#same for zappa plus he's fine as shit

[answer-gov]

Guilty gear characters and if they'd be my friends:3

[broken-clover]

AU-gust Day 16- Treasure Hunters

Hmph. I was so sure I’d be able to finish yesterday, but after being stuck in a car so long I guess I was just too tired.

This one isn’t especially long, and I’m not sure if it really counts, either? I mean, treasure hunting is involved, but I mostly wanted to do something with my GG Persona AU. Then again, what, am I going to go to jail if I don’t do all the prompts perfectly?...well, maybe.

(Also this one has a smidge of Sinbed because self-indulgence. Sorry not sorry)

For a guy who wore an eyepatch, Sin had pretty good eyesight, at least when it came to scouting. The good new about that was he made for an excellent finder of treasure chests hidden at the end of dungeon hallways, and seeing how their ragtag ‘Investigation Team’ was made up entirely of schoolkids with shaky paychecks on the best of days, they appreciated any shiny trinkets they could sell off for healing items and weapon upgrades.

The biggest downside was that, though he was an excellent chest-finder, he wasn’t quite as good as noticing the shadows guarding it until it was too late.

“Dammit, it was guarded?” He hissed, recoiling as the dark sludge formed into a trio of Principality.

“And they’re decently strong ones, too! But it doesn’t look like there’s a good way to evade them, we can’t run!” Said Potemkin, balling his large hands into fists. “Should we try and call the rest of the team? I’m not sure if they’re too far away to hear, but-”

“It doesn’t matter!” Elphelt shouted, pulling out Miss Travallier to shoot her card and summon Anteros. “Just don’t let your guard down!”

They didn’t have any major tricks up their sleeve, but between Potemkin’s physical skills, Elphelt’s healing spells, Ram’s fire, and his own pool of Personas on-hand, Sin couldn’t find it in him to be especially worried.

Elphelt boosted everyone’s defense with Marakukaja before taking a step back. Potemkin lunged forward to attack head-on, and Sin summoned Perseus to fire up a Mazionga. They seemed off to a strong start, with the two victims of their attacks taking a decent chunk of their health off before they could even attack. If they kept up the quick attacks, then they had a pretty good chance to make it out unscathed, right? He was feeling confident about that.

...At least until a flurry of cards tangled around Elphelt, and she suddenly collapsed to the ground like a marionette with snipped strings.

“El?!” He shouted, falling back halfway through another lightning strike. Sin dug through his pockets for a revival bead while Perseus took a thankfully nonlethal blow. “Guys, be careful! At least one of them has an instant-kill spell!”

They still had a few beads on-hand, but as soon as he felt Elphelt stir, he heard Potemkin shout in pain and felt the vibration of him collapsing. “S-shit! El! Get up! We’re taking hits!”

“I am injured.” Ramlethal’s voice managed to carry over the other sounds of the firefight, with a definite tinge of concern to her usually-neutral tone. Nike was fast, but she still struggled to dodge the attacks of three enemies all at once, all the while with Ram trying to find a revival item for Potemkin.

The three shadows managed to get lucky with instant-kill spells remarkably often, leaving the remaining members scrambling to use whatever revival items they had while avoiding more potshots, and any hits they could actually land were quickly healed.

“Dammit! My SP is almost gone! Do we have anything for that?!” Sin barked, as Perseus fired a flimsy bolt of lightning that barely nicked one of the Principality.

“I-I think Ram just drank our last coffee…” El stammered in reply, trying to revive Potemkin yet again while only hobbling by on a handful of HP, herself. “I have enough for a few more healing spells, but we’ve only got the one bead left. Are you sure we can’t run?”

At every opportunity, they had tried, only for the shadows to intercept them. He liked being an optimist, but Sin knew that things had gone horribly downhill. When he tried to conjure more electricity, all it got him in return was a hard smack that knocked his Persona to the ground.

“Shit, brace yourselves- !”

“Did someone need assistance?”

A familiar silver-and-purple gundam skated into the room, throwing up a barrier wall to catch a couple of magic blasts.

“Finally! There you are, we’ve been looking for you!” An echoing voice came from the large machine, but its mouth didn’t move. “Good think you make such a racket.”

“Bedman! About time!” Sin felt himself grinning.

“Looks like you’re all in rough shape. Good thing I brought backup.”

The shadows were still too distracted by the new barrier to care much about the newcomers who ran into the treasure room right under their noses. Ariadne and Thalassa carried Bridget and May in their respective free arms, while Zappa ran along behind. The mechanical Persona began releasing purple smoke from its head-pipes, and a glimmering veil surrounded both it and the second half of the Investigation Team.

“Get ready for an overclock!” The echoing voice shouted. “You're buffed! May, you’re on healer duty, but just focus on knocking out those shadows!”

“Roger!” Bridget hopped off of Ariadne, and began barraging the Principality with physical attacks as soon as the barrier wall began to fragment. Zappa trailed behind with curse spells as Mania dangled over him limply. May did as instructed, throwing on a few mild healing spells, but the evasion buffs made it so it was less necessary than usual.

Following the initial difficulty, the battle swiftly shifted sides. The enemies finally burst back into piles of darkness and faded away, leaving behind nothing but a small pile of money.

“Oh, god, finally…” Sin sat on the ground and tried to catch his breath. “Nearly thought we were goners for a second.”

“Don’t run off like that next time!” May chided him. “How did you even get stuck in here in the first place, it’s a dead end!”

He pointed over his shoulder. “I saw a chest! I thought there’d be something valuable in it.”

“Well, if we cleared this room out, more shadows shouldn’t appear for a while, right?” Asked Elphelt, as she wandered toward the unattended box on a pedestal. “And since that almost got us into some hot water, it’d better be something good.”

“Yeah!” Sin managed to spring back up, following after her. “I’ve got the picks, let’s see what we got!”

Everyone else trailed behind, more than a little interested in whatever shiny trinket was so interesting that it nearly got half their team killed. Sin easily jimmied the lock open, pried the creaky lid back, and...

“Uh...looks like a cheap gemstone...and a piece of armor we already have.”

A collective groan went through the group, plus a few muffled curses and less-than-polite gestures. Sin still pocketed the small gem, but he was in the same boat as the rest of them. “Well, I guess you win some, you lose some. Let’s head back to the safe room to take a break. Bedman, think you can carry Pot? I don’t think we’ll have any luck trying it ourselves.”

The mecha nodded, scooping the unconscious man up like a sack of potatoes. “Everyone can hop on if they don’t feel like walking.”

A few took him up on the offer, and they all headed back. Maybe it was just imaginary, but the safe room felt far warmer and cozier than the rest of the dungeon. At least they knew no more shadows would be popping out to take them by surprise.

“Must be nice having a Persona you can ride in, Bedman.” Bridget said, sliding off the machine’s arm. “Ariadne can barely carry me!”

“Morpheus is remarkably comfortable on the inside, though I can admit it was frightening the first time I was dragged into him. For all I knew, he could have been trying to eat me.”

“I’ve got sandwiches!” Zappa chirped, hoisting up a makeshift lunchbox for everyone to see. “The boss lets me take the ready-made ones once they’re passed the sell-by date, but I promise they’re still good!”

“Ah, damn, that sounds perfect right now.” Sin went up to grab half of a turkey sandwich and begin munching on it.

After being revived, Potemkin found a place to sit near his much smaller leader. “I’m glad you were able to figure something out in the end. But next time, let’s be more careful. Treasure rooms are often more dangerous than one would expect.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right.” Replied Sin, between bites of sandwich. “How’s Kratos?”

“Perfectly fine, I just don’t summon him unless I need him.” Potemkin reached across the table to pull out an egg sandwich, which looked positively miniscule in his large hands. “I’m not sure why you leave yours out so much when we aren’t in battle.”

Sin tilted his head. “Huh? What do you mean? He isn’t out now.”

The man gave him an odd look back. “What do you mean? He’s up there.”

When he looked up to where Potemkin was pointing, Sin was surprised to see that he was right. Perseus hadn’t dissipated, instead he sat on Morpheus’s shoulder, apparently perfectly comfortable where he was. He’d never realized how large Morpheus was, especially odd considering the respective sizes of their owners, but there was plenty of space for his Persona to sit and relax on his teammate.

“Huh?” The girls seemed to notice his staring. “What’s Perseus doing…?”

“I dunno, El. I didn’t make him do that.” He shrugged back. “Why does it even matter?”

“Hmm…” Despite herself, Elphelt had to side-eye the rather affectionate way Perseus cuddled up on his teammate, wrapping an arm around one of his pipe-horns. Hey, weren’t Personas supposed to be a manifestation of their owners...? “Hey, Sin, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah, what?”

“Do you...have a crush on anyone?”

Sin balked. “The heck? What does that have to do with anything? What made you ask?”

Behind him, Perseus’ gloved hand stroked Morpheus’ sleek metal head, before he went back to cuddling his horn.

Elphelt glanced away, resisting the urge to blush. “No reason. Just wondering.”

[familyvisionis2020]

Day 2 - Knoxville

Somehow the post I made about Knoxville got deleted so this is me trying to remember some of it but this is deficient and I am mad and sad I lost that writing because it was good and heartfelt.

Before we went to bed in Asheville we heard birdsong in the trees at like 1am and I said ‘nightbirds?’ and Jeremy laughed a little. Jeremy and John and me remarked in the morning in Asheville how nice it would be live here. The cool mountain breeze was nice. We left the house we were staying at and headed into town. We went to the mechanic first to try to find out what the problem with the van was. The mechanic looked at it and explained it was our pittman arm and the steering box was shot which was causing the play, and that it could be repaired for about $280, and we confirmed with the van owner from whom we are borrowing the van that they would reimburse us for the repair, so we left the van with them, put on sunglasses, walked past the moog factory and down thes street to the Five Points diner. It was a greasy spoon where they served typical Denny’s fare plus a bonus section of greek and italian entrees in the back. I got a big omelet of spinach and feta, hash browns and grits. It felt so warm and full and substantial to eat those things. Later John would remark that “when your needs are met on tour, they’re met so much more intensely,’ which I agree with. Sleep is precious even thought it’s usually cramped and smelly and uncomfortable, the water bottle and coffee cup and meal feel like real ballast and fuel. I had said this more poetically before I lost the post but whatever. We eat our breakfast and then stroll around town for a bit, visit the bookstore Malaprops downtown where I see more muppet-looking people busking and spanging, flying signs, nodding out, sleeping on benches, the nexus of muppet and homeless is an unclear one for me and I try not to be too judgy.  We meet Kabir’s friend Alex Brown at Malaprops, Kabir buys a book called 1491 which is a precolonial history of the US I think, we walk down town past one plaza and to a park with a bandshell and a stage and a lawn cordoned off because two men are testing the sprinkler system. The soil near the bench where we sit is aerated and I confirm the squat columns of earth littering the ground are soil and not goose shit. We all four sit on a long bench and all cross our legs together and read each of our individual books in this way that was kind of comically synchronized, so much so that Kabir just bent over so we wouldnt look exactly the same. Me and John were on Ursula K Leguin and Kabir on Kingdom Cons by Yuri Herera, a novella, and Jeremy on Capitalist Realism on his kindle. A townie ambles by, he has a deeply asymmetrical hircut with a shock of purple dyed hair on a mostly shaved head, a loud Pittsburh steelers hat, a cane, and that familiar mix of affability and psychosis that seems to characterize a lot of home bums. He sees us all reading and remarks: “I like Shakespeare myself.” Mercifully, he walks on, goes to another group of tourists down the sidewalk and does something that’s not quite heckling and not quite visiting with them. 

We leave, the drive is short, we have had the steering box/pittman arm/linkage repaired and so the play is gone out of the steering but the wheel itself is permanently at 10 o clock and evidently it wants to drift left. Jeremy is driving and negotiating the misalignment expertly, we agree to find a place to get this fixed in Knoxville. On the drive we listen to Blue Smiley, The Durutti Column, Andy Shauf, Frank Zappa, Toro y Moi, Toshifumi Hinata, and best of all we listen to a track called “Style and City’ by Stand High Patrol, which is just an upbeat litany of naming music genres and then naming the city that genre originated, a genius idea, Jeremy said it came on in a club in Brooklyn and the crowd got incredibly loud and everybody loved it. This time around on tour rather than despairing at the poverty of my music knowledge as compared to the expansive encyclopedic aural erudity of the boys in the band, instead I just ask what song is on when I like a song and like it on my Spotify. The other day my friend was asking me where I find out about new music from and I said without thinking ‘I just borrow my music taste from my friends’ which like yes, of course I do. I had this issue for a long time like I must be the originator of my taste, that I must dig in the crates and find the rarest music that no one has ever heard of before, and that I must never be influenced by anyone. Which is dogshit egotism, I’m pleased and relaxed to learn that I can just ask and my bandmates will happily give me a track ID and not think twice of it, and I can take these new songs home with me to enjoy and share. 

We get into Knoxville and there’s a giant JFG sign that looks about a century old and a bizarre system of concrete staircases snaking and zigzagging and carved into a steep hill and I want to go visit them but we end up not visiting them. We get to the house we’re staying at, the people who live there are Royal and Kayla, ‘betrothed’ is how Royal describes his Kayla, they are married. Royal is an architect, exceedingly kind and jubilant and gregarious and gets close to you and involves you in jokes and has a laugh that comes so easy and his jaw kind of jerks in time with his jaw and palate when he laughs, the same sort of motion you see in an opera singer or like Mariah Carey when they are modulating vibrato on big belting sung notes. We hang at the house, Kabir breaks out his big thing of homemade chipotle hummus, we start to feast but Kayla brings out a homemade loaf of sourdough she has and then warms up four thick slices in the cast iron and puts a gentle golden crust on it and serves it to us with a big stick of butter on one of those covered narrow butter plates, and also she brings out sweet bell peppers and cuts them into sections we can dip into the hummus, and she pulls out the drum throne from royal’s kit for me to sit on. She’s a nurse, she’s southern in this special way that treats hospitality like breathing, makes it not hard to accept kindnesses and graces. She gets up after eating to work on her pottery, she has a throwing wheel outside in the garage area and she has lined their stone retaining wall with cups and pots she’s made, I learn later that the plates she served us bread off of were all made by her as well. The life she and Royal have in Knoxville seem so breezy and solid and supported and full and healthy. 

Royal is an architect, the home has a couple little miniature homes and buildings made out of what look like high-grade matchsticks. John recognizes a poster on the wall of a friend’s band. Their dog, Willow, approaches me, I get annoyed and think it’s going to be mean or bark or smell bad or be annoying, but then I’m petting it for an hour, she jumps on the couch beside me and I put her in this kind of hug-headlock and fall asleep with her on the couch, Jeremy, I learn later, has taken a picture of this, I feel really happy he did that, and I ask for the picture from him and I send it to a girl I like in an effort to confirm my putative cuteness and genteel nature. When Royal is home we watch funny videos on youtube on his projector, weird interviews with furries and flat-earthers and then of a guy screaming about something while in the middle of traffic outside Universal Studios in L.A., I try to explain to the guys how there was a meme I saw wherein there is a picture of a cat who is reciting the lyrics of a Kanye song but in a cute speech impediment style where it can’t say Rs: “Pwease Baby No Mo Pawties in Ew Ay” and it is basically impossible to explain and gets no laughs and that’s fine and we move on. Jeremy puts on a Vimeo of this incredible short film he made with the title “Guided Meditation for Increased Kill/Death Ratio,” which is exactly what it sounds like, it’s built in Unity, which is like a framework to design video games in, it looks like a generic FPS with a character holding an assault rifle moving down a long spacy looking corridor lined with metal, and with a very calm amniotic ambient track Jeremy comissioned his friend to make, and Jeremy is doing the voiceover, and the conceit is it’s like a guided mindfulness meditation except instead of reducing anxiety or avoiding panic or grappling with trauma or mending depression or whatever the usual purpose of these meditations are (meditations I do daily, using the app Headspace, btw, which no one here knows as far as i know), instead of that, the purpose is to like reassure the video game player that they are a perfect efficient killing machine. Stuff like ‘focus on the feeling in your HUD, now the feeling in your body armor, now the feeling in your M4A1 carbine, now visualize your next spawn, you are not your avatar, you are pure death’ something along those lines, and it hits hard home for me being a former competitive Counter Strike player and casual Halo and Call of Duty player and now being like mentally ill to whatever extent I am such that I believe I require these meditations. ITs really well executed, the player glides through corridors, clips through the ceiling, encounters nebulas and NPCs and aliens and eventually spirals into space. Jeremy shows the original video that inspired him, same basic thing but in a virtual Costco rather than in a FPS. We move slow, Royal screen prints tee shirts for his band, Tired Frontier, on his living room table as we watch the videos. The plan is to spend tonight and the next three tour dates wth Tired Frontier. We eventually go to the show.

It’s a house show, the name of the place is CBD Castle, above the front door they have a huge cardboard sign that says CBDB’s in the style of CBGB’s and there’s a big porch with a huge couch on it and a guard rail thing that you can sit on or prop your feet on perfectly if you’re slouched way down on the couch. We mingle a little, the show gets started, the opening act is Kind Magic, which it becomes evident is something of a joke band, perfectly suited to a house show, they don’t take themselves too seriously, they mostly have just mustaches, 80s style, one guy has wraparound oakleys, he’s the lead singer, he climbs up on his bass amp at one point. Royal comes in, and people start moshing, gently, just like running into each other, Jeremy does a silly dance and I watch it happen and I want to do it and I have to wait a few songs to get up the courage but eventually I give it up and start spinning around and let myself get bounced around and I am 32 years old and feel just right and not self conscious and silly and afraid how I used to always feel at the metalcore concerts when I was 16 in Ace’s Basement in Greensboro and the moshing was this awful violent masculine chauvanist bullshit thing. This is the opposite. One song, the lead singer, it becomes evident, is chanting “Pogo! Pogo! POGO!” and I think this means pogo mosh but it does not, it means the drummer gets up off his throne and picks up a big pogo stick he has secreted in the corner and starts jumping up and down on it WHILE playing a complex drum pattern on the drums, it is unreal the level of dexterity and coordination this guy has, I learn later that he spends half the year touring with a professional pogo troupe whose gigs are mostly basketball halftime shows, and include a guy named Danger Rus, aka Russel The Muscle. This band rips and is so fun and loosens everybody up and people are drinking and getting kind of sloppy and I plan to be mad and indignant about this but instead I just don’t care and it’s lovely. Next up is us.

We set up, I get to use the backline kit so load in is minimal, just setting up breakables again. We get locked in, Kabir revs us up, we get started, and right from the jump either I pushed the tempo with my count-off or the guys pushed the tempo or we all did most likely, but we are playing louder and faster than last night and I am going in all the way hard on the drums, playing with my whole body, i come down with my right hand on the floor tom so hard my butt bounces up off the throne, I’m surprised but I like that so I keep letting that happen, I head bang as hard as possible, my neck is immediately sore and hurting but the crowd is crazy live, everyone is dancing after a few songs. I manage to thrash the wingnute off the hihat clutch which and try to repair it, flounder, and give up, which all that means is I can’t modulate the hi hat and so our set is just louder and more raw which matches the room anyways. By the last two songs the people are dancing so hard that I give up my usual veneer of grimacing and lasering my eyes to the side or corner to avoid the crowd, instead of grimacing what I do is watch what is happening in the crowd, which is the crowd smiling dancing moshing grooving with us, with me, and I get a huge smile on my face which I can’t hide and I’m so incredibly happy just playing and being heard by these people. We end and Royal rallies the crowd and they chant ONE MORE SONG ONE MORE SONG for like 3 minutes but we just don’t know another one, and so there’s no encore, but how special and lovely to be asked to do one.

Tired Frontier plays and they rock and they have keys by Paul who has a master’s in music theory and currently pursuing a second music masters in production or something. Royal has 10 pedals I think, and a super weird tuning, and they make a big wall of ambient noise between the keys from Paul and the feedback from Royal’s “stack,” which is his guitar running through a Fender guitar combo for an amp and with a Fender bass combo for effects. Their set is a little longer and the vocals don’t come through that clear and they don’t give super clear definitions to the start and end of their songs so the set may have been 4 or 7 songs. They finish, and I am so starving hungry I get the keys from Kabir and go to the van and eat about a half a jar of peanut butter and an apple and then go lay on the big white couch outside and just doze, super tired. It starts raining sheets and we learn from somebody that Knoxville’s adjacency to the mountains makes it a temperate rain forest and it rains almost every day. It’s warm and breezy and perfect. Me Kabir and John go get taco bell, the best taco bell in town, I just order the same thing as Kabir rather than taking a million years to choose and that works out great, two spicy potato soft tacos, and we just sit in the parking lot and wolf and chomp. The parking lot is sparkling, spotless, a big street sweeper truck is skrrting around finishing the job, someone who I imagine is on opiates walks very very slowly up to our van and then walks away. Someone is asleep outside near a building in the strip mall. Some car drives up and maybe drops off food or clothes. We go back to CBDB’s Jeremy is involved in a dance party there, Paul is choosing tunes based off what he calls ‘forgotten hits from the 80s.’ We eventually go back to Royal’s I fall asleep almost immediately on the couch. 

[fmlfpl]

Lineup Lamentations - GW18

Our Transfers, Captains, and Starting 11s for the week.

WALSH

TRANSFERS:

OUT: BOB

IN: ROM

It's time to go back to the Rom well. I'm sick of Bob. He's being rotated too much and now that he is confirmed off pens his stats don't fill me with confidence that he is worth holding. I've managed to rejigger my team a bit to afford a big upgrade to Lukaku and I think it's a good time to buy the big donkey and welcome him back into the fold. The non-celebration on his goal got me feeling good as he just looked fucking pissed off to have been so shit. He knows he's been shit and with a pretty kind run of fixtures plus Paul back soon I think he'll be a steady returner of points. He is also a pretty decent differential in the top 100k so I'll take that for however long it will remain. I do expect him to making his way into more sides over the next handful of GWs so it feels like a good time to jump back a little early. I know I have given the boy a lot of shit on the pod but as shouted he's a flat track bully and the fixture run right now is good. Welcome back my son.

GK:

Pope. Standard legend. Have been seeing a lot ruing the fact they got Courtois in over him and shit like this. Been saying it forever, and it's a little skewed now that Pope has gone up a bit, but he's just Heaton version 2.0. It took us all far too long last season to realize that Heaton was the best value keeper in the game and the same thing is happening with Pope. I don't really know why. The fixtures get a bit trickier soon with top sides incoming as well as their easy games coming away but for Pope with save points it doesn't really matter to me. If anything, it makes him over a defender that much better. I think they will keep a couple of surprise cleans against top sides and he'll keep getting points. It is also a huge boon that he is nailed on for bonus points in any clean sheet they keep. Pope fucking in.

DEF:

WOWw lads. It is a proper christmas tree formation for me this week as actual day of christmas approaches. I don't think I've ever willingly started this formation in my FPL career so it's a weekend of firsts for squad walsh. The alignment of timing with the holiday so near gives me good juju. Triple Chelsea defense roll out again with Christensen, Azpil, and Moses. Will always be a tad nervous with Moses with Zappa lurking so I hope rotation doesn't get me. Obviously losing the clean against Huddy in the last fucking action of the game didn't get my dick hard but I'm still sitting here with the long term play in mind. Cleans will come, right? Fucking hope so. Southampton suck, so let's fucking go.

The God Phil of Jones is another auto start for me for the foreseeable future. Of course slightly concerned he may be rested with only a few days off but probably not because he's the only thing that keeps clean sheets for United. Everyone starting to go back to the Phil well since he's also fairly nailed on baps with every clean. He's just great. CBI monster.

Finally, I'm starting Lewis Dunk this weekend home Burnley. It was a close call between him and RLC but I'm feeling a better chance of a Brighton clean than a RLC return. Dunk also carries his share of goal threat...he's gotta get one eventually...and if that comes when I'm starting him the satisfaction would be off the charts. Burnley still not really creating loads...and while they do seem to score one goal per game we'll see. Don't feel THAT confident in a clean here but worth the gamble considering my other options.

MID:

Three friends this weekend. The two City lads Dilva and Raz are stuck in. They propelled me last GW and they've been so fucking good for me and having patience rewarded feels nice. Good friends.

Rounding out the group is Salah. Obv. Nothing to see here. Could be rested, possibly, but with pressure on for points it feels unlikely.

FWD:

Kane and Rom. Couple of good guys. Kane 10 shots and 3 chances created last week sums up his season. The underlying stats are off the page but he is blanking a lot. Meh. He goes nowhere.

CAP:

Lukaku. Not really close for me and a huge diff here. Seeing a lot of Hazard shouts this weekend (when will we learn?) but I don't have him so fucking fuck him. West Brom are proper shit and I kinda love Rom going back to his old familiar stomping ground where he had so much joy back in the day to do it. WBA is only a matter of time before they get completely done and I think United are a real shout for 4 goals this weekend or something around there. Wish Paul would be back but meh. Salah is a fine shout, but idk. Not feeling him for some reason. I'm not comfortable at all capping Kane against City so not really looking at him. Pretty excited about Rom this weekend so hope he bangs. If he manages to donk in a double return I'd be absolutely flying so let's fucking go. Cheeky extra day of rest for United with three days off between games also feels like a nice cherry on top of the feather in his cap.

ALON

TRANSFERS:

OUT: Vert

IN: Jones

Jones out GW15 and Jones back in GW18 such is life.

He’s the by far the best value pick of any player in all of FPL. Need I say more? GW1 darling of mine. Welcome back. Feels good again to double up on United Mou cleans (double with de Gea for me) and I expect a ton of points to follow...

Vert left me with a clean, the best thing he’s done for me by far... Break-up sex in for a 6 pointer. I’m down. One last fuck IN :).

GK:

The aforementioned DDG in for the foreseeable rest of season. The stress free pick.

DEF:

All of a sudden my defense is good. I addressed it with good transfers -- GW14 Christensen in, GW15 Tarkowski in, and now GW18 Jones in. And those are my three going this week.

Christensen and Chelsea what can be said. They should be keeping cleans in all of these... I got lucky with the Christensen sub last week. I’m not worried at all.

Tark sorry I benched you that one week and missed a clean I’ve learned my lesson. Go with Ginger Mourinho and the cleans will follow. Easy pick. Escaping death thus far in a very dead Burnley backline.

And Jones yeah. Best most fucked up face and best value. Check and check.

MID:

Back in a 3-4-3 almost feels weird even though I’ve spent the majority of sixish seasons of FPL on it. But here we are. Feels good to have RLC off the bench and no longer a starter.

Let’s begin with Salah since everyone has him and he’s god and there’s nothing to say. Maybe he’ll be rested who knows...

Next we have Daveeeed the cock goblin genius legend. Also kind of not much to say. What a call back in preseason by Walshy just nailing it on the head. And then props to both Daveed and Pep for adapting / changing / progressing his game. He looks a new lad. Fresh new 31 year old on the scene.

Rounding out the midfield we got two guys who I have no idea what to expect from with Son always at risk of sub 20 minutes and Richarlison coming off of fatigue/groin shit who knows -- it seems to me a good time to rest him but they also could really use some points and he’s their best player. No clue. Both are dice rolls - but dice rolls with high ceilings. So maybe I’ll get something lucky.

FWD:

Up top we got Kane, Morata, Chaz Austin.

Chaz I was thiiiiis close to benching for Duffy (home Burnley) but Brighton have been fucking bad and Chaz is so good. What was I thinking about? Chaz is fucking great. And if he starts / plays a bunch of minutes (big IF) I expect him to score vs. anyone, honestly, I do.

Kane is auto.

And Morata Conte says is fine today so hopefully he’s also fine tomorrow and can properly get it in there. Just get in bro. Don’t fall over and be the bag of dicks that I know you are. Let’s go dude.

CAP:

I’m on Kane for now. My gut tells me that this City defense can be got at on the counter. I see like a 2-2 or 3-2 kind of game in the cards with Spurs giving them their toughest test of the season. This could change. It’s a TBD. Maybe I keep it simple and go Salah but I’m not sure. Spurs have been titting their big matches this season so maybe it’ll continue.. But the lads in Slack are pushing for DDG captain and everyone is fucking mad at me for being slow with Lineup Lambs so here we are. Gl hf.