandom! Any genre, any rating! Crossovers, fusions, and alternate universes are all allowed, so long as the focus is on a het pairing! Want to write a story with Harry Potter in a relationship with Wonder Woman? Excellent, please do! Want to write Harry Potter and Hermione in a relationship and joining the Justice League in a Harry Potter/DC Comics crossover? Great! Want to write Batman and Catwoman in a relationship, in a Harry Potter AU fusion? Feel free to write that story!!! More than one pairing, het or otherwise, in a fic is also allowed. Slash and femslash pairings can be included, so long as they are secondary and not the focus of the story, such as a story about Tony Stark/Pepper Potts, who happen to hang out with their good friend couple, Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne occasionally. Characters in the het pairing do not have to be strictly heterosexual, either! Mentions of past relationships with the same sex are fine, such as a story about Buffy Summers/Spike, and Buffy mentions a past relationship with Willow, or Buffy having an interest in women is fine, so long as the focus of the story is not Buffy's desire to get with another woman. Threesomes or moresomes should not be the focus of your story. Gen fic with a hint of ship also doesn't qualify for the Het Big Bang and while we aren't going psychoanalyze how "shippy" your fic is, we ask that you use your best judgement. Remember, we're here to celebrate het pairings! Original Works, genderbent characters to make a het pairing (such as Tony Stark genderbent to a woman and paired with Bruce Wayne, or Thor genderbent to a woman AND Jane Foster genderbent to a man), and RPF (real person fiction) are all allowed! Mod Contact Info: If you have any questions or concerns, here is the Page-A-Mod Post. You can also contact the mods at thehetbigbang@gmail.com or by messaging LuciferxDamien or JesterLady on the HetBigBang Discord Server.   General Guidelines --Be kind to each other! We all like different things and rudeness for disliking a pairing, characters, any canon, genre, or kink, etc. will not be tolerated! We want everyone to feel welcome and supported here!!! --Please provide us with an email address that you frequently check. The mods need a good email address in the case that contact is needed, such as during story/fanwork claims, or for clarification purposes. All important announcements are sent out via email, as well. In the event that you change your email during the duration of the Het Big Bang, it is your responsibility to update the mods! Your email address will ONLY ever be used for official Het Big Bang business. --Please keep in contact with the mods and your author/fanworker partner, if you're working with one! If something comes up and you need to drop out at any stage, that's okay! Just let the mods know! Needing to dropout before the final default date is not a bannable offense, and even if the default date has passed, please let us know, so we can work something out. You can contact the mods at any time via email at thehetbigbang@gmail.com.   Author Info/Story Requirements and Guidelines --Authors can work with a co-author or a group, just make sure to sign-up all authors on the sign-up sheet and have everyone join the comm if they wish. --WIPs are allowed, so long as it has never been posted anywhere. If you have never posted the story anywhere, it qualifies for this Bang, even if you started writing it 10 years ago! --Authors can sign up to do two stories. Both times for the Big Bang, or both times for the Little Bang, or one Little Bang and one Big Bang! To sign up twice, fill out the sign up form twice! The Big Bang --The minimum word count for the Big Bang is 20k. There is no maximum word limit, but please be aware of time constraints and obligations, if you’ve chosen to be paired up with a fanworker. IE don’t try to write a 100k story and choose to be paired with a fanworker if you’re not certain you can finish it on time! --Stories at least 20k in length can choose to be paired with a fanworker during the claiming process on the comm, and have an accompanying fanwork created for that story! Stories that are over 20k in length can opt out of receiving a fanwork, if the author does not want the pressure of working with a fanworker! --Authors that choose to be paired with a fanworker have an obligation to finish that story, or face consequences for dropping out! Little Bang --The minimum word count for the Little Bang is 10k. There is no maximum word limit, but a story that is over 20k is guaranteed an accompanying fanwork, while stories less than 10k can still go through the claiming process, an accompanying fanwork is not guaranteed. --Stories less than 20k in length are not guaranteed to be paired with a fanworker during the claiming process. Stories less than 20k in finished length can still post a summary during the Little Bang story claims and try to get matched with a fanworker. --Little Bang summaries will be posted after Big Bang stories have all been claimed. --Authors that choose to be paired with a fanworker have an obligation to finish that story, or face consequences for dropping out! What requirements are there for stories? --All stories must focus on or revolve around a het pairing of your choosing! --All stories must be complete by the due date period. Please check the schedule for when this will be. --All stories must be beta read. This is not an option! We suggest finding a beta sooner rather than later, and the HetBang comm and Discord will be great places to start seeking a beta. If you want to have more than one person beta read your story, that's fine, too! --All stories must be posted to Ao3! Once the collection reveals, stories can be posted anywhere else the author chooses. --Stories must not be posted before the due date! Posting guidelines will go live in April, before the due date period.   Fanworker and Fanwork Requirements --The minimum amount of accompanying fanworks per eligible story is 1 piece. If you are a fanworker and choose to claim 3 stories, that means you will need to create 1 fanwork for each story, 3 total. Please do not take on more stories than you can handle! --Fanworkers can claim as many stories as they are reasonably certain they can handle. Please do not take on 5 stories to create a fanwork for unless you are reasonably certain you can finish all 5 fanworks! --Fanworkers that sign-up are not required to claim a story. Claims are a few months off from author sign-ups, and we understand that life can happen and you may not be able to claim a story as planned, this is totally fine! Just let us know that you’re dropping out and you’re good to go! --All fanworks must be complete by the due date period. Please check the schedule for when this will be. --Fanworks must not be posted before the due date! Posting guidelines will go live in April, before the due date period. What are the minimum requirements for fanworks? Each story a fanworker claims is required to have at least one accompanying fanwork of quality for each story they claim. If a fanworker decides to claim 3 stories, they will be required to create one accompanying fanwork for each story, so at minimum, 3 fanworks. You’re creating something for a work that is at least 10k in length, so we want the fanwork to match that effort! Here are the suggested guidelines: Traditional/Digital art: Cleaned lineart, on unlined paper, that is at least 500x500 pixels is the minimum. Additional sketchier/rougher pieces are welcomed so long as one piece of art is at the cleaned lineart stage! Manips: Clean renders and non-blurry images that do not contain watermarks should be used for photo manipulation. Examples of the quality expected for this Bang can be found right here on Fanlore. Banners or Icons or Wallpaper: 5 icons, of at least 100x100 pixels. 3 banners. 1 wallpaper. More is of course always welcomed! Picspam or Gifsets: At least 6 images, but more images, or multiple sets are welcome! Vids: At least two minutes long, or a full song! Fanmixes: At least 10 songs and include cover art (this can be a manip!).   Het Bang FAQs Do I need a DreamWidth/LiveJournal/Tumblr/Ao3 account? The only account that is required at this point is Archive of Our Own. The reason for this is that all stories will be posted to the Het Big Bang Ao3 Collection, rather than being posted to the DreamWidth/LiveJournal communities. After the Ao3 collection reveals, you’re free to post your story/fanwork anywhere you wish! I have my own fanworker I work with, or I found a fanworker to work with, do I still have to go through claims? First off, that’s great you’ve found a partner to work with! All you need to do is let us mods know that you’re already paired up and have your fanworker sign-up, if they haven’t already! You do not need to go through claims, story claiming is for authors that are still seeking a fanworker to work with. Can I join this comm? Absolutely! Feel free to join and watch the comm even if you aren't signing up! What support communities are there for Het Big Bang? We’ve got a few places to hang out!

het_banghelp is a community set up for members only. Every year, previous members are removed so that only this year’s participants have access. Once you sign-up, you can request to join again! Authors, fanworkers, betas, and cheerleaders are welcome and encouraged to join! This comm is for all your hand-holding, snippet sharing, and flailing. Special writing and enabling events will be hosted on that comm, such as Snippet Days and Block Writing Events. HetBang Discord Server is another choice if you like chat-style platforms. There are channels for sprinting and word wars, sharing snippets, asking for writing help, beta reader/cheerleader seeking, and offtopic channels for chatting! The Discord server is open to anyone that wants to chat and be supportive, whether you have signed up or not for the Het Big Bang. What are check-ins? Check-ins are a way to see how you’re doing on your work! Some of them are mandatory and some of them are not, so it’s important to keep track of which ones are mandatory! They’re also a great way to keep yourself on track and a time to talk about your work and let others know how you’re doing. What is the amnesty period? The amnesty period is a chance for participants that couldn't quite finish on time to have one last chance to post for the current Bang! If for any reason you cannot post on your chosen reveal date, please get in contact with the mods ASAP! I signed up last year, and then dropped out. Can I still sign up again? Yes!! Can I drop out? Yes! Sometimes life gets in the way or a story just doesn’t happen, and we understand that! However, there is a cutoff point, and if you do not let the mods know before this date, you can be banned from the next round. Even if it is after this cutoff date that you need to drop out please let us know so that we can discuss options. We can’t help if we don’t know there is a problem! Can I sign up as an author AND a fanworker? Absolutely! What can I do if I have problems with my author/fanworker? Contact the mods! Let us handle things as we understand that sometimes people just don’t get along. Abuse or rude behaviour toward any participant in the Bang will not be tolerated, especially for story/fanwork content. (It’s important for fanworkers to read all the warnings in a story summary, and for authors to list all warnings in their story summary!) Please just get in contact with us mods to resolve issues between participants, rather than disappearing. from Het Big Bang https://ift.tt/2nJcamh via IFTTT

[lovableminyoongi]

Rainy days in Seoul

Pairing: reader & Kim Namjoon(RM)

Genre: Angst, maybe fluff at the beginning?

Growing up I always thought love was easy to find. My parents met in college and fell in love at first sight. Even though my older brother wasn’t planned, as it was only 2 months into the relationship, my parents realized they wanted to keep both the child and the relationship. That turned into another child, me, and 10 years of marriage. My older brother didn’t have the same luck at the first year of college but he’s still hoping. After meeting my boyfriend, randomly at cafe in Seoul, I slowly started to develop the same outlook on love:

"Hi can I get a ice americano and a muffin please?” I said when it was my turn at the counter.

“And what name should I write?”

The server asked.

“Y/N” I said softly and smiled.

The server nodded and took the money I held out for him. I sat down a little further into the little cafe. I reached down to take out my earphones and put in one, just so I could still hear when my order was ready.

“Excuse me, is this seat taken?”

I looked up and into the eyes of a gorgeous young man. His soft brown hair framed his face perfectly and his brown eyes were shinning with the sunlight from outside, coming inside. His smile was enchanting and made my knees weak, luckily I was sitting down so no one noticed the physical reaction.

“No no, you can take the chair” I said expecting him to move it to another table. I looked down to my phone to answer a message from my friends group chat expecting the guy to be long gone in a conversation with someone else at another table.

“Y/N is a beautiful name”

I looked up shocked and noticed he had sat down across me, at ‘my’ table. My mouth opened slightly from the shock of his words.

“I’m sorry if I come across rude, but do i know you? How do you know my name?” I said confused. Had I met him before? Was he a friend of a friend?

“Shit sorry, I totally came across creepy... I heard your name when you mentioned it to the server.. I was behind you in the queue” he said nervously, as all confidence in his voice dissapered.

As I realized we wasn’t a stalker, at least still kind of hoped, I smiled and stopped holding my breath.

“I’m Namjoon” he said and also let his breath go. “I just thought I could approach you confidently and be smooth but I got too nervous” he said and laughed softly.

“Nice to meet you, Namjoon” I said.

I was sure that if it had been any other guy I would have ticked him off as a creep and would’ve rejected him in hopes of him walking away without any anger, as I had heard stories about what could happen. But somehow I felt safe with him. Could’ve been me being naive and trusting whoever, always seeing the best in people. But I decided not to reject him. We spent hours talking at the cafe and I learned he had a passion for music and I shared mine with art. He mentioned a new exhibition his friend, Taehyung, had made. He invited me and gave me his number before he excused himself for having to leave. I met up with him at the exhibition, which I had checked up before going so I was sure of it not being a lie to get me into another more dark situation. But the place checked out and even looked very official. He was standing outside and looked very handsome indeed in a suit. He had asked me to dress up as it was a quite fancy place. I chose a beautiful black dress that hugged my body, and put on some red lipstick. He was standing with his phone looking. As he heard footsteps coming closer to him he looked up and at me. His eyes became bigger and he looked me up and down. I did a little spin and laughed.

“ Hello Namjoon” I said softly still smiling.

“Hello Y/N, you look beautiful” he said smiling at me.

“Should we go in?” I asked him after what felt like 30 seconds of staring into each other’s eyes.

“Ah yes, lets go” he said smiling and put out his arm for me to take.

The night went by quickly and I had caught him staring several times when looking at the paintings. He introduced me to his friend who had paintings and afterwards he led my around the room, never leaving my side, but never touching me. I noticed him clinking softly on his glass of champagne and I smiled at him.

“Namjoon can I ask you something?” I said turning around so I was in front of him. “Of course”. “Is this a date?” I said bluntly, obviously catching him off guard. He looked down and and smiled big. “I hope so” he said slowly looking up at me, looking for a reaction to his words. “Me too” I said smiling at him.

The date went like they do in the movies, I felt myself falling for him slowly, but too fast at the same time I thought. I had just met this guy a few days ago but it felt like we had known each other for years. After the exhibition ended he said his goodbye to his friend and led me to the metro station nearby. He hugged me goodbye and explained his car was around the corner, therefore not taking the metro. After the date came many more. After many more came the label “boyfriend” and “girlfriend”. After the labels came the “lets move in together”. Everything was going great. I loved my job and living in Seoul. Namjoon was working on music and decided to go to an audition for the idol companies. After he got accepted and made it into a group, I was so incredibly happy for him. The group put out amazing songs that made them stand out from the crowd and they gained the success for their hard work. But I felt myself losing grip of him. He began to stay over at the studio several nights a week and began forgetting to answer my texts asking when he came home. I feared the realization of him drifting away but I wanted to hold on. And I feared more the thought of him realizing we were no longer as close as we used to be and as much in love we used to be. It was a rainy day I woke up to. Namjoon wasn’t by my side in our bed, which was becoming a normal recurrence. I sighed and sat up. Isn’t it just typical to be raining when the clouds where in my mind as well? The weather being a match with my feelings. But somehow I felt sure. Sure of how I felt and what I wanted to do today. To let go of the love of my life, or rather the love of 5 years. We had had several arguments about his fading time at home, more severe than others. I had had enough and given up on the idea of bringing my parents’ love into my world.

Yesterday I broke up with him. I had gone to his studio and had asked him to step outside. I told him quietly but surprisingly. He didn’t even flinch and after a few seconds he told me he agreed. That our blooming love had died like flowers in the cold of winter and that summer was never to return to revive it. As I got home everything hit me. What was I to do now? I had lost my life, losing him. What I had imagined for years I wouldn’t find in him. And the feelings of emptiness filled my and the tears started streaming down my cheeks. My legs gave out like the day I met him, only caused by the opposite feeling. Today Taehyung came by and told me he had been sent to pack up Namjoons things. I couldn’t get myself to help him pack everything of Namjoons personal things down. Every picture of his that was taken down, was a stab in my heart. Even when I couldn’t feel the love between us I could still remember when I could. And that broke my heart even more. Today was also a rainy day, with even more aggressive rain, beginning when Taehyung left with the boxes of belongings that used be conjoined with mine. The sky cried with me. Trying to comfort myself with the thought of the future but confusing myself more when I had to remove Namjoon from them.

[whatshethinks]

What happened?

BUT OK, MONDAY NIGHT AROUND 7pm - he picked me  up at KFC Marisol and then I got him fries and burger. And he was like whaaat you didnt hafto! I was like i know its cool

And then we got into his car, and he was all giddy and I was too, definitely. And then, I hand fed him fries and he was shooketh. And then I was like jeez, just eat it already. Hahaha! Tapos ayun he got used to me handfeeding him the fries and shit.

Then I was like hey where are you taking me (eh before when he was back in Cali, we talked about how I  had a dream about him and I having sex at Clark, CDC parade grounds) and he was like Im taking us to CDC HAHAHAHA

And then otw to Clark, I was asking him questions about his life like who he lives with in Cali, if he prefers his mom than his dad HAHAHA

So he was answering them, okay. Happily. So i kept going. Once we got to CDC, we just had parked car conversations. And we was eating fries (he's conscious about his diet so he tries so hard not to eat as many fries) and then while I was talking and singing he would just stare at me. Dead ass serious like stare like SEXY stare, like IM GOING TO  KISS YOU NOW stare.

Ofc I was a tease, so I came close to his face and said "what are you doing?" in a sexy voice (at least I thought it was sexy) and then he was brushing my face and hair with his fingers

Okay so! THE STARE. That fucking stare, was so fucking sexy and shit I can cum just by his stare. Ive never had someone stare at me that way before.

So he was staring at me! And I was wearing this baggy  knitted sweater from H&M and while he was staring, I was lowkey tryna make the sleeves fall off my shoulder like the slut I am. So his californian ass was like: damn mami

And then, I was singing Ivy - Frank Ocean, cause thats what was playing. And he suddenly kissed me. And we started making out you know, and he was grabbing my tits and shit, thank god they grew. And then he was like "oh my god" I was like "hehe what, why?"

And then, I got all heated up. I took off my sweater! And I was wearing a bra and jeans only by this time, and he was like "fuck, you're so hot" and then he would bite his lips and stop and just stare at my tits. Like as if they're the biggest tits he's ever seen. Validation right there for me!

And then, things are getting heated. He was trying to remove my pants, I said "adrian" and he would get his hands off immediately off me. Which was n extra turn on! Cause damn, I like me a good boy too mamas. And then I was kissing his neck. He smelled so good. And thats not even the best part of his body yet.

I went and touch his peepee, and then damn. That shit was hard as fuck and LONG... So I was like "oh my god" under my breath. And he removed them shorts immediately.

When he removed them, I was like "fuckkkkkk" cause jesus christ. I dove my mouth into that dick real quick!

His groin smells so good. Like every corner and inch. Which is so hard to believe cause he didn't come from his house, he came from a fucking funeral with his friends for fucks sake. How does it smell so good. So ofc, I had to show him my skills. My god, I sucked that dick for so long my jaw almost locked. Long story short, he didn't cum. He face fucked me while standing upin the car (thank you, Toyota Innova for having a huge ass space inside) and then I deepthroated without a doubt.

And then, he wanted to fuck - "wanna get a room?"

Me: Not yet, be patient Adrian: Fine baby

After a few mins, he tried to squeeze my butt but my ass small so barely squeezed anything. But thats okay.

And then I had to remind him I was on my period. He was like "Oh shit I totally forgot about that"

- We were smoking weed too on the drive to Clark, like the vape pen whatever you had before.

And then oh my god, honest to god the way he kisses me was so good. He would hold my face and squeeze my mouth with his hand and just fucking eat my whole face. And god, if someone was taking a video of it - they would have came.

It was the best kiss I've ever had. And then we'd take pauses after a few minutes. And I lied down on his chest and just feel his chest and arms and tattoos. And then, he would trace his fingers on my back and hair and give me FUCKING SMOOCHES.

R O M A N T I C!

So thats the fucking signal I picked up right? Cause who the fuck gives smooches to someone you just wanna fuck??!

Smooches are for "I wanna keep seeing you you adorable slut" not "I will hit you up only when Im horny"

So i was so gooey with all the smooches and the finger tracing and shit. I was rubbing his chest. And all that ROMANCE shit!

After a while, we decided to order takeout from Mcdonalds. And then, I offered to pay. He was like:

What are you doing? Let's half What are you thinking? Stop!!! Put that back

So he grabbed my wallet and fucking threw that shit back in my bag and said

Wag ka maglalabas ng pera pag kasama mo ko

So of course I went all soft and shit, once again!

While we were waiting for our takeout, I hand fed him fries again with caramel sundae this time. He was like "Im more of a chocolate sundae guy" but he still ate. Then he ate his burger. And then it was so cute cause the servers from McDonalds came out to deliver our food, and there were two of them... and they were all giggling and shit when they handed the 1 pc of burger and giggling when they left too.

I was like, "oooh they like you" He was like "they didnt have to go in pairs when they gave us this burger naman diba" I was like "they probably like you"

I wish I could say, thats my boyfriend.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Then he started sharing his life story back in the Philippines. Where he did a feeding program for his birthday 2 years ago and shit. How he got that trait from his mom and all. How he would do that again after a year. Then he dropped me off at Marisol, the gate at the kanto where you have to enter. I didnt let him drop me off at my house per se.

Then while I was fixing my stuff, he was like are you sure you're okay to walk home? I was like, yeah Im a big girl.

And he laughed, and was like "come here baby" and was gesturing a hug. So he hugged and fucking GAVE. ME. SMOOCHES. AGAIN.

I texted him at 6am to ask if I left my brella in his car. And then he replied at almost 2pm. When I saw that he was online at like 12pm (Facebook). But I brushed it off. Then, his message was dry as usual.

He acknowledged my head and I said we'd transfer to Telegram cause Im at work, but it was just small talk like I asked him when is he gonna pick his dog up downtown so I can meet his dog, Samson. He was like, "Ill def let you meet him, imma take him to CDC some time and you can come with"

And then, I was like Ill look forward to that and shit

And I sent a meme, and he just said "that is me" and I didnt reply na.

I texted him when I got out of work, you know - lowkey dropping hints and shit. And he replied 4 hours later. I just assumed he's with his friends

We talked during dinner and while I waited for his reply, I slept at 12am. And then he replied at 2am. And then I woke up at 5:30am for work, and he said "aga mo nagigising" and I said yeah and he was like "hatid kita sa work" and shit, but as the good girl and angel that I am, I said "No, pahinga ka nalang"

Then when I got out of work again, I asked him where he was at. And he said he just woke up but he was online for hours before that on Facebook. And he had plans with his family for his cousin's birthday and I was like oh okay.

And he said, puntahan kita mamaya? Ofc my heart went oops! Hahaha.

Okay I waited from 6pm to 9pm for him, and I was so tiired and sleepy already and when we met I was like I deserve an apology and he was like, matagal ba? Shet sorry talaga. Sinurprise pa kasi namin cousin ko.

And I was like, yeah a bit but its fine, tulugan nalang kita haha.

And then, I was so tired I couldnt think of a convo. So I asked him where he was planning to take me, and he said, up to you. I was like, anywhere.

And we ended up in a motel LOL. Like jesus christ, how can I say no now.

We got in the motel room, and oh, I forgot to mention on the way to the motel - I told him I got him a gift, cause his bday was on Sept 24th and he was like "OH MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU DOINNNNNNNNN, WHY DID YOU DO THAT"

He was prolly thinking I got him a watch or something like a scrapbook, LMFAO.

Then when we got to the motel, I gave him my gift, which was weed. I was like, I picked those up from the streets. And he was like "oh shiiiiit, you didnt have to" I was like, I know it no biggie.

Then he was like, "shit babyyyy, thank you"

And then we lied down and I was wearing a mini skirt and sweater. And he saw skirt go up and he was like "oh fuck" and then we made out and then I removed my sweater, and bra he was like "oh my god"

And then he slipped my panties to the side, and oof I liked that very much, thank you. And then, from missionary, we went to doggy. And then he was like - can I cum inside, and I didnt hear him the first time and the second time, so the third time, he was like "can. i cum. inside?" and I said, oh yeah go.

"are you sure?" "Yes haha"

and then he fucking did, it was so hot.

The sex is not as good as Kyle, as well as the dick feels. Ya know!? Hahaha but I dont mind.

and then I went to pee and I showed him my underwear with his cum on it LMFAO. And then he was like shookth

And then, we watched Rick and Morty for a while and then he turned the TV on and then in the movie, there was a funeral. And he switched it off, we ended up watching 1 ep of Brooklyn 99 and then we sang the intro of B99 together, unscripted. How cute was that. Cute as fuck.

Then you know how high people laugh, theyre just like "he.he.he" that was our laugh all through out the episode. HAHAHAHA we cute as fuck.

Then someone called him, a guy. I was assuming it was his cousin or something. Asking him what time he'll be home and where he's at.

Ever since then, he felt so uneasy. And off... I was making out with him, he was hard but it would just die. We were blaming the aircon LMFAO, and then I was like hey its okay. So we ended up spooning instead and he was playing with my titties and then, we tried again. And then, he got hard and died again. He was like "fuckkk so sorry baby, I've never had this problem before haha idk why its acting up right now"

I was like hey its okay, so I gave him head. And we started trying again, then ayun after a few mins. He was able to cum, and he came on my pussy naman.

We cuddled after cleaning up, and then he was staring into space, I was like whats wrong? You okay?

Yeah I am, why whats wrong? Ikaw ok ka lang?

Me: Yeah Im okay, you seem off lang

Adrian: No, wala wala. Dont mind me..

Me: Aww, its gonna be okay.

Adrian: De kasi, kanina sa movie may nakita akong coffin... naaala ko sya (his bestfriend who died whos the reason why hes back in the PH)

Me: oh shit, sorry.

And then he was like, no its okay... And then I was like you wanna bounce na ba?

Adrian: Ok lang ba? Kasi I actually have to go.

Me: What, of course its okay. I get it!

A: You sure ha? Feel ko galit ka...

Me: What, noo come  here. *kissed*

A: Sorry talaga

Then we checked out

The trip back home was awkward but we kissed goodbye and shit. And then the awkward texts came.

also forgot to mention, I asked why didnt he cum on my face and he was like: well I still wanted to kiss you after (:

[insiderandroidtk-blog]

RxJava support 2.0 releases support for Android apps

The RxJava team has released version 2.0 of their reactive Java framework, after an 18 month development cycle. RxJava is part of the ReactiveX family of libraries and frameworks, which is in their words, "a combination of the best ideas from the Observer pattern, the Iterator pattern, and functional programming". The project's "What's different in 2.0" is a good guide for developers already familiar with RxJava 1.x.

RxJava 2.0 is a brand new implementation of RxJava. This release is based on the Reactive Streams specification, an initiative for providing a standard for asynchronous stream processing with non-blocking back pressure, targeting runtime environments (JVM and JavaScript) as well as network protocols.

Reactive implementations have concepts of publishers and subscribers, as well as ways to subscribe to data streams, get the next stream of data, handle errors and close the connection.

The Reactive Streams spec will be included in JDK 9 as java.util.concurrent.Flow. The following interfaces correspond to the Reactive Streams spec. As you can see, the spec is small, consisting of just four interfaces:

·         Flow.Processor<T,R>: A component that acts as both a Subscriber and Publisher.

·         Flow.Publisher<T>: A producer of items (and related control messages) received by Subscribers.

·         Flow.Subscriber<T>: A receiver of messages.

·         Flow.Subscription: Message control linking a Flow.Publisher and Flow.Subscriber.

Spring Framework 5 is also going reactive. To see how this looks, refer to Josh Long's Functional Reactive Endpoints with Spring Framework 5.0.

To learn more about RxJava 2.0, InfoQ interviewed main RxJava 2.0 contributor, David Karnok.

InfoQ: First of all, congrats on RxJava 2.0! 18 months in the making, that's quite a feat. What are you most proud of in this release?

David Karnok: Thanks! In some way, I wish it didn't take so long. There was a 10 month pause when Ben Christensen, the original author who started RxJava, left and there was no one at Netflix to push this forward. I'm sure many will contest that things got way better when I took over the lead role this June. I'm proud my research into more advanced and more performant Reactive Streams paid off and RxJava 2 is the proof all of it works.

InfoQ: What’s different in RxJava 2.0 and how does it help developers?

Karnok: There are a lot of differences between version 1 and 2 and it's impossible to list them all here ,but you can visit the dedicated wiki page for a comprehensible explanation. In headlines, we now support the de-facto standard Reactive Streams specification, have significant overhead reduction in many places, no longer allow nulls, have split types into two groups based on support of or lack of backpressure and have explicit interop between the base reactive types.

InfoQ: Where do you see RxJava used the most (e.g. IoT, real-time data processing, etc.)?

Karnok: RxJava is more dominantly used by the Android community, based on the feedback I saw. I believe the server side is dominated by Project Reactor and Akka at the moment. I haven't specifically seen IoT mentioned or use RxJava (it requires Java), but maybe they use some other reactive library available on their platform. For real-time data processing people still tend to use other solutions, most of them not really reactive, and I'm not aware of any providers (maybe Pivotal) who are pushing for reactive in this area.

InfoQ: What benefits does RxJava provide Android more than other environments that would explain the increased traction?

Karnok: As far as I see, Android wanted to "help" their users solving async and concurrent problems with Android-only tools such as AsyncTask, Looper/Handler etc.

Unfortunately, their design and use is quite inconvenient, often hard to understand or predict and generally brings frustration to Android developers. These can largely contribute to callback hell and the difficulty of keeping async operations off the main thread.

RxJava's design (inherited from the ReactiveX design of Microsoft) is dataflow-oriented and orthogonalized where actions execute from when data appears for processing. In addition, error handling and reporting is a key part of the flows. With AsyncTask, you had to manually work out the error delivery pattern and cancel pending tasks, whereas RxJava does that as part of its contract.

In practical terms, having a flow that queries several services in the background and then presents the results in the main thread can be expressed in a few lines with RxJava (+Retrofit) and a simple screen rotation will cancel the service calls promptly.

This is a huge productivity win for Android developers, and the simplicity helps them climb the steep learning curve the whole reactive programming's paradigm shift requires. Maybe at the end, RxJava is so attractive to Android because it reduces the "time-to-market" for individual developers, startups and small companies in the mobile app business.

There was nothing of a comparable issue on the desktop/server side Java, in my opinion, at that time. People learned to fire up ExecutorService's and wait on Future.get(), knew about SwingUtilities.invokeLater to send data back to the GUI thread and otherwise the Servlet API, which is one thread per request only (pre 3.0) naturally favored blocking APIs (database, service calls).

Desktop/server folks are more interested in the performance benefits a non-blocking design of their services offers (rather than how easy one can write a service). However, unlike Android development, having just RxJava is not enough and many expect/need complete frameworks to assist their business logic as there is no "proper" standard for non-blocking web services to replace the Servlet API. (Yes, there is Spring (~Boot) and Play but they feel a bit bandwagon-y to me at the moment).

InfoQ: HTTP is a synchronous protocol and can cause a lot of back pressure when using microservices. Streaming platforms like Akka and Apache Kafka help to solve this. Does RxJava 2.0 do anything to allow automatic back pressure?

Karnok: RxJava 2's Flowable type implements the Reactive Streams interface/specification and does support backpressure. However, the Java level backpressure is quite different from the network level backpressure. For us, backpressure means how many objects to deliver through the pipeline between different stages where these objects can be non uniform in type and size. On the network level one deals with usually fixed size packets, and backpressure manifests via the lack of acknowledgement of previously sent packets. In classical setup, the network backpressure manifests on the Java level as blocking calls that don't return until all pieces of data have been written. There are non-blocking setups, such as Netty, where the blocking is replaced by implicit buffering, and as far as I know there are only individual, non-uniform and non Reactive Streams compatible ways of handling those (i.e., a check for canWrite which one has to spin over/retry periodically). There exist libraries that try to bridge the two worlds (RxNetty, some Spring) with varying degrees of success as I see it.

InfoQ: Do you think reactive frameworks are necessary to handle large amounts of traffic and real-time data?

Karnok: It depends on the problem complexity. For example, if your task is to count the number of characters in a big-data source, there are faster and more dedicated ways of doing that. If your task is to compose results from services on top of a stream of incoming data in order to return something detailed, reactive-based solutions are quite adequate. As far as I know, most libraries and frameworks around Reactive Streams were designed for throughput and not really for latency. For example, in high-frequency trading, the predictable latency is very important and can be easily met by Aeron but not the main focus for RxJava due to the unpredictable latency behavior.

InfoQ: Does HTTP/2 help solve the scalability issues that HTTP/1.1 has?

Karnok: This is not related to RxJava and I personally haven't played with HTTP/2 but only read the spec. Multiplexing over the same channel is certainly a win in addition to the support for explicit backpressure (i.e., even if the network can deliver, the client may still be unable to process the data in that volume) per stream. I don't know all the technical details but I believe Spring Reactive Web does support HTTP/2 transport if available but they hide all the complexity behind reactive abstractions so you can express your processing pipeline in RxJava 2 and Reactor 3 terms if you wish.

InfoQ: Java 9 is projected to be featuring some reactive functionality. Is that a complete spec?

Karnok: No. Java 9 will only feature 4 Java interfaces with 7 methods total. No stream-like or Rx-like API on top of that nor any JDK features built on that.

InfoQ: Will that obviate the need for RxJava if it is built right into the JDK?

Karnok: No and I believe there's going to be more need for a true and proven library such as RxJava. Once the toolchains grow up to Java 9, we will certainly provide adapters and we may convert (or rewrite) RxJava 3 on top of Java 9's features (VarHandles).

One of my fears is that once Java 9 is out, many will try to write their own libraries (individuals, companies) and the "market" gets diluted with big branded-low quality solutions, not to mention the increased amount of "how does RxJava differ from X" questions.

My personal opinion is that this is already happening today around Reactive Streams where certain libraries and frameworks advertise themselves as RS but fail to deliver based on it. My (likely biased) conjecture is that RxJava 2 is the closest library/technology to an optimal Reactive Streams-based solution that can be.

InfoQ: What's next for RxJava?

Karnok: We had fantastic reviewers, such as Jake Wharton, during the development of RxJava 2. Unfortunately, the developer previews and release candidates didn't generate enough attention and despite our efforts, small problems and oversights slipped into the final release. I don't expect major issues in the coming months but we will keep fixing both version 1 and 2 as well as occasionally adding new operators to support our user base. A few companion libraries, such as RxAndroid, now provide RxJava 2 compatible versions, but the majority of the other libraries don't yet or haven't yet decided how to go forward. In terms of RxJava, I plan to retire RxJava 1 within six months (i.e., only bugfixes then on), partly due to the increasing maintenance burden on my "one man army" for some time now; partly to "encourage" the others to switch to the RxJava 2 ecosystem. As for RxJava 3, I don't have any concrete plans yet. There are ongoing discussions about splitting the library along types or along backpressure support as well as making the so-called operator-fusion elements (which give a significant boost to our performance) a standard extension of the Reactive Streams specification.

[shahramkabiri]

The best Methods for Dealing with Web-Page Glitches

This brief article clarifies the operation of developing problem dealing with to acquire a eshop that uses host-element scripting. Optimal error taking on is needed to make sure that clients of the eshop have a very good undergo in their travel to. Any professional person net site will have to be totally tested onto a staging server before being deployed onto the real world wide web server. But the truth is, it is far from forever easy to expect just about every single quite possible mistake and incredibly good miscalculation taking care of will notify the two individual in addition the web master about complications with the web page inside of a formulation platform.

Whenever we have a discussion about eshop blunders, the two main various sorts we have to converse about. Life threatening mistakes trigger setup within the script to stop including a internet page miscalculation (HTTP situation computer code 501) being said in to the owner. An exemption happens to be an miscalculation chucked by host-side script that might be contained thru scripting and let the net website page to continue to be displayed. An illustration of this this form of exclusion is the data base inquiry which then causes an different but doesn't abort delivery using the existing script.

Building a Code Library

For you to provide continuous error taking care of throughout a eshop, a propagated policy module is generally built which supplies almost all of the miscalculation working with info. The aim is to not ever perform policy to make sure that everything is managed in one central location. Because of this, any alterations or modifications that must be made to the policy only need to be performed and once. A high-quality problem taking on collection will possess means of exhibiting a genial concept at the guest not to mention pick up the debugging critical information necessary for technical support.

Any encoding foreign language is different, so it will likely be as much as the builder to decide strategy to the best utilize the miscalculation taking care of. The target ought to be to make it functional and intuitive so as that it can be used in a variety of circumstances. It needs to only need a little amount of computer code to cover a section of scripting policy with problem managing.

Exhibiting Helpful Messages

There are several selections for displaying pleasant error announcements in to the consumer. Model option is only to end handling on the entire internet page and exhibit an error that reads "Sorry, this website can not be presented presently caused by an inside point. Our technical support company continues to be notified and will projects swiftly to fix this condition." This could be simplest way to handgrip any unusual flaws that people are prepared for through the use of hosting server-edge scripting.

An alternative choice will be to demonstrate the maximum amount of of that website page as is feasible and place an extremely observable miscalculation sales message on screen. This communication would looked over "Incapable to do activity attributable to an internal mistake." The aim of this style of controlling simple fact that we provide the owner the ability to appropriate the dilemma and test the procedure in the future. Such type of scenario is typically a from submitting the places horrible knowledge may cause an error by the online page.

Debug Critical information

Once machine-team code are prepared for the error, it is vital that debug facts are sent to the webmaster and technical support crew in order for concerns is in many cases addressed effectively. This debug data is quite different from the warm and friendly mistake principles that could be showed in to the client. It contains definitely detailed information around the code which resulted in the problem, and any other relevant critical information.

The single most Fix my website flaws will be a database fault a result of a malformed SQL document for websites which tend not to use kept steps. This kind of fault can easily be captured and managed throughout web server-aspect code. In cases like this, the particular debug critical information we would like to see is your resource for the error (document name and collection phone number) by way of a pile locate and in addition the offending SQL script which induced the error.

Several other bits of critical information we wish to see is your Website url along with the inquiry string. The require method (GET or POST) and everything version specifics passed on in to the set of scripts. Additionally, any biscuits setup by the client's machines would additionally be great for reproducing the mistake. This may sound like a great number in fact it is. The thing is, we must get quite as much critical information as it can be so the obstacle is in many cases acknowledged and adjusted easily.

Transmitting Debug Critical information

When we have this debug critical information, we need to send it to your website owner and technology help and support club. The most effective way of accomplishing that is to send an e-mailbox filled with the above critical information. One particular way is to store this data in a very data base in which it actually is accessible by having a company intranet.

As a form of biggest perform, you should think about accomplishing together to eliminate the chance that one way falls flat. Definitely, if for example the whole set of scripts fails and quits undertaking, then no information is going to be sent. This has become the dangers of problem handling. Site owners will regularly analysis their fault controlling to ensure that all sorts of things succeeds, in the form of provision to avert this.

Web master Alerts

Notices about faults are delivered with message dealing with nearly every fault, as previously mentioned. Periodically, it doesn't appear sensible to possess your inbox loaded up with a lot of e-mails. The next alternate can be to develop an Feed. RSS refers to Fairly Easy Syndication or Rich Information site Summary. It is sort of a reports provide for that gives headlines in addition to a synopsis to consumers.

Getting an RSS visitor app, members can be given notification from their computing device or cellphone about new problem studies which get created. The Rss or atom website reader can look at the web site host all 5 minutes for first time worries. There are many program code libraries readily available for putting together Rss or atom company online. Additionally it is not very tough to design your very own made to order service from an RSS feed is not actually a large amount of over a dynamically-produced XML file that conforms in the Really simply syndication specification.

Even for a lot quicker responses years, it may be somewhat unimportant to add in a alert (or notify mechanism) while using Text message or text messaging on to a mobile device handful. So, just like a pager was adopted extended ago, area buyers should be notified instantly every time a major issue ensues. Since it is a message, critical information for example website Website url, or miscalculation form might also be provided by the warn. An application would need to take care not to flood users with loads of sms messages. When it is each and every single 15 minutes and maybe constraint the total wide range of mail messages each and every day to 25 a prime observe will be to reduce communications to.

Fault Notice Understand Emails

For internet resources that generate a lot of people fault notifications each and every day, it can be not as much intrusive to aggregate all the error notifications into an break down. A break down is really a simple survey that contain the different error documents that have been documented for any day. States would have to be registered in both a data source possibly in a ripped-submit as an example XML data format. A scheduled concept is run at the end of the same day that records the various glitches for the entire day and develops a particular special article.

This kind of state cuts down on the quantity of fault mail messages which get sent out with e-mail. So, a first-class compromise might be to forward an e-send understand daily and perhaps receive an Intranet or RSS feed for almost instantaneous alert of issues. Needless to say, this kind of alert mandates that the web master or tech support man or women be ahead of their desktop or cellular generally if the notification is gained.

Refining Mistake Taking care of

There is absolutely no definite concept for a way mistake coping with should be carried out. That being said, each individual situation is unique and care really need to be brought to resolve how to handle errors. Periodically, we can get corrective procedure by the strategy code for getting "near" the problem. In such a case, we could not must showcase any miscalculation in any way.

When displaying polite blunders, make an effort to put yourself in the user's athletic shoes. When I were definitily at the document along with a critical problem came about while having processing, types of text would I like to see? Would need to this fault incorporate data teaching how to submit opinions at the site owner? In case the mistake feature url links to help and support papers that could perhaps imply workarounds? Would need to this communication include a procedure that notifies members (doubtless through e-mail) whenever the main problem continues to be resolved?

There is a multitude of many kinds of considerations to select when creating purchaser fault controlling. We hope that this article has peaked your interest on possessing a special miscalculation dealing with unit in your internet site if hardly anything else. Mistakes would definitely be a annoyance to both of these eshop information site and house owners targeted traffic. Helping to make your web sites responsible and powerful should be a superior consideration within firm.

[kadobeclothing]

The 8 Email Marketing Metrics & KPIs You Should Be Tracking

There’s a lot to say when it comes to how to do email marketing well. We could talk for days about the most critical components of an optimized email, common email marketing mistakes you might be making, and examples of brilliant email marketing that will inspire you. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how optimized your emails are if you can’t see the results of your efforts — not to mention measure whether email is helping you hit your goals.

So before sending your next email, pause for a few minutes and ask yourself: What is the goal of my email marketing? Is it to grow my subscriber database? Generate more leads? To convert more existing leads into customers? Whatever you decide your goal is (and you can have more than one), the next thing you need to do is figure out which metrics you’ll need to track in order to determine how you’re progressing toward that goal.

Let’s take a look at the metrics you should be paying attention to in your email marketing efforts. We’ll start with the metrics every email marketer should be tracking, and then we’ll take a look at how to tie certain metrics to your specific goals.

Email Marketing Metrics

Clickthrough Rate Conversion Rate Bounce Rate List Growth Rate Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate Overall ROI Open Rate Unsubscribe Rate

1. Clickthrough Rate What It Is: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links contained in a given email. How to Calculate It: (Total clicks OR unique clicks ÷ Number of delivered emails) * 100 Example: 500 total clicks ÷ 10,000 delivered emails * 100 = 5% clickthrough rate (Using either total clicks or unique clicks in the calculation above works, as long as you use the same approach consistently.) Clickthrough rate (CTR) is likely the first answer you’ll get when you ask an email marketer what metrics they track. It’s what I like to call the “day-to-day” email marketing metric, because it lets you easily calculate performance for every individual email you send. From there, you can track how your CTR changes over time. CTR is also frequently used for determining the results of A/B tests, as these tests are often designed with the intention of finding new ways to get more clicks in your emails. Clickthrough rate is a very important metric for all email marketers to be tracking, as it gives you direct insight into how many people on your list are engaging with your content and interested in learning more about your brand or your offer. Read this blog post to learn what a “good” clickthrough rate is, according to industry benchmarks. (HubSpot customers: Click here to learn how to easily set up click tracking in your emails using HubSpot.) 2. Conversion Rate What It Is: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link within an email and completed a desired action, such as filling out a lead generation form or purchasing a product. How to Calculate It: (Number of people who completed the desired action ÷ Number of total emails delivered) * 100 Example: 400 people who completed the desired action ÷ 10,000 total email delivered * 100 = 4% conversion rate After an email recipient has clicked through on your email, the next goal is typically to get them to convert on your offer — in other words, to take the action that your email has asked them to take. So if you’re sending an email to offer your audience the chance to download, say, a free ebook, you’d consider anyone who actually downloads that ebook to be a conversion. Because your definition of a conversion is directly tied to the call-to-action in your email, and your call-to-action should be directly tied to the overall goal of your email marketing, conversion rate is one of the most important metrics for determining the extent to which you’re achieving your goals. (We’ll discuss more specific goal-related metrics later.) In order to measure conversion rate on your emails, you’ll need to integrate your email platform and your web analytics. You can do this by creating unique tracking URLs for your email links that identify the source of the click as coming from a specific email campaign. 3. Bounce Rate What It Is: The percentage of your total emails sent that could not be successfully delivered to the recipient’s inbox. How to Calculate It: (Total number of bounced emails ÷ Number of emails sent) * 100 Example: 75 bounced emails ÷ 10,000 total emails sent * 100 = 0.75% bounce rate There are two kinds of bounces to track: “hard” bounces and “soft” bounces. Soft bounces are the result of a temporary problem with a valid email address, such as a full inbox or a problem with the recipient’s server. The recipient’s server may hold these emails for delivery once the problem clears up, or you may try re-sending your email message to soft bounces. Hard bounces are the result of an invalid, closed, or non-existent email address, and these emails will never be successfully delivered. You should immediately remove hard bounce addresses from your email list, because internet service providers (ISPs) use bounce rates as one of the key factors to determine an email sender’s reputation. Having too many hard bounces can make your company look like a spammer in the eyes of an ISP. (Read this blog post to learn more about the difference between hard and soft bounces.)

4. List Growth Rate What It Is: The rate at which your email list is growing. How to Calculate It: ([(Number of new subscribers) minus (Number of unsubscribes + email/spam complaints)] ÷ Total number of email addresses on your list]) * 100 Example: (500 new subscribers – 100 unsubscribes and email/spam complaints) ÷ 10,000 email addresses on the list * 100 = 4% list growth rate Aside from the call-to-action metrics (CTR, conversion rates), you’ll also want to be keeping tabs on your list growth and loss. Of course, you should be aiming to grow your list in order to extend your reach, expand your audience, and position yourself as an industry thought leader. But believe it or not, there’s a natural decay of your email marketing list, and it expires by about 22.5% every year — which means that it’s more important than ever to pay attention to growing your subscriber list and keeping it at a healthy size. 5. Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate What It Is: The percentage of email recipients who clicked on a “share this” button to post email content to a social network, and/or who clicked on a “forward to a friend” button. How to Calculate It: (Number of clicks on a share and/or forward button ÷ Number of total delivered emails) * 100 Example: 100 clicks on a share/forward button ÷ 10,000 total delivered emails * 100 = 1% email sharing/forwarding rate The rate at which your email recipients forward or share your email with others may not seem all that significant, but it’s arguably one of the most important metrics you should be tracking. Why? Because this is how you generate new contacts. The folks on your email list are already in your database. So while conversion is still a primary focus, this doesn’t help you attract new leads. Encourage your readers to pass along your email to a friend or colleague if they found the content useful, and start tracking how many new people you can add to your database this way. (Read this blog post for tips on getting people to forward your emails.) Keep a careful eye on your sharing rates to discover which types of articles and offers tend to get shared the most, and use that insight when you plan email campaigns in the future. 6. Overall ROI What It Is: The overall return on investment for your email campaigns. In other words, total revenue divided by total spend. How to Calculate It: [($ in additional sales made minus $ invested in the campaign) ÷ $ invested in the campaign] * 100 Example: ($1,000 in additional sales – $100 invested in the campaign / $100 invested in the campaign) * 100 = a 900% return on investment for the campaign This is the most basic formula to calculate ROI — but there are several ways to approach calculating the ROI of your email campaigns. Depending on your type of business, you might prefer a different one.) As with every marketing channel, you should be able to determine the overall ROI of your email marketing. If you haven’t yet, set up an SLA system whereby you assign different values to various types of leads based on their likelihood to generate revenue for your company. How many of each of these types of leads did you generate via email marketing? How does this translate to potential revenue? Actual revenue? These are the types of metrics that will help you show your boss and your sales team how valuable email marketing is as a channel that drives real, tangible results. 7. Open Rate What It Is: The percentage of email recipients who open a given email. Most email marketers are still bent over backwards trying to optimize their subject lines for higher open rates. While this can have a positive impact — and more opens are a great thing — they really should be focused on optimizing their clickthrough rates, instead. The fact of the matter is that open rate is actually a very misleading metric for a few reasons. Most importantly, an email is only counted as “opened” if the recipient also receives the images embedded in that message. And a large percentage of your email users likely have image-blocking enabled on their email client. This means that even if they open the email, they won’t be included in your open rate, making it an inaccurate and unreliable metric for marketers, as it underreports on your true numbers. You can get some value out of open rate as a metric if you use it as a comparative metric. For instance, if you compare the open rates of this week’s email send to last week’s email send (both to the same lists) it might give you some insight since the variables are somewhat controlled. 8. Unsubscribe Rate What It Is: The percentage of email recipients unsubscribe from your send list after opening a given email. As with open rate, the unsubscribe rate isn’t a reliable picture of the health of your email list. Many subscribers who are tired of receiving email messages from your brand won’t bother to go through the formal unsubscribe process. They’ll just stop opening, reading, and clicking on your email messages. That’s why it’s much more effective to measure subscriber engagement by clickthrough rates and conversion rates. From there, you can keep an eye out on unengaged subscribers so you can consider removing them at some point, like we went over earlier. Checking your monthly unsubscribe rate is helpful for calculating your overall list growth rate, though, so do keep an eye on it every once in a while. How to Know Which Email Metrics to Track, Based on Your Goals The goal of your email marketing may be very different from the goals of another company like yours, and may even vary within your own company over time. But again, it’s crucial that you determine exactly what it is you’re looking to achieve with your email marketing before you begin (or continue) to send and measure your emails. Here’s how you can align your specific goal with key metrics. Subscriber List Growth Rate If your focus is on growing the top of your funnel — attracting more visitors to your site, signing up more blog subscribers, getting more people to use your free tools, that kind of thing — your goal will probably be growing your subscriber list. Your emails will likely contain calls-to-action such as “Subscribe to Our Blog” or “Join Our Weekly Email List.” So of course, the most important metric you should be tracking for this goal is the growth rate of your subscriber list. (Read this blog post for more detailed tips on how to grow your subscriber list.)

Unengaged Subscribers Just as you want to track and grow your subscribers, it’s also important to keep an eye on your unengaged subscribers — and consider removing them from your list altogether. Why? Because sending emails to people who aren’t engaged with your emails (called “graymail”) can hurt the deliverability of your email overall. Email clients might get tipped off by low engagement rates and deliver email from known-graymail senders straight to recipients’ “junk” folders, meaning your emails will technically get sent and delivered, but won’t necessarily be seen. Here at HubSpot, we deliberately unsubscribed 250,000 people from HubSpot’s Marketing Blog, which included people who had opted in to receive emails about new content we published on the blog. This subscriber purge brought our total subscriber count from 550,000 down to 300,000. Read this blog post to learn more about why and how we purged our subscriber list, and why you might consider doing the same. Number of New (or Total) Leads Generated Maybe instead of focusing on subscribers, you’d like to work on growing lead generation. If this is the case, you should be sending emails that offer lead generation content — in other words, content that requires the viewer to fill out a lead capture form in order to access it. If the goal of your email marketing is lead gen, you should be tracking how many leads you’re capturing every day, and every month. You can decide to focus on all leads generated, or only new ones added to your database, depending on your priorities.  Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate Finally, let’s say you want to focus more toward the middle/bottom of your marketing funnel, and convert more of your existing leads into customers. If this is your goal, the emails you’re sending will likely provide content more closely related to your business and your product or service. Your calls-to-action may include “Get a demo,” “Watch a Video of Our Product in Action,” or “Start a Free Trial.” If this is your goal, you should be tracking changes in your lead-to-customer conversion rate. As obvious as this all seems, you’d be surprised how many email marketers determine their goals and then don’t bother to track their progress against them. Make sure that you’re able to track how closely you’re trending toward your goal at any point during the month, and that you’re looking carefully at any changes in these metrics month over month. Navigating Email Marketing Metrics The bottom line? Be smart about which metrics you’re tracking, and make sure you’re able to effectively measure your individual email performance, the health of your email list, and your progress toward your overarching goals. As long as you’re able to determine each of those, you’re on the right track for more effective email marketing.

  Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in March 2014 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

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[itsfinancethings]

November 07, 2019 at 08:59PM

The Democratic allegations at the heart of the ongoing impeachment inquiry are pretty simple: that Donald Trump used the power of the presidency to pressure a foreign government to improperly investigate Joe Biden. Or as Democrat Eric Swalwell of California summarized it on Nov. 7, “Defense dollars for dirt.”

The Republican response, by contrast, has been less straightforward. In the weeks since Sept. 24, when the White House released a rough transcript of Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky, the Republican defense has shifted dramatically, from denying the charges and then dismissing that they would be impeachable if true, to denigrating witnesses and evidence and attacking the impeachment process.

Democrats paint the changing defense as evidence of its weakness. Republicans attribute it to another source: disorganization. So far, they say, there’s been little coordination between the White House and Trump’s nominal allies on the Hill about a messaging strategy.

Here’s a look at how the defense of Donald Trump has changed since the impeachment proceedings began.

‘No Quid Pro Quo’

Since the moment he authorized the release of a transcript, Trump has maintained there was no quid pro quo in his withholding military aid from Ukraine while pushing the country to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. In a tweet announcing the decision to publish the call, Trump said his conversation with President Zelensky was “totally appropriate,” that he applied “no pressure,” and that there was “NO quid pro quo.”

….You will see it was a very friendly and totally appropriate call. No pressure and, unlike Joe Biden and his son, NO quid pro quo! This is nothing more than a continuation of the Greatest and most Destructive Witch Hunt of all time!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2019

Trump has continued to chant this mantra at rallies, on Twitter and in interviews — a blanket defense of the core issue at the center of Democrats’ investigation. And it has been echoed by other top members of his Administration. “The transcript of the President’s phone call with President Zelensky… there was no quid pro quo,” Vice President Mike Pence said on Oct. 3. “There was no pressure.” Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, Larry Kudlow, Trump’s chief economic advisor, Steve Mnuchin, Treasury secretary, and others of Trump’s top allies have all repeated this line as well.

But this stance has become more complicated in recent days as witnesses have asserted explicitly to House investigators that there was, in fact, a quid pro quo.

“That was my clear understanding,” Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, testified last month. “Security assistance money would not come until the president [of Ukraine] committed to pursue the investigation,” Taylor continued, according to the transcript of his testimony. On Nov. 5, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, revised his original testimony to include that he had passed along such a message to a Zelensky advisor. “I said that resumption of the U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Sondland said in a written statement.

Some aides have since adjusted their strategy, and been backing away from an unequivocal “no quid pro quo” defense.

On Nov. 3, for example, Conway changed her tune on CNN. She continued to say there was no quid pro quo, but then when pressed by CNN’s Dana Bash, Conway said, “I don’t know whether aid was being held up and for how long.”

Attacking the process

When Pelosi announced the start of a formal impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24, Republicans immediately began decrying the process and questioning the legitimacy of the investigation. In past impeachments, the inquiries had been voted on by the full House, whereas in this case, Pelosi didn’t hold a vote to begin it. While that broke with tradition, there is nothing in the Constitution that says the House needs a vote to begin an impeachment investigation. But Republicans and White House lawyers seized on the procedural omission to defend Trump nonetheless. As the investigation has proceeded, they’ve also criticized the fact that many of the hearings have been held behind closed doors.

“This is a process problem,” Rep. Mark Meadows, an ally of the President and leader of the Freedom Caucus, told TIME in late October. “If you focus on communication and not process, you’re focusing on the wrong thing.”

On Oct. 8, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone sent a letter to House Democratic leaders in which he said they “have designed and implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process,” specifically citing the lack of a House vote to authorize it. He announced that Trump and his Administration would not cooperate with the investigation.

“We think there’s serious constitutional flaws [with] the way the process is going on,” Trump’s personal attorney Jay Sekulow told TIME on Oct. 22.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham introduced a resolution in October condemning the inquiry, arguing that Democrats are “abandoning more than a century’s worth of precedent and tradition in impeachment proceedings and denying President Trump basic fairness and due process accorded every American.” Graham and other Republicans have complained both about the lack of a full House vote to begin the probe and that the testimony has thus far largely not been public.

On Oct. 31, the House did vote on formalizing the inquiry, and public hearings are set to start next week. While he often refers to the impeachment investigation as a “witch hunt” — the same term he used to describe Robert Mueller’s investigation — Trump has urged Republicans to move away from process arguments as the inquiry has proceeded. “I’d rather go into the details of the case rather than process,” Trump told reporters on Oct. 28 of how Republicans in Congress were defending him. “Process is good, but I think you ought to look at the case, and the case is very simple and quick.”

Undermining the credibility of witnesses

Trump and his allies have attempted to undermine the credibility of certain witnesses and poke holes in their testimony. Trump has repeatedly attacked the whistleblower whose complaint spurred the impeachment inquiry, calling for the person’s identity to be revealed and criticizing the media for not publishing it. He has also asserted, without evidence, that the whistleblower has a political agenda.

“There have have been stories written about a certain individual, a male, and they say he’s the whistleblower,” Trump told reporters on Nov. 3. “If he’s the whistleblower, he has no credibility because he’s a Brennan guy, he’s a Susan Rice guy, he’s an Obama guy. And he hates Trump.”

After Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official, testified behind closed doors on Oct. 29, Trump tweeted that he was a “Never Trumper witness.” On Nov. 2, when asked whether he regrets that comment, Trump seemed to imply he had damaging information to release about Vindman: “Well, you’ll be seeing very soon what comes out and then you can ask the question in a different way,” Trump said.

As members of conservative media amplified Trump’s attacks on Vindman, who was born in Ukraine, and questioned his patriotism, some Republicans in Congress condemned the line of attack. “I’m not going to question the patriotism of any of the people who are coming forward,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the day of Vindman’s testimony. House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney said questioning Vindman’s patriotism was “shameful.”

Sondland, on the other hand, is a Trump donor, and can’t be criticized as a “Never Trumper.” When he updated his testimony in a statement that said he had been the messenger of a quid pro quo, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham released a statement saying, in part, “Ambassador Sondland squarely states that he ‘did not know, (and still does not know) when, why or by whom the aid was suspended.’ He also said he ‘presumed’ there was a link to the aid — but cannot identify any solid source for that assumption.”

There may have been a quid pro quo, but that’s not impeachable

On Oct. 17, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney held a press conference in which he dramatically changed the defense of Trump’s actions, and then walked back his comments hours later. While Trump had been continuing to proclaim “no quid pro quo,” while standing behind the podium in the White House press briefing room, Mulvaney seemed to acknowledge that there had been one — but that it wasn’t a problem. “Did he also mention to me in [the] past the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely,” Mulvaney said of a conversation he had with Trump. “No question about that. But that’s it, and that’s why we held up the money.”

“I have news for everybody: Get over it,” Mulvaney said. “There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.”

Reaction to what seemed to be the first acknowledgement of a quid pro quo in the conversation at the heart of the impeachment inquiry was swift, and hours later, Mulvaney put out a statement disputing his earlier comments. “There was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election,” he said in his later statement.

While he had to walk back his explanation of why Trump held up aid money to Ukraine, others are now shifting to a defense of Trump that mirrors Mulvaney’s original comments: that there may have been a quid pro quo, but that’s not an impeachable offense.

This line of defense has emerged as multiple witnesses (including Sondland and Taylor) have testified about the occurrence of a quid pro quo. “If it was a condition of getting aid that there be an investigation into a political rival, that was inappropriate,” the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, Mac Thornberry of Texas, told NPR on Oct. 28. “Whether it rises to the standard of being an impeachable offense — that’s a different question.”

“The Senate will face the question of whether that’s an impeachable offense,” Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, told CNN in November. “And I don’t think the American people are going to conclude that it is.”

Trump is no fan of this tactic, however, as he still maintains that there was no quid pro quo at the base of the matter. “False stories are being reported that a few Republican Senators are saying that President Trump may have done a quid pro quo, but it doesn’t matter, there is nothing wrong with that, it is not an impeachable event,” the President tweeted on Nov. 4. “Perhaps so, but read the transcript, there is no quid pro quo!”

False stories are being reported that a few Republican Senators are saying that President Trump may have done a quid pro quo, but it doesn’t matter, there is nothing wrong with that, it is not an impeachable event. Perhaps so, but read the transcript, there is no quid pro quo!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2019

[newstechreviews]

The Democratic allegations at the heart of the ongoing impeachment inquiry are pretty simple: that Donald Trump used the power of the presidency to pressure a foreign government to improperly investigate Joe Biden. Or as Democrat Eric Swalwell of California summarized it on Nov. 7, “Defense dollars for dirt.”

The Republican response, by contrast, has been less straightforward. In the weeks since Sept. 24, when the White House released a rough transcript of Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky, the Republican defense has shifted dramatically, from denying the charges and then dismissing that they would be impeachable if true, to denigrating witnesses and evidence and attacking the impeachment process.

Democrats paint the changing defense as evidence of its weakness. Republicans attribute it to another source: disorganization. So far, they say, there’s been little coordination between the White House and Trump’s nominal allies on the Hill about a messaging strategy.

Here’s a look at how the defense of Donald Trump has changed since the impeachment proceedings began.

‘No Quid Pro Quo’

Since the moment he authorized the release of a transcript, Trump has maintained there was no quid pro quo in his withholding military aid from Ukraine while pushing the country to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. In a tweet announcing the decision to publish the call, Trump said his conversation with President Zelensky was “totally appropriate,” that he applied “no pressure,” and that there was “NO quid pro quo.”

….You will see it was a very friendly and totally appropriate call. No pressure and, unlike Joe Biden and his son, NO quid pro quo! This is nothing more than a continuation of the Greatest and most Destructive Witch Hunt of all time!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2019

Trump has continued to chant this mantra at rallies, on Twitter and in interviews — a blanket defense of the core issue at the center of Democrats’ investigation. And it has been echoed by other top members of his Administration. “The transcript of the President’s phone call with President Zelensky… there was no quid pro quo,” Vice President Mike Pence said on Oct. 3. “There was no pressure.” Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, Larry Kudlow, Trump’s chief economic advisor, Steve Mnuchin, Treasury secretary, and others of Trump’s top allies have all repeated this line as well.

But this stance has become more complicated in recent days as witnesses have asserted explicitly to House investigators that there was, in fact, a quid pro quo.

“That was my clear understanding,” Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, testified last month. “Security assistance money would not come until the president [of Ukraine] committed to pursue the investigation,” Taylor continued, according to the transcript of his testimony. On Nov. 5, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, revised his original testimony to include that he had passed along such a message to a Zelensky advisor. “I said that resumption of the U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Sondland said in a written statement.

Some aides have since adjusted their strategy, and been backing away from an unequivocal “no quid pro quo” defense.

On Nov. 3, for example, Conway changed her tune on CNN. She continued to say there was no quid pro quo, but then when pressed by CNN’s Dana Bash, Conway said, “I don’t know whether aid was being held up and for how long.”

Attacking the process

When Pelosi announced the start of a formal impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24, Republicans immediately began decrying the process and questioning the legitimacy of the investigation. In past impeachments, the inquiries had been voted on by the full House, whereas in this case, Pelosi didn’t hold a vote to begin it. While that broke with tradition, there is nothing in the Constitution that says the House needs a vote to begin an impeachment investigation. But Republicans and White House lawyers seized on the procedural omission to defend Trump nonetheless. As the investigation has proceeded, they’ve also criticized the fact that many of the hearings have been held behind closed doors.

“This is a process problem,” Rep. Mark Meadows, an ally of the President and leader of the Freedom Caucus, told TIME in late October. “If you focus on communication and not process, you’re focusing on the wrong thing.”

On Oct. 8, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone sent a letter to House Democratic leaders in which he said they “have designed and implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process,” specifically citing the lack of a House vote to authorize it. He announced that Trump and his Administration would not cooperate with the investigation.

“We think there’s serious constitutional flaws [with] the way the process is going on,” Trump’s personal attorney Jay Sekulow told TIME on Oct. 22.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham introduced a resolution in October condemning the inquiry, arguing that Democrats are “abandoning more than a century’s worth of precedent and tradition in impeachment proceedings and denying President Trump basic fairness and due process accorded every American.” Graham and other Republicans have complained both about the lack of a full House vote to begin the probe and that the testimony has thus far largely not been public.

On Oct. 31, the House did vote on formalizing the inquiry, and public hearings are set to start next week. While he often refers to the impeachment investigation as a “witch hunt” — the same term he used to describe Robert Mueller’s investigation — Trump has urged Republicans to move away from process arguments as the inquiry has proceeded. “I’d rather go into the details of the case rather than process,” Trump told reporters on Oct. 28 of how Republicans in Congress were defending him. “Process is good, but I think you ought to look at the case, and the case is very simple and quick.”

Undermining the credibility of witnesses

Trump and his allies have attempted to undermine the credibility of certain witnesses and poke holes in their testimony. Trump has repeatedly attacked the whistleblower whose complaint spurred the impeachment inquiry, calling for the person’s identity to be revealed and criticizing the media for not publishing it. He has also asserted, without evidence, that the whistleblower has a political agenda.

“There have have been stories written about a certain individual, a male, and they say he’s the whistleblower,” Trump told reporters on Nov. 3. “If he’s the whistleblower, he has no credibility because he’s a Brennan guy, he’s a Susan Rice guy, he’s an Obama guy. And he hates Trump.”

After Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official, testified behind closed doors on Oct. 29, Trump tweeted that he was a “Never Trumper witness.” On Nov. 2, when asked whether he regrets that comment, Trump seemed to imply he had damaging information to release about Vindman: “Well, you’ll be seeing very soon what comes out and then you can ask the question in a different way,” Trump said.

As members of conservative media amplified Trump’s attacks on Vindman, who was born in Ukraine, and questioned his patriotism, some Republicans in Congress condemned the line of attack. “I’m not going to question the patriotism of any of the people who are coming forward,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the day of Vindman’s testimony. House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney said questioning Vindman’s patriotism was “shameful.”

Sondland, on the other hand, is a Trump donor, and can’t be criticized as a “Never Trumper.” When he updated his testimony in a statement that said he had been the messenger of a quid pro quo, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham released a statement saying, in part, “Ambassador Sondland squarely states that he ‘did not know, (and still does not know) when, why or by whom the aid was suspended.’ He also said he ‘presumed’ there was a link to the aid — but cannot identify any solid source for that assumption.”

There may have been a quid pro quo, but that’s not impeachable

On Oct. 17, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney held a press conference in which he dramatically changed the defense of Trump’s actions, and then walked back his comments hours later. While Trump had been continuing to proclaim “no quid pro quo,” while standing behind the podium in the White House press briefing room, Mulvaney seemed to acknowledge that there had been one — but that it wasn’t a problem. “Did he also mention to me in [the] past the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely,” Mulvaney said of a conversation he had with Trump. “No question about that. But that’s it, and that’s why we held up the money.”

“I have news for everybody: Get over it,” Mulvaney said. “There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.”

Reaction to what seemed to be the first acknowledgement of a quid pro quo in the conversation at the heart of the impeachment inquiry was swift, and hours later, Mulvaney put out a statement disputing his earlier comments. “There was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election,” he said in his later statement.

While he had to walk back his explanation of why Trump held up aid money to Ukraine, others are now shifting to a defense of Trump that mirrors Mulvaney’s original comments: that there may have been a quid pro quo, but that’s not an impeachable offense.

This line of defense has emerged as multiple witnesses (including Sondland and Taylor) have testified about the occurrence of a quid pro quo. “If it was a condition of getting aid that there be an investigation into a political rival, that was inappropriate,” the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, Mac Thornberry of Texas, told NPR on Oct. 28. “Whether it rises to the standard of being an impeachable offense — that’s a different question.”

“The Senate will face the question of whether that’s an impeachable offense,” Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, told CNN in November. “And I don’t think the American people are going to conclude that it is.”

Trump is no fan of this tactic, however, as he still maintains that there was no quid pro quo at the base of the matter. “False stories are being reported that a few Republican Senators are saying that President Trump may have done a quid pro quo, but it doesn’t matter, there is nothing wrong with that, it is not an impeachable event,” the President tweeted on Nov. 4. “Perhaps so, but read the transcript, there is no quid pro quo!”

False stories are being reported that a few Republican Senators are saying that President Trump may have done a quid pro quo, but it doesn’t matter, there is nothing wrong with that, it is not an impeachable event. Perhaps so, but read the transcript, there is no quid pro quo!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2019