#excel sheet with pretty diagrams and all just like him

[shmowder]

Autism be damned by boy can work an Excel

[teehee-vibes]

Alright, list of headcanons/ideas/hopes for The Owl House cast after Belos is defeated and locked away or dead due to his own ambitions (give me your additions and thoughts, I will if I come up with more):

The Portal Door is recreated, but kept a secret from all human realm dwellers (sans Camilla and Vee). Luz travels back and forth between realms regularly, and sometimes, people tag along with her. She introduces demon realm culture to her family, and human world culture to her second family.

By extension, Gus indulges in human culture with ecstasy! He plans to one day foster a mindset where the demon realm can be well received by humans. However, he acknowledges that not all humans are open to the idea quite yet. In the meantime, he visits zoos for giraffe feedings and travels to major cities to visit prestigious museums. He shows off a lot of his findings, replicating them with illusions, and he inspires fascination with the other world across the entire Boiling Isles.

Luz fulfills her secondary dream of becoming a an author. She writes a narrative about her childhood AND her time in the Boiling Isles. In the human realm, it’s a best-selling fictional narrative about coming of age, found family, and trust. In the demon realm, it’s still a best-seller, but it’s treated as it really is: an autobiography and primary source from the rebellion against the tyrant, Emperor Belos.

Luz actually publishes additions to the original work, including additional history and other primary sources (like a replica of Darius’ draining spell diagram, sheet music for “Raine’s Rhapsody,” Luz’s various artworks regarding the major plot). The sources were put together with cool aunt Lilith’s assistance. In the human realm, she is, unfortunately, credited as anonymous for the sake of witch kind.

Eda and Raine get married. This one’s just a given. Luz helps plan it, and it’s very human and witchy at the same time. It makes Eda happy to see Luz happy, so she and Raine go along with a lot of the plans. Lilith is maid of honor, while Luz and Amity are both bridesmaids. Darius is the best man, and he gives a surprisingly tender speech about his friendship with Raine while also roasting the hell out of them. He doesn’t cry (he does cry). Hunter is a spouse’s man. So are the BATTs. Willow handles the flora. King and Eberwolf are flower girls. Hooty is the ring bearer, to everyone’s chagrin.

Eda remains an excellent mother and wild witch. She continues her life pretty normally, flaunting her prowess and scamming people (teaming up with Edric more often). She is treated with more respect, and she’s seen as a champion for those with life-altering curses. She helps those affected with one live with it, telling how she learned to accept her own.

King begins seeking out the history and real strength of Titans, learning to fully embrace his lineage. He also strives to help others treat “idols” with respect and empathy.

Raine goes back to being the teacher they wanted to be originally! They apply to be a bard teacher at Hexside, so they can give good education to Hexside students. All of the Bard-track students brag about how good Professor Whispers-Clawthorne is. They teach their students the whistle trick, and they all swear to not share the trick with others. They never do. They keep an orange flower in a pot on their windowsill at all times. Before moving in with Eda, they fly/walk with Hunter to school everyday.

Speaking of Hunter, he enrolls at Hexside. The environment there made him feel unsafe, but in the safer way! The people there are good to him, too. The teachers love having him in class because of his utter passion for learning. Like Luz, the curious overachiever, he tries to study all the tracks at once. Principal Bump, still in charge, takes quite a liking to him. In addition to participating in Flyer Derby with the Emerald Entrails, he joins the Clawthornes and Bat Queen and volunteers to help with Palisman adoptions, helping those like his beloved Flapjack find good matches for themselves after tragedy.

Darius’s excellent skincare routine can only do so much. Eventually, being middle aged catches up to him. Barely. He develops smile lines on his cheeks. At first, he frets a bit. But he gets used to them eventually. After all, it’s just a sign that he’s been laughing more. He does play a major role in Hunter’s life, primary caretaker or not.

Willow proceeds as Captain of the Emerald Entrails. After she graduates from Hexside, while most of the others move on for other things (Hunter still holds a passion for the game and keeps at it with her for longer), she continues with the sport! Not only does she go on to the big leagues as an adult, as the witch she wants to be, but she’s basically an inspiration to other young witches. She campaigns proudly for the sport, hoping that it will one day be just as embraced as Grudgby and that others can use it as a mental outlet.

Lilith strives to right Belos’s and Flora’s wrongs. She publishes book after book debunking Belos’s praise and the incorrect history he wrote. She makes exhibits in museums about the culture that was lost on the Isles, hoping that truthful education will encourage others to embrace the good parts. She also eventually accepts Steve’s therapy recommendation and learns not to undervalue herself to so-called superiors.

This is all I can think of right now! I’ll probably add more eventually, and I want to hear other ideas too.

[broken-clover]

Goretober Day 8- Obsession

Man, I’m like...double late. Well, better late that never! And hopefully the nest ones should be short to balance all this out. This is one of the prompts that specifically made me choose this list! I had an idea ahead of time and I’m glad I was able to use it.

Today I’m using Zappa and S-ko! Though not in the way you might expect. In a sense, this is kinda-sorta an AU based on Misery (I hate Stephen King, but Kathy Bates is a phenomenal actress and the film was excellent) with a few differences. Hopefully you like how it turned out! I’m going to bed!

Cold.

Everything was cold, and everything hurt.

Why did it hurt? He couldn’t think. It was hard to see. There was nothing but white.

And cold.

And Pain.

He’d been...where had he been? What had he been doing? Why was he outside in the first place? The storm was supposed to be-

The storm. The blizzard. He’d been trying to drive home after the powerlines fell down and knocked out all the electricity. They couldn’t do any computer work without power.

But he was supposed to have been going home, why wasn’t-

The ground seemed to open up underneath him before he could answer the question. It dumped him out into something soft, but somehow even more blisteringly cold. He would have recoiled from the sensation, but he felt too tired and and it hurt too much to move.

Something warm brushed his side, so foreign and odd from everything else that he wondered if it was really there. He didn’t have much time to think about it, however. The world seemed to decide that he’d spent enough time awake for the time being and pitched him headfirst into unconsciousness. He wasn’t sure if it was an annoyance or a relief.

++++++

Zappa awoke to a similar white, but this one wasn’t freezing cold. Actually, he felt quite warm and comfortable where he was. His head was still swimming and something was throbbing in pain, but it all felt so much more bearable when it wasn’t so cold out.

A smear of something ash-black edged into his vision. It was difficult to discern at first, but as he blinked to clear his vision, it turned into long, dark hair, framing the face of a person that he definitely didn’t know.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, Zappa stiffened up in panic. The stranger took note of it, and pressed a hand gently against his chest.

“Easy, there. You’re okay.” It was a woman’s voice, quiet but slightly raspy. “Your car crashed nearby, but I pulled you out of it. You’re safe with me.”

It wasn’t much to go off of, but she certainly seemed kind. Not that he could do much in his current state anyway. He dragged himself up to sit on the bed she’d put him in. One arm felt tender as he put pressure on it, and he found the whole limb wrapped up in bandages.

“Popped your wrist right out of place.” The woman explained. She reached over to pull the blanket back, and he winced at the sight. Though it had been splinted up and mostly bandaged over, his right leg was still twisted oddly, and the white fabric was soaked through in a few spots. “Banged this up pretty badly, too. But I think the concussion’s eased up, and for the state your car was in, I’d say you’re pretty lucky to have made out with just that. Don’t worry, though. I’m a nurse, I know how to handle this kind of thing.”

She seemed to have thought of everything. Zappa couldn’t help but be impressed. “Thank you very much for your help, I’m not sure what would have happened if you hadn’t shown up.”

“It’s no problem at all! I’m glad I could help you out.”

“You’re very kind, ma’am.” He smiled gratefully. “Um, I guess I should introduce myself, I’m-”

“Oh, you don’t need to tell me! I already know!” She cut him off, expression growing giddy.

“Huh?”

“You’re Zappa! The famous paranormal researcher! How could I not know who you are?”

Zappa felt his face going red. “I-I’m not, really-”

“Oh, don’t be so modest! I’ve read every single one of your monographs and dissertations, you’re amazing!” The woman was practically bouncing in her seat. “My name is Sadako Yamamura, and I’m your number-one fan!”

“Y-you’re too kind.” He turned away in embarrassment. “I-I just write theoretical stuff. It’s not really as interesting as practical magic-”

“But your theories are just so well-detailed!” Sadako shook her head. “I’ve never seen a writing style like yours, everything is so organized, and you think of things that nobody else would ever think of! I’ve never understood anyone else so well since I read your texts!” She clasped her hands together. “So really, it’s an honor for me to be able to take care of you! I feel like such a lucky woman to be able to meet you at all!”

He’d gone absolutely tomato-red, burying his face in his hand. Sadako giggled quietly. “Oh dear, don’t make yourself faint. Would you like some water? Or some soup? I’m sure you’re hungry…”

Sadako seemed like a very kind woman. Zappa found himself warming up to her as she milled around making lunch. She seemed the chatty type, which was a tad odd, considering that she seemed to share the house only with herself.

“It’s not all that lonely.” She said, stirring a pot on the stove. “It might be a quiet place, but the scenery is very beautiful. I like the snow.”

He stared out the window with a little frown, watching the blizzard continue to rage on outside. “I can’t imagine it would be safe to try and drive anywhere.”

The woman shook her head. “Afraid not. I think the phone lines got knocked down, too. I can't seem to get a call to anywhere.” Her expression grew dismayed, until she put a smile back on. “But that’s okay. You can stay here and rest up until the roads are clean.”

The idea of being stuck where he was felt worrying, but she did have a point. The weather was far too bad to try and go anywhere, and it would be a death sentence to try. He’d barely made it out the first time, he didn’t need to press his luck at all.

Something warm settled into his lap. Sadako sat down in the chair next to his bed, carrying a bowl of her own.

“I hope you like tomato!”

++++++

Zappa had been very lucky to end up where he was, staying in the home of someone so kind. Miss Sadako seemed ready and willing to do anything he could have asked for, and even more than that. Not that he would have, he was a guest, after all. But she seemed insistent to do an extremely thorough job in looking after him. Every day, she checked the bones, redid the bandages, checked his temperature, offered painkillers, tossed on more clean blankets, and gave any sort of assistance that she could manage, whether he asked for it or not.

That...seemed to be the only problem he could name. He couldn’t help but be slightly distubed at her lack of a sense of personal space. Complaining felt rude, but Sadako had to reservations in patting his hand, ruffling his hair, or looking over the injured limbs without much of a warning. Maybe that’s just how people were around here? It didn’t seem impossible, but it also didn’t do anything about the uneasy feeling it gave him.

At least he was able to take his mind off of it by discussing paranormal theories. Sadako was a bit of a casual theorist- which he’d only been able to barely make out in between her praises of him. The blizzard had lightened, but the roads were still covered in snow and any attempts to make a phone call accomplished nothing, so they’d opted to try and stay occupied until then. His arm had healed up a bit and the swelling had gone down, so he could hold a pencil and sketch out some diagrams while they conversed.

“It’s all still theoretical, mind you, but it is very possible that the Backyard is not a fully separate dimension as we’ve thought up until now. Instead,” he sketched out a few new lines on the sheet of paper, and held it up for her to see, “I’m wondering if it’s, in a sense, overlaid over the world we’re in now, just sort of ‘adjacent’ to our reality, close enough that it can interact with ours but we can’t visually experience it the majority of the time.”

“Oh, that’s brilliant!” Sadako clapped her hands. “You’re really brilliant! I never could have thought of that, not in a million years!”

“I-I’m sure you could have.” Zappa replied. “Don’t talk about yourself like that. Besides, I can’t prove anything yet…”

“‘Not yet,’ though! I’m sure a genius like you will figure everything out super-quick!”

He wanted to insist that he really wasn’t as bright as she was giving him credit for. But the feeling of a hand sliding over his made him stiffen up.

“Zappa,” Sadako said, “what do you think of me?”

That took him even more off-guard. “You seem like an incredibly kind woman, a very clever one, too.”

She seemed unsatisfied with his answer. “What do you think of that, though? Do you like that in a woman?”

Realizing what she was trying to say, he blanched. “Oh. Uh, m-miss Yamamura, I barely know you. I-it’s not that I dislike you, or anything. I’m just not exactly doing the whole ‘dating’ thing right now.”

It was enough to get her to calm down, though it didn’t diminish the suspicious look in her eyes. “I’m not sure I understand. Have you met someone already, or…?”

“Well, yeah, actually.” He smiled sheepishly. “I’ve got a boyfriend at home. His name’s Randy.”

“Oh.” Sadako replied, stiffening up. “I-I didn’t realize you were...taken.”

Zappa waved her down. “Hey, it’s alright. I tend to keep my personal stuff to myself, nothing wrong with you. I just hope he’s not too worried about me…”

She laughed again, quietly, shaking off her embarrassment. “Haha, I’m sorry, that was silly of me. Got a bit in over my head. It’s everyone’s dream to fall in love with their idol, y’know? I wasn’t really thinking.”

He’d thought that would have been the end of it. If Sadako had gotten the hint, she would have backed off on all the touching and learned to respect boundaries a bit better.

That was wishful thinking.

“Alright, easy...have you got your balance?”

Zappa wobbled awkwardly on a pair of crutches, trying to figure out how to orient himself so he could take a hop forward. Sadako had insisted that he at least try it out, to see if he could manage enough of an impromptu walk while his leg was finishing up on healing.

“I’m not sure if I can get this.” He admitted, trying to find a way to keep balance to he could swing his arms. “H-how do I- ah- !”

A familiar pair of warm hands caught him before he could fall. “Gotcha. Are you alright?”

With a bit of maneuvering, Zappa managed to stand up again. “I’m fine. Thank you for…”

Though he’d managed to stand up straight again, Sadako didn’t let go. Actually, he could feel her touch sliding across his skin. Her hand came to rest on his side, sliding down a bit too low for his liking.

“Your hand, can you put it a bit higher?

Her eyes shone with innocence. “Hmm?”

“Sadako.” Zappa snapped. “Please stop touching me.”

“Huh? Oh, sorry.”

He watched her let go, then step away to stand across from him. “Okay, let’s try this again, alright?”

That seemed fair. He tried adjusting the crutches again. “You said the plow gave you the all-clear, right?”

She nodded. “Yes. The phone lines still aren’t quite functional, but the roads are safe.”

“Excellent. Does that mean I can go home today?”

Sadako flinched as if he had just slapped her across the face. “What?”

Zappa tilted his head. “It’s been a long time. If I can’t call them, then nobody knows where I am right now. I’m sure Randy and my co-workers are worried about where I am.”

She took a step closer. “Y-you don’t have to leave already, you’re still not well yet! You- uh, you shouldn’t go out like this! I’m sure we’ll be able to send a call soon, you can tell them you’re staying- !”

“Sadako.” He hardened his tone. “I appreciate your kindness, and I don’t mind compensating you for it. But I want to go home. It’s alright if you don’t want to go the entire way, but can you at least drive me to the nearest police precinct?”

After several moments, she slumped over in defeat. “Alright, I can do that. Let’s...let’s head out this afternoon, okay? I’ll make lunch, and then I can drive you home.”

Zappa finally let his expression soften. “Thank you, Sadako.”

By the time he had managed a few steps on the crutches, she called him in for food. Vegetable soup and bread, both steaming warm.

“It really was a pleasure to be able to get to know you, Zappa.” Sadako seemed to have cheered up a little. “Not everyone gets to meet the people they admire, and I guess it’s pretty rare to have your idol be an amazing person in real life, too. It really means a lot just have been able to meet you.”

He still felt a bit averse after what had happened before. “I’m glad I was able to live up to your expectations. I’ve never met a fan before.”

“How’s the soup? It’s a new recipe I’m trying.”

It was very good. He hadn’t been especially hungry in the first place, but the taste made it hard to stop eating it. “It’s delicious. Can I ask what you put in it?”

“Not really anything special,” she said. “Garlic, bay leaves, bit of…”

Anything after that faded into incoherency. Zappa braced himself against the table with one hand, feeling an odd dizziness suddenly strike him. The walls shifted, threatening to knock him out of his chair if he couldn’t stay balanced.

“Zappa?” Sadako’s voice was somewhere in the distance. “What’s wrong?”

Everything was on fire. Oh god, he was burning alive! The heat of the soup had been comforting, but it had spiked into a blazing pain all the way down, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to gasp for air or simply throw everything back up.

The heat and dizziness was overwhelming. He could just barely recognize that he’d fallen out of the chair and hit the floor before he blacked out.

++++++

The feeling of warm softness was familiar. The world still felt too hot, and when he finally managed to peel back sticky eyelids, the room was blurry.

“Are you awake?”

The voice sent a shot of ice directly into his spine. Zappa tried to sit up, but he found that he lacked the energy to do so, and he immediately sank back down, whimpering in the intense heat.

“Easy, there.” Something cold brushed his cheek, and Sadako’s face came into view. “You gave me quite a scare, passing out at lunch like that. You feel so warm, can you tell me where it hurts?”

It hurt everywhere. But when he opened his mouth to speak, all that came out was a sticky, incoherent sound of pain.

“Oh no,” she cooed, with the same saccharine tone that he was all-too-familiar with, “poor dear. I guess the food must not have agreed with you. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure that you’re nice and healthy before you go home. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you. You mean a lot to me, you know...”

[peterstanslizzie]

Re-watching Lizzie Mcguire: Episode 1.6 (Jack of All Trades)

- We first see Mr. Pettis administering a career aptitude test to his 7th grade students. I don’t think my teachers ever handed out those before back in my day. After class, Gordo mentions to his friends that Mr. Pettis has been giving his Bs in Science all semester because he hates Gordo.

- It’s strange because he is usually a straight-A student and the standard of his work is always two steps above the class average. Gordo can’t seem to figure out why that is but we will eventually find out later in the episode.

Career Mismatch & Matt’s New Identity

- At home, Lizzie informs her parents about the career aptitude test she had to take and her parents tell her that they too had taken one before. Jo Mcguire was supposed to be a rock diva with a renowned shoe collection and Sam Mcguire was supposed to be along the lines of a mechanical engineer.

This reminds me of Phineas and Ferb where Phineas, Ferb and Candace’s mom was a famous pop star in the eighties who went by the name of Lindana

- We then hear Matt telling his family that from now on, he wants his name to be ‘M-Dogg’ in reference to Snoop Dogg because he expresses he wants to be different from the rest of his classmates. Both Jo and Sam are not so thrilled about this but at the same time, they don’t want to discourage him.

I wonder how did Matt manage to get this made?

- The next morning, Matt heads to the front door to leave for school and he is dressed in a sort of ‘urban/street‘ getup and Jo demands he changes into something more appropriate. He even installed an ‘M-Dogg’ identity plate on the back of his bike.

Results of the Career Aptitude Test are In

- Mr. Pettis announces that the class is required to carry out an individual science project as part of their unit of the human brain.

- As Lizzie, Gordo and Miranda are waiting anxiously for their test results, they discuss about their future career goals; Lizzie wants to work in an interesting job that requires a lot of travel but at the same time, allowing her plenty of time to take care of her future twins. In reference to the new revival series coming out in 2020, we now know that Lizzie is working as an apprentice to a NYC decorator. I wonder if it fits all the criteria for her ideal job. Miranda just wants to be rich; Don’t we all...

This is not what they envisioned exactly...

- They finally receive their results and they were unsurprisingly off the mark. Miranda is matched to become a Navy Seal, Lizzie gets Cosmetologist her future career and Gordo gets Blackjack Dealer. I think out of all these careers, I’d rather be what Gordo got but I don’t think I could handle being in a room full of smokers (I presume that many casinos have mostly smoking areas?). Plus, I’d probably have to work late hours to make a decent amount of money.

- They take their results too seriously, especially Miranda because she cannot bear to get her hair wet. But Gordo as well gets a bit too hung up about the idea of becoming a Blackjack Dealer.

M-Dogg Goes Too Far

- Lizzie is almost finished with her science project on the Human Brain, which is basically a poster diagram of the central nervous system but she runs of out ink in her marker. She asks Matt for help but forgets to address him as ‘M-Dogg’ and he straight up ignores her. Even when she starts calling him ‘M-Dogg’, he still doesn’t want to help her find another marker.

- Lizzie was clever enough to threaten him to tell everyone that he sleeps on dorky action hero bed sheets. He got the message and immediately hands her over the marker, which was in his hand the whole time.

- Similar to Episode 2, ‘Picture Day’ when Matt pretended to be sick and Jo decided to play a trick on him by making his time at home miserable, his parents kinda do the same thing here by really going for it and addressing him as ‘M-Dogg’ no matter what. Sam even wants Matt to call him ‘Dee Dee’ at all times and Jo wants him to call her ‘Miu Miu’. Like Prada’s Miu Miu lol?

- They’re essentially doing the same thing that Matt has been doing to them and Matt doesn’t respond well to it and starts regretting his decision to request he be called a different name.

Gordo and Lizzie Switches Projects

- Later that night, Lizzie and Gordo are chatting over the phone and Gordo asks Lizzie if they could switch science projects because he realizes that no matter how brilliant his work is, he is always going to end up getting a B. He essentially wants to make sure his project gets the grade it deserves. Lizzie isn’t so sure about it and tells him that she would think about it overnight.

- The thought about them switching projects and passing it off as their own actually made me cringe a bit just because in college, that is considered plagiarism and that comes with a pretty hefty penalty.

I don’t think I could ever build something like this, even as a Biochemistry student at Imperial College London, where I graduated from.

- At school the next day, Gordo shows his friends his amazing, electronic 3D  model of the brain in which each section of the brain can be stimulated with the push of a button. He also warns that pressing 2 or more buttons at the same time would overheat the brain model and something bad might potentially happen. Despite all the complications present, Lizzie caves in and agrees to switch in her mediocre project for Gordo’s. Sorry, I had to call a spade a spade  and well, she eventually gets a C on her work.

- Mr. Pettis is very impressed with Lizzie’s project and deems it to be A+ grade material. He even asks her if she ever considered a career in Neurology, which somehow triggered Gordo and he confesses to him that he is the one behind that project. He even manages to sneak in a slight diss at Lizzie by saying that she and the rest of his classmates are busy at the water-park trading beanie babies. Gordo! That is so not cool hahaha.

- Enraged with emotions, Gordo begins to demonstrate what his 3D model can do by pushing the buttons of his brain model a bit too quickly one after the other and tells off Mr. Pettis at the same time for not giving him proper credit for all the work he has done over the year.

I really hope the inside of that brain model is just water

- Because of that, his brain model starts heating up and it suddenly explodes and all the gunk from the brain flies straight right into Gordo, Mr. Pettis and Lizzie’s face.

- Mr. Pettis dismisses the class and Gordo is forced to stay behind and before Lizzie could sneak out, she gets called out for plagiarism by Mr. Pettis. Lizzie, who clearly did not understand the concept of plagiarism before this is sure to comprehend it from now on.

Lizzie and Miranda are curious to find out what’s going to happen to Gordo. Lizzie evens asks Miranda to give her a boost so that she can eavesdrop on their conversation through the upper window of the door.

Gordo Learns a Life Lesson

- Gordo confesses to Mr. Pettis that is was his idea to get Lizzie to switch projects with him because he feels it was impossible for him to get a fair grade from his teacher. Mr. Pettis reveals to Gordo that the reason he has been giving him Bs all year is because ever since he got an A- in his first project, he feels like Gordo has been coasting along and not pushing himself to deliver his best work.

Gordo and Mr. Pettis shares a heartwarming moment together

- In turn, this actually caused Gordo to push himself and work 2-weeks straight on his brain model, which is A+ material. So, Mr. Pettis’s technique to get Gordo to bring his A game worked. I get his intention, I really do. But somehow, credit should be given where credit is due. 

- Like, I suspect that all of Gordo’s B-grade projects are all worth As if he were to be judged accordingly based on the class curve. But because Mr. Pettis holds him to such a high standard, Gordo is assessed very differently from his peers. But all in all, I really enjoyed this moment between the two. Mr. Pettis just wants Gordo to not rest on being safe and wants him to strive for excellence. And I think these are the best kinds of teachers to have.

- We also get word that even Mr. Pettis doesn’t take the career aptitude test seriously and that when he took the test back in school, he was matched to be a ‘rodeo clown’. These tests are meant to open up their horizons on the different careers out there. Well, I never take these tests seriously at all from the get-go.

Way to play it cool Miranda and Lizzie lol

As Lizzie and Miranda try to eavesdrop again, Gordo opens the door and accidentally scares them, which causes them to both fall. Gordo tells them that after talking to Mr. Pettis, he learns he doesn’t actually hate him and that he can probably get an A by the end of the semester.

M-Dogg is Finished, Finally!

- During dinner at the Mcguire household, Lizzie and her parents are doing all  they can to go along with their strategy of only addressing Matt as ‘M-Dogg’ and only responding to him if he calls them their ‘Dee Dee’ and ‘Miu Miu’ names at all times.

- Matt is weird out by this and he tells his parents that he wants to take back his own name if he is able to call his parents mom and dad again. Well, Sam and Jo’s strategy paid off well without having to reprimand him or force him to change back his name. I just hope Matt soon learns how to detect when his parents are playing mind games on him.

Overall Thoughts

- This was a solid episode. There was a really good lesson to take away from the story-line involving Gordo and Mr. Pettis, which is the importance of maximizing your potential and not being too comfortable in being average when you are better than that. Even for the younger kids, they would learn that switching your work with another person and passing it off as your own is considered plagiarism and that could result in marks deducted off your grade or even suspension in more serious cases.

- Again, I really don’t care about Matt’s ‘M-Dogg’ story-line. I said it once and I will say it again, it’s just episode filler. Fortunately, there are some story-lines involving Matt that are interesting and is full of depth later in the series but I would say that especially in Season 1, it’s more filler than depth in my opinion.

[365daysofsasuhina]

[ 365 Days of SasuHina || Day Twenty-Eight: Floating ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata, Ōnoki, Uchiha Itachi ] [ SasuHina ] [ Verse: Like Magic ] [ AO3 Link ]

“C’mon Uchiha, or we’re going to be late!”

Groaning, the little first year pulls his pillow up over his head. It’s his first official day of classes...and he’d rather do anything else. Especially sleep. His new roommates had spent half the night staying up and talking. Comparing bloodlines, homes, hopes for their schooling...when all Sasuke wanted to do was get some rest.

So, consequently, he’s exhausted.

“You’ll miss breakfast!” another voice calls up after him. “And you’ll get nothing else until lunch!”

“All right, all right!” Grumbling to himself, he frees his legs from his sheets and dresses, throwing his robes atop his clothes and fetching the books and supplies he’d laid out the night before. Something the This Morning Sasuke can appreciate...he’ll have to make that a habit.

Making his way out of the dormitory and into the Slytherin common room, he rubs at his face as dark eyes glance to the large glass panes that provide a view into the lake. A few fish mill about before scattering as a mermaid streaks past, armed with a crude spear. Said eyes go wide, staring.

“Last warning, Uchiha!”

“Coming!”

The hall is packed, many of his fellow Slytherins’ plates already piled high with all manner of morning goodies. Settling on eggs, toast, and sausage, Sasuke does his best to eat quickly without looking like he’s in a rush. After all, he has a family line to represent.

“I thought you weren’t going to make it.”

Jolting with a mouthful of food, he sees his older brother - a sixth year - making his way back toward the mouth of the hall already. There’s a fond glint in Itachi’s eyes as he ruffles his sibling’s hair. “Do try not to oversleep again - forming a good rising habit early will make it all the easier.”

Swallowing with a bit of struggle, Sasuke tries to reply, but Itachi’s already taken his leave. Students of several houses go to meet him, his popularity even defying the ever-notorious rivalries between the four founders’ students.

The little brother’s shoulders wilt. As much as he adores Itachi...there’s times he can’t help but resent him a bit for how perfect he seems in every way. Just once, he wish he’d slip up...maybe then Sasuke wouldn’t feel so bad.

Still, he can’t afford to tarry, and he shovels the rest of his food in his mouth before hiking up his bag and taking out a map of the school. His first class is Charms...a double with first years of Hufflepuff. It’s not exactly a class he’s looking forward to. Potions is more his style, or maybe Transfiguration. But Charms? It seems like something too...simple. Too plain. Hardly befitting of someone from the infamous Uchiha line.

Making it before the bell, he’s still one of the last to arrive, looking around for a seat. While most rows seem rather divided between the house, a few students intermingle...and that leaves mostly random seats. And practically all that are left are beside a Hufflepuff…

Not wanting to get scolded for being up after the bell, he slides into the nearest seat: the right-hand side front row, at the very end, beside a young girl of pale eyes and dark hair. The yellow accent to her robe betrays her as Hufflepuff. She gives him a nervous look, gaze flickering to the green of his own attire.

Before he can say anything, Sasuke’s cut off by a short, elderly man ascending several stacks of books to look down at them from his podium. He boasts a rather large nose, complete with several age spots, and deep-set wrinkles. Nevertheless, eagle-sharp eyes look down at them all.

“Good morning, class. I am Professor Ōnoki, your Charms instructor. In this class, we will use practical methods to practice giving objects new, and at times...unusual properties. I will warn you: this particular class has much room for error, and thus extraneous noise, and movements. Best to keep your wits about you! Now...to begin, please turn to page ten of your books. Today, we will start with the levitation spell!”

Taking out his tome with a sigh, Sasuke flicks to the correct page, glancing at the illustrated motions of the spell. It begins with a swish, and then a flick. Whatever that means.

“Wingardium...levi...osa?”

He glances over as his neighbor murmurs the incantation aloud. Wisely, she keeps her wand atop the table, not wanting to give it an accidental try before she’s ready.

“Now, as you can see in the diagram, you simply give your wand a swish, and a flick - along with the proper words, ‘wingardium leviosa’. Do mind the enunciation, now: ‘win-GAR-dium levi-O-sa!” The professor does just that, wand gesturing to a feather at his front. With a little jolt, it lifts from the podium and hovers a foot in the air. “Do keep in mind not to get too carried away. But I doubt many of you will succeed in our first tries. But, we’ll give it a shot.”

Sasuke scoffs under his breath. Oh really? Well, he’ll just have to prove the old man wrong! Taking up his wand with pursed, stubborn lips, Sasuke looks to his tawny feather. Pointing the tip at his subject, he swishes, flicks, and “Wingardium leviosa!”

...it doesn’t so much as twitch.

Staring incredulously, he takes a breath, hitching up his sleeves and exhaling curtly. “Wingardium...leviosa!”

Nothing.

All around him, echoes of the same spell are spoken again and again. And almost nowhere does he see movement. A few manage to send theirs flying, but...only off and down to the floor. So...maybe he doesn’t feel quite so bad.

Beside him, the girl is still studying the diagram, miming the motions over and over, without the spell. Sasuke has to admit, her movements are pretty fluid. Watching her out of the corner of his eyes, he sees her pause, take a breath, and then give it a try.

“Wingardium leviosa…!”

The feather wibbles...wobbles...and then shakily begins to hover a few inches, swaying this way and that as though on a breeze. She stares in rabid concentration, tip of her wand shaking slightly.

“Well well, now - it seems miss Hyūga’s made some progress!”

Eyes turn to her, and she quickly loses her hold, feather fluttering back to the desk.

“Excellent! Keep trying, everyone - even just a bit of movement is a sign you’re on the right track!”

Expression tinged a bit jealous, Sasuke battles himself before asking, “How...how did you do that?”

She startles, not expecting him to speak to her. “Um... I just - just did, really. You have to be really careful about...a-about how you aim, and...how you hold your hand when you move it…? At least, I think so. I’m...not sure.”

Be careful, huh? Well...he can give that a try.

“Here...f-follow how I do it.” Lifting her wand, the Hyūga goes through the motions, over and over in a loop. “See how, um...how they all fit together?”

Watching, Sasuke slowly eases into following, until they’re both moving in tandem. Giving it one last go, he then aims his wand, speaking the spell and holding steady.

The feather twitches, jerking a bit before leaping unexpectedly. “Whoa!” Trying to aim at it again, Sasuke accidentally sends it even higher!

“Ah, another success!” Ōnoki praises. “Just remember, it matches your movements! Too quick, or too sudden, and you’ll lose it!”

Trying to rein the thing in, Sasuke stares in dismay as it only starts floating closer to the vaulted ceiling of the classroom.

“Here, let me help!” Aiming her own wand, the Hufflepuff manages to snare it in her own spell. Between the pair of them, they wrangle it back down to the desk with a flutter.

Dark eyes meet pale, there’s a pause...and then they both break out into giggles. “It went so high!” she enthuses, clearly excited.

“How’d you grab it so easy? I could barely keep up with it!”

“I don’t know! I guess...maybe I’m just good at it…” Her tone tapers off, as though not sure she believes herself.

“Well, you gotta be, if you did that first try, huh?” Sour mood lifted, Sasuke smiles at her. “So...what’s your name?”

“Hinata. Hinata Hyūga.”

“I’m Sasuke. Uchiha.”

“N-nice to meet you! Should...should we try again?”

“Sure!”

Oof, another late night - had some irl shenanigans keep me from writing far longer than I wanted tonight, but done is done!      Another HP crossover, but this time with them a little younger, and a little cuter x3 I think Hinata would excel in things like Charms and Herbology, while Sasuke's more into Potions and Transfiguration. But at least Hinata seems happy to help him get the hang of their first Charms spell!      Aaand that'll do it for tonight! Thanks for reading n_n

[dreamweaversofficial]

Year Two, Chapter One

“I am so glad you’re back,” Lyric says fervently, throwing her arms around Garen’s shoulders. He laughs and pats her back. From the doorway of their room, she can see the other year two students engaging in joyful reunions, linking arms and calling gleefully to roommates. They’ve all got new rooms and new classes, but this is familiar.

Devon strides down the hall, bag dragging behind them, and comes to a stop in front of the room they share with Reema. She stands in the doorway and smirks. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

“Out of the way, Salten.” Devon rolls their eyes, grinning, and brushes past her. She looks up, catching Lyric’s gaze. They sneer at each other.

“She’s not one for showing emotion in public,” Garen notes, following her gaze.

Lyric sighs. “She’s not one for showing emotion besides disgust.”

Unbidden, the memory of Reema in the corridor returns to her. The girl’s face, pinched and miserable, as Lyric tried to comfort her. But soon the memory is replaced by the feel of the cold floor under her hands, pain spreading through her wrists.

A boy in a wheelchair steers past them. “‘Scuse me.”

“Sorry!” Garen chirps back, scooting out of the way with his entire body. He ushers her into their room, towing his backpack and suitcase behind him. Lowering his voice, he eases the door shut. “I brought so much contraband food.”

“You’re dream sent,” Lyric groans, making grabby hands at the bag. “I’ve had nothing but school food for ages.”

It’s not like it’s bad food - it’s just that Mentality’s still a school, at the end of the day. A school on a health kick, apparently. There aren’t exactly vending machines filled with the sugary stuff care didn’t, well, care enough to ban. He pulls a baggie of Scandanavian Swimmers out of his bag and tosses them to her.

“I still don’t know how you think that’s the height of flavor,” Garen complains.

She shrugs. “More for me.”

They settle on the couch to throw candy into their mouths at rapid speed.

“Tell me about your summer,” Lyric implores, shaking her hair out of her face. Candy and spit almost follow.

Garen tilts his head from side to side, scrunching his face. “It was pretty normal, honestly. I mean -” (a dreamy smile) “I had this great shared dream with my family. We were all at a beach, I think, and I think the umbrellas were - floating? It was really warm.”

“That sounds sweet,” Lyric says truthfully. It sounds maybe a tad boring, but mellow.

“Uh,” he mumbles, abruptly coming out of his reverie. “Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t that great. I mean.”

“Oh,” Lyric realizes. “It’s fine. I like hearing about your family.”

Garen exhales, relieved, and smiles sheepishly. “My little sister would have smacked me. Lizzie.”

“Lizzie,” she repeats, satisfied. “A good name.”

“Is this awkward?” he asks, lurching forward. “I might be projecting.”

“You wanna do an awkward hug?” Lyric offers, spreading her arms. He shrugs, wraps his arms around her, and suffers through two back pats. “Now we’re good.”

“Thank you,” Garen replies solemnly.

There’s a click at the door, and they look at each other in unbridled panic. As if of one mind, they shove their respective snacks back into his backpack, settling back onto the couch naturally. ‘Naturally’, in this case, means Garen has one leg draped over the side of the couch, the other propped up on the table. Lyric has one leg in lotus position and the other jabbing into Garen’s side.

“Lyric.”

“Headmaster,” Lyric perks up.

The woman smiles. “Settling into having a roommate again?”

“It won’t be a hard adjustment,” she rushes to assure her. “I won’t be a bother.”

“You talking to me isn’t a bother,” Headmaster admonishes. “I was just checking up on the students. Good to see you two are doing well.”

Lyric beams at her, and the headmaster ducks back out the door with a final nod to Garen. He settles back into a normal position. “You totally worship the headmaster.”

“I don’t worship her,” Lyric denies stiffly. She doesn’t remove her foot from Garen’s ribs, instead giving him a jab. He curses and swats her away. “I just give her due deference, as someone who pulled me out of mundanity.”

“What thirteen year old uses words like due deference and mundanity,” he mutters, shaking his head. It’s not mean spirited, but something in Lyric prickles. She shoves it down.

“Let’s get you unpacked,” she suggests instead, tossing a candy at his head. Garen heaves himself off the couch with a sigh, cracks his back like an old man, and offers her a hand up. She takes it.

“What I painted my room orange this year?”

“What if you didn’t?”

.

.

.

“This year,” their professor informs them, “will be harder than the last. You’re second years, so it’s hardly going to be a mission every day, but it’s your last year in which to decide what track you’re entering.”

Lyric and Garen throw each other glances, pen from mouths to paper and back again. Daydreams??? is written at the head of her own notebook. Garen’s sheet is covered in doodles of sports plays and one terrible drawing of Salza. She smirks.

“We’ll get you on the team this year, buddy,” she whispers, patting him on the shoulder. Throwing a significant look at the sketch, she continues: “I can’t promise anything more than that.”

“Shut up,” he mutters back, covering the drawing with his hand, and underlines Daydreams??? on her sheet twice.

Professor Ozik finishes drawing a venn diagram on the board, then motions towards the oval where weavers and eaters intersect. His students furrow their brows at him.

“I know we don’t like to discuss anything beyond the whole ‘our opponents are heartless monsters’ gig, but I figured I’d throw it out there. I tend to get a bit philosophical -” - here, some of the kids groan - “- but think about it. Why do dreamweavers and dreameaters have the same fundamental magic?”

“If you’re suggesting we have the same common ancestor, I’m going to be extremely concerned,” a boy pipes from the back. His seatmate snickers, thinks about it, and contorts her face into a look of dismay. Another starts fake-retching.

“That’s scientifically disproven,” Salza points out mildly, and the boy snaps to attention. He rubs the back of his neck.

“Not ancestors, per se…” the professor halts. “Anyway. We can start with the differences.”

“Dreamweavers are creatures of destruction,” another student recites - Mary? Mercy? - “They consume the dreams of normal people, so dreamweavers have to stop them.”

Ozik writes fight on the board, then halts. “I want you all to remember you’re normal too, alright?”

There’s a lull in conversation, a lapse in the faintly uneasy but engaged atmosphere. Discomfort. Ozik turns to face them. “Seriously. You’re no worse than people without magic, but you’re no better. Just because your eyes are purple -”

He catches sight of Lyric and hastily backtracks. “Magic doesn’t make you an inherently better person. People can’t help the way they’re born.”

Cirro throws a look at Lyric over his shoulder, long and disdainful. She bristles. A few of the surrounding students follow his gaze, eyes trailing to Lyric’s, and seem to remember she’s visibly different from them - her one mistake. She supposes being asked to look inward only makes them more predisposed to look out.

Rolling his shoulders, their professor blows chalk into the front row. Lyric’s not sure why the instructors here are either hideously informal or insanely uptight, but she’s not exactly complaining. These aren’t usual situations.

I thought we were getting along, she thinks at Cirro, but he’s back to being the same jerk he was at the start of first year. A reset of sorts. Reema makes a clucking noise in the back of her throat. The way she’s looking at their professor is almost - impressed, for once, admiration leaking through as his words.

“Would you consider magic users to see things in black and white rather than shades of gray, when it comes to the dreameaters?”

Professor Ozik twists his mouth to the side. “An excellent question! From a more philosophical standpoint, we have to assume every living thing is playing into their baser nature. However, those same creatures presumably also have free will and emotions.”

It’s an uncomfortable thought, one most of the born-and-bred magic students surely wish Reema hadn’t planted. She herself looks almost inclined to take notes. Shifting in her seat, Lyric sets down the pen, picks it back up, presses her fingers into it tight enough to hurt.

Reema talks like there’s always more to her sentence: a pause, the internal debate, and conclusive refraining sigh. No word escapes her lips that she hasn’t already considered a thousand times. Lyric has to bite words back half-formed, damaging combinations of letters to wound and cauterize.

The fact that she thinks before her actions hurts. She knows how cruel she���s going to be, and she does it anyway.

Salza’s eyes are alight with cautious interest. “It hasn’t been proved that dreamweavers are capable of conscious thought beyond ‘eat dreams’ and ‘fight anything in my way’.”

“She talks like she’s in a scientific study, and plays like she’s on a national team,” Garen mumbles dreamily. Lyric stifles a laugh, dipping her head.

“Do you think we could try to talk to them?” Reema asks. This is the most interested she’s looked during any lecture, leaning slightly forward with her eyes trained on Professor Ozik. He’s engaged in response, flourishing under the weight of his students’ eyes, and opens his mouth to answer.

There’s a knock on the door, and he flashes an apologetic look as he goes to answer it. Ozik blinks. “Headmaster. What a pleasantly unexpected surprise.”

The usually kindly looking woman’s eyes are downturned, face sober, lips pressed slightly inwards. The headmaster whispers something to Professor Ozik, then ducks back out into the hall. He looks at Reema.

“The headmaster would like to see you after class.” Ozik says, then waves a hand. “You aren’t in trouble for anything.”

“That’s a first,” Lyric rolls her eyes, but her mind is stuck on Headmaster’s face as she left - guilt.

The sheet of paper in Reema’s hand, ripped out of a notebook in anticipation of answers, crumples loudly.

The girl jolts slightly, as if she hadn’t meant to do that. She smooths her fingers over the page as if she wants to unwrinkle it, but the tightness in her eyes implies she’d rather clench her fist instead. Lyric winces at the unmeasured movement. The blankness of her face covering concern.

“So,” Professor Ozik announces loudly, “Where were we?”

“Dreameaters,” Marcus suggests from the back row, and Ozik nods.

But the room has a different kind of charged tension now, vague interest in whatever their resident troublemaker has done this time mixed with the shift of an interrupted lesson. Lyric scribbles down what appears on the board in between glances towards Reema. Devon catches her, clearly interpreting it as a scornful look, and scowls back. She averts her eyes.

After class, Lyric hastily packs up her stuff, lingering by the door. Reema slowly and methodically puts her notebook and pen into her bag. Needling her, Devon mutters hushed questions that Lyric has to crane her neck to hear.

“- do something without me?” Devon asks, their own bag ready to go. “I’d rather have warning. I hate getting busted for stuff I didn’t do.”

“Quit pestering me, alright?” Reema says calmly. She stands. “I haven’t pulled anything by myself. It’s probably something about my grades - I’ve been tanking assignments on purpose to see if they’ll kick me out.”

Lyric pretends to fiddle with something on her backpack. She’s told Garen to head to their next class without her, so it looks less suspicious, but she’s not so sure it’s working.

Reema glances over at her, then lowers her voice. “Maybe they’re finally sending me home.”

“Right,” Devon replies, face frozen, and laughs stiffly. “I’d forgotten about that for a minute.”

“I haven’t,” Reema replies, her voice dropping to a low whisper. Lyric catches herself trying to lean in and hear what follows, pulling back with a silent noise of regret. She wheels out of the classroom ahead of them and slinks towards the headmaster’s office.

Look natural, she tells herself. It’s a good thing I head here so often - nobody thinks anything out of the ordinary.

The other girl darts into the office, and Lyric feels a pang of anxiety in her stomach. Listening into other people’s conversations isn’t exactly polite, and listening into the headmaster’s conversation with a student is hardly any better. Still, she edges closer to the door and tries to pretend she’s leaning against a wall, no ulterior motives here.

“You asked to see me?” Reema’s voice floats out of the room, anticipatory.

“I’m afraid it’s about your parents,” Headmaster responds. Her tone is heavy. Forbidding. “They’ve been involved in some - less than savory activity.”

“Please just say you think they’re criminals and move on,” Reema snarks. “This has happened a hundred times before.”

The headmaster exhales. “I’m afraid it hasn’t. At least not something of this magnitude.”

Reema is silent. As if answering Lyric’s unspoken plea, the headmaster continues. “They were using spells on those without magic. Serious spells, Reema. Those that you can’t use without consequence.”

“So, what, they’re getting arrested by the magic police?” the girl sneers. “I can’t believe -”

“Can you really look me in the eyes and tell me you can’t believe this would happen?” Headmaster asks, quiet and understanding. Lyric’s head slowly tips back, her gaze fixed on the ceiling, and she tries not to breathe.

Again, the only response is silence. Then: “I want to see them.”

“I’m afraid I can’t permit second years to leave school grounds once the school year has started,” Headmaster begins.

“Not even for ‘family emergencies?’”

She sighs. “Not even then.”

Lyric can picture it: Reema, furiously indignant, Headmaster, unflappable and unmoving. Teenage passion burning out against hard stone.

“I’m afraid I called you in here to give you other news, as well.” the headmaster admits, and the sound of shuffling papers fills the hallway. “Since your legal guardians are going to be unable to care for you this summer, you’re going to have to stay in the Mentality dorms.”

“Are you serious,” Reema demands, enraged. The fight seems to drain out of her in the next moment, a defeated quality entering her voice. Lyric risks a peek into the room. The other girl’s shoulders are slumped, her head bowed, and her eyes closed. The picture of ingracious defeat.

Then it hits her.

Reema is going to be staying at Mentality over the summer.

Lyric is going to have to deal with her, without even the buffer of other people her own age, for two and a half months.

[badlypackedtraveller]

7:0

And then we got into MOLDOVA.

Nothing. Emptiness. A long strip of tarmac leading to Chisinau.

Past towns and villages of uniform dullness. There is nothing here. I cannot begin to describe how much of anything it lacks.

But somehow we arrive at the Hotel Jolly Alon[1] in Chisinau on the best night of their year. The 27th August 2019 is the 27th anniversary of Moldovan Independence. The celebration on the big stage set up on the edge of Cathedral Park, scene of 1992 protests, goes like this:

1.    National Youth Orchestra and singers. Opening numbers are Kashmir and the Mission Impossible theme.

2.    Via Daca. Folk Prog Rock. Close your eyes to black out the folksie costumes and it’s just prog rock and pretty good prog rock at that.

3.    National Ballet of Moldova. Excellent. Fast ballet/country dancing fusion. Brilliant band, brilliant accordionist, brilliant classical violinist later.

4.    The newly elected Prime Minister and a fat bloke from the council make speeches. “Hands up if you’re having a good time” encourages the PM. Plenty of hands go up, ours too. “Hands up if you love Moldova” Hmm, not so many hands. Ours do. “What have you got your hands up for” says the helpful girl in the crowd, “You’re not from here”

5.    Boring, earnest ballad singer. Local hero, the crowd like him. The Rough Riders decide it’s time for another beer.

At the York Pub[2] we have one beer and get out before the heavies lock the door. Why did we even bother coming here? English bars anywhere but in England are places I avoid like the plague.

The Military Museum[3] has a garden full of tired WW2 guns, tanks and planes. The same as you see at any memorial long the roads here. Nowadays I find these instruments of death and people’s fascination in them disturbing.

At the National Museum of History and Archaeology[4] I encounter the rudest staff so far. It has been a tough competition. One harridan makes a point of following me across a hall to tell me not to whistle. The exhibits are of the sort where a case of cracked pots are labelled POTS.

In the basement, follow signs for the Gents loos, a room telling the tales of the Stalinist purges gets little promotion or attention.

In the evening we resume our search for some live music. Of the two recommended music bars the first we find, Kira’s Club,[5] has a prominent sign on the gate saying “Please don’t make a noise as our neighbours always call the police”. The second find “Rock ‘n Roll Cafe”[6] boasts murals of U2, Slayer, Motorhead, moody men in denim and leather, the Eagles, Bon Jovi – none of whom are likely to have heard of the Rock Cafe’s existence. There is no live music here and when we ask the sad waitress where she goes to listen to bands she looks forlorn and says she has never seen a live band.

Hooray! The Czech Women’s Football Team has checked into the hotel prior to their game against Moldova on Friday. When we find their briefing room unattended we take the opportunity to sneak in and alter their tactical diagrams and team sheets. Beckham. V. and Ma(ra)donna get added. Next morning the briefing room stays firmly locked.

After the match we find out that the Czech ladies won 7:0. Just saying, that’s all, just saying.

[1] Maria Cebotari St 37, Chisinau 2012, Moldova. T: +373 22 232 233 https://jolly-alon.hotelschisinau.com/en

[2] Strada Mitropolit Gavriil Bănulescu-Bodoni 45, Chișinău 2012, Moldova T: +373 792 00 208

 [3] Strada Tighina 47, Chișinău, Moldova. T: +373 22 272 056  www.army.md

[4] www.nationalmuseum.md

[5] Veronica Micle Street 7, Chisinau, Moldova. T: +373 797 40 927 on Facebook.

[6] Stefan cel Mare si Sfant Boulevard 134, Chisinau 2012, Moldova. T: +373 798 84 843 on Facebook

[oceangl1tter]

i didn’t proofread this

i don’t know how to say it it’s hard to explain can you pull up google translate://

It's weird seeing the things you learn manifest themselves into real life. It's like wow, they actually have application in my life rather than being trapped as beginner theoretics learned in isolation. Earlier this morning I hear my cousin and dad yelling at eachother. It's not exactly yelling. Maybe the type of yelling you do as you're trying to explain a baking recipe while someone is using a very loud whisking machine in a very cramped kitchen. Very frustrating. I turn the music up a bit higher and pay no mind to what I would consider a regular morning, and subsequent, afternoon, or night.

My cousin asks me to come look at his screen. It's a pdf of a neural network broken down into "formulas" with purple and red arrows pointing at different sections along with sparse Chinese characters doing the bare minimum in explanatory work. The file is titled AITrader. AITrader brands itself as an "autonomous trading system" that takes in data input and makes financial crypto-decisions based on that data. Cryptocurrency, I understand as digital $$$, from a previous time of sitting in a conversation between two economics majors talking about exchange rates and whatnot. The output would be trading profits. From the first page of Google, I understand it as a trading bot.

During winter break, I talk to J about the stocktrading he always likes to put on his Snapchat story. It seems like devastating work. You stare at this app on your phone that makes squiggly lines up and down based on whether you're gaining money or losing money. The winning strategy seems to be selling when the price is high or waiting out the lows in hopes that it'll shoot up in prices again. Why not automate that system? Even without a predictive system, if you can program something that tracks the price of the specific stock and sells automatically once it detects the market slightly dropping, you would (theoretically) never lose but you wouldn't gain big either—sort of a median range. I don't think I know enough about stocktrading to make this sweeping proposition but it seems a lot better than manually checking the app every few hours and selling on your own but maybe people like that control of their financial actions and its profits (maaaaybe). We both share an interest in machine learning and he talks about the ML startups in Berkeley and the resources they have there. I notice he loses focus as I rattle off a little more than I should about something I'm only theoretically interested in.

My cousin then asks me how I would calculate a line—a straight line. I'm not sure how calculating a straight line would be able to transfer to creating a deep learning machine but I tell him the Emexplusb shindig. Apparently they had been arguing over my dad's very insistent stance. This is what I understand from my 5th grade knowledge of Cantonese, years of watching my father tap away at an excel sheet, and my small tiny chip of PHI10 2x speeding lecture videos:

A neural network works very much like the neural network in our brain. I'm not much of a biology/neuroscience nut but it mimics much of the neuron firing process including: excitatory/inhibitory signals, those signals that determine whether the cell has reached a threshold, the threshold for an action potential to fire pchoooo through the axon to um I'm assuming release a bunch of neurotransmitters, and those neurotransmitters then consisting of either excitatory/inhibitory signals to repeat the process. There hasn't been any other physical manifestation of a neural network besides our brain but "theoretically" you could make one as long as you have these three ingredients: nodes, weights, and layers (connections between the nodes). What we have so far are simulations of a neural network as a program. This program is no exception to the all-or-nothing credo as the nodes act as the neurons and the weights as activation levels (what it takes to reach a threshold) that either fire or don't/ advance to another node or don't. Advancement to the final layer leads to output—the desired goal.

Basic neural networks, the diagrams we glimpsed at in class, are feed-forward. This means that what happens in one layer does not affect the previous layers. This is where things get interesting but before that, I forgot to include what a neural network actually does. So far, the structure of the neural network discussed (feed forward—advancing forward through a layer and its nodes) handles input and creates output. The programmer has a target output and if the neural net is successful, it should output with 100% accuracy.

Neural networks are generally used to detect objects in a picture—very much like the Captchas we do, painstakingly, to prove we aren't robots. Funnily enough, the data that's collected from the Captchas we do to prove WE aren't robots is the same data used to make robots more like humans. An example I'm making up is detection of a raccoon in a picture. What the programmer does is feed their neural nets a training set of inputs—in my case, it would be pictures upon pictures of raccoons in their natural habitat. To mix up the batch, the programmer would also include pictures of celebrities with smudged makeup after an emotional breakdown in front of TMZ. Both categories have some resemblances to eachother but aren't completely indistinguishable. On the back of these pictures, we metaphorically label them "raccoon" and "human'. The target output is for the neural net to detect when the picture consists of a raccoon or when it does not(imagine that meme with the man holding his hand up asking "is this a butterfly", but replace butterfly with raccoon).

This training set is then used to train the neural net the correct inputs and output—improving their accuracy. It's like training wheels for small kids that want to bike their little tooshes away. The programmer feeds the photos in. Because we know the desired output (and we can use our eyes to see when it's an animal or a human), the programmer can manually go in and change the WEIGHTS of the neural net every time it makes a mistake in its detection. The programmer would then run another trial from the beginning.

Once the net is able to reach 100% accuracy (in that its able to get to the desired outputs from the answer sheet we fed it, it then moves onto another training set and even more trials. This has implications for so many fields. A relevant one would be detection systems for tumors in x-ray scans, facial recognition systems, security systems, e.t.c. Finally, the goal is for the neural net to get to the right outputs with a completely new set of data it has not seen before. What I'm assuming is behind AITrader is that we give the neural net inputs we don't know the outputs to but the machine is able to figure it out.

I could go on about neural networks and case studies that have been done but back to where things get interesting and how I'm going to wrap up this convoluted explanation of neural nets with even more convoluted explanations of neural nets. What is super fascinating about these machines no matter how boring they were when I read (aka skimmed) about them in the assigned readings is that there is this thing called the backpropagation method—neural networks that are NOT feed forward and layers CAN affect layers before it.

The backpropagation method is almost like a blanket-all formula. It has no specific task and has been used in various applications doing vastly different things. Like our brains, the neural net is adaptive so over time it begins to notice patterns and similarities in the photos that contain a raccoon rather than a distressed celebrity. A neural net continues to improve its accuracy by self-changing its weights/activation levels and "firing" when correct. What is infinitely scary is that how these machines come to make these self-changing decisions becomes increasingly unknown to the programmer. The programmer feeds input they do not know the output to. How the machine gets to the outputs and how those outputs become correct (aka they're predictive) are out of the programmer's realm of expertise. That is truly fucking scary and cool. The implications for this are even more far-reaching, which I will save for another day. Did any of that make sense? I probably simplified a lot of complex things beyond effective simplification--aka to the point of being incorrect, but from what little I learned in lecture and read, it is still pretty darn cool.

My dad has sheets upon sheets of numbers highlighted and labeled in different colors. Apparently he has a formula for "artificial intelligence". The argument between them this morning had to do with their differing ways of approaching this program they are supposedly brainstorming and making. My dad does not know how to program. He does not know how the computer will track each cell of his excel sheet when really every input/output could just be labeled x^1, x^2 e.t.c. They could also make matrices but that's the extent of my ECS32A knowledge. Anyway, I'm not sure how they're going to go about doing this without even knowing the formula to a straight line. My cousin asks me several questions. If I know log, e, f(x)' and other diagrams I've seen in a math textbook. I’m wondering if it's really worth switching over to the B.A. If I stay in the B.S. track I'll know at least that I have a background to what I say and I won't feel like what I tell him are shots in the dark. Like I want to be a part of this!! It's sort of interesting to see the boring things taught in class apply to something that could become so powerful.

Or maybe all of this is just illusive.

It's strange to see how these paths intersect. My (now faded/squashed) career interests in AI came before I knew my dad's aspirations in detail. I read a single page about the Actual Contents of neural nets and my brain twisted itself into a German pretzel. There's actually no way I would be able to grind through all that math without wanting to tear my eyeballs out. I just want to design programs that can detect whether a picture contains raccoons or celebrities with smudged makeup--gosh is that so hard?

My sister tells him that my cousin seems to care for my dad a lot even though he has to listen to my dad drone on for hours. Like when we go out to eat he'll ask if my dad will be okay or if he needs food when we really just leave him to his own devices. She says my dad acts sort of like a father figure to him. In my head I think: it could've been me.

[son-of-a-duck]

April 15, 2018

I didn't run on the elliptical this morning because I went up and down the stairs so many times last night while messing with the furnace that my knees were a bit achy.

I went down to the basement again this morning to take the ignitor out of the furnace.  This was a pain because the gas pipe runs right over the top of the screw so I could use screwdriver or socket wrench.  I ended up using a crescent wrench, turning it less than a quarter turn each time because that's all the room I had to work with.  But I got it out.  The point of this was so that I could test it.  My multimeter was at my Mom's house, and I thought I would swing by there before work to grab it but I wasn't moving fast enough for that to happen.  I also thought I would go to Home Depot after work to get a new ignitor but all the ones I saw on their website that looked like they would work, weren't available in the store.  Instead I tracked one down on Amazon that has the same model number, which means I don't have to worry about it working.

Work went by pretty quickly today.  I probably spent too much time creating a diagram in Publisher for a possible desk layout using the two tables we use for the print station, instead of the one big table and two smaller ones we are currently using for our temporary desk. Despite putting too much time into it, I think it looks pretty cool.

One of our semi-regulars, a younger guy who has had some incident reports regarding the phone, was briefly back in the library today. Now that we are so close to the computers it is a lot more apparent when people are being annoying, which makes it harder to ignore. This patron was listening to music a little too loudly so I went over and asked him to turn it down a little.  A minute or two later he shouted out something I can't remember but it involved the word 'fuck', which is not appropriate, even if he wasn't saying it to anyone in particular.  I went back over to talk to him and pretty much kicked himself out of the library for the day.  He said something about being mad at a girl, being heated up, and doing a male dominance thing.  And then continued mumbling as he left.  Made my job easier.

I had several other positive patron interactions throughout the day. We are now in a much more central and visible location which I think is increasing the chances of patrons coming up and asking us questions.  So far this is the main positive of our new spot.  Today I helped people with printing, finding books, and using the microfilm machine.

The second half of my day was spent adding the automated bookmark sheets into the workbooks for the patrons of the librarian I deliver homebound books with.  It's tedious for multiple reasons, the first being that Excel doesn't like copying one-for-one when it comes to copying a sheet from one workbook into another.  Each time I had to go through and adjust the column width for all of the columns, which were all slightly off.  The other tedious part is changing all of the formulas on each bookmark so they reference the new workbook they're in, not the one I copied the template from.  Despite all that, I nearly finished.  I just need to finish changing the formulas on one more patron.  It was a very productive weekend.

On my way home I stopped at my Mom's house to get my multimeter.  I tested the ignitor and it seems to be working fine.  Which is frustrating because that would have been an easy fix.  I'm still going to try the new ignitor when it gets here on Tuesday.  If nothing else, now I'll have a backup ignitor.  When I got home I also tested the voltage going to the ignitor and it seemed low but the furnace was on for maybe a second or two before shutting off without the ignitor in it, so I think maybe there just wasn't enough time for it to get up to full power.  I'm just glad this is happening on the tail-end of Winter weather.

I finally got around to roasting vegetables for dinner, and then watched videos while I ate.  After dinner I played a little bit of CoD: WW2.  I had several really good games on Shipment because there is currently a challenge with a sniper camo reward and so many people were using snipers to complete the challenge.  I don't want the camo, so I was using my favorite rifle, and I was destroying.  It was fun.

Now it's far too late so I'm going to go to bed.