#especially with the program i work in there's always this awkward not entirely judgmental

[quilleth]

I don't want to go back to work tomorrow T_T

[aelaer]

Hi friend! You seem vast in your knowledge of Stephen and willing to share so please enlighten me as I don’t read the comics but I do watch the mcu movies, and do love Stephen.

I know he’s erratic and impulsive and reckless sometimes but didnt we already complete this arc in his first movie? Especially since we’ve watched him deal with the consequences of his actions for the entirety of the film and end of the movie Stephen was a different Stephen from the beginning of the movie.

IW Stephen seemed like a more mature version of the man we’ve met at the end of his first movie, a linear progression of the character, more responsible.

The spider man trailer is just a few minutes so I’ll further reserve judgment till I see the film, but he seems.. silly almost? I’m aware he has his funny moments but I’m just nervous they’re gonna make him the joke instead of having him make the jokes.

Do you notice anything weird about how the adults act in these newer marvel projects.? (I’m thinking of loki specifically) they all have a silly undertone to them? I cant put my finger on it but it’s definitely new and ..off

Is this a constant characterization for Stephen in the comics? Is this what he’s like all the time?

Regardless, thank you for your time if you see this xx

Oh yeah, Stephen's my favorite subject at the moment so I'm happy to give my thoughts!

Note that my answers apply to MCU!Stephen and what we've seen in the four films he's been in.

I know he’s erratic and impulsive and reckless sometimes but didnt we already complete this arc in his first movie? Especially since we’ve watched him deal with the consequences of his actions for the entirety of the film and end of the movie Stephen was a different Stephen from the beginning of the movie.

In my experience of just living, there are personality quirks that can be tempered out and made better, but not entirely eliminated, even if it's undesirable. In my opinion, Stephen's need to push himself and prove that he can Do A Thing is a trait that won't ever go away--especially as that trait has helped him more than hindered him. Examples would include the more mundane such as getting through a combined MD/PhD program and inventing surgical procedures at what is still a really young age for a neurosurgeon. We don't have a canonical age for Stephen, but Benedict was 40 when Doctor Strange was filmed and released; even if he's canonically in his mid-40s, that's still very young for him to be at his caliber after the necessary years of med school and residency in the United States. He's young and nowhere near the end of his career when he gets in the car crash. So with that information in mind, we know that he's very ambitious and throws himself into doing difficult work with gusto. That doesn't even go into everything he did as a sorcerer.

Why get into all of this? Because while we, the viewer who has seen the multiverse open at... some point (possibly, in a rewritten timeline, it's always been open now with what happened in Loki!), we have seen just how nuts it gets. We have seen the consequences. Stephen's smart, but I don't think it's a matter of strictly recklessness and more a combination of ignorance on this specific subject (erasing memories across the world or slightly rewriting time-- we don't know how he's doing it, but a memory spell makes more sense to me), hubris (of course), and the real desire to help Peter out. The latter two traits combined in intelligent people have proven bad in both fiction and reality.

The reason I don't think it's pure impulsiveness is because in the trailer, we see Stephen doing some meditation type thing in the underground area before the spell. He's also always doing research and as he tells Peter he'll help him, he clearly knows of a spell already and has some working knowledge of how it works. The conversation with Wong wouldn't have happened otherwise. But I personally get the vibe off him that he'd not do it without being very confident that he can do it -- and his history in the films has shown 0 failures in any of his spells once he's past novice-level, so in that aspect, his confidence makes sense. If he *should* do the spell due to the risks of failure, and lack of practicing precaution in the face of his confidence, is where his flaws lie, IMO. And in that sense people could say he was reckless for deciding to perform a complicated, dangerous spell, but that follows his M.O. completely -- he performed a very complicated, dangerous spell consistently with the Time Stone again and again, from how the sorcerers spoke about the Infinity Stone (and he casually just... throws himself into a time loop, then to look through time. He takes calculated risks, but they are very much risks).

One last thought on this statement - the biggest, biggest lesson that Stephen learned in his first film was that it was not about him. There was more to the world than his glory and his brilliance and even his happiness. He started doing things for the greater good rather than himself. And he started doing things for others -- fighting for the Sanctum in his own film, and protecting the Earth. Serving something greater than himself. But that doesn't make him suddenly humble, and it doesn't suddenly take away his strange (hah) sense of humor.

IW Stephen seemed like a more mature version of the man we’ve met at the end of his first movie, a linear progression of the character, more responsible.

He was more serious in that film. So was Tony. They still had some quips and arguments, but they were very serious. And it makes sense as to why -- it was the end of the world. So the mood of the setting would change anyone's demeanour. But he had very little chance to unwind in that film, considering that he was trying to protect one of six items that would destroy the universe, and also got freaking tortured in the middle of the film with little time to recover. But nearly every Avenger was super serious in that film, and for good reason.

It's a completely different setting from what is now Stephen's life which, from what little we've seen in the trailer, is weird enough that he got a magical snowstorm in the Sanctum. It's safe enough that Wong's off on vacation. It's been nearly a year since he returned from the dead. He's either figured out how to move on in the last year or, as some prefer, has gotten good enough to put on a facade and bury the trauma so far down that he's putting on a normal act - but that's up to debate until MoM. And we have no idea if old traumas are going to be brought up there or if it's just the new things.

I think the point is that it's possible to be both a responsible person and also to make colossal mistakes due to either emotional connections or hubris (or both - we don't know which way the film will go, if they'll explain it at all). They're not mutually exclusive. He can be protecting reality fantastically, while also believing that he's skilled enough to pull off the ability to pull off a dangerous spell which he did in his own film and in IW. He's guided the timeline down a specific path in IW/Endgame, after all - what's a little identity item compared to the fate of the universe, after all? Removing the Spider-Man/Peter association is, in comparison, child's play I imagine to a man like Stephen.

The spider man trailer is just a few minutes so I’ll further reserve judgment till I see the film, but he seems.. silly almost? I’m aware he has his funny moments but I’m just nervous they’re gonna make him the joke instead of having him make the jokes.

Do you notice anything weird about how the adults act in these newer marvel projects.? (I’m thinking of loki specifically) they all have a silly undertone to them? I cant put my finger on it but it’s definitely new and ..off

He was definitely silly in his own film. He was constantly trying to get Wong to laugh and there was a banter between Stephen and Christine after he gets stabbed. He's always been a bit awkward and a bit jokey--I think Thor showed that combination of humorous snark and good research rather well, though he was flippant in a way that didn't get to show his kinder side that is better established in his film. And now we get to see that sympathy in his agreement to help Peter (at least, in my opinion).

Because he was doing an amazing awesome spell not once, not twice, but *three* times in the trailer alone, I am not worried about Stephen just being a joke. He seems just as powerful as he was in IW and Endgame. The rest of the world is just getting reminded that he's definitely a bit of a socially awkward duck at times (or, if you prefer, Putting On a "I'm Fine" Front And It's Coming Across As Weird). So him being a big joke is not something I am personally worried about.

Situational humor has been a staple of Marvel films since Iron Man. I watched the films casually before 2016 when I fell head deep into Stephen Strange (or well, 2018/9 is more accurate as that's when I *really* went nuts), and my viewings before that time and after that time was a lot more analytical. And it's very easy to see where the silliness started, all the way back when Tony crashed into his own car and Dum-E sprayed him with a fire extinguisher. Thor was the butt of the joke in the "fish out of water" scene in a good, good chunk of the film. Even Captain America had some situational humor. And remember that Guardians of the Galaxy was back in 2014, which was halfway through the MCU's time thus far. The stars of these films are almost always the butt of some joke a couple times and do things that could be viewed as childish.

I don't know your age at all, but if you were born after 1990, what might be happening, rather, is that they are not getting sillier, but that you may be getting older. I was an adult (legally, at least) in 2008, but the way I view the adults of the films throughout the early 2010s as compared to now is night and day. It's just come with my own life experience, and wider understanding to media tropes. The jump is even more significant if you were younger in Iron Man/Avengers days and are an adult now. If you're an older adult than me, then I'd argue it's the matter of life experience adding to your overall knowledge of media plus, potentially, rose-tinted glasses giving you a better vision of the older movies while forgetting that the older movies had plenty of their own flaws (and silliness). Could be a lot of things- it's too individual to really say why your perspective has changed. But I don't think the MCU's largely changed their comedy formula since 2012/2013.

Is this a constant characterization for Stephen in the comics? Is this what he’s like all the time?

Oh the comics are a mess of characterizations. It's very difficult to find full consistency across writers, and some writers did him much better than others. At the moment, Jason Aaron's 2015 run is viewed as very good by a large amount of fans, while Waid's 2018 run is viewed with mixed reviews. It's largely a matter of preference as you'll see traits that are just so uncharacteristic in an arc and then it never happens again. He takes on secret identities, he kills billions to save trillions (along with the other Avengers!), he sells his soul, he's in a steady relationship for 30 years, then he's sleeping with a new woman every arc he co-stars in-- it's just so dependent on the writer over the decades. What Marvel thinks will sell. Right now Marvel thinks his death is gonna sell issues, so yeah :P You pick and choose with the comics and build a personality from there.

Thank you for the thoughtful ask. I hope this wasn't too much of a drag to read through; I get rambly on my favorite subjects. Or anything, really.

[yelenasdog]

il un a visage gentil (prof!gwilym lee x prof! gn reader)

genre: fluff

summary: who knew the attractive english lit professor also happened to speak french? not his new coworker, that’s for sure.

words: 1.7k

warnings: reader embarassing herself a lil bit, that’s it :)

a/n: hi!! first of all, no pronouns are used as this is from readers pov, so anyone can read. second of all, so i typically don’t write for gwil, but i had this idea in french the other day when my french teacher (sweet old french man who deserves better LMAODSJO) was going over some assignment that for some reason had il un a visage gentil in it LOLOL. that being said, i obvi don’t speak fluent french and this is all fictional! love u, hope u enjoy!!

。·☔︎◎❦·。·

“Hello everyone, and welcome to your first day. I’m Dr Gwilym Lee, and I am the head of the English Literature Department here at Oxford University. Feel free to call me Gwil, it’s what all my students do.”

I slanted my eyes from my position at the door, gripping the frame just a tad tighter than I had been before hearing his voice. I continued to listen to the doctor talk as I made my way behind the last row of seats in the lecture room, trying not to make any noise. My heels were thankfully mute against the carpet, not drawing any attention towards me, the professor keeping complete focus on his students.

“One of the first things I wanted to kind of, um, touch on, is that I will be quite flexible. I understand that you have lives, as do I. As long as I can see an honest effort being put into my class, I will hold no repercussions for late work or being physically late to class.”

With that, he looked up to where I had just sat down, quirking a brow. The eye contact was momentary, only lasting what seemed to be a second, if that.

I cleared my throat, looking to my feet.

“We at the english department are quite proud of our status, ranking 4th in english programs overall in the UK. Now I won’t continue to bore you with the statistics, but-“

I made a scan of the room, seeing how only 1 or 2 pupils were actually listening, the rest either slumped over looking at their phones, or pretending to take notes on a laptop while really watching netflix. (More than one student was watching gossip girl, oddly enough.)

Considering it was only 5 minutes into the hour long lecture, I was confused, as he was holding my attention, at least, quite well.

After about 30 minutes, I realized that my own “first day lecture” was in 15 minutes, which assured that I most definitely had to leave. I was saddened by this (even though I had only even planned on staying in Gwil’s room for a small while.

I sighed quietly, picking myself up from the surprisingly comfortable seats and making my way towards the door. Just as I was about to go, I felt eyes boring holes into the back of my head. I turned, realizing Gwilym to be the perp. I opened my mouth to speak and then closed it again, quickly walking out and down the hallway to my own room.

I made it in, hurrying down the many stairs, past where a few students were waiting.

“Hi, everyone, I’ll just be a few moments, just waiting for the rest of your new classmates to arrive.”

I smiled briefly, before slamming my office door audibly, chest heaving with my back against the shaded window. I closed my eyes, unaware of why I had been so panicked by the brief interaction, not to mention the butterflies it hatched in my stomach.

After giving myself some time to decompress, I exhaled, smoothing out the skirt of my dress and rotating. I placed a hand on the handle, preparing myself for the fresh faced freshman.

As I opened the door, I heard half a knock, before whoever was behind the door (poor soul) essentially fell on top of me.

Expecting to see a red faced pupil who had just made a very interesting first impression, I looked up, suddenly becoming the one with a warm and itchy wave of embarrassment making its way up my neck.

“I’m so terribly sorry,” He stood up, reaching out a hand. I hesitated before reaching forward and gripping tightly, allowing him to tug me up.

“It’s alright, Gwil, really.”

He opened his mouth (not that I was paying any mind to his lips), presumably to ask my name. Before he got the chance, I beat him to it, blurting out my full title, unfortunately in a quite awkward way.

The students that had gathered had mostly turned their attention elsewhere by now, only a few of them still watching the live disaster that was my interaction with the incredibly attractive man in front of me.

He spoke up as I tried to maneuver my way around him to the podium positioned in the front of the room where my laptop was waiting.

“Well, I had assumed you were a student who was trying to sneak off early, but I stand corrected, then.” He looked around my slowly filling space, a slight amusement hiding in his gaze.

“Yes, sorry, I had caught you at a bad time, I was hoping to introduce myself, you know, trying to make a good impression. Feels like the first day of school all over again.” I laughed, bringing a hand up to brush away a stray strand that had somehow managed to escape my bun.

“It’s alright, don’t stress about it. And trust me, I get it. New jobs are scary.”

I huffed, looking out at the sea of judgmental young people that I now would have to face after that fiasco. Lovely.

“You could say that again.”

We sat in a comfortable silence for a short amount of time, the clock striking 2:30 being what woke me from my trance.

“That’s my queue.” I gave a small wave as he walked off, a smile spreading across his face at the motion.

I turned to my teaching assistant, fully believing he was out of earshot.

“Il un a visage gentil, eh?”

She only laughed, nodding her head and plugging in my macbook, allowing the screen to come alive with a flurry of colors in my powerpoint.

“Hi guys! Or should I say bonjour!” I paused, receiving a few chuckles in the crowd.

“I’m sorry for getting us started so late, I had a small mishap. I’m Dr Y/n Y/l/n, and I am your professor this year in the French undergraduate course, where you will have the opportunity to study medieval literature, modern day linguistics, and much more, which I will get into later on.

 We here at Oxford have the single largest French department in Britain, which we have come to have extreme pride in. We also have a french cultural center, where you will find a large selection of programmes and literature to choose from. If you haven’t yet checked it out yet,” I briefly looked up, seeing Gwilym still stood at the top of the stairs. He gave me another small smile, crossing his arms.

“Sorry, lost my place. Where was I?”

-

After class, I walked up to where the tall man had now moved to the side, allowing students to flood right by him.

“Gwil, hi!”

“Hi to yourself.”

I blushed, the feeling of fuzzy-ness once again flooding my entire system at just the brief statement. Odd. Extremely odd.

“That was very nice, I have a feeling this class will be quite popular in the coming years.”

I smiled and nodded my head. “Thank you, I appreciate it, truly. Although, I must say that I can tell everyone is racing to get a spot in Professor Gwilym Lee’s class 100% percent.”

He cocked his head, slimming his eyes.

“Really, you think so?”

We continued to walk down the long hallway, neither of us quite aware of where we happened to be going.

“Oh for sure, I can imagine you’re especially popular with a certain demographic, too.”

His confusion seemed to only grow, stormy blue eyes seemingly lost.

“What do you mean by that, exactly?” His voice slightly raised an octave at the end, earning a chuckle from me.

“Look, all I’m saying is that with looks like that, I bet your roster was full in seconds.”

I paused, the flow of conversation stopping as I came to terms with what I had just accidentally said. Out loud. In front of my new coworker, who happens to be incredibly gorgeous. A wonderful first day I’m having.

We resumed walking, a blanket of complete silence falling upon us all the way until we reached the entrance to the facility.

The chilly December air hit my face immediately, as well as droplets of rain that were falling so hard it felt like small bullets were grazing my nose, which I could barely feel after just a few moments outside.

“Here.” Gwil muttered, pulling out a bright red umbrella and using it to shield us both from the angry pellets sent from above.

“Ah, thank you.”

“Of course.”

Then it was quiet again between us both, minus the sounds of chattering students and the rain hitting and then sliding off of our cover, coming in contact with the ground with a final splat.

“You know,” Gwilym began, always the one to break the silence.

I hummed, turning my head in his direction.

“I speak a little bit of French, as well. And I think you also have a nice face.” He nudged my elbow and laughed, while I closed my eyes and sighed, hanging my head.

“So there really isn’t any other way I could possibly embarrass myself right now, is there?”

He only shrugged, scratching the back of his head. “Actually, now that I think of it, there might be one more thing I can think of?”

“What would that be?”

“Saying no to a cup of coffee?”

It was like I froze over completely, my mind suddenly growing blank when I needed it mostt.

“With me?” I asked, the question more aimed towards myself, a miniscule act of reassurance and affirmation.

Gwilym smiled brightly as he shook his head, and I swear, I had never seen anything more amazing.

“Yes, Y/n, with you.”

I stuttered, embarrassed for what seemed like the millionth time that day, specifically at my lack of verbal skills.

“Yes, yes of course, that sounds amazing.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

He offered me an arm which I gladly took, and we started walking to the quaint campus cafe just across the street from our building.

It was the same cafe where (not that we knew it yet) the both of us would make many late night coffee runs together during midterms week, the stressful time growing to become one of our favorites as it was now filled with giggles and caffeine. 

Usually it would end up with one of us, that one of us usually being me, leaving a ring of coffee on the other’s ungraded assignments. Or even better, spilling an entire drink on the paper, only a “sorry!” written in Gwil’s rushed handwriting at the top of the curiously scented paper as explanation.

But as I said, we didn’t know that yet.

。·☔︎◎❦·。·

kinda gross but whatevs, like and rb if u did indeed enjoy it. mwah, go eat some protein, take an electronics break and drink some water. love u 

xx hj

[fugandhi]

What Ska Means & Why It Matters

‘What Ska Means & Why It Matters’ (A Film Review) by Adam Wękarski

I recently went to check out a brand new documentary called “Pick It Up! Ska in The ‘90s” at the local Enzian Theater (literally the only showing I think I saw in the central Florida area). For anyone who was alive in America in the 1990s - you may or may not be familiar with the incredibly energetic and upbeat explosion of Ska music in the 1990s. The “Third Wave of Ska” had officially arrived in the U.S.A. thanks to a lot of younger people having grown up listening to all of the previous (and totally awesome) acts of the second wave of Ska (up in the U.K.) and of course the original wave of Ska in Jamaica back in the 1960s (and then forming their own bands with the ‘90s vibe and flavor of the time).

This documentary goes well into detail over many aspects of the first & second waves of ska (aptly narrated by Tim Armstrong of Operation Ivy & Rancid notoriety). For anyone who loves (or has loved) Ska music - this documentary is for you! I speak as someone who very happily (and very thankfully) had got to experience the Ska movement of the ‘90s (which absolutely without-a-doubt helped shape me into the person I have become today), and without the third wave of Ska music I wouldn’t be playing music. Having said that, it must be mentioned that this documentary is a smorgasbord of all of the big players in the Ska scene (throughout all generations of ska) and is a real reward for any devoted lovers of Ska music.

This documentary has a very informative take on Ska music (which honors the style of music) and a wonderfully-animated historical story or two of Jamaican Rude Boys crashing Ska shows in the ‘60s and English Skinheads in the ‘80s adopting Jamaican attitude through style and expression (in addition to a ton of other stories from first-hand accounts). The documentary also has the best sense of humor exuded through every person on screen who gets that Ska music is kind of a butt-of-a-joke to a lot of people who listen to other styles of music. The unfortunate reality is that Ska did have a rise and a fall in the mainstream due to the eventual lack of interest and appeal (and in my own humble opinion: especially after “9/11” - after that happened, everyone got really angry & miserable and the music industry bought into that and kept feeding that negativity).

When Ska was at it’s height in the ‘90s, it was indeed everywhere and everyone had at least heard a Ska band on the radio or had known what Ska music was (due to the rising popularity of the genre). I truly enjoy how the documentary does show all of the people who made the Ska scene happen in the ‘90s, and who brought SO MUCH INFLUENCE to people like me (I was also TOTALLY in my band program in school and felt like Ska music gave people like me a CHANCE - Band Kids Unite! Hahaha). It was truly refreshing seeing a ton of photos and video footage of all of those bands, and then having everyone pretty much “sit around the campfire” so-to-speak to talk about how their experiences were being a part of that movement in music. The positive atmosphere cultivated due to the most energetic and dance-friendly (and jump friendly) bands with the raddest shows had never really happened in such a manner before (with exception of The Specials and The English Beat and the like during the second wave) - at least certainly not in USA.

The somewhat bizarre and unorthodox nature of the musical instrumentation of Ska bands even gets discussed in this totally excellent documentary. All of the borderline awkwardness of Ska music and how it’s basically the ultimate party music (while at the same time being a party for dorky, dweeby, unwanted, unnoticed group of people who really love to have a good time despite going through ups and downs in life just like everybody else). I think that it’s also very commendable that YES Ska music has values and convictions (i.e. Ska Against Racism), and something I always noticed and appreciated was how so many Ska bands had a variety and DIVERSITY of people on stage. You’ll see all people come together unlike any other style of music - and it’s all good - there’s no isolation or hatred when the party is on - people in the ska scene “have arrived” in terms of understanding one another. This is a genre for the enlightened.

Ska music is the one place where you can find unity & fun and a lot of people with really awesome styles or outlooks. The genre itself is full of a unique variety of bands and people who have been around for a long time and typically know a great deal of the in’s and out’s of Ska. ALL of the AWESOME bands of the Ska scene are featured in this documentary: Operation Ivy, Sublime, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Reel Big Fish, Save Ferris, The Aquabats!, Less Than Jake, No Doubt, Chris Murray, Hepcat, The Slackers, Skankin’ Pickle, Rx Bandits, The Hippos, Buck-O-Nine, Mad Caddies, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Five Iron Frenzy, Dance Hall Crashers, Rancid, Goldfinger, Mustard Plug, The Suicide Machines, Big D and The Kids Table, The Pietasters, Mephiskapheles, The Toasters, Spring Heeled Jack, Fishbone, The Selecter, The Wailers, The Skatalites, Madness, The Specials, Oingo Boingo, Pilfers, Bim Skala Bim, Kemuri, Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, Catch 22, Streetlight Manifesto, Bomb The Music Industry! (and plenty more! - Seriously).

Watching ‘Pick It Up!’ truly brings out the overall sense of a person who listens to Ska (as well as dabbles a bit with a hilarious remote done with Scott Klopfenstein asking people on the street if they know Ska music - SO Funny!). This documentary has an undying sense of humor (and sense of heart) throughout telling the entire story of Ska in the ‘90s - especially when learning about how these people were working day-jobs prior to their break-out in their respective bands. It was fascinating watching that human story behind the show and understanding a bit better the effort that was put in behind the scenes while these bands were getting rejection letters from record labels that didn’t believe in their sound (despite the success of those of whom had kept going strong through the years to keep the Ska sound alive & well).

“Pick It Up! Ska in The ‘90s” does go over a lot, and pretty much covers all you need to know to become a true Ska scene aficionado (if you haven’t lived like all of us who have been to a sh!t ton of Ska shows since way back when).

There are, however, a few things that I did notice weren’t necessarily covered: 1) The term “Ska” originates from the sound of the guitar having that upstroke “scratch” sound on the “off-beat” in a measure of music (as opposed to the downbeat) - hence, “uhn-ska, uhn-ska” which did indeed originate in Jamaica in the 1960s. 2) Ska music is correctly described as “fast reggae”, and “The Godfather of Reggae” - but it must be mentioned that the reason why Reggae birthed from Ska music is due to the Jamaican weather of the late ‘60s. As it’s said, there was an overwhelming heat wave in Kingston, Jamaica during “The Orange Street Sound” around ’68-’69 which wore down the dance halls so they would begin jamming a bit slower and a bit easier and smoother - thus the Reggae boom in the 1970s. 3) The real reason why the Ska scene dissipated and eventually dissolved (as far as “mainstream” styles go) was primarily due to big business getting involved and trying to make all of the Ska (and Ska/Punk) bands basically become the same carbon-copy acts that were already “industry standards” or “successful acts”. 

So, there were Ska bands that did drop their horns (which was lightly gone over in the documentary) due to either economy, or not wanting to sound like Ska anymore, or just simply transforming their sound. There were some bands that completely sold out - and then there are other bands that stayed true and have kept Ska music and the dance scene FUN & AWESOME this entire time and never gave up in the true power of music and the possibilities that come with creativity, fun, and optimism through adversity (coughcoughREELBIGFISHcoughcough).

Aside from all of the fun facts, familiar faces, and excellent music throughout the entire documentary - there is a moment when the documentary goes into the heart & soul of the sound of Ska music and how it provided such an important & positive outlet and release for people (of all types) who would simply put on a good Ska band or album or song to replace any sense or feeling of sadness, frustration, anger, loneliness, or problems and by the end of the experience can have a form of newfound happiness or refreshed outlook. There was actually a moment when viewing the documentary (at least in my own humble opinion) where I could completely and whole-heartedly relate to the underlying message of Ska bands and Ska Music and what it means to people now who experienced it (and still push for the scene to thrive to this very day).

I still believe it can literally save lives. Ska music saved my life and I know that if it wasn’t for all of the people who have been working hard through the years to perform their hearts out - I wouldn’t have worked so hard in my own life to keep fighting for my dreams, and, in a greater picture - keep working towards more unity, fun, and good times in the world around me - because that’s what Ska is really about at the end of the day. I never thought Ska was a joke (despite how humorous the style can be) - I always knew Ska was a really big deal and it’s still the best style of music (in my own opinion) and I still think the music industry has failed music-lovers and music-listeners by not developing more of an open mind to Ska music (which is the only style of music that can use all styles of music to express itself amidst the traditional formula of the genre). It’s literally the most interesting music to experience (melodically, lyrically, rhythmically).

Despite the reality of Ska music and the judgmental stigma towards the genre - there are still a ton of people in the world who believe in having Ska music and Ska bands and Ska shows. There’s a reason why people love Ska music and there is a totally awesome reason why Ska will never die - because it’s THE MOST FUN STYLE OF MUSIC EVER! I have always been proud and fearless with my admiration for Ska music and Ska bands and people who still believe in having a really good time and sweatin’ our asses off dancin’ at shows and singin’ along to the party. There is no other style of music like it - it’s completely unique & completely awesome. It’s not for everybody, and that’s all good because the people that “get it” will always sing along and dance their hearts out - I know I will!

I give “Pick It Up! Ska in The ‘90s” a Perfect 10 out of 10. It is the best music documentary I have seen. This documentary does for the ‘90s what “American Hardcore” did for the ‘80s. 

This is the Perfect Documentary for any fan of Ska.

“...Take me back to my happy land, take me back to my happy land, take me back to my happy land, take me back to my happy land...” ~The Aquabats!

[zukadiary]

Beside the Foggy Elbe / Estrellas ~ Star Troupe 2019

First show of 2019! My home base in Japan is usually Kansai, but for the first time I’m in Tokyo for a lengthy stay. I saw Elbe/Estrellas twice in the theater plus the senshuuraku live view. Spoilers, because the ending of Elbe was one of my favorite things about it.

Beside the Foggy Elbe [Summary]

I caught Elbe quite late in the run, and most of the feedback I heard from talking to other non-Japanese fans beforehand was fairly negative, but I found it VERY enjoyable. Elbe is one of the most historically famous original Takarazuka works. While I haven’t seen more than clips and photos of the older productions, I was already familiar with much of the soundtrack, and I always love seeing and hearing classic Takarazuka elements live, especially as a relatively young fan coming in late in Takarazuka’s 105 year history. It’s a special kind of fun to be able to sit in the theater and sing along (even if only in my head) to a show I’ve never even seen. The story is most definitely dated, but I love the vintage-ness of it (if anything, I wish they’d pushed the aesthetics even more vintage). And because it’s an old classic, I was able to suspend my disbelief of the unlikely love story in the same way I can with old Hollywood musicals (is it believable that Dale Tremont falls in love with Jerry Travers three seconds after finding out he wasn’t actually Horace? No but I’m here for it). I also love that they don’t get together!! The first time I saw it, I looked at the clock when Margit and Florian began yelling for Karl on the docks, and went sort of wide eyed when I realized there wasn’t TIME for it to end any way other than heartbreak. I think it’s much more interesting that way.

Quick complaints out of the way first: while the show isn’t really hard to follow, I did find both Beni and Airi quite difficult to understand. Beni uses a very loud, slurred voice to play the foul-mouthed Karl, and while it’s in keeping with her character, I couldn’t untangle a lot of her words, even though they weren’t lines I’d find complicated if I read them. Airi put on a shrill voice that I also found difficult to understand. I get that her character is an ingenue to the extreme so it makes sense, but I still feel like she could have landed somewhere between that and her natural voice and been ok. Additionally, there is a parade in the beginning that I think was an UeKumi addition. I didn’t DISLIKE it, and I understand its usefulness because it’s a very top heavy show and the parade gives the secondary players a bit of fun extra spotlight, but it didn’t really fit the look or vibe of the rest of Elbe. 

I do think you need to like Beni and Airi to enjoy this show, because it is so top heavy (if you love them, I think this will be a really great show for you). I especially liked the role of Karl for Beni. Beni’s Karl was an extremely insecure person who disguised his self-doubt in brash mannerisms and generally poor behavior, which made his moments of sincerity very poignant. Since Beni is known more for her comedic roles than her serious ones, and sometimes seems to be questioned by fans re: her ability to be serious, I thought this really suited her in kind of a meta way. She leaned hard into the brashness because that’s more her strength, but for me she also nailed Karl’s vulnerable moments, and that made them sting extra because it felt like it was coming from a real place. I’m also kind of a sucker for the cross-social-class love story trope. Karl’s behavior for the most part is truly unattractive to the point where it can be hard to sympathize with him, but there are several scenes where you can feel his deep discomfort toward being amongst the wealthy, and how traumatized he is about his ex leaving him because he wasn’t rich enough, and Beni makes them hurt sooooo good (shout out to Otoha Minori who had the very small part of Karl’s ex but really helped succinctly convey that backstory in a way that impacted the whole show).

Margit is a hard sell for me because I don’t find her likable as a character, but I think Airi did a great job hitting the necessary notes. For the story to work, Margit has to be unhappy, but also sheltered, spoiled, frivolous, and naive enough to fall in love with someone she met in a bar at first sight just because he was a little nice to her and the polar opposite of the life she’s trying to escape. Airi made it plausible. She also plays the piano for real a couple of times (angrily!) and I was VERY impressed (Coto also does, but she can’t surprise me with unexpected talents anymore). I think Airi’s strength is sexier more mature characters and I hope she gets to flex that muscle in their taidan show, because in that sense Elbe left a lot to be desired.

As much as I think Karl suited Beni, Coto is the one who made me think it wouldn’t have been quite the same if they’d given Elbe to any current lineup other than Hoshigumi. The least believable part of the entire story is that Florian is too good. There are no men who are that good. Even for the not-men of our 夢の世界 it’s a stretch. But I completely believed that Coto was that good. I don’t even know what to say about her... she can do anything and it’s stupid. Muster up heartbreaking sincerity for a truly unrealistic character? Sure. Play the piano flawlessly while speaking? Why not. (And the way she brushed her coattails out of the way before seating herself at the piano bench made me feel A Way).

The newly inserted Tobias was a nice sendoff for Kai. Not quite as delightful and meaty a role as Kiroku, and not as strong of a goodbye present as Sho Fu Kan, but lovely nonetheless. Tobias was not inherently a remarkable character, but he was an excellent blank canvas on which Kai painted herself, making him cool, hot, and everyone’s big brother—all around lovable. Her costumes made NO sense (cowboy hat??) but she wore them so well I loved them all against my better judgment. Stage time dropped off pretty hard after Beni/Airi/Coto, but the scenes with the other sailors were my favorite, and Kai’s involvement in each was prominent enough (and CUTE enough) to make Tobias feel like a juicy role. She gets a lovely bridge solo toward the end, and fittingly leaves the ship crew to get married (to Mizuno Yuri/Karl’s sister), exiting separately in dramatic fashion to everyone else’s tears and well wishes. 

I found myself charmed by the supporting cast—including (especially??) the nameless lurkers of the background—more than usual. Was it the giant food props? Were they just exceptionally silly back there? I don’t know, but unfortunately the recording won’t illuminate them regardless. As for the named support, Mao Yuuki, Seo Yuria, Shidou Ryuu, and Amahana Ema made up the rest of the sailors with lines and stuff, and while there was barely anything for them to do, I (for reasons not entirely known) found Mao and Seo in particular extremely charming. Amato Kanon played a bratty screaming kid, the exact type of role I’d normally find annoying as hell, but she even managed to make HIM charming; she had a lot of very entertaining wordless interactions with some of the bigger players on the outskirts of various scenes while something else was happening in the middle. Mikkii used 5 of her 7 seconds of stage time prowling through the audience, and seeing her angry face advancing head on toward the gaijin seats was indescribably intimidating. The biggest surprise was I fell a little in love with Mizuno Yuri, who, to be fair, did not have to sing OR dance, but who did play a weird lanky adorably awkward country bumpkin with a stupid accent from Karl’s middle-of-nowhere hometown in a way that I for some reason could not stop watching. She, as Tobias’s bride, also bawled her eyes out on raku when the two of them ran off together. 

So far I still think Another World is the crown jewel of Benigumi, but I’d place Elbe second.

Estrellas

Seeing Estrellas was an odd experience because it got the New Year’s NHK broadcast, and I watched THAT before I saw it live—how often do you see a Takarazuka video BEFORE seeing the show live?? It’s my personal favorite Benigumi revue thus far. I fell in love with it pretty instantly, and interestingly I think a big part of that was the NHK cinematography, which combined with the song selection made it feel more like a concert or a FNS-style big televised music program. I found that fresh. It didn’t have QUITE that same vibe live, but still a good impact. I can see it being polarizing though; it’s very pop and not very Takarazuka at times, and I probably like it so much because I happen to personally like the song choices. 

Allowing for the fact that she was still performing very much within her own quirky style, Beni (up until Tokyo raku) seemed very on point to me, which I was glad to see; my last live Hoshigumi experience was Another World/Killer Rouge in Takarazuka toward the beginning of the run last year, and in Killer Rouge especially it seemed like she was being extremely cautious with her movements in a way that made me wonder if she was nursing or avoiding an injury. Every time I saw Estrellas though she danced full force. Airi had more than one sexy number to make up for Margit, most notably an all musumeyaku dance in the finale portion that I feel like I see pretty rarely from Hoshigumi. Beni and Airi’s duet dance was also VERY cute and very them.

Kai again got a lovely sendoff, a big long 3-song progression with perfectly chosen lyrics. The way she drank in the theater on the last day, like she was really trying to burn the image of the audience into her eyes, was SO much. 

Coto is stupid. She paints with her voice and that gets me real bad. There’s a solid handful of siennes in the top tier of vocals in Takarazuka, and while many of them are gorgeous singers, the only two I’ve heard play and emote with their voices the particular way I’m thinking of are Coto and Daimon. Her vocal control while she’s violently dancing is also astounding. She’s stupid.

Senshuuraku was an ordeal! Estrellas opened with Beni doing what I initially thought was some weird attempt at a sexy breathy thing, and then maybe thought she was trying not to cry, till it became abundantly clear that something bigger was wrong. She got hoarser and hoarser till some notes in “Tonight is What it Means to be Young” failed to come out entirely. She used her chuuzume ad lib time to apologize for her voice... sad, because that was the prime slot for cute and touching moments with the retiring actresses, but she was clearly too panicked and struggling to think of that. Then she explained during the curtain call that she broke her voice at the end of Elbe—and it must have been on the VERY last note, because the entirety of Elbe was COMPLETELY fine (I didn’t even notice a weird crack or anything at the end). I didn’t know you could break your voice that badly on one note, but I guess you can. She was very flustered and apologetic—also full on crying—though every curtain call, and while I can’t blame her for feeling remorseful I wish she’d dialed it back after the first couple of apologies and let the retiring actresses have their moment. But considering her state it was pretty remarkable that she powered through, and I hope she has a chance to recover before the next show.

I’ve lived through my share of Takarazuka retirements, including ones that turned a whole troupe’s vibe completely upside down, but somehow Kai’s feels unusually odd (I imagine Miya’s will as well). I think it’s gonna be a downer of a year. 

[holytheoristtastemaker]

Taking your first steps in programming is like picking up a foreign language. At first, the syntax makes no sense, the vocabulary is unfamiliar, and everything looks and sounds unintelligible. If you’re anything like me when I started, fluency feels impossible.

I promise it isn’t. When I began coding, the learning curve hit me — hard. I spent ten months teaching myself the basics while trying to stave off feelings of self-doubt that I now recognize as imposter syndrome. It wasn’t until I started going to beginner-friendly meetups that I realized how coding collaboratively opens up amazing possibilities. You just need the right community of people to practice with.

For me, that community was Founders and Coders, the free JavaScript bootcamp that helped me to switch my career from copywriting to coding. Even now, less than a year after completing the course, I can hardly believe I’m being paid to develop software.

Collaborative coding is all about tackling problems and discovering solutions together. It encompasses techniques like pair programming, which several tech companies take seriously enough to screen for during their interview processes. It also cultivates useful skills that are tough to learn if all you’re doing is coding alone at home.

Whether you’re just starting out in the tech industry or you have several years of experience under your belt, collaborative coding never stops being useful. In this article, we’ll look at how these evergreen skills equip you for a long and successful career in software development.

Perfect Pairing

My first experience of pair programming was at a meetup for beginners called Coding For Everyone. Here’s how it works: people pair up, often with people they’ve never met, to solve JavaScript challenges together at the same laptop. One person assumes the role of the ‘navigator’ and proposes the code they think should be written. The other person, the ‘driver’, types out their suggestions on the laptop and asks questions whenever something isn’t clear. You continue doing this, swapping roles frequently, until the end of the two-hour session.

In theory, it was simple. In practice, not so much.

I found it quite distracting to have someone I didn’t know watching my screen while I typed, and I was reluctant to hand over control when it was time to swap roles. I found navigating even trickier. When an idea cannot go from your head into the computer without first going through your partner’s hands, every word that you say matters. It demanded a degree of communication from us both that we simply weren’t used to, and I felt sure we’d both learn more if we split up to work separately.

Fortunately, we stuck with it; I went again to the meetup the following week. I’ve since spent hundreds of hours pairing with dozens of developers, and I’ve learned more than I initially thought possible.

Pair programming is an incredibly fast way to learn. The magic of the method — once you get over the initial awkwardness — is that it yields immediate results. Some feedback loops, like bubbles in the stock market, can take hours, days, or even months to produce a correction. Pair programming takes minutes, if not seconds. When you misplace a semicolon, two pairs of eyes can spot the mistake faster than one. Need to search StackOverflow for clues about a rogue error message? You and your partner can each read different threads, halving the time it takes to find an answer.

The pair programming feedback loop (Large preview)

For even trickier problems, mob programming can be a further step up. This method requires a cross-functional section of a team to gather around the same computer screen and brainstorm solutions in realtime while one person types.

“All the brilliant minds working on the same thing, at the same time, in the same space, on the same computer.” — Woody Zuill, Agile Coach and Mob Programming Trainer

While it might seem like an inefficient way to work, mob programming advocates such as Woody Zuill say it can actually save time by eliminating the need for individual code reviews because everyone reviews the code in realtime as it’s being written. Productivity aside, I think mobbing is a fantastic way to learn not just about the code, but about how other people approach problems. If pair programming doubles the number of perspectives you’re exposed to, mob programming yields even more insights.

Sometimes, ten heads are better than two. (Large preview)

That’s not to say that pairing — or indeed mobbing — is plain sailing. Something I struggled with initially was putting my ego to one side to ask questions that I thought might sound stupid. In these situations, it’s good to remember that your partner might be having the same thoughts, especially if you’re both just starting out.

If you find yourself pairing with someone more senior, perhaps at work, don’t be afraid to pick their brains and impress them with your inquisitiveness. Even someone who is only a bit further ahead than you might think of things that wouldn’t occur to someone more senior. Some of my favorite pair programmers only have a few months more experience than me, yet they always seem to know exactly which mistakes I’m about to make and how to steer me in the right direction. When these developers say there’s no such thing as a silly question, they really mean it. The best pair programmers speak freely, without the need to appear fantastic or the fear of looking foolish.

Pair programming takes practice, but it’s worth perfecting. Studies show that programmers who pair to solve problems tend to be more confident, productive, and engaged with their work. Whether you’re looking for your next job or you’re onboarding new hires, pairing is caring.

Resources And Further Reading

“Pair Programming Roles,” Jordan Poulton, GitHub

“The Friendship That Made Google Huge,” James Somers, The New Yorker

“Mob Programming: A Whole Team Approach,” Woody Zuill, YouTube

Engineering Empathy

When I started teaching myself JavaScript, my code looked a lot like my bedroom floor: I’d let it get messier and messier until I had no choice but to tidy it. As long as my web browser could understand it, I didn’t care how it looked.

It wasn’t until I started reviewing other people’s code that I realized I needed to show a lot more empathy for the people reviewing mine.

Empathy might be the most underrated tool in any developer’s arsenal. It’s the reason why IDEO puts user research at the center of their design process, and why Etsy asks their designers and product managers to do an engineering rotation. Empathy emerges when we have the opportunity to see how our work impacts other people. No wonder collaborative coding is such a great way to build it.

Peer code review — the act of checking each other’s code for mistakes — calls on us to exercise empathy. As the reviewer, it’s important to recognize that someone has gone to considerable effort to write the code that you are about to critique. As such, try to avoid using phrases that might imply judgment or trivialize their work. When you refer to their code, you want to show them the specific functions and lines that you have questions about, and suggest how they might refactor it. Sharing learning resources can also be more helpful than spoon-feeding a solution. Some of the most useful feedback I’ve received from code reviews has come in the form of educational articles, videos, and even podcast recommendations.

Writing good documentation for your code also goes a long way. An act as simple as creating a readme with clear installation instructions shows empathy for anyone who needs to work with your code. GitHub founder Tom Preston-Werner advocates a readme-first approach to development.

“A perfect implementation of the wrong specification is worthless. By the same principle, a beautifully crafted library with no documentation is also damn near worthless. If your software solves the wrong problem or nobody can figure out how to use it, there’s something very bad going on.” — Tom Preston-Werner, GitHub Founder

I’ve also spoken with tech founders who treat documentation as an essential part of successful onboarding. One CTO said that if a junior developer struggles to reach a level of productivity within six months of joining his team, it points towards the codebase not being well documented enough. It only takes a few seconds to add an explanatory comment to a complex function you’ve written, but it could save the next person who joins your team hours of effort.

Resources And Further Reading

“On Empathy & Pull Requests,” Slack Engineering, Medium

“Readme Driven Development,” Tom Preston-Werner, GitHub

“What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team,” Charles Duhigg, The New York Times Magazine

Agile Achievement

From the millions of man-hours that go into making CGI movies to the intense development crunches leading up to big-budget video game releases, towering technical achievements take a mind-boggling amount of effort. The first time I saw my current employer’s codebase, I was floored by the enormity of it all. How on earth did anybody build this?

The answer is that everybody can build a lot more than anybody, given the right collaborative framework. In companies that encourage collaborative coding, the software doesn’t emerge from the efforts of a lone genius. Instead, there are ways of working together that help great teams to do amazing work. Developers at Founders and Coders practice a popular software development methodology known as ‘Agile’, and in my experience, it puts the ‘functional’ in cross-functional development teams.

Entire books have been written about Agile, but here is a summary of the core concepts:

A product development team breaks down large pieces of work into small units called ‘user stories’, prioritizes them, and delivers them in two-week cycles called ‘sprints’.

For as long as the project continues, the cycles repeat, and new product requirements get fed into a backlog of tasks for future sprints.

The team holds daily standup meetings to discuss their progress and address any blockers.

The process is both incremental and iterative: the software is built and delivered in pieces and refined in successive sprints.

A typical Agile workflow (Large preview)

As a chronic tinkerer whose solo hobby projects often succumb to ‘feature creep’, I know how easy it is to waste time building the things that no one ever uses. I love the way that Agile forces you to prioritize user stories so that the entire team can focus on delivering features that your users actually care about. It’s motivating to know that you’re all united around the common goal of building a product or service that will continue to have a life after you finish working on it.

Splitting tasks into small user stories also happens to be a great way to timebox pair programming sessions. No matter how deep in the zone you find yourselves, finishing up work on a key feature is always a nice reminder to step away from your desks and take a break. Agile lends structure to collaborative coding where it could otherwise be lacking.

Meanwhile, daily standups give you the freedom to talk about anything that is holding you back, and sprint retrospectives provide space to share key wins and pinpoint where the team could improve. These ceremonies foster a sense of collaboration and accountability, and help us to learn more together than we could by ourselves.

Putting all of these Agile principles into practice can be challenging, especially when no one in a team is used to this way of working. At Founders and Coders, it takes most students a while to get into the habit of doing daily standups. However, after 18 weeks of project-based practice, you find that your processes and communication skills improve immensely. By the time you take on your first client work, you’ve formed a much clearer mental model of how to approach building a full-stack web app in a team.

The best way to learn Agile is to build interesting projects with other people. Attending hackathons is an excellent way to connect with potential collaborators. Many open-source projects make their kanban project boards public, so you can see which GitHub issues different contributors are working on. Several welcome contributions from beginners, and you can often assign yourself to open issues and begin raising pull requests.

Since most tech companies subscribe to some form of Agile, it’s not uncommon for employers to ask about it in interviews. Any experience you have can set you apart from other applicants who may never have coded collaboratively, let alone with Agile in mind.

Resources And Further Reading

“What Is Agile?,” Steve Denning, Forbes

“Embracing Agile,” Darrell K. Rigby, Jeff Sutherland, Hirotaka Takeuchi, Harvard Business Review

“Awesome First Pull Request Opportunities,” Shmavon Gazanchyan, Deloitte Digital

Remote Collaborative Coding Tool Recommendations

In the last several years, remote working tools have advanced to the point that prominent companies like Gatsby and Zapier are now “remote first”. While it remains to be seen whether this will turn into a trend, it’s safe to say that remote development teams are here to stay.

In that spirit, here are some tools that can help you and your team code collaboratively from afar:

Markdown Editors HackMD The killer feature is that you can turn markdown documents into slideshow presentations with next to no effort. Borrows from the popular reveal.js library. StackEdit A collaborative online editor with a clean UI and lots of file export options. Code Editors CodeSandbox A fantastic collaborative cloud-based code editor that you run in your browser, with no installation needed. Live Share A neat extension for the popular Microsoft Visual Studio Code editor that supports real time editing and debugging of files inside the same workspace. Video Conferencing Solutions Google Hangouts Superb Google Calendar integration makes it a cinch to schedule video calls. Microsoft Teams Video conferencing software that offers really good call quality (1080p video), and supports up to 250 simultaneous participants.

If you take one thing away from reading this article, I want it to be that team players trump individual contributors. In a field where there seems to be a hot new framework to master every other week, our technical skills age in a way that our soft skills don’t. The upshot is that developers who can work well with other people will always find their abilities are in demand. Collaborative coding isn’t just an effective way to learn; it’s a sought after skill set that anyone can develop with enough practice and patience.

[babblingbat]

Sentient Castle AU (Voltron: Legendary Defender)

Basically, I had this idea a few months ago that the Castle is actually aware.  It’s designed to learn, and we saw from King Alfor’s A.I. that the Alteans have the technology to make this happen.  Anyways, the post is fairly long (read: took me 24 hours to write and get everything to gether from my stray notes to make it even semi coherent), so the bullet points are under the cut.

BASIC PLOT THUS FAR

The Castle starts out as simply being a computer but it learns over time

In the Fall of the Castle of Lions, it feels pain when the Galra crystal takes over

Then it feels guilty because it went against what it was supposed to do (keep the passengers safe and generally don’t be an asshole)

Lance hears the screaming when he’s in the cryo-pod because mind links are everywhere in Voltron for no particular reason, and someone needs to start being aware of the lonely computer

The computer likes to hang out with King Alfor’s A.I. before he goes evil

After Alfor gets deleted, the computer is very lonely because no one talks to it

It decides to help out the Paladins, but before it can do that it (she, I guess, because she’s a ship) needs to Know Things

She starts asking Allura about how emotions work by pretending it’s one of the paladins asking

Allura thinks that it’s Keith because she is 100% certain that he is terrible with feelings and he is also 100% gay

She uses her superb subtlety to try and get the truth from Keith and it goes terribly because he has no idea what she’s talking about

She also wants to know about cooking because that seems like an Organic™ thing to do

Hunk would really like to know who’s asking about his cooking

Whoever it is keeps leaving meals in the kitchen and never eats them

Also she just kind of observes the paladins in general and kind of hijacks the computer systems of any planets they come across to get more information

She is very critical of Shiro’s leadership

After Learning Things, she starts pretending that she has a therapy program in her code

She calls it the Consolation Programme

She mostly talks to Lance and Keith

She is privy to their every thought and just wants to shove them in a closet and make them kiss

She avoids the Alteans because they’ve said that she’s probably a threat

Eventually, Keith mentions the “Consolation Programme” during a meal and the castle is doing the electronic equivalent of hiding curled up in a ball in the corner of the room

“What are you talking about?” snaps Allura. “It isn’t a therapist.  It can run programs and analyze things, but it isn’t alive.” “Excuse me, princess, I actually am and that’s really hurtful.  Can someone talk to me I’m lonely,” replies the Castle.

Over time, she just starts being everyone’s therapist friend

Hunk and Pidge build robot bodies for her because she wants to be more organic

Their first attempt is terrible

They slowly get better and she starts looking more and more human with each version

She wears clothes that Lance gives her because no one knows how to sew and since they wear clothes she wants to wear them too (she bleaches the clothes because her favorite color is white)

Eventually, they make a White Lion for her.  It’s way smaller than any of the other lions, but it accompanies Voltron on missions.  It’s mostly used for scouting and that kind of thing.

She has no idea what the gender binary is because it never comes up

After a while of trying to get Keith to open up, she says “Allura is much better at this”

He responds with “it’s different for girls” and she asks what a girl is

The Castle feels really awkward being addressed as the Castle so Lance names her Castillo because the one thing the paladins lack is creativity.

Castillo is completely ignorant of Earth languages, despite knowing upwards of 100 billion languages spread throughout the stars

She claims she can’t control the language learning program (you know, the one with the dangerous holograms) but in truth, she just likes watching people squirm

Castillo actually can control the artificial gravity and anything remotely related to the main computer.  Gladiator? Check.  Alarms? Check.  Lights? Check.

When the Castle-ship is boarded by Galra, she turns off the gravity and just generally screws around with the controls to beat the crap out of them

The paladins are fine because of their jet-packs

In fact, they aren’t even there, it’s just Castillo alone defending one of the major assets of Voltron

Galra!Keith is a thing in this version (although he could also not be; he’s more of a side plot than a major plot point) By Galra I mean actually turning purple and getting ears because it’s confirmed he is Galra so the normal reactions (that appear in show) would probably happen regardless of whether he turns purple or not...

But based on a very lovely post I can’t find this link which I spent twenty minutes looking for, Keith’s Galra genes get kicked into gear after the Blade of Marmora trials

He gets fluffy and now people are doubly suspicious because ANGST

During the last big fight against Zarkon, Castillo fights using the White Lion but hangs back to help Shiro with overcoming Zarkon in the astral plane

90% of Castillo’s power revolves around her mind links and the computer part of her, rather than the combat elements

Shiro still disappears but she can help find him

She gets pissed because she TOLD HIM not to do this shit but here he is, doing this shit

HOW CASTILLO GETS ALONG WITH HER PASSENGERS

Lance

She’s really supportive of him and they both know what it feels like to be overlooked

Lance tells her about Earth, and she tells him about other planets

He’s trying to add Spanish to her language bank, but it isn’t really taking

Castillo is more or less always happy with him because he found the “humanity,” per se, in her before anyone else and gave her a name

She believes in his ability to lead and rarely (if ever) questions his judgment

She validates him and assures him of his worth

She happens to know a lot about depression and anxiety disorders because it was practically an epidemic at one of the planets they visited

Keith

Keith tells her almost everything because he was one of the first people to take advantage of her friend therapy

In return, she listens to him and helps when he’s planning things

She tends to be a bit of a matchmaker and spends a lot of time trying to get him and Lance together

She realizes early on that he’s Galran but chooses not to say anything to him or the team

She wants him to figure things out himself

Except for the Lance thing, because she has determined that it is a 100% certainty that he is too oblivious to even realize the possibility

She knows how to knock him down a peg if he’s acting cruelly or arrogantly without damaging his self-esteem beyond repair although that’s usually more of a problem with Lance

Hunk

Hunk is mostly just casually interested in her, he’s more interested in building a robot body

Castillo cooks with him, often in the middle of the night because computers don’t sleep and paladins of Voltron can’t be counted on to do so either

He sometimes gushes about Shay and Castillo doesn’t know what else to do but make encouraging noises

She spends a lot of her time with him trying to calm him down enough to get him to sleep and stop constantly worrying

He has nightmares (very vivid nightmares) about his friends dying

He’s normally able to dream lucidly, but not in nightmares

She has taught him various things to help him sleep

Pidge

She and Pidge are really good friends, and their conversations are a lot lighter than the ones with Lance and Keith

Pidge taught Castillo most of what she knows about gender

Pidge also helped Hunk out a lot with the robot bodies but spent most of her time figuring out how to integrate the massive consciousness of the castle with a tiny processor

Pidge and Castillo play board games and D&D together.  Castillo loves to DM, and Pidge does the craziest things to solve her puzzles

Pidge also has a bunch of old television shows downloaded on her laptop, so she and Castillo watch things like X-Files and MST3K when they can’t sleep and Castillo isn’t baking

Castillo comforts and helps Pidge in any way she can when she (Pidge) is missing her family

Shiro

Castillo doesn’t really like Shiro.  She thinks that he does a bad job of leading and is too self-absorbed to pay attention to other people’s problems

She especially despises how he treats Lance and Hunk, so she makes a point of complimenting them and pointing them out around Shiro

She has taught him how to get through his flashbacks without freaking out entirely or shutting down

She is fairly tactical, so she offers up very sound strategies, but he tends to ignore her or not acknowledge that it was her idea

She’s actually trying to figure out how to shut down his arm so that she can force him to learn how to fight without it

She might also be doing it so that she can be spiteful, but she’s not about to admit that

Coran

Castillo is good friends with Coran.  Coran is the only one that listens to Castillo’s problems and she appreciates his open-mindedness coupled with his caution

Coran treats her as just another member of their team and acts like the Supportive Uncle for her

Castillo does like pranking people so sometimes she gets into trouble with him

Coran is predominantly curious about how this happened instead of frightened because of his grandfather

Castillo is also good friends with the talking cubes, but they’re simpler than she is

Allura

Their relationship starts out as pretty rocky because Allura doesn’t believe that Castillo is a sentient being at first and then doesn’t really trust her

But after a while, Castillo figures out how to talk to Allura and tells her about her father’s memories

Allura, as we know, loves gossip, so Castillo tells her harmless things like what kind of music Lance listens to

It’s a bit weird for them because Allura is accustomed to controlling the castle and it acting as an appliance, but now she has to get used to Castillo acting autonomously and questioning some of her worse decisions

When Allura is unnecessarily harsh Castillo has nothing against calling her out on it

TBH Castillo doesn’t really recognize royalty

CASTILLO CHARACTER TRAITS

She wants to be as kind as possible, always

However, she has some priorities, like keeping the paladins safe and happy that will turn her into a Rage Machine™ and all that

She adheres to Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics as her moral code

She wants to fit in with the Paladins and Alteans but knows that she never will because she’s a computer

She’s actually kind of depressed, and sometimes will refuse to talk or just does things without putting a lot of effort into it

She worries about whether or not they’ll shut her down, even though she knows consciously that they value her

Castillo is a she because all ships are, but she’s probably agender

This only serves to make her feel more alienated, but she flat out does not understand the gender binary

She’s sometimes inappropriately mischievous, but she clings to that because it’s a very organic feeling

She makes a lot of bad puns and has a dry sense of humor

Sometimes, however, she is trapped by dad jokes and everything Coran says is funny somehow

She and Keith can have entire conversations sarcastically, and everyone else is five steps behind

She is all for free information and gets in trouble for taking classified documents from random planets

She can be very judgmental and tends to focus on the negatives of people she doesn’t like, making it very difficult for them to redeem themselves

THAT’S ALL I’VE GOT SO FAR BUT I AM WRITING A FIC AND WILL LINK IT LATER ON THANKS FOR READING PLEASE LIKE AND REBLOG (god this sounds like a youtuber fml)

[riichardwilson]

Why Collaborative Coding Is The Ultimate Career Hack

About The Author

Bobby is a software developer at Flourish and a fan of data-driven storytelling. He loves no-code tools that help people tap into the web’s creative potential. … More about Bobby …

Whatever stage you’re at in your career, coding collaboratively is one of the best uses of your time. With remote working on the rise, there’s never been a better time to practice pair programming and embrace Agile development.

Taking your first steps in programming is like picking up a foreign language. At first, the syntax makes no sense, the vocabulary is unfamiliar, and everything looks and sounds unintelligible. If you’re anything like me when I started, fluency feels impossible.

I promise it isn’t. When I began coding, the learning curve hit me — hard. I spent ten months teaching myself the basics while trying to stave off feelings of self-doubt that I now recognize as imposter syndrome. It wasn’t until I started going to beginner-friendly meetups that I realized how coding collaboratively opens up amazing possibilities. You just need the right community of people to practice with.

For me, that community was Founders and Coders, the free JavaScript bootcamp that helped me to switch my career from copywriting to coding. Even now, less than a year after completing the course, I can hardly believe I’m being paid to develop software.

Collaborative coding is all about tackling problems and discovering solutions together. It encompasses techniques like pair programming, which several tech companies take seriously enough to screen for during their interview processes. It also cultivates useful skills that are tough to learn if all you’re doing is coding alone at home.

Whether you’re just starting out in the tech industry or you have several years of experience under your belt, collaborative coding never stops being useful. In this article, we’ll look at how these evergreen skills equip you for a long and successful career in software development.

Perfect Pairing

My first experience of pair programming was at a meetup for beginners called Coding For Everyone. Here’s how it works: people pair up, often with people they’ve never met, to solve JavaScript challenges together at the same laptop. One person assumes the role of the ‘navigator’ and proposes the code they think should be written. The other person, the ‘driver’, types out their suggestions on the laptop and asks questions whenever something isn’t clear. You continue doing this, swapping roles frequently, until the end of the two-hour session.

In theory, it was simple. In practice, not so much.

I found it quite distracting to have someone I didn’t know watching my screen while I typed, and I was reluctant to hand over control when it was time to swap roles. I found navigating even trickier. When an idea cannot go from your head into the computer without first going through your partner’s hands, every word that you say matters. It demanded a degree of communication from us both that we simply weren’t used to, and I felt sure we’d both learn more if we split up to work separately.

Fortunately, we stuck with it; I went again to the meetup the following week. I’ve since spent hundreds of hours pairing with dozens of developers, and I’ve learned more than I initially thought possible.

Pair programming is an incredibly fast way to learn. The magic of the method — once you get over the initial awkwardness — is that it yields immediate results. Some feedback loops, like bubbles in the stock market, can take hours, days, or even months to produce a correction. Pair programming takes minutes, if not seconds. When you misplace a semicolon, two pairs of eyes can spot the mistake faster than one. Need to search StackOverflow for clues about a rogue error message? You and your partner can each read different threads, halving the time it takes to find an answer.

The pair programming feedback loop (Large preview)

For even trickier problems, mob programming can be a further step up. This method requires a cross-functional section of a team to gather around the same computer screen and brainstorm solutions in realtime while one person types.

“All the brilliant minds working on the same thing, at the same time, in the same space, on the same computer.”

— Woody Zuill, Agile Coach and Mob Programming Trainer

While it might seem like an inefficient way to work, mob programming advocates such as Woody Zuill say it can actually save time by eliminating the need for individual code reviews because everyone reviews the code in realtime as it’s being written. Productivity aside, I think mobbing is a fantastic way to learn not just about the code, but about how other people approach problems. If pair programming doubles the number of perspectives you’re exposed to, mob programming yields even more insights.

Sometimes, ten heads are better than two. (Large preview)

That’s not to say that pairing — or indeed mobbing — is plain sailing. Something I struggled with initially was putting my ego to one side to ask questions that I thought might sound stupid. In these situations, it’s good to remember that your partner might be having the same thoughts, especially if you’re both just starting out.

If you find yourself pairing with someone more senior, perhaps at work, don’t be afraid to pick their brains and impress them with your inquisitiveness. Even someone who is only a bit further ahead than you might think of things that wouldn’t occur to someone more senior. Some of my favorite pair programmers only have a few months more experience than me, yet they always seem to know exactly which mistakes I’m about to make and how to steer me in the right direction. When these developers say there’s no such thing as a silly question, they really mean it. The best pair programmers speak freely, without the need to appear fantastic or the fear of looking foolish.

Pair programming takes practice, but it’s worth perfecting. Studies show that programmers who pair to solve problems tend to be more confident, productive, and engaged with their work. Whether you’re looking for your next job or you’re onboarding new hires, pairing is caring.

Resources And Further Reading

Engineering Empathy

When I started teaching myself JavaScript, my code looked a lot like my bedroom floor: I’d let it get messier and messier until I had no choice but to tidy it. As long as my web browser could understand it, I didn’t care how it looked.

It wasn’t until I started reviewing other people’s code that I realized I needed to show a lot more empathy for the people reviewing mine.

Empathy might be the most underrated tool in any developer’s arsenal. It’s the reason why IDEO puts user research at the center of their design process, and why Etsy asks their designers and product managers to do an engineering rotation. Empathy emerges when we have the opportunity to see how our work impacts other people. No wonder collaborative coding is such a great way to build it.

Peer code review — the act of checking each other’s code for mistakes — calls on us to exercise empathy. As the reviewer, it’s important to recognize that someone has gone to considerable effort to write the code that you are about to critique. As such, try to avoid using phrases that might imply judgment or trivialize their work. When you refer to their code, you want to show them the specific functions and lines that you have questions about, and suggest how they might refactor it. Sharing learning resources can also be more helpful than spoon-feeding a solution. Some of the most useful feedback I’ve received from code reviews has come in the form of educational articles, videos, and even podcast recommendations.

Writing good documentation for your code also goes a long way. An act as simple as creating a readme with clear installation instructions shows empathy for anyone who needs to work with your code. GitHub founder Tom Preston-Werner advocates a readme-first approach to development.

“A perfect implementation of the wrong specification is worthless. By the same principle, a beautifully crafted library with no documentation is also damn near worthless. If your software solves the wrong problem or nobody can figure out how to use it, there’s something very bad going on.”

— Tom Preston-Werner, GitHub Founder

I’ve also spoken with tech founders who treat documentation as an essential part of successful onboarding. One CTO said that if a junior developer struggles to reach a level of productivity within six months of joining his team, it points towards the codebase not being well documented enough. It only takes a few seconds to add an explanatory comment to a complex function you’ve written, but it could save the next person who joins your team hours of effort.

Resources And Further Reading

Agile Achievement

From the millions of man-hours that go into making CGI movies to the intense development crunches leading up to big-budget video game releases, towering technical achievements take a mind-boggling amount of effort. The first time I saw my current employer’s codebase, I was floored by the enormity of it all. How on earth did anybody build this?

The answer is that everybody can build a lot more than anybody, given the right collaborative framework. In companies that encourage collaborative coding, the software doesn’t emerge from the efforts of a lone genius. Instead, there are ways of working together that help great teams to do amazing work. Developers at Founders and Coders practice a popular software development methodology known as ‘Agile’, and in my experience, it puts the ‘functional’ in cross-functional development teams.

Entire books have been written about Agile, but here is a summary of the core concepts:

A product development team breaks down large pieces of work into small units called ‘user stories’, prioritizes them, and delivers them in two-week cycles called ‘sprints’.

For as long as the project continues, the cycles repeat, and new product requirements get fed into a backlog of tasks for future sprints.

The team holds daily standup meetings to discuss their progress and address any blockers.

The process is both incremental and iterative: the software is built and delivered in pieces and refined in successive sprints.

A typical Agile workflow (Large preview)

As a chronic tinkerer whose solo hobby projects often succumb to ‘feature creep’, I know how easy it is to waste time building the things that no one ever uses. I love the way that Agile forces you to prioritize user stories so that the entire team can focus on delivering features that your users actually care about. It’s motivating to know that you’re all united around the common goal of building a product or service that will continue to have a life after you finish working on it.

Splitting tasks into small user stories also happens to be a great way to timebox pair programming sessions. No matter how deep in the zone you find yourselves, finishing up work on a key feature is always a nice reminder to step away from your desks and take a break. Agile lends structure to collaborative coding where it could otherwise be lacking.

Meanwhile, daily standups give you the freedom to talk about anything that is holding you back, and sprint retrospectives provide space to share key wins and pinpoint where the team could improve. These ceremonies foster a sense of collaboration and accountability, and help us to learn more together than we could by ourselves.

Putting all of these Agile principles into practice can be challenging, especially when no one in a team is used to this way of working. At Founders and Coders, it takes most students a while to get into the habit of doing daily standups. However, after 18 weeks of project-based practice, you find that your processes and communication skills improve immensely. By the time you take on your first client work, you’ve formed a much clearer mental model of how to approach building a full-stack web app in a team.

The best way to learn Agile is to build interesting projects with other people. Attending hackathons is an excellent way to connect with potential collaborators. Many open-source projects make their kanban project boards public, so you can see which GitHub issues different contributors are working on. Several welcome contributions from beginners, and you can often assign yourself to open issues and begin raising pull requests.

Since most tech companies subscribe to some form of Agile, it’s not uncommon for employers to ask about it in interviews. Any experience you have can set you apart from other applicants who may never have coded collaboratively, let alone with Agile in mind.

Resources And Further Reading

Remote Collaborative Coding Tool Recommendations

In the last several years, remote working tools have advanced to the point that prominent companies like Gatsby and Zapier are now “remote first”. While it remains to be seen whether this will turn into a trend, it’s safe to say that remote development teams are here to stay.

In that spirit, here are some tools that can help you and your team code collaboratively from afar:

Markdown Editors HackMD The killer feature is that you can turn markdown documents into slideshow presentations with next to no effort. Borrows from the popular reveal.js library. StackEdit A collaborative online editor with a clean UI and lots of file export options. Code Editors CodeSandbox A fantastic collaborative cloud-based code editor that you run in your browser, with no installation needed. Live Share A neat extension for the popular Microsoft Visual Studio Code editor that supports real time editing and debugging of files inside the same workspace. Video Conferencing Solutions Google Hangouts Superb Google Calendar integration makes it a cinch to schedule video calls. Microsoft Teams Video conferencing software that offers really good call quality (1080p video), and supports up to 250 simultaneous participants.

If you take one thing away from reading this article, I want it to be that team players trump individual contributors. In a field where there seems to be a hot new framework to master every other week, our technical skills age in a way that our soft skills don’t. The upshot is that developers who can work well with other people will always find their abilities are in demand. Collaborative coding isn’t just an effective way to learn; it’s a sought after skill set that anyone can develop with enough practice and patience.

(fb, ra, yk, il)

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source http://www.scpie.org/why-collaborative-coding-is-the-ultimate-career-hack/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/616321323350851584

[laurelkrugerr]

Why Collaborative Coding Is The Ultimate Career Hack

About The Author

Bobby is a software developer at Flourish and a fan of data-driven storytelling. He loves no-code tools that help people tap into the web’s creative potential. … More about Bobby …

Whatever stage you’re at in your career, coding collaboratively is one of the best uses of your time. With remote working on the rise, there’s never been a better time to practice pair programming and embrace Agile development.

Taking your first steps in programming is like picking up a foreign language. At first, the syntax makes no sense, the vocabulary is unfamiliar, and everything looks and sounds unintelligible. If you’re anything like me when I started, fluency feels impossible.

I promise it isn’t. When I began coding, the learning curve hit me — hard. I spent ten months teaching myself the basics while trying to stave off feelings of self-doubt that I now recognize as imposter syndrome. It wasn’t until I started going to beginner-friendly meetups that I realized how coding collaboratively opens up amazing possibilities. You just need the right community of people to practice with.

For me, that community was Founders and Coders, the free JavaScript bootcamp that helped me to switch my career from copywriting to coding. Even now, less than a year after completing the course, I can hardly believe I’m being paid to develop software.

Collaborative coding is all about tackling problems and discovering solutions together. It encompasses techniques like pair programming, which several tech companies take seriously enough to screen for during their interview processes. It also cultivates useful skills that are tough to learn if all you’re doing is coding alone at home.

Whether you’re just starting out in the tech industry or you have several years of experience under your belt, collaborative coding never stops being useful. In this article, we’ll look at how these evergreen skills equip you for a long and successful career in software development.

Perfect Pairing

My first experience of pair programming was at a meetup for beginners called Coding For Everyone. Here’s how it works: people pair up, often with people they’ve never met, to solve JavaScript challenges together at the same laptop. One person assumes the role of the ‘navigator’ and proposes the code they think should be written. The other person, the ‘driver’, types out their suggestions on the laptop and asks questions whenever something isn’t clear. You continue doing this, swapping roles frequently, until the end of the two-hour session.

In theory, it was simple. In practice, not so much.

I found it quite distracting to have someone I didn’t know watching my screen while I typed, and I was reluctant to hand over control when it was time to swap roles. I found navigating even trickier. When an idea cannot go from your head into the computer without first going through your partner’s hands, every word that you say matters. It demanded a degree of communication from us both that we simply weren’t used to, and I felt sure we’d both learn more if we split up to work separately.

Fortunately, we stuck with it; I went again to the meetup the following week. I’ve since spent hundreds of hours pairing with dozens of developers, and I’ve learned more than I initially thought possible.

Pair programming is an incredibly fast way to learn. The magic of the method — once you get over the initial awkwardness — is that it yields immediate results. Some feedback loops, like bubbles in the stock market, can take hours, days, or even months to produce a correction. Pair programming takes minutes, if not seconds. When you misplace a semicolon, two pairs of eyes can spot the mistake faster than one. Need to search StackOverflow for clues about a rogue error message? You and your partner can each read different threads, halving the time it takes to find an answer.

The pair programming feedback loop (Large preview)

For even trickier problems, mob programming can be a further step up. This method requires a cross-functional section of a team to gather around the same computer screen and brainstorm solutions in realtime while one person types.

“All the brilliant minds working on the same thing, at the same time, in the same space, on the same computer.”

— Woody Zuill, Agile Coach and Mob Programming Trainer

While it might seem like an inefficient way to work, mob programming advocates such as Woody Zuill say it can actually save time by eliminating the need for individual code reviews because everyone reviews the code in realtime as it’s being written. Productivity aside, I think mobbing is a fantastic way to learn not just about the code, but about how other people approach problems. If pair programming doubles the number of perspectives you’re exposed to, mob programming yields even more insights.

Sometimes, ten heads are better than two. (Large preview)

That’s not to say that pairing — or indeed mobbing — is plain sailing. Something I struggled with initially was putting my ego to one side to ask questions that I thought might sound stupid. In these situations, it’s good to remember that your partner might be having the same thoughts, especially if you’re both just starting out.

If you find yourself pairing with someone more senior, perhaps at work, don’t be afraid to pick their brains and impress them with your inquisitiveness. Even someone who is only a bit further ahead than you might think of things that wouldn’t occur to someone more senior. Some of my favorite pair programmers only have a few months more experience than me, yet they always seem to know exactly which mistakes I’m about to make and how to steer me in the right direction. When these developers say there’s no such thing as a silly question, they really mean it. The best pair programmers speak freely, without the need to appear fantastic or the fear of looking foolish.

Pair programming takes practice, but it’s worth perfecting. Studies show that programmers who pair to solve problems tend to be more confident, productive, and engaged with their work. Whether you’re looking for your next job or you’re onboarding new hires, pairing is caring.

Resources And Further Reading

Engineering Empathy

When I started teaching myself JavaScript, my code looked a lot like my bedroom floor: I’d let it get messier and messier until I had no choice but to tidy it. As long as my web browser could understand it, I didn’t care how it looked.

It wasn’t until I started reviewing other people’s code that I realized I needed to show a lot more empathy for the people reviewing mine.

Empathy might be the most underrated tool in any developer’s arsenal. It’s the reason why IDEO puts user research at the center of their design process, and why Etsy asks their designers and product managers to do an engineering rotation. Empathy emerges when we have the opportunity to see how our work impacts other people. No wonder collaborative coding is such a great way to build it.

Peer code review — the act of checking each other’s code for mistakes — calls on us to exercise empathy. As the reviewer, it’s important to recognize that someone has gone to considerable effort to write the code that you are about to critique. As such, try to avoid using phrases that might imply judgment or trivialize their work. When you refer to their code, you want to show them the specific functions and lines that you have questions about, and suggest how they might refactor it. Sharing learning resources can also be more helpful than spoon-feeding a solution. Some of the most useful feedback I’ve received from code reviews has come in the form of educational articles, videos, and even podcast recommendations.

Writing good documentation for your code also goes a long way. An act as simple as creating a readme with clear installation instructions shows empathy for anyone who needs to work with your code. GitHub founder Tom Preston-Werner advocates a readme-first approach to development.

“A perfect implementation of the wrong specification is worthless. By the same principle, a beautifully crafted library with no documentation is also damn near worthless. If your software solves the wrong problem or nobody can figure out how to use it, there’s something very bad going on.”

— Tom Preston-Werner, GitHub Founder

I’ve also spoken with tech founders who treat documentation as an essential part of successful onboarding. One CTO said that if a junior developer struggles to reach a level of productivity within six months of joining his team, it points towards the codebase not being well documented enough. It only takes a few seconds to add an explanatory comment to a complex function you’ve written, but it could save the next person who joins your team hours of effort.

Resources And Further Reading

Agile Achievement

From the millions of man-hours that go into making CGI movies to the intense development crunches leading up to big-budget video game releases, towering technical achievements take a mind-boggling amount of effort. The first time I saw my current employer’s codebase, I was floored by the enormity of it all. How on earth did anybody build this?

The answer is that everybody can build a lot more than anybody, given the right collaborative framework. In companies that encourage collaborative coding, the software doesn’t emerge from the efforts of a lone genius. Instead, there are ways of working together that help great teams to do amazing work. Developers at Founders and Coders practice a popular software development methodology known as ‘Agile’, and in my experience, it puts the ‘functional’ in cross-functional development teams.

Entire books have been written about Agile, but here is a summary of the core concepts:

A product development team breaks down large pieces of work into small units called ‘user stories’, prioritizes them, and delivers them in two-week cycles called ‘sprints’.

For as long as the project continues, the cycles repeat, and new product requirements get fed into a backlog of tasks for future sprints.

The team holds daily standup meetings to discuss their progress and address any blockers.

The process is both incremental and iterative: the software is built and delivered in pieces and refined in successive sprints.

A typical Agile workflow (Large preview)

As a chronic tinkerer whose solo hobby projects often succumb to ‘feature creep’, I know how easy it is to waste time building the things that no one ever uses. I love the way that Agile forces you to prioritize user stories so that the entire team can focus on delivering features that your users actually care about. It’s motivating to know that you’re all united around the common goal of building a product or service that will continue to have a life after you finish working on it.

Splitting tasks into small user stories also happens to be a great way to timebox pair programming sessions. No matter how deep in the zone you find yourselves, finishing up work on a key feature is always a nice reminder to step away from your desks and take a break. Agile lends structure to collaborative coding where it could otherwise be lacking.

Meanwhile, daily standups give you the freedom to talk about anything that is holding you back, and sprint retrospectives provide space to share key wins and pinpoint where the team could improve. These ceremonies foster a sense of collaboration and accountability, and help us to learn more together than we could by ourselves.

Putting all of these Agile principles into practice can be challenging, especially when no one in a team is used to this way of working. At Founders and Coders, it takes most students a while to get into the habit of doing daily standups. However, after 18 weeks of project-based practice, you find that your processes and communication skills improve immensely. By the time you take on your first client work, you’ve formed a much clearer mental model of how to approach building a full-stack web app in a team.

The best way to learn Agile is to build interesting projects with other people. Attending hackathons is an excellent way to connect with potential collaborators. Many open-source projects make their kanban project boards public, so you can see which GitHub issues different contributors are working on. Several welcome contributions from beginners, and you can often assign yourself to open issues and begin raising pull requests.

Since most tech companies subscribe to some form of Agile, it’s not uncommon for employers to ask about it in interviews. Any experience you have can set you apart from other applicants who may never have coded collaboratively, let alone with Agile in mind.

Resources And Further Reading

Remote Collaborative Coding Tool Recommendations

In the last several years, remote working tools have advanced to the point that prominent companies like Gatsby and Zapier are now “remote first”. While it remains to be seen whether this will turn into a trend, it’s safe to say that remote development teams are here to stay.

In that spirit, here are some tools that can help you and your team code collaboratively from afar:

Markdown EditorsHackMD The killer feature is that you can turn markdown documents into slideshow presentations with next to no effort. Borrows from the popular reveal.js library.StackEdit A collaborative online editor with a clean UI and lots of file export options.Code EditorsCodeSandbox A fantastic collaborative cloud-based code editor that you run in your browser, with no installation needed.Live Share A neat extension for the popular Microsoft Visual Studio Code editor that supports real time editing and debugging of files inside the same workspace.Video Conferencing SolutionsGoogle Hangouts Superb Google Calendar integration makes it a cinch to schedule video calls.Microsoft Teams Video conferencing software that offers really good call quality (1080p video), and supports up to 250 simultaneous participants.

If you take one thing away from reading this article, I want it to be that team players trump individual contributors. In a field where there seems to be a hot new framework to master every other week, our technical skills age in a way that our soft skills don’t. The upshot is that developers who can work well with other people will always find their abilities are in demand. Collaborative coding isn’t just an effective way to learn; it’s a sought after skill set that anyone can develop with enough practice and patience.

(fb, ra, yk, il)

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source http://www.scpie.org/why-collaborative-coding-is-the-ultimate-career-hack/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/04/why-collaborative-coding-is-ultimate.html

[scpie]

Why Collaborative Coding Is The Ultimate Career Hack

About The Author

Bobby is a software developer at Flourish and a fan of data-driven storytelling. He loves no-code tools that help people tap into the web’s creative potential. … More about Bobby …

Whatever stage you’re at in your career, coding collaboratively is one of the best uses of your time. With remote working on the rise, there’s never been a better time to practice pair programming and embrace Agile development.

Taking your first steps in programming is like picking up a foreign language. At first, the syntax makes no sense, the vocabulary is unfamiliar, and everything looks and sounds unintelligible. If you’re anything like me when I started, fluency feels impossible.

I promise it isn’t. When I began coding, the learning curve hit me — hard. I spent ten months teaching myself the basics while trying to stave off feelings of self-doubt that I now recognize as imposter syndrome. It wasn’t until I started going to beginner-friendly meetups that I realized how coding collaboratively opens up amazing possibilities. You just need the right community of people to practice with.

For me, that community was Founders and Coders, the free JavaScript bootcamp that helped me to switch my career from copywriting to coding. Even now, less than a year after completing the course, I can hardly believe I’m being paid to develop software.

Collaborative coding is all about tackling problems and discovering solutions together. It encompasses techniques like pair programming, which several tech companies take seriously enough to screen for during their interview processes. It also cultivates useful skills that are tough to learn if all you’re doing is coding alone at home.

Whether you’re just starting out in the tech industry or you have several years of experience under your belt, collaborative coding never stops being useful. In this article, we’ll look at how these evergreen skills equip you for a long and successful career in software development.

Perfect Pairing

My first experience of pair programming was at a meetup for beginners called Coding For Everyone. Here’s how it works: people pair up, often with people they’ve never met, to solve JavaScript challenges together at the same laptop. One person assumes the role of the ‘navigator’ and proposes the code they think should be written. The other person, the ‘driver’, types out their suggestions on the laptop and asks questions whenever something isn’t clear. You continue doing this, swapping roles frequently, until the end of the two-hour session.

In theory, it was simple. In practice, not so much.

I found it quite distracting to have someone I didn’t know watching my screen while I typed, and I was reluctant to hand over control when it was time to swap roles. I found navigating even trickier. When an idea cannot go from your head into the computer without first going through your partner’s hands, every word that you say matters. It demanded a degree of communication from us both that we simply weren’t used to, and I felt sure we’d both learn more if we split up to work separately.

Fortunately, we stuck with it; I went again to the meetup the following week. I’ve since spent hundreds of hours pairing with dozens of developers, and I’ve learned more than I initially thought possible.

Pair programming is an incredibly fast way to learn. The magic of the method — once you get over the initial awkwardness — is that it yields immediate results. Some feedback loops, like bubbles in the stock market, can take hours, days, or even months to produce a correction. Pair programming takes minutes, if not seconds. When you misplace a semicolon, two pairs of eyes can spot the mistake faster than one. Need to search StackOverflow for clues about a rogue error message? You and your partner can each read different threads, halving the time it takes to find an answer.

The pair programming feedback loop (Large preview)

For even trickier problems, mob programming can be a further step up. This method requires a cross-functional section of a team to gather around the same computer screen and brainstorm solutions in realtime while one person types.

“All the brilliant minds working on the same thing, at the same time, in the same space, on the same computer.”

— Woody Zuill, Agile Coach and Mob Programming Trainer

While it might seem like an inefficient way to work, mob programming advocates such as Woody Zuill say it can actually save time by eliminating the need for individual code reviews because everyone reviews the code in realtime as it’s being written. Productivity aside, I think mobbing is a fantastic way to learn not just about the code, but about how other people approach problems. If pair programming doubles the number of perspectives you’re exposed to, mob programming yields even more insights.

Sometimes, ten heads are better than two. (Large preview)

That’s not to say that pairing — or indeed mobbing — is plain sailing. Something I struggled with initially was putting my ego to one side to ask questions that I thought might sound stupid. In these situations, it’s good to remember that your partner might be having the same thoughts, especially if you’re both just starting out.

If you find yourself pairing with someone more senior, perhaps at work, don’t be afraid to pick their brains and impress them with your inquisitiveness. Even someone who is only a bit further ahead than you might think of things that wouldn’t occur to someone more senior. Some of my favorite pair programmers only have a few months more experience than me, yet they always seem to know exactly which mistakes I’m about to make and how to steer me in the right direction. When these developers say there’s no such thing as a silly question, they really mean it. The best pair programmers speak freely, without the need to appear fantastic or the fear of looking foolish.

Pair programming takes practice, but it’s worth perfecting. Studies show that programmers who pair to solve problems tend to be more confident, productive, and engaged with their work. Whether you’re looking for your next job or you’re onboarding new hires, pairing is caring.

Resources And Further Reading

Engineering Empathy

When I started teaching myself JavaScript, my code looked a lot like my bedroom floor: I’d let it get messier and messier until I had no choice but to tidy it. As long as my web browser could understand it, I didn’t care how it looked.

It wasn’t until I started reviewing other people’s code that I realized I needed to show a lot more empathy for the people reviewing mine.

Empathy might be the most underrated tool in any developer’s arsenal. It’s the reason why IDEO puts user research at the center of their design process, and why Etsy asks their designers and product managers to do an engineering rotation. Empathy emerges when we have the opportunity to see how our work impacts other people. No wonder collaborative coding is such a great way to build it.

Peer code review — the act of checking each other’s code for mistakes — calls on us to exercise empathy. As the reviewer, it’s important to recognize that someone has gone to considerable effort to write the code that you are about to critique. As such, try to avoid using phrases that might imply judgment or trivialize their work. When you refer to their code, you want to show them the specific functions and lines that you have questions about, and suggest how they might refactor it. Sharing learning resources can also be more helpful than spoon-feeding a solution. Some of the most useful feedback I’ve received from code reviews has come in the form of educational articles, videos, and even podcast recommendations.

Writing good documentation for your code also goes a long way. An act as simple as creating a readme with clear installation instructions shows empathy for anyone who needs to work with your code. GitHub founder Tom Preston-Werner advocates a readme-first approach to development.

“A perfect implementation of the wrong specification is worthless. By the same principle, a beautifully crafted library with no documentation is also damn near worthless. If your software solves the wrong problem or nobody can figure out how to use it, there’s something very bad going on.”

— Tom Preston-Werner, GitHub Founder

I’ve also spoken with tech founders who treat documentation as an essential part of successful onboarding. One CTO said that if a junior developer struggles to reach a level of productivity within six months of joining his team, it points towards the codebase not being well documented enough. It only takes a few seconds to add an explanatory comment to a complex function you’ve written, but it could save the next person who joins your team hours of effort.

Resources And Further Reading

Agile Achievement

From the millions of man-hours that go into making CGI movies to the intense development crunches leading up to big-budget video game releases, towering technical achievements take a mind-boggling amount of effort. The first time I saw my current employer’s codebase, I was floored by the enormity of it all. How on earth did anybody build this?

The answer is that everybody can build a lot more than anybody, given the right collaborative framework. In companies that encourage collaborative coding, the software doesn’t emerge from the efforts of a lone genius. Instead, there are ways of working together that help great teams to do amazing work. Developers at Founders and Coders practice a popular software development methodology known as ‘Agile’, and in my experience, it puts the ‘functional’ in cross-functional development teams.

Entire books have been written about Agile, but here is a summary of the core concepts:

A product development team breaks down large pieces of work into small units called ‘user stories’, prioritizes them, and delivers them in two-week cycles called ‘sprints’.

For as long as the project continues, the cycles repeat, and new product requirements get fed into a backlog of tasks for future sprints.

The team holds daily standup meetings to discuss their progress and address any blockers.

The process is both incremental and iterative: the software is built and delivered in pieces and refined in successive sprints.

A typical Agile workflow (Large preview)

As a chronic tinkerer whose solo hobby projects often succumb to ‘feature creep’, I know how easy it is to waste time building the things that no one ever uses. I love the way that Agile forces you to prioritize user stories so that the entire team can focus on delivering features that your users actually care about. It’s motivating to know that you’re all united around the common goal of building a product or service that will continue to have a life after you finish working on it.

Splitting tasks into small user stories also happens to be a great way to timebox pair programming sessions. No matter how deep in the zone you find yourselves, finishing up work on a key feature is always a nice reminder to step away from your desks and take a break. Agile lends structure to collaborative coding where it could otherwise be lacking.

Meanwhile, daily standups give you the freedom to talk about anything that is holding you back, and sprint retrospectives provide space to share key wins and pinpoint where the team could improve. These ceremonies foster a sense of collaboration and accountability, and help us to learn more together than we could by ourselves.

Putting all of these Agile principles into practice can be challenging, especially when no one in a team is used to this way of working. At Founders and Coders, it takes most students a while to get into the habit of doing daily standups. However, after 18 weeks of project-based practice, you find that your processes and communication skills improve immensely. By the time you take on your first client work, you’ve formed a much clearer mental model of how to approach building a full-stack web app in a team.

The best way to learn Agile is to build interesting projects with other people. Attending hackathons is an excellent way to connect with potential collaborators. Many open-source projects make their kanban project boards public, so you can see which GitHub issues different contributors are working on. Several welcome contributions from beginners, and you can often assign yourself to open issues and begin raising pull requests.

Since most tech companies subscribe to some form of Agile, it’s not uncommon for employers to ask about it in interviews. Any experience you have can set you apart from other applicants who may never have coded collaboratively, let alone with Agile in mind.

Resources And Further Reading

Remote Collaborative Coding Tool Recommendations

In the last several years, remote working tools have advanced to the point that prominent companies like Gatsby and Zapier are now “remote first”. While it remains to be seen whether this will turn into a trend, it’s safe to say that remote development teams are here to stay.

In that spirit, here are some tools that can help you and your team code collaboratively from afar:

Markdown Editors HackMD The killer feature is that you can turn markdown documents into slideshow presentations with next to no effort. Borrows from the popular reveal.js library. StackEdit A collaborative online editor with a clean UI and lots of file export options. Code Editors CodeSandbox A fantastic collaborative cloud-based code editor that you run in your browser, with no installation needed. Live Share A neat extension for the popular Microsoft Visual Studio Code editor that supports real time editing and debugging of files inside the same workspace. Video Conferencing Solutions Google Hangouts Superb Google Calendar integration makes it a cinch to schedule video calls. Microsoft Teams Video conferencing software that offers really good call quality (1080p video), and supports up to 250 simultaneous participants.

If you take one thing away from reading this article, I want it to be that team players trump individual contributors. In a field where there seems to be a hot new framework to master every other week, our technical skills age in a way that our soft skills don’t. The upshot is that developers who can work well with other people will always find their abilities are in demand. Collaborative coding isn’t just an effective way to learn; it’s a sought after skill set that anyone can develop with enough practice and patience.

(fb, ra, yk, il)

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Banned from College?

I vividly remember the first time I met Shina. It was our freshman year and I don’t specifically remember whose room we were in but I remember downing shots of Fireball alongside a few other people. This upperclassman was stuck on me, but I never wanted anything more than a playful makeout session really. He wasn’t my type, but his personality drew me in. We grew a weird bond. We talked a lot about his childhood and I never spoke about mine, although I’d speak of what kind of life I wanted in the near future. I never really saw us as romantics, it was just fun to be around him, having a man cuddle you to sleep and be playful with. But he was still a little boy at heart and you know how boys are, he probably had his friends convinced that we were fucking. I never allowed any of his advances. Even when I slept over his shitty dorm room sober and would wake up to him begging for us to fuck, “no”, I’d nonchalantly answer. And he got the hint. 

We grew apart.

I remembered that night freshman year. Shina and her friend walked in the room and greeted everyone. She wore skinny jeans and a cropped top revealing her lower belly button piercing. It was one of those dangly jewelries and I asked her about it with no real interest, just the intent of initiating small talk. I was 17 and at the time I was still very reclusive and too shy to speak of anything I considered to be private. She then fled the room, and that was that. Our relationship from then on was a hi and bye- very cordial and very shallow.

I never thought I had much in common with her from the outer surface.

By then it was our sophomore year. The adrenaline of the previous year was gone as we each found our niche. After my best friend and roommate left the school due to personal reasons, I was placed in an awkward situation with a new roommate. I knew from the jump we wouldn't get along. Long story short I got in a physical altercation with that brolic ass bitch but that’s a whole other story child ;).

Shina was going through the same thing, except it wasn’t a fight with her roommate and I’m sure she got her ass beat. We had the same math class and would talk about the ongoing drama. No matter how carefree Shina was, she always made her work a priority and I did admire that about her. She was rough around the edges but had a deeper essence. You could tell by the way she spoke. She had the personality to reel you in, no matter what the topic was. The more we spoke, the more I started to like her. We seemed to share a lot of the same values, although we carried ourselves differently. We were vocal about what we were willing to tolerate. She was just more of a wild and free spirited bitch. And I liked that.

Shina and Michele were pretty close. I, as the outsider, started to spend more quality time with the two. Michele and I never had a friendship and often walked passed each other as if the other didn't exist. One of my roommates, freshman year, dated her brother and it ended on a terrible note. There was tension between the two and it bled onto my relationship with Michele. We were just both naive and easily manipulated to be real honest.

The first time we all established some sort of camaraderie was at this club in Miami. As Shina parked and stepped out, we remained in the car.

*Awkward silence*

“So, I’m not sure what the issue is between us but I wanna have a good time” I said. She responded, we spoke about things, and I complimented how cute her tone was as we carried on. Michele always seemed unapproachable but she had the best sense of humor and her intellect was on a different level than most. She was extremely mature for her age, and was very private- like myself. Later on I came to find out that Shina told Michele to “act friendly” towards me so she could use me.

Ever since that night, the three of us grew really close. I started to know these girls like the back of my hand. We spoke about our dysfunctional families, life, our dreams- man did we speak about our dreams. I really grew to love them cause it felt as if I’d been missing them my entire life. I never felt judged, crazy or belittled. Although the three of us had different personalities we also shared a lot of the same commonalities. We partied damn near every weekend and if we weren't at a club, we’d be somewhere on south beach smoking weed and drinking liquor which we’d have to ask other classmates to cop for us since we were underaged. Many other times we’d be over her guy friend’s crib smoking their weed, then dipping out. We hotboxed Shina’s ran down car damn near everyday. On other days I’d just cop a bottle and we’d be in the room drinking, blasting music, talking about niggas, planning our day.

It was reckless and exhilarating, and I grew infatuated. I came from a strict and extremely judgmental household, where every aspect of my life was compartmentalized and critiqued. My sister grew up in France , so I was basically raised as an only child in the states. Having two close friends at my side all the time, was something I wasn't used to. If Shina ran out of cash, I would easily Venmo some money into her account. If I needed a ride, she’d drop me off. We were very selfless, or so I thought.

So when I met these two girls who didn’t give a fuck and could hold conversations about sex, religion, culture, dreams, and be goofballs all at the same time… It was what I thought I needed. I started smoking a lot. We’d meet up at the school parking lot and smoke a J. Midterms went horrible? Smoke. Bored and bout to go to bed? Smoke. Dick appointment was lit? Smoke. Didn’t get the job interview? Smoke. “WYD” “Chillin, WYA” “SMOKE”. It was an every day thing and surely each night we’d find a spot to smoke. I’ve always been more of a drinker, and now that I think about it- I don’t know how I was functioning. I could barely keep up cause smoking would trigger my anxiety so I usually ended up paranoid and tapping out.

On labor day weekend we picked up a few guys and drove to south beach. Mid way, I had a severe anxiety attack and immediately wished I was back home. I thought maybe I should ask to turn the car back around because I legit felt like I was dying. I didn’t want to be an inconvenience, especially on a lit wknd, so I took a bottle of Mango/Pineapple Svedka and chugged it down till I felt nothing. It was as if I was on a cloud, and nothing mattered anymore. I got so crossfaded, that I barely remember how I got back home. There were many nights when Shina would drunk drive and although I’d persist that we don’t, she’d reassure me and we’d get back in one piece. This one night we met these guys at a drive through after coming back from the club, and drove to their hood. We parked in the lot and spoke for a minute but someone had to pee so the three of us ended up entering these strangers’ house and I recall jokingly saying if these guys tried anything we’d have to fuck them up, run to the car and speed off. Michele and I would accompany Shina to her sugar daddy’s cook out which we were so oblivious to at the time, but now it makes sense as to why he’d slide her cash underneath the table.

Several situations we were in could've ended horribly but nothing ever did. Except for the night I got kicked out of school, but to this day I don’t consider that as insane as some of the shit we previously got into. One night I drank so much, I spent the next day in its entirety throwing up and could barely keep anything down other than some soup that Shina’s grandmother made.

As time went by, Michele and Shina’s relationship started deteriorating. I remember this one night I walked into Shina’s dorm room and laid on top of her as I asked her about her day. She told me these guys wanted to hang out but she didn’t want Michele tagging along. This was uncomfortable for me due to the fact that they knew each other longer than I knew them and I wasn’t one to pick sides. I simply told Michele, Shina wanted me to go out with her and we left and drove to this AirBNB mansion where we played cards and smoked weed then drove back to our dorm. After that night it was clear that there was underlying tension between the two.

Michele and I ended up having so many parallels in our lives which indeed led us to becoming very close. Being Haitian, we dealt with a lot of the same trials and tribulations. Whether it was stereotypical bullshit, both of our fathers being inconsistent, coming from a middle class upbringing, writing poetry to ease the pain we’ve endured, growing into spirituality. We both faced the pressure of going to college and becoming somebody, trying to make our mommies proud and being independent. To this day, although I feel that we’ve grown apart, I still love her.

Michele and a mutual friend of ours had breakfast at the caf one day and told me of a shitty night she had with Shina. I insisted that she tossed the bad vibes aside, but she was right.

Every concealed flaw of Shina was becoming undone, and sooner than later- it’d all come to light.

This particular night it was as if my subconscious knew everything would change forever and if I knew best, I would've stayed my home. It was the summer time, the girls were taking summer courses and living on campus. I did too since my mother paid for a study abroad program in Italy that was due the following month and I wanted to knock a class off my schedule. It was still early in the semester but I was not partying like my usual self. So that night it was eager that I headed out with my girls. My room was disheveled with suitcases on the ground and lights taped at the perimeter of my wall. Shina walked in and asked me to do her makeup, and I did by dabbing an ABH glow kit highlighter palette I’d just ordered onto the peak of her face. Michele was still in her room getting ready, as Shina would stop in between and ask her for help regarding her outfit and what not. At this point I’m alone in my room and I feel something tell me to stay home. I disregard my instinct. I figured I was just feeling tired and lazy, and pursued to tell the girls I was ready to go. By the time we got downstairs, Shina stepped out of the car asking if we each wanted to pop some xanax which I then asked her why the fuck was she popping pills. She responded it was only half a bar and went to cop her xans.

I’ve never been interested in abusing pills/drugs or trying anything more than marijuana solely because everyone was curious at one point.

Pills, drinking, driving… nowhere did that sound like a good idea. As Michele sat in the passenger seat I looked to her and said I hope she had no interest in that. Shina was someone who once she had her mind set, she refused to listen to anyone or view the bigger picture. She came back and took the pill(s), Michele and I stuck to smoking weed.

Once we got in the club, it turned to be one of the worst nights I could’ve experienced in Miami.

As a child I’ve always been able to manifest situations that were aligned to benefit me. No matter how traumatic an experience may have been, I was never tainted. I always told myself I had angels guiding me. But I guess at 18, I stopped being in tune with the divine energies that had always been there for me, when people weren’t. The whole car ride was awkward. It was just unwanted tension. I couldn't have been the only one who felt it, not matter how fucked up we were.

We got in the club and the next thing I know I’m “accidentally” shoved onto a table which completely pissed me the fuck off. By this time Shina was extremely frustrated and kept trying to get me to join her at the other side of the room and leave Michele. As I refused to go back and forth I collided into a table leaving everyone in the room to witness it. I’m not one to easily get embarrassed, but I certainly was atm. Anyone who knows me knows I’m down for a twerk session and don’t mind getting fucked up at a party, but it’s always done with poise. Being pushed in the middle of the room with everyone watching, wasn’t cute. So I get up and walk towards Michele and by this time Michele tells me she’s ready to go home and I agree since I was fucking over it. We go up to Shina and let her know we should all leave. Shina goes fucking nuts. She’s screaming her lungs out and now normally since she’s a friend I would try to neutralize the situation but I was fucked up and felt nothing but bad vibes so I was not here for her childish ass rant in the middle of the club. So at this point she’s screaming at Michele and the security guard comes up trying to break up whatever it is that was going on. Clearly it’s a case of drunk bitches arguing over nothing but I couldn’t tolerate the disrespect. Was she acting like this cause she drove us here and felt as if she could speak to us in that manner? If so I could easily get my ass a ride back home, so I did. I flashed my screen at Michele and told her the uber was on its way. I made my exit and Michele followed.

We stood outside in disbelief of what just took place. Shina drunkenly, high and tweaking off xannies followed us belligerently going psycho. I hope you fucking die, she texted Michele. Michele read the text to me as we got in the uber and I just sat there high, drunk, and confused.

The uber driver laughed as we went back and forth cussing and puzzling what the fuck whatever that was. We drove 20 minutes back to our dorm and I chose to go to Michele’s room for a bit. That was the last time I’d ever be in Michele’s dorm room.

I suggested we stepped out to the first floor and so we did. A few minutes past as we’re conversing, and it’s Shina belligerently intoxicated; knocking at Michele’s door on the floor above us. Michele addresses her and asks her for her belongings which she left in Shina’s car. Shina’s response? She throws it at above the balcony at the door. It gets even more out of control. She starts screaming once again, throwing profanities in which I had no envy to tolerate due to her pill and liquor concoction.

I step on top of a bench and yell back as loud as I can. When I reach a point of anger. I black the fuck out. No remorse what so ever. Shina and I are having a screaming match at this point, as Michele stands aside silently. Is this really happening right now? It’s like two in the fucking morning. Fuck this bitch.

In an instant. Shina hauls through the balcony and to the staircase. I turn to my left and here she comes, walking directly towards the both of us. I get off the bench in order to protect myself and my friend. I’ve never been intimated by a soul and if Shina thought she’d be an exception that night... she thought wrong. One thing leads to another and I am dragging her through the grass and up the concrete, punching the fuck out of her face. My acrylics are ripped off my nail bed as I punch her. I feel nothing. I let it all out. All the anger that I’ve learned to mask so deeply. This is why I choose to not be irritated so easily, cause once I’m angered, it’s the devil’s advocate and I feel nothing.

 I’m not proud of that moment and it’s something that I take absolutely no pride in. Hurting someone I once considered a friend. It was never supposed to go down this way. 

Now to someone who takes pride in being vulgar and eager to retaliate, go ahead and chant to the world that you’ve beat someone’s ass... but even now thinking about it I am disgusted. Growing up witnessing so much violence and hatred... why am I repeating the shit I went through that I swore to myself I would never bathe in. 

Lights are blurring and it’s public safety. The man separates us and writes our names and IDs down. Aww man I’m in deep shit. This nosy ass nigga Jerry peeped some extent of the incident and came upstairs to ask what happened- obviously to gossip the following morning but I kept silent. 

The following day, well you can guess what happens next. A whole lotta BULLSHIT. Including the public safety dude raving about how I learned how to fight like that, insisting that I see the bulge all over Shina’s face. Which I thought was completely inappropriate and tasteless. But that’s what these authoritative “figures” find pleasure in. It’s like their own WWE/BGC Jerry Springer special. It’s what keeps them talking about solutions that they don’t plan on providing. It’s what keeps them entertained. Students making bad decisions. Damn near ruining their own lives. 

It’s been an entire year and that changed my life. Completely. I am no longer entertained by drama. I am no longer interested in seeking genuine friendships. I am more to myself and even a bit paranoid by overly friendly girls. I’m not saying I am not open to meeting people, but I’m very cautious, even more cautious about my words and actions. 

I don’t think she’ll ever see this but Kashina Harmon I forgive you and I am sorry it ended on such a chaotic note. I really wish her the best. At the end of the day, I don’t want to portray her as a toxic person. Because many times, I’ve been misunderstood. That was her way of dealing with internal pain, and I myself am no angel. 

Choose your friends wisely and confide in no one but yourself.

-KF