#so I've been compiling this list for quite a while and now seems as good a time as any to get it off my chest

[jilyawards]

The Jily Fandom Rec List 2024 is a compilation of Jily stories our readers want to keep an eye on for this year's awards.

JUNE

Stranger Days, Brighter Nights (WIP, 16.3k as of 30 June 2024) by @minoukwrites. Rated T.

Regulus Black is in love with James Potter. Lily Evans is absolutely not. (In which Lily finds love and Regulus peace. A tale of secret crushes, unspoken yearnings, and quiet betrayals. But at its core, it's the fix-it I've always craved, full of fluff, angst, and all the tropes.)

Falls the Shadow (part 3 of The Darkest Days series) (completed, 95.6k) by @seriousbrat. Rated M.

1977. The Queen's Silver Jubilee. Strikes, riots, violence, and increased political tension. A darkness seems to have descended on Britain, and the Wizarding World is no exception. As Lily, Severus, and the Marauders enter their seventh and final year at Hogwarts, the last rays of fading childhood herald a darker, unforgiving world, in which all face life-altering choices. Sev will stop at nothing to get what he wants, despite what it's already cost him— while Lily and the Marauders find themselves on the precipice of war. Part 3 of a canon compliant story spanning the last three years of Hogwarts up until the end of the First Wizarding War.

in losing grip (WIP, 97.1k as of 30 June 2024) by keep_driving. Rated M.

“I’ll see you again?” She’d asked. “Someday, when we’re older.” “Obviously,” he told her. A promise without any boundaries, without any concrete truth. “Obviously,” she whispered back. Like it was that simple. - For her, summer did not exist before him. Now that it's been gone for so long, she wonders if it ever truly existed at all.

Filipendulous (completed, 30.2k) by @seriouslysam8. Rated M.

An attack on Diagon Alley in July 1980 leaves James Potter cursed and on death’s door.

Querencia (completed, 10k) by @thelighthousestale. Rated T.

que·ren·cia: a sanctuary where you feel safe The time Lily, James, and Harry spent as a family in their little house in the West Country was far too brief, but it was overfilled with love, laughter, and, above all, life. Moments of Lily and James at Godric’s Hollow told in five parts for @mppmaraudergirl's 'Alight With Happiness Fest'.

Rumor Has It (completed, <1k) by @thelighthousestale. Rated G.

Severus doesn't believe the rumors that Lily finally agreed to go out with James Potter.

The Roe Deer And The Knight (completed, 2.1k) by @annabtg. Rated G.

The tale of a magical roe deer and a knight who had to learn humility.

Fixed Luck (completed, 1.3k) by @annabtg. Rated T.

The books warn: excessive intake can cause giddiness, recklessness, and dangerous overconfidence. But good luck is addictive.

THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT (Jily's Version) (oneshot collection, 1k as of 30 June 2024) by @wearingaberetinparis. Rated E.

And so I enter into evidence, My tarnished coat of arms. My muses, acquired like bruises, My talismans and charms. The tick, tick, tick of love bombs, My veins of pitch black ink. All is fair in love and poetry. A Jily TTPD Drabble Collection

The Tooth Fairy (completed, <1k) by @jfleamont. Rated T.

Harry loses his first tooth, so James pulls one of his pranks on his son.

In Love and War (WIP, 338.9k as of 30 June 2024) by Icepen. Rated M.

After a horrible summer before her Seventh Year brings the war to her doorstep, Lily Evans knows one thing for certain-- she will not be safe at Hogwarts anymore. Her position as Head Girl, her new friendship with the Potter heir and the disgraced Black heir, the sudden and tragic murder of her parents all shoves her into a limelight she never wanted. Learning to cope with her grief and her trauma, Lily needs to navigate the treacherous waters of her new situation as the war against people like her escalates in the world she is about to graduate into.

Think I Know Where You Belong (Think I Know It's With Me) (WIP, 80.2k as of 30 June 2024) by @wearingaberetinparis. Rated M.

At thirty-three years old, Lily Evans fears she may not quite have lived up to her potential. Single and living alone – if one does not consider her cat a flatmate, that is – her days are blurs of monotony, most of her students getting more action than she has seen in the past decade. (Hyperbole gratuitously applied.) Insert James Potter – former classmate and unrequited crush – who appears to be on a mission – aside from promoting his fourth novel – to point out all of her flaws, while strutting the hallways of their former secondary, the place she has never left and he will forever haunt now that the board has decided to name the school library in his honour. (F*ck her life.)

Heavier The Crown (WIP, 135.9k as of 30 June 2024) by @sidlarsson. Rated E.

Fifty years after the First Wizarding War, Teddy Lupin stumbles across a secret about the ghost of Lily Evans. The truth will lead him deep into the past—unraveling a friendship marked by rivalry, betrayal, and one falling out of love with the other. “It—is you. I—thought I was dreaming.” His cheek was lifted. He was out of it, possibly from the effects of Dark Magic. “You—" and he seemed to struggle. His breath came in gasps. "I thought you were an angel.” Dark love story set during the First Wizarding War. Features General James Potter, Potions Master Lily Evans, and Death Eater Severus Snape. 1978 - 1982.

Check out the previous months' recs too: January, February, March || April || May

Happy reading!

[clarktooncrossing]

DUDELZ of the Damned | Punishment, Pt. 1

HEY THERE PEOPLE OF TODAY AND ROBOTS OF TOMORROW! IT'S ME, CLARK!

A chill is in the air. You can feel it can't you? Perhaps you even recognize it. That same chill arrives every year right on the dot. With it comes a frightful howl in the moonlight, the only other sound to be heard. Otherwise there is a strange calmness settling around you, like the point of ease before the storm. By now the howling has stopped. It has been replaced by a different sound. Footsteps. Big, heavy, dragging, as if the figure didn't quite know how to use their legs. Perhaps it's a random passerby. Perhaps it's a rotting, frightful feature freshly risen from the grave. Perhaps it's some other, unspeakable horror waiting to pounce! Whatever it is, you're not waiting around to find out! Yet no matter how far you run, it can't be escaped. The chill in the air, the howling of the wind, the heavy footsteps, it all leads back to one thing: October is here! And with it comes the return of the DUDELZ of the Damned!

Yes weirdos, like last year, my approximation of Sketchtober has returned. I call it an proxy because there was no list of prompts. Nah, that'd be too limiting. This is yet another case where I compiled my own list of ideas, sketched them out, then used one color per picture. With all that said, let's see what spoopy scribblings await us today!

Fighting evil by moonlight! Winning love by daylight! Never running from a real fight! She is the one called Sailor Moon! Meanwhile, I'm the guy who got tricked into wearing this stupid freak'n costume. Again. It never fails. Every year at least one of my friends manages to manipulate events so I end up dressed in a girly costume. This year it's for a character I'm not even a fan of. Well, like heck am I doing it alone this year! Not when @burningthrucelluloid looks so good in a skirt. >:3

Okay, this one's gonna require some context. Back in 2017 I had reached 300 Watchers on my deviantART page. As a celebration of this achievement, folks could suggest stuff for me to review, one peep picking a Sailor Moon mobile game. These were the original Giraffe's Eye Views, and this one in particular sported me wearing the iconic Sailor Scout uniform for a gag. Now you'd think that'd be the end of it. After all, hardly anybody read the review in the first place. So how could this possibly come back to bite me? Quite easily, as it turns out. See, I have malicious friends. One of them saw this review and decided to draw me in this outfit once more. They then drew me as Harley Quinn from Arkham Knight. From there Alec would keep the gag going by paying multiple artists absurd amounts of money to draw me as various other female characters, usually with boobies so large they have their own gravitational pull. I've been drawn as Mayday Parker's Spider-Girl, Carol Danvers's Miss Marvel, Pinkie Pie from Equestria Girls, it never seemed to end! Now far be it from me to foil a good running gag, but this really got annoying after a while. For crying out loud, it started to feel like my friends were forgetting I was a dude. So after a talk we all agreed the joke would be saved for special occasions. Turns out Halloween is one of those special occasions. Especially when it follows a year of my friend putting me through the wringer in Dungeons and Dragons. Remember this when you start up your next campaign, buddy! Besides, I've had that 'in the name of the moon, the bear, and the big blue house' gag rattling around in my head for a while now and Sailor Bumper demanded to be drawn. Here's hoping you all enjoy this more than Alec does. And remember: wear leggings under your battle skirt! The October breeze is not forgiving, even to magical anime chicks.

Also, since it seems I didn't post last year's DUDELZ on tumblr, here's how I embarrassed Alec back in 2023:

Here is my friend dressed as Abigale Brand from Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, a show I convinced him to check out and a character he deemed 'sexy'. All this paired with a quote he said. Remember folks; giraffes can be devious! >:3

BONUS QUESTION: Which Sailor Scout is your favorite?

MAY THE GLASSES BE WITH YOU!

[pokesmashorpokepass]

Gen VI, Complete!

You read that correctly, we've made it through PokeFrance (Official term for Kalos, honest!) and have compiled the data!

With that said, let us begin the usual look at this generations...

Sultans of Smash!

(Which is just my fancy way of saying they got more "Smash" than "Pass" votes)

So come with me on this fabulous journey in smashing! Our Smashables are (under the Read More because, you know, this gonna take a while):

1. So for this generation, we do have three starters on the list! But, sadly, Chesnaught couldn't make it. So for our first starter, we instead have our second middle evolution, Braixen! Suppose it's not hard to see why, everyone loves magical girls and Braixen certainly counts! Counts enough to get a 66.4% Smash rating, which is pretty good says I.

2. But far surpassing Braixen is the greatest of Pokemon fire mages, Delphox! And when I say surpass, I mean really surpasses! Delphox has the honor of being the first Starter Pokemon to make it into the Gods of Smash, with a mighty 80.9% Smash rating! There's no stopping the magic of this witch! ...Side note, I think I will be naming my next Delphox "Browser", because she's a Firefox. (Ba-Dum-Tss)

3. Similar to the samurai, ninja have long been one of the more interesting mainstays of Japanese pop culture (especially abroad), and are almost always popular. So it's understandable that Pokemon's own ninja, Greninja, would have their fair share of friends and admirers! And with a smash rating of 72.5% in Standard Form, god damn what fans they have! The Ash-Greninja form, while not quite as popular Standard Form, also makes it in with a 52% Smash rating! Looks like not even a ninja of this calibur can hide how smashable they are.

4. This next Pokemon has a pretty accurate name. Florges, a combination of "Flower" and Gorgeous", certainly describes them pretty well if you ask me! And judging by that solid 67.8% Smash rating she's earned herself, I'd say many of y'all agree!

5. Everyone knows the "Jerk with a Heart of Gold" character archetype, and the closely related "Bruiser with a Soft Center". And it cannot be understated that these character archetypes are super popular. So of course, combining them into a single Pokemon and making that Pokemon a panda? Instant recipe for success, I'm sure! And said Pokemon exists in the form of Pangoro! Are they loved? I dunno, let's ask that 67.9% Smash rating of theirs. ...Survey says yes.

6. Many of us love cats, but often wish it was easier to understand them (or at the very least make ourselves understood to them). Fortunately for the Pokemon universe, they do have cats that can understand us and be more easily understood in the form of the psychic Meowstic! Coming in at 68.1% Smashable for Female Meowstic and 59.3% Smashable for Male Meowstic, it seems some of y'all really appreciate these cats! ...Now if only Female Meowstic didn't tend to fall into the French/Kalosian stereotype of being kind of a jerk (according to the Pokedex, anyways)

7. If there's two things I've seen a number of tumblr users like, it's tentacles and hypno stuff. So with that in mind, Malamar having both makes it very unsurprising they've gained entry to the Sultans of Smash! That said, at a 51.7% Smash rating, I have to admit I expected larger numbers. But anyways... Wait wha- ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOSQUID.

8. It's a tale as old as time, people look at the Tyrannosaurus Rex as a kid and think "That's them, that's the coolest fucking dinosaur ever!" While some move on or get different favorite dinosaurs, for some that passion never fades. And that passion for the majestic t.Rex, it seems, translates itself onto Tyrantrum! And at 53% Smashability, seems this king will have no reason to go on a tantrum. (Thank god, I don't think we could handle the repair bills to the property if they did...)

9. The Aurora Borealis has fascinated humans since they've first been able to observe that wondrous display of light. Thankfully for those of us who don't live in polar regions, the color-changing sails of Aurorus can help capture the beauty of such a natural phenomenon! Certainly, many of you have expressed a desire to admire this Pokemon up close and personal, if that 65.9% smash rating is any indication! Though really, the ice crystals and geometric patterns on their scales also do a lot for the appeal of this cool customer.

10. Attention everyone, it is once again Real Eeveelution Hours! And for this list's Eeveelution, we have everyone's favorite walking trans flag, Sylveon! With their extendable ribbons, piercing blue eyes, and 69.3% Smash rating, it seems Sylveon continues the time-honored Eeveelution tradition of being absolutely smashable!

11. Hear me out here, what if snails and slugs were also... Dragons? If your answer to learning this was "Oh fuck yeah that sounds awesome!", then I have Good News! This Snail/Slug Dragon I proposed is a thing in the form of Goodra, with Kalosian Goodra being more slug-like and Hisuian Goodra being more snail-like! However people like them though, considering Kalosian Goodra has a 71.4% Smash rating and Hisuian Goodra has a 61.6% rating, it's clear people do like these dragons quite a bit.

12. It may not be Halloween, but for many of us there's always time for Jack-o'-Lanterns! And with Gourgeist, the next Pokemon on our list, you can have a jack-o'-lantern that can also be smashed, something a number of you want if that 50.4% Smash rating is any indication!

13. And next up on the list, we have a noisy one! Ever wondered what would happen if bats could be loud enough to shatter anything by yelling at it? Well, if Noivern and their 68% Smash rating is any indication, the answer is "People would want to smash it!" Though really, looking at them, I can safely say you'd have to be blind as a bat to not see the appeal. Sorry, the pun had to be made.

14. I'm gonna be honest, I tried thinking long and hard on how to be crafty with my statement regarding this next one, but I just can't do it. I'd need more than one lifetime to make something fitting enough for this majestic deer! Fortunately, Xerneas can give one all the time in the world they need to think of stuff! And judging by that 66.5% Smash rating, I think a few of y'all have a few ideas on what to do with all the time Xerneas' immortality will give you...

15. But where there's life, there must, sadly, be death. Fortunately, death is this case is the very cool looking Yveltal, who has achieved an impressive 63.5% Smash rating! Seems that for some of y'all, "Death comes for you" has a different meaning...

16. Balance is an important part of any ecosystem. Too much death and you have no ecosystem, but too much life and you risk one particular part of that ecosystem overwhelming the rest. Fortunately, to prevent this from happening, Zygarde is here! And judging by how 50% Forme has a 52.3% Smash rating and Complete Forme has a 61.2% Smash rating, I'd say a number of you wish to show Zygarde your appreciation.

17. Diamonds are great. They're shiny, they're stupidly hard to damage, and they can come in a variety of colors! And that's just in our universe, the Pokemon universe is lucky and has Diancie, a living diamond Pokemon! And if Standard Form's 56.1% Rating and Mega Diancie's 65.3% rating is any indication, Diancie also adds "Very smashable" to the list of good diamond traits!

18. And for the finale, I present to you... Another Pokemon who only had an alternate form get in? Yep! It's Hoopa, the genie in a bottle Pokemon! Specifically, it's Hoopa Unbound, who makes it in with a 55.6% Smash rating! And with his rings, they'll show you the wo- Eh? What? Copyright law?! Damn it! Ok my lawers just advised me to not finish that joke, so sadly I can't leave y'all on the Aladdin reference. But I can say that considering Hoopa has a history of stealing treasure with their rings, I'm beginning to suspect some of y'all have a thing for Pokemon with criminal tendencies...

And thus is the Gen VI Who's Who of Smashing concluded, bringing us up to 136 Sultans of Smash! Well then let's see what's next... Gen VII? Oh man, we've got some choice Sultans of Smash incoming...!

[phanbeats]

🦉Positivity owl reporting for duty! This was sent by a friend who wants you to smile as much as your posts make them smile. Please list five things that make you unique, four things you are super passionate about and why, OR three of your favorite memories. Feel free to send the owl to those who you feel deserve to smile🦉

four things that I'm passionate about -

1. dan and phil

so i got into them in November of the worst year of my life: 2015. They were the first people older than me who'd ever seemed really alive? like, phil especially seemed genuinely happy, and they were weird in a way i thought grown ups weren't allowed to be, and I spent years clinging to my childhood because I was terrified of losing that spark of whimsy that made life feel worth living sometimes, so that was incredibly important to me. and I'd just lost three family members within a three month span and graduated from high school (therefore I'd lost my sole reason to get out of bed in the mornings) and i was trying to come to terms with being aro ace while a "friend" who was very well aware of my sexuality wouldn't stop coming on to me, and so by that November I was just waiting for the last straw; i wasn't planning to live much longer. but that's when I found d&p, and they quite literally saved my life. They gave me a reason to keep going when I really, really needed that, and i love my life now. I've met so many friends and had so many experiences i would have missed out on if not for them. So how can I not love them? they're everything to me.

This picture, by the way, was taken at tit Vancouver, shortly after i got down on one knee with a blue raspberry ring pop and asked Phil to marry me. He said yes!

2. sewing

i got into sewing (and other fiber crafts) several years ago because i wanted to make myself a corset, which was. an ambitious goal, for someone who had at the time only really done any sewing once several years earlier in home ec class. Since then I've made about a dozen skirts, four capes, three sets of pants, a few blouses, and right now I'm making my sixth corset, which is going to be made from silk and coutil and is heavily embroidered:

the lesson here is don't give up on doing things you want to do just because there's a learning curve; one day, with enough practice, you can become good at anything.

3. art

I've always been creative, and art is one of the easiest ways to express yourself creatively. I've been drawing and painting regularly for most of my life, and the career path I've chosen is animation. I have a diploma in 2D, but I'm actually planning on going back to school for 3D animation as well. Right now, I'm working on a realistic digital painting of d&p asleep on the couch in their tour bus as a bit of a challenge for myself. Here's a wip:

The final piece will be lineless, but I've included a lined version just so you can see the parts I haven't painted yet lmao.

4. writing/poetry

I distinctly remember being six years old and sitting down to write a book. Writing has been a part of me just as long as I've been able to read, and while the book six-year-old me attempted to produce was perhaps not very inspiring, I've written quite a lot since then. I got into writing fanfiction when I was 12, and it was my main hobby until I was about 16, at which point i got too depressed to continue with it. I have written fanfic since then, though, mostly in the past few years. I don't post everything I write only because I mostly just write down a scene here or there when I can't get them out of my head, but I have posted a few complete works which can be found here (for my teenage writing) and here (for my more recent stuff). I also write poetry, and one day I'd like to compile it into a book perhaps. Here are a few of my pieces:

I don't really have a favourite type of poem, although I do enjoy rhyming couplets lmao.

------

thank you for sending me this ask!! I know it's been a week or so but I've enjoyed answering it.

[utterly-mediocre]

A collection of letters from a lovesick and naive girl

To you, who still manages to capture my heart after all these years,

I’m not even sure if you would ever be able to read this. I’m a coward, as evident by the way I bottled up these emotions and watched you from afar for years rather than actually trying to convey to you how I feel, in real life. So here I am, compiling a collection of my thoughts- most of it coming to me at ungodly hours of the night- and hiding behind a screen. It seems I haven’t matured much at all from that first time I laid my eyes on you.

Anyway, on the incredibly rare occasion that I do somehow figure out a way to deliver this to you, I hope you take the time out of your day to read this. I’ve come to terms that I would never be anything special to you, but that still doesn’t mean that I’m not absolutely smitten over you. I’m not expecting anything to come out of this, honestly, I just want this out of my system. So don’t worry about reciprocating my feelings or anything like that, I’m perfectly fine with how things are as is.

This, I guess you could call it a letter?, would contain a little section of mini letters and each mini letter will be numbered according to a playlist. Most of the songs listed are actually what I was listening to while I was writing whatever I was thinking. You might think this is too much hassle for someone trying- emphasis on trying- to let go of their feelings and to be honest, you’re right. I’m just over dramatic. Nevertheless, I do hope you somehow are able to read this, someday.

--

;golden hour

I Everything Has Changed - Taylor Swift

II Risk It All - Yuna

III I've Never Been In Love Before - Laufey

IV Love Letter From The Sea To The Shore - Delaney Bailey

VI Sunlight - Hozier

--

I Everything Has Changed - Taylor Swift

“All I know is a simple name /

And everything has changed”

I don't actually remember the specifics of when I had truly fallen for you. You had crept so slowly into my heart and the depths of my mind that eventually I found that you were all that I could think of.

I used to jokingly say it was love at first sight but that isn't really true. It was more like gradually getting pulled towards you, and a sense of familiarity that I can’t quite put my finger on took root in the crevices of my soul, it’s tendril wrapped tightly around my heart. It felt as though my soul had known you before and now that I've met you again, a desperation to get close to you makes itself known with every time our eyes meet. I could feel the centre of my universe shifting slowly towards you the very moment my eyes laid on you.

I keep thinking of that one time my hand had brushed against yours and almost every night since then, I wonder what it would be like if I held your hand in mine. Would it fit perfectly? Would it feel as warm as I imagined? I find myself yearning for your presence, and my eyes would always subconsciously search for you.

It was a new and scary feeling, but it felt so, so good.

--

II Risk It All - Yuna

“I would risk it all, just to feel your touch /

I just want it all, if it ain't too much”

I've always been scared of authority figures ever since I was a young child, and I carried that throughout my life. And so, I've decided early on to not tell you my feelings. I took one look at it, and with shaking hands, I buried it to the back of my mind. Because I was so scared of the consequences. I was so scared of that omnipotent God I spent my whole life fearing. And to be completely honest, I still feel that paralyzing fear sinking deep into my bones sometimes. My heart is bursting at the seams and each time I see you around I feel like screaming out how much I wanted to be yours but I’d find that the words just wouldn’t come out of my mouth.

I tried everything to lose these feelings and to pretend that I'm a good, pious child. Frustratingly, nothing ever seemed to work. The more I tried to push the thoughts of you away, the more my heart craves you. It was a new sensation, and it probably is the worst pain I had ever experienced. It was as though someone had ripped my heart out, replaced it with pebbles and forced me to live normally. But it’s impossible to do so, everything reminds me of you. I couldn’t help but imagine a world where I could freely love you without any reservations. A different world where I either could be yours or find a healthier way to move on instead of mulling over what could've been if I wasn't such a spineless fool.

And yet, now I feel as though I would be able to break free from all the restrictions if it meant that I could be by your side. For you, I would gladly break the stifling rules of my religion. What’s heaven got that I can’t find by being with you anyway? I’d much rather endure the fiery pits of hell with your hand held firmly in mine.

--

III I've Never Been In Love Before - Laufey

“So please forgive this helpless haze I'm in /

I've really never been /

In love before"

Try as I might, I would never be able to fully express how deeply my feelings for you run. I could try to compare you to the stars, the ocean, the flowers, the galaxies; all of the world's wonders. I could try to compare you to a million different things but the language runs dry. Everything pales in comparison to you.

I work hard to be poetic in expressing my feelings for you anyway, but it's all too overwhelming and passionate and it's overflowing out of my chest. Not just in love but completely submerged in it, permeated by it, to the point that I find the words that I try to string together no longer make sense. You've truly enchanted me and now I'm rendered a mess.

You might find it weird. I get it. I’ll admit that it is. I don’t truly know you, only the fragments of yourself that you decide to show others. But I cling to those pieces anyway and try my best to store it in my memories, as though it would ever be of use. Because it wouldn't. I would never be yours.

--

IV Love Letter From The Sea To The Shore - Delaney Bailey

“Like the tourist comes back to the beach /

I come back to you for more and more and more”

Did you know that humans are made of stardust? Well, not quite, but it's been said that the very elements that exist in our body came from exploded stars. Which means that the atoms of my left hand may come from a different star from my right, and maybe some of the atoms that were meant to be in my body had ended up in yours.

Because, even if I somehow find it in myself to not think of you anymore and so much time has passed, a part of me will forever be yours. At this point in time, I have no true desire to pursue you since I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m just not meant to be yours a long time ago. However, I still find that my mind keeps coming back to you. Every train of thought that I have, even if it initially didn’t have anything to do with you, would inevitably lead me to think of you. Everything that I know about you (though it's not much, I'd admit that) is carved into my brain and I have no way of getting it out. I think of you so endlessly that I feel as though the last star in the universe might fizzle out and die before I can even begin to try to forget you. It’s honestly corny but it’s true. You will forever be in the forefront of my mind.

--

V Sunlight - Hozier

“Know that I would gladly be /

The Icarus to your certainty /

Oh, my sunlight, sunlight, sunlight"

Once, on a particularly lazy afternoon, my mother showed me a video completely unprompted. We were laying on the living room rug then, and I was about to doze off while watching the television but instead she thrusted her phone into my face, playing a video of a couple getting whipped and punished and I could feel myself freeze. I was laying so close to her then, our shoulders almost touching. I remember the disgust, both for myself and for the policemen punishing them, coiling tighter and tighter in my stomach that I could barely hold myself together. I waited a few hours until my mother decided to take her nap before running and emptying the contents of my stomach into the toilet bowl.

I do wonder, though. Would God really have condemned those who commit sodomy if he were put in my shoes and saw just how divine you looked with the sunlight perfectly framing your silhouette, forming an almost golden halo above your head with your smile as blinding as the sun? Would he not understand at that very moment why I had spent so many years adoring you in secret when the thought of actually accepting that part of myself made me feel nauseated? But even if he didn't, does it matter? Heaven and hell are mere words to me now. If I wanted to find something to devote my faith to, shouldn't I devote it to you instead? It feels more religious, rather than devoting myself to a God who had claimed to create me, all the while condemning me for something I can no more control than I can control my heartbeat.

--

[hen-of-letters]

Series 15 gives all of the characters you could ever care about their worst possible endings, but presents these endings as somehow good or satisfying or acceptable.  Here's a list.

The short version: they're Chuck's endings, and Chuck is a bad writer.  

None of the characters can escape the fate set out for them or break the cycle of trauma begun by Chuck.  The show itself doesn't even realise how truly awful these endings are - it dresses up a tragedy in pie gags and pretty colours and calls it a happy ending.  And in order to inflict these worst possible endings on its characters, the narrative has to be twisted and contorted in the most absurd of ways.

So, onto the list:

Adam: Forgotten and left to languish in the pit, he's finally freed, only to suffer an anticlimactic offscreen death and be forgotten again.  Michael, his only companion for so long, is also killed off.  In the finale, blood family seems to be all that matters - and yet he isn't mentioned.

Alternate Kaia: She helps rescue Kaia from the Bad Place, but chooses to remain there to face certain destruction rather than return to earth with Kaia, Dean and Sam.  This world is so hostile to her that death is preferable.  Her horrible, pointless death stands as a powerful statement about the real harm caused by exclusion, but the text doesn't seem to acknowledge the full horror of this.  Her death isn't remarked upon; it seems to suggest that both Kaia and her double are returned to their rightful places.  It's just one example of the show creating awful endings without seeming to understand how awful they truly are.  (I rant a lot more about Alternate Kaia here.)

Amara: After being betrayed and locked away for millennia, we see Amara's initial impulse for revenge and destruction transform into an admiration for creation.  She becomes an advocate for humanity and the world.  And yet she ends up being betrayed (by both the Winchesters and Chuck) and locked away again.  She's absorbed by Chuck in a way that doesn't fit within the logic of the show.  Chuck and Amara are equals - it doesn't make any sense that Chuck could overpower her.  Wouldn't they become a blend of the two of them?  And, since their separation caused the Big Bang, wouldn't their unity end the world?  Anyway, having the cosmic feminine be voiceless and invisible is the worst way for Amara's story to end.  Having Jack speak for her, saying that they are 'in harmony' tries to make this an acceptable fate for her, but only makes it worse.

Benny:  Another offscreen death, and this one feels particularly spiteful.  It really seems like he was killed just to be a conversation-starter for Cas and Dean.  However, if his fate can be sealed by a line of dialogue, then it only proves that confirmation of the fates of Eileen, AU Charlie and the other hunters could have been given in the same way.  Just one line could have done it - "I just spoke to Eileen, everyone's back."  Instead, at the end of 15.19 we're in the absurd position of having Sam and Dean toast the people they've lost without them even bothering to check who that may or not be.

Billie: The bizarre thing about Billie being revealed as a villain at the end of Season 15 was that she was supposed to be acting in self-interest - that she wanted to be the new God.  It made no sense.  What would make sense to me, though, would be if Chuck was controlling her (as Lucifer bound Death in Season 5).  Season 15 has strong echoes of Season 4 - and Billie took on both the role of Ruby (feeding Jack hearts rather than demon blood, but nevertheless making him into a weapon, with the price being the loss of his sense of self and ultimately his life) and Heaven (persuading Dean that it had to be this way, and telling him to go along with the plan).  We only have the Shadow's word for Billie's motivation, and we know she wasn't responsible for the deaths of the AU hunters, so in the end her status is ambiguous - she really seems to be a victim of Chuck's bad writing.  She's erased from the narrative along with Castiel, when really she should have been freed from Chuck's control and fighting on the side of nature and free will alongside the Winchesters.  Supernatural also concludes with nobody in the role of Death, which is a crazy loose thread left dangling.

Castiel: His confession was a thing of beauty, perfectly summing up the truth of both his and Dean's characters.  Both of them are made of and motivated by love.  And yet after speaking his truth, he is silenced.  He never gets to hear that he is loved in return (when the previous twelve seasons have made it abundantly clear to the audience that Dean loves Cas just as much as Cas loves Dean).  His capacity for love made him the only thing that Chuck could not control; as an agent of free will, he should have had a central role in Chuck's defeat.  

In 15x13, when Cas is in the Empty to see Ruby, the Shadow says: "funny thing about [Death's] plan, though... she didn't say anything about needing you. Baby, you can't just traipse in and out of here. It upsets the order of things."  To me, this sounded so much like 4x22's "you're not in this story" that I saw it as a pretty clear indication that Cas would play an important part in Chuck's defeat.  Because Team Free Will wouldn't follow the plan, would they?  They would find another way, wouldn't they?  Wouldn't they?

However, after the confession, he's never seen on screen again.  He's barely mentioned.  Eventually we're told he "helped" Jack, so he ends up where he started: as a servant of heaven.  He deserved to complete his fall, to become human, to live as well as speak his truth.  Making him a silent, unseen instrument of heaven undoes his entire arc.  Erasing him from the narrative requires the extraordinary warping of that narrative: nothing about his death suggests that it should be accepted as a permanent 'sacrifice', when we know that there is a spell that can return angels from the Empty (and, thanks to the handprint, we have his blood for it) and that Lucifer was brought back by Chuck in 15x19.  And the idea that Sam, Jack and Dean wouldn't try everything in their power to bring him back is utterly ludicrous.

Cas' confession scene to so closely mirrors 4x01's barn scene that the narrative is crying out for the parallel to be completed by Dean rescuing Cas from the Empty just as Cas rescued Dean from hell.  However, we're never given that narrative closure - just like we are never given the reunions demanded by the scenes of Sam losing Eileen and Charlie losing Stevie.

Chuck:  Okay, so he might not make your list of characters you could ever care about, but my point about his ending is that while it's fitting, for it to really work we also needed Cas to become human, too.  For Chuck, being human is a punishment, but for Cas it would be a reward.  We really needed this balance, otherwise all we have is humanity as the worst thing that could happen to you, which is not exactly a great parting message for the show.  (Also, how precisely is it possible to make him human?)  Not only is being human the worst fate possible, but, specifically, so is growing old and being forgotten.  Again, this is a punishment for Chuck, but it would have been a reward for Dean: growing old when the story (and his own self-loathing) constantly told him that he would die young; and being forgotten, not in a negative sense, but in terms of not being a character in a story any more: remembered fondly by his friends but no longer a legend, just a man living an insignificant little life exactly the way he chooses.  

Dean: Where do I even start.  Let's be clear: ending the story with his death (by any means and in any scenario) was always going to be the absolute worst possible ending for him and for the show.

In 15x19 we have the glorious moment when Chuck calls him the ultimate killer, and Dean (heeding Cas' words from 15x18) says "that's not who I am".  Now, I mean no disrespect to Dean here (because he is, canonically, a genius) but I don't think that he was in any way necessary to the Michael double-cross plot that eventually saw the defeat of Chuck.  Honestly, if he had died in 15x18, then 15x19 could still have played out in exactly the same way.  It's as if he wasn't saved so that he could save the world - he was saved so that he could have this moment of self-realisation.  He was saved so that he could stand up to Chuck (God, and the author, and parallelled with John) and tell him that he's not the person that he tried to force him to be.  

And yet by the next episode, this revelation is entirely forgotten.  He doesn't get to continue his self-actualisation by speaking his truth to Cas.  Instead, 15x20 presents Dean as almost a caricature of himself.  Dean loves pie.  Dean loves his brother.  Dean loves his car.  All of his complexity (present right from Season 1) is stripped away.

Finally free to write his own story, he ends up giving Chuck the ending he always wanted: one dead Winchester - killed, you could argue, by his brother (Sam fails to call for help and instead tells Dean to "go".)  Told by Cas that he's not "Daddy's blunt instrument" and accepting that he's not "the ultimate killer", Dean goes right back to killing (even threatening torture) and following his father's words (in the form of the journal).  

For Dean to die exactly as the story has always told him, and as he's always told himself in his worst moments of self loathing, is brutal and tragic.  What makes it truly appalling is the way in which both Dean and Sam accept his death and say it's "okay".  For Dean to say "always keep fighting" at the very moment when he gives up and when Sam gives up on him is bitterly ironic.  (Interestingly, when Cas said "you have to keep fighting" in his 12x12 death speech, exhorting Sam and Dean to save themselves and leave him behind, Sam replied with "we are fighting.  We're fighting for you, Cas" and Dean followed with "and like you said, you're family.  And we don't leave family behind".)   

Dean has always been the symbol of humanity in Supernatural: he stood for earth against the forces of heaven and hell.  He'd rather live with pain and guilt than exist as a "Stepford bitch in paradise", and yet that's exactly what he becomes, driving mindlessly through Jack's new heaven where everyone is "happy".  Dean previously dismissed heaven's happiness as "Memorex", and after Mary's death he was the only one not consoled by the confirmation that she was in heaven and happy.  Having Dean being content in heaven is utterly out of character.  He's always fought for free will, and in heaven - where there's no agency, where he's cut off from the world - this is the one thing that he does not have.

Eileen: An interesting, complex, kickass character, Eileen deserved so much better than being erased from the storyline.  A Men of Letters legacy, I imagine her working with Sam to share the knowledge contained within the bunker whilst also dismantling the patriarchy, elitism and colonialism of its past.  Her disappearance from the narrative makes absolutely no sense - 15x09, 15x17 and 15x18 confirm just how significant she is to Sam, and yet we never see them reunited or see Sam mourning her death.  The audience's love for Eileen is totally disregarded, too - she's ripped away from us with no further explanation.

Emma: Okay, so she wasn't actually in season 15, but that's sort of my point.  I have a lot to say about Emma, but here I'll just say that her significance has grown massively since Season 7.  The narrative has shifted from Team Free Will being sons to being fathers.  Even if she wasn't brought back, just a mention of her would have been significant.  (I can't stop thinking about the massive potential of a conversation about Emma between Dean and Jack.)  She didn't deserve to be forgotten.  

Season 15 was Supernatural's last opportunity to bring back characters from the past - such as Meg, original Charlie, Crowley, and Bela Talbot - and give them better endings.  Sadly this opportunity was wasted.

Garth: He actually seems to get his happy ending, on several levels.  He finds a family; he finds happiness; he's acknowledged as a hero by the Winchesters, who had previously mocked him.  Dean's words to him about embracing happiness are powerful.  Garth lives as his full, authentic self - monstrosity now included.  It's that monstrosity that's the issue here, though - as werewolves, Garth, Bess and little Sam and Castiel are doomed to go to purgatory when they die.  Mia Vallens said to Jack that "it doesn't matter what you are - it matters what you do", but in this case the opposite is true.  It's hideously unfair, but again the show never acknowledges this.  It would have been simple to change in a line or two - just a quick mention about how purgatory has been fixed, so that only truly monstrous beasts like the leviathan are kept trapped there - but the injustice remains.

Jack:  From his birth, his destiny was either to be the monstrous destroyer or the divine saviour of the world, which is precisely why he should have side-stepped it and found another way.  He deserved to live without the weight of the world on his shoulders.  Instead, he was forced to take on the power of God - and since when has someone suddenly taking on a huge amount of power ever ended well for Team Free Will?  Then, he repeats the exact same pattern set up by Chuck.  First, he abandons his creation by walking away and disappearing off to, in the words of Bobby, "wherever he went".  Like Chuck, he ignores earthly suffering: if he's now omniscient and omnipotent, is he in fact complicit in Dean's death?  Secondly, he's controlling: he remodels Heaven as he sees fit, making it a place where everyone's together and everyone's happy, with its inhabitants given absolutely no choice in the matter.  There's also no reason why Jack had to vanish from the story - Chuck was capable of spending time on Earth.

The mechanics of the bomb plot also irks me no end.  We're told by Death that the bomb will kill Jack.  However, their plan fails, and Jack survives the blast.  In 15x19, Dean tells Chuck that all the work done to turn Jack into a "cosmic bomb" has turned him instead into a "power vacuum."  It makes it seem like a side-effect, and also that "sucking up bits of power" has been charging him up to the point where he's "unstoppable".  He's able to both absorb and appropriate Chuck's power.  However, in 15x17 Adam and Serafina explain that the bomb will create a "metaphysical supernova" that will make Jack into "a living black hole for divine energy" - which suggests that, actually, the bomb worked as intended.  

But if the plan worked, why is Jack still alive?  Billie made it clear that Jack wouldn't survive.  And "nothing can escape" a black hole - so how is Jack able to use Chuck's powers to bring back Earth's population? Besides which, didn't 15x17 reveal that Chuck himself had "orchestrated" the entire thing?  Which makes the theory that Chuck possessed Jack really the only outcome that makes sense.  (Particularly as Serafina talks about Jack making his "vessel" strong.  Jack is a nephil, not an angel - he has a body, not a vessel.  Also, the bomb is made by fusing his soul with his grace - so, the two things that make up Jack, his humanity and his divinity, are annihilated.)  Deliberately making Chuck win, however (with no tease at the end that this might be the case), makes no sense either.  My head hurts.

Kevin: As if he hadn't been treated badly enough by the story already, we find that Kevin hasn't been in Heaven since we last saw him, but rather hell.  He ends up as an untethered ghost, presumably just wandering about for all eternity.  His fate comes courtesy of a bizarre new rule that souls from hell can't go to heaven - when previously both Bobby and John have done exactly that.  Again, just one line telling us that he's now in heaven could have changed his ending.

Michael: Bringing back Adam and Michael was a brilliant move, and this version of Michael was utterly compelling - struggling with his faith in his father after being abandoned, torn between his loyalty to Heaven and his relationship with Adam.  I thought that his handing over of the spell was very similar to Cas' "just so you understand … why I can't help" moment, and it seemed the precursor to Michael becoming an advocate for humanity, even a member of Team Free Will.  However, instead Michael was doomed to play out his father's narrative: killing his brother and repeating the cycle of sibling conflict and trauma that Chuck began when he betrayed Amara.  (And we'll credit Chuck's bad writing with the fact that the battle between Michael and Lucifer that was once predicted to wipe out millions and scorch the globe can now happen in the bunker without so much as a chair being knocked over - and without wires as well.)

Rowena: She seems to be relishing her reign as Queen of Hell, but the way she's so casually condemned is jarring.  Surely her previous good deeds and her final act of self sacrifice would be enough to tip the scales in a heavenly direction?  (It worked for Lily Sunder - another woman who vowed never to be powerless again.)  They could easily have said it was Chuck's fault that she had to remain in hell - but instead it just seems like a foregone conclusion.  She deserved better.

Sam: If we're supposed to believe that having a "normal" life is Sam's idea of writing his own story, why doesn't he do it as soon as Chuck is defeated?   Instead, his suburban "apple pie" life only happens after Dean dies, which makes it seem more of a grief arc than a happy ending.  (Just as he escaped into a self-professed "fantasy" life with Amelia after Dean's death, or when he succumbed to the comfort of a fake married life in Charming Acres after the trauma of losing all the AU hunters).  

The idea that he'd keep hunting for Dean doesn't ring true - Dean had been the one openly craving retirement and domesticity for several seasons.  After all, the idea of Dean as a hunter and Sam as the brother who wants to be normal is Chuck's story.  Dean wasn't the "ultimate killer" that Chuck wanted him to be, and Sam too had been forging his own identity as a leader, a Man of Letters, and a powerful witch.  He'd also found love - and with Eileen, he could be his full, authentic self.  The idea that he would leave her is absurd, as is the idea that he would abandon his entire extended found family, who seem to have no part in his new life.  When Dean returned from purgatory, he was furious that Sam had failed to help Kevin.  Would Sam really do the exact same thing again - walk away from Jody and the girls when they are mourning both Cas and Dean and need his support?  Would he just abandon Rowena's entire witchy collection and leave the huge store of knowledge in the Bunker locked up in the dark?

The Shadow: again, dubious on a list of characters you care about, but hey - all they ever really wanted was to go back to sleep, and can't we all relate to that?  Anyway, they made the list for being one of the most frustrating open endings of the show.  What did it mean for the Empty to be "loud"?  Who is the Shadow, anyway?  Just how did this cosmic entity fit in with the mythology of Chuck and Amara?  It's maddening that the Shadow and the Empty were made central to several seasons only to be suddenly dropped.

The Wayward Sisters: my beloveds. Such a brilliant cast of characters and such wasted potential.  They're an important part of the Winchesters' family and Team Free Will, but, in the end, they're forgotten.  Claire may have gotten her happy ending with the return of Kaia, but this happens off screen.  We never see her reaction to the deaths of Castiel or Dean.

The final few episodes seem to be about stripping away all of the characters except Sam and Dean, so they are completely alone by 15x20. Phrases such as "just us" and "just you and me" and "it's always been you and me" seem to suggest that this is a good thing, but previously the idea of them being isolated and alone has seemed like the worst case scenario (for example in Season 8, when Sam and Dean are forced to give up Amelia and Benny, respectively, or in Chuck's vision of a future in which the brothers lose Eileen and Cas along with Jody and the girls, give up hope, and end up as vampires, killed by their remaining friends). 

Anyway, the whole idea of just Sam and Dean going wherever the road takes them is Chuck's story.  It's on the cover of his books.  By making Chuck the villain, Season 15 itself makes it impossible for a return to this idea to be a satisfying conclusion to the story.

In fact, Supernatural was never about just Sam and Dean.  It was always about family.  Season 1 was about Sam, Dean and John.  Bobby introduced the phrase "family don't end with blood" in Season 3 and Dean coined the phrase "Team Free Will" in Season 4.  It's an ethos that has spread into the fandom, too.  Didn't the SPN Family deserve a finale that celebrated that idea, of banding together, of caring about the whole world, of love being the ultimate expression of free will?

You can't help but pick up on a theme: characters that were forgotten are forgotten again.  Characters who were locked away are locked away again.  The same narratives and the same traumas play out again and again.  No-one escapes their miserable, predestined fate.  It's Chuck's ending.  And it's Chuck's spiteful ending.

It's the ending that kills off its beloved characters, and also destroys their whole world.  The bunker is left in darkness.  Time has moved forward by so much in order to accommodate Sam's natural death that we can't even imagine the ongoing stories of other characters like Garth or the Sioux Falls family (ironic, given the episode's title).

It's the kind of ending you get when a show is cancelled and the writer decides to kill off their characters and wreck their world so that there's no possibility of another network or another writer taking over their story.  (And yet outside of the show, there's no evidence to suggest this - you would think that the ending had been designed to make a reboot impossible, but it has already been talked about.)

If we were not going to get a sense of the world continuing, then we could have been given a more radical and satisfying ending.  We could have had Death collect on their promise to one day reap God.  We could have had a world freed from the supernatural entirely: heaven, hell and purgatory obliterated, and Team Free Will finding peace in life on earth.

Because Chuck has been the author and the narrator the entire time, it makes no sense for the story to continue past the point of his defeat.  (It makes even less sense for that story to revert back to Chuck's ideal narrative.)  So, really we should have been given a more open ending: Team Free Will triumphant over Chuck and their future left open, the author dead and the characters' stories entrusted to the audience.

Instead, in the end, it's a bizarre mix of needlessly closed-down endings (killing off Cas, Sam and Dean, and vanishing Jack) and frustrating open ones (the loud Empty, there being no Death, Kevin wandering, the ambiguous fate of Eileen, Adam, Donna and the AU hunters).  

And the final two episodes are also objectively bad.  The double-cross plot in 15x19 is lame when the resolution of the Chuck storyline should have been profound. (It invites comparisons with the Season 11 finale, which was excellent.) 15x20 feels weirdly empty and flat.  Dean's death is unrealistic; it echoes Sam's death in Season 2 and Dean's in Season 9 (which, if you think about it, would only be possible if Chuck was still writing it), but lacks the emotional punch of either.  Dean's "I'm proud of us," in his Season 9 death scene is so much more powerful than his "I'm proud of you" in the finale.  And let's not even mention that wig.

In conclusion: every single character deserved better.  The actors deserved better.  The audience deserved better.  Because the ending we were given was not the ending that the season, or the entire series, had been building towards.

The ending tries to destroy every good thing that Supernatural has ever given us - vibrant characters, the fight for free will, the value of found family, the power of love - but it fails. Ultimately the characters and themes are too powerful to be contained by that terrible, flimsy ending. So now I've gotten all of that off my chest, I'm going right back to finale denialism.

[stitch1830]

You said you weren't that familiar with LoK ships, so I thought I'll give you a little bit of information about Lin-ships! (and also my opinion) :)

1. Linzin (Lin & Tenzin)

This ship is pretty obvious, as the two were together in canon. It's not known when the two got together, but they broke up sometime between 153-159 AG. The two have a lot in common, the pressure to meet their parents' expectations and they are both also very focused and serious, but the biggest difference is that Lin doesn't want children and Tenzin has a whole culture on his shoulders. Many ship it within canon, but also some in AU's where they get together again or do not break up at all. Very solid ship, especially since you often write about kid and teenage Lin, into which the ship can be integrated very easily.

2. Kyalin (Lin & Kya)

This ship is quite popular desptie not being canon. The two benefit from the saying that opposites attract each other and can therefore complement one another very well. Many ship it mainly after the Linzin breakup, but some also in AU's where they get together earlier or have been attracted to each other for a long time. Kya is a lesbian in canon and since Lin's sexuality is unknown, she's mostly written as bisexual or gay.

3. Linumi (Lin & Bumi)

This is a rather small ship, compared to the previous two. As with Kyalin, it's the same case here that opposites attract each other, but with Bumi more in a humorous way. The ship is definitely mostly written at an older age, due to the greater age difference.

4. Linzumi (Lin & Izumi)

Probably one of the smallest ships on the list, but it's getting more and more attention lately. There's not much to say about it personality wise, as Izumi hardly had any screen time, but many interpret her as rather serious and no nonsense, which is why the ship has some similarities to Linzin, in my opinion.

5. Linko (Lin & Mako)

Personally, I don't ship it, because the age difference is too big for me, which is why it's definitely a ship for after the series. The two have very similar personalities and in some cases similar experiences, through which they can establish a connection.

6. Pemlin (Lin & Pema)

This is also a rather small ship, which is mostly written at an advanced age. It's often the case that they fall in love, while one is still with Tenzin. I'm not sure if they'll be a good match based on their personality, but it's definitely an amusing ship.

7. Bonuses (without explanation)

Linorra (Lin & Korra), Kyalinzumi (Lin, Kya & Izumi), Pemlinzin (Lin, Tenzin & Pema)

I really hope this helps and that it wasn't to much. I Hope you have a great day. :3

Hi Anon, thank you for the ask! And YAY a list! :D You've done the hard work for me, and I'm forever grateful hehe.

Now that I'm seeing this list, most of these are ships I've seen roaming around the dash, although I don't have many strictly LOK conversations with people at the moment.

The Lin ships with the cloudbabies are what probably make the most sense to me, but all of them seem cool! I will say that I don't often have the original cloudbabies in my stories, only because I don't often write Kataang, but I can see the opportunity for some interesting coming of age stories for the next gen if I were to stick with canon.

Actually, how funny would it be if Lin dated all the cloudbabies? LOL. Probably unlikely, but a funny thought nonetheless ;)

I kind of like the idea of Linzin when they're teens, and then if canon were to occur and Tenzin was with Pema, it would be interesting to see the opposites attract dynamic with Bumi. They can relate a bit to being the oldest sibling, having a big legacy/reputation, and (potentially) feeling like they were disappointing their parents growing up. Also, I feel like both Bumi II and Lin could use some hugs lmao.

Fun! Thank you for this list of ships, Anon. It definitely helps me out a ton, and I can't believe you took the time to compile this for me :') You Nonnies are so nice to me, it makes my heart swoon.

Thank you again for this ask and the list of ships, and I hope you have a great day!

......

Send me asks about ATLA, or anything, really! :D

[finalfantasyxivwritings]

Hi there! Hopefully this contact is welcome--I've really enjoyed reading your miqo'te content and headcanons, and finally wrote a heatfic of my own (FemKeeper!WoL). I'd be very interested in your opinion, if you've spare time/energy to give it a look? AO3 @ works/21699931

Interlude: Satisfaction on AO3

Rating: Explicit

Summary: 

If it had been any other time, any other place, her heat would have passed unnoticed. As is, being stranded on the First, the Warrior of Darkness finds herself in great need. A certain meddling Ascian can't resist prying, and a spying crystal cat is caught out.

I want you to know how truly hilarious getting this ask is anon, if only because I was literally reading your fic last night before I went to bed and I was fucking loving every word of it. Every conceivable ounce of love that I can feel for a fic is exactly what I was feeling while reading it--compiled with utter amusement when I open up my inbox and eventually do a double-take when I realized that said fic and the one you’re pointing me to are one in the same.

To give my most honest opinion, you’ve crafted an amazing piece of work for the fandom, and one I think--in regards to headcanons on miqo’te heats and the like--showcases beautifully a lot of what I like to think has become fairly intriguing ideas of miqo’te physiology. I mean, it’s one thing for someone like me to slap down a nice list of headcanons, especially more scientific-oriented takes on how the course of a heat makes sense in the first place.

But your work? It goes above and beyond, the next level, takes those headcanons and fucking runs with them off into the goddamn sunset. Because you wrote out some bomb-ass smut while also imparting a lot of really sweet takes about how keeper females would go into heat, but also (more importantly) why they would in the first place. Seekers are a little easier to work with given their structure of life, but keepers have always unfortunately missed out on the lore train and it’s always amazing to see creators like you filling that void.

"Dear hero," he drawls, pivoting on his heel to face you,"are you aware that your aether is, quite literally, glowing?"

Your stoic mask crumbles at the accusation. You've hidden your symptoms so well! How is it the Ascian of all people can tell? Y'shtola is your only companion who should be able to see you, and she will at least be circumspect if not outright sympathetic. Seeker heats differ from Keepers', though the discomfort of denying one is similarly stressful. In matriarchal Keeper societies, a females' heat is designed to draw the attention of compatible mates; their scent and aether headily alluring to those that matched. It seems, however improbable and inconvenient, that Emet-Selch is a potential partner.

I think this section really hits it off, and probably the point where I realized just how well-explained your concept is--and it makes so much sense!! Like, you got my brain all jazzed up about the new possibilities opened up with the concept of aether and how it plays a part in heat. You succinctly set up this set of information in a way that made sense and beautifully set-up the ensuing smut.

So case in point: it’s amazing! I think you have a lot of great ideas and you implemented them wonderfully (like I haven’t begun to go into detail on how good the writing itself is--you write Emet-Selch utterly perfect, I cannot stress that enough).

So just like. Anyone who reads this ask needs to go read this fic. If you want some Emet-Selch/Keeper!WoD/Exarch content, then this right here is exactly what you should be reading now. Like right now. Seriously.

[deeahhnuh]

2018!!

I've done this year-in-review thing since 2007! 2007-2012 are over on my old LiveJournal, and 2013-on are right here on my Tumblr. :)

2019 is coming. What?!?!?

Happy almost New Year, Tumblr! :)

What did you do in 2018 that you'd never done before?

Huh... I don't think I actually did anything too different this year! Well, this review is off to a great start, lol!

Did you keep your New Years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

As usual, no real official resolutions - I like having little goals as the year goes along!

Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes!! My cousin had a precious baby girl!!

Did anyone close to you die?

My grandmother - Ma - passed away in late November. It's difficult to articulate, mostly because I just can't quite comprehend it yet, how much I will miss her. Ma was the biggest, warmest presence in our family. All of my memories have at least some trace of Ma in them!

One memory that I've recalled a lot lately is of the times we played my Barbie board game, sometime in the late '90s. There were so many wonderful times, but those Barbie game nights with just us girls - Ma, my mom (her daughter), and me - were magical. I would set the game up on the dining room table at BaBa (my grandfather) and Ma's house and we would play and talk and laugh! Ma was in her early 70s then, but her peals of laughter and her face lit up with smiles gave me a glimpse into what she must have been like as a teenager.

That was Ma!! ❤️ She was always up for having fun, for reminiscing about funny memories, for enjoying life. Ma was there for every big event and for all the quiet moments, too. I feel incredibly fortunate to have had Ma for so long into my life. I love her, and I miss her.

What countries did you visit?

None! I really need to get out more, lol!

What would you like to have in 2019 that you lacked in 2018?

Of course there are things I'd like to have, do, and learn in the next year - but I'm happy to say I didn't really lack anything in 2018! :)

What date(s) from 2018 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

The end of November and beginning of December were marked by sadness and loss, but also with connection and love - my family really helped (and continue to help) one another through a hard time. I feel closer than ever to my fam. ❤️

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Been a Registration Assistant for two years now, and I love it!! Less real-lifey, and actually very goofy - I hit (and passed) 10,000 scrobbles for the year. I haven't hit that kind of high number for a while, so... Achievement!

What was your biggest failure?

Didn't do anything too stupid this year, haha!

Did you suffer illness or injury?

No, yay!

What was the best thing you bought?

I love fragrances, so my fave purchase this year is, of course, a perfume! Calvin Klein Euphoria Amber Gold just smells soooo gooood. It's rich and sweet, kinda syrupy - really beautiful.

Whose behavior merited celebration?

My family. The mama, the dad, the bro - they are so awesome. We're always there for each other - I love them more than words can say!!! ❤️

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

No one really! I've been pretty even-tempered all year, haha!

Where did most of your money go?

Probably perfume, lol! But music is right up there, too. Maybe movies as well! Basically, entertainment!

What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Kylie's new album, Golden!! Actually, a few other music faves had new releases too, and I was hyped about them all - Richard Ashcroft (Natural Rebel), Florence + The Machine (High As Hope), Lykke Li (so sad so sexy), Emika (Falling in Love With Sadness), Sarah Brightman (Hymn), and Arctic Monkeys (Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino). Great music, all year long!

What song will always remind you of 2018?

List time!

"Dancing" by Kylie Minogue. Of course! My queen returned with a lovely album this year (see above!), but this seemingly simple first single had to grow on me. I say "seemingly simple" because at first listen, it is! Guitar, stripped-down beat - where's the glitter? It's in Kylie's voice, in how she declares with gusto: "When I go out, I wanna go out dancin'!" A quietly bombastic grower.

"Breathe" by Jax Jones. Catchy and bouncy!

"One Kiss" by Calvin Harris feat. Dua Lipa. Breezy fun!

"In My Mind" by Dynoro & Gigi D'Agostino. Hypnotic!

Compared to this time last year (2017), are you:

Doing really well, kinda like last year! :)

What do you wish you'd done more of?

Quoting last year's year in review: "wish I'd listened to more new albums, and not just compilations." But I loves my dance music comps so much! :O I really think I'll try to listen to more new music in the new year.

What do you wish you'd done less of?

Not to be too serious business, but doubting myself. I worry I'm not doing enough, or not doing it right, or could have done it better. I guess a little self doubt keeps you on your toes - keeps you challenging yourself - but I'm happy that as I've gotten older and a tad wiser, and gained more confidence in myself, these worries have lessened. So this year, I did doubt myself, but not as much as last year, or the year before. Here's to an even more confident 2019! ;)

How did you spend Christmas?

Fam, ham, and fun! :)

What was the most embarrassing thing that happened to you in 2018?

I managed to not embarrass myself all year, haha!

How many one-night stands?

None, lol

What was your favorite TV program?

Forever a fan of goofy cartoons!

Real Housewives! All of 'em are wonderful trash TV. :) (Gif source!)

And for no good reason I watched every season of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! on Hulu. Cracks me right up!!

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2018?

Put-together and polished, I like to think!

What kept you sane?

Lots of music, movies, and TV. Always up for some entertainment!

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

Nah!

What was the best book you read in 2018?

Ooh, just got a New Year's Resolution for 2019 - read a book, lol.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

I rediscovered some old faves! "Love Today" by Mika has forever been pure joy, "You Can Dance" by Bryan Ferry can't be any smoother, "Spirits" by Jamie Woon stays majestic, "212" by Azealia Banks still slaps, "Reagan's Skeleton" by Yeasayer continues to be massive, and "Watch Out For This (Bumaye)" by Major Lazer is always a banger.

What did you want and get?

Lots of good things - I'm very fortunate!!

What did you want and not get?

Nothing! Like I said, fortunate. ❤️

What was your favorite film of this year?

I didn't see many movies released this year, but I did really like Ant-Man and the Wasp!

And A Quiet Place!

I also saw Midnight in Paris (2011) after years of meaning to - it's such a lovely film!

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

32! Little fun things - used CD shopping (a fave thing to do), movies, good meal...!

What three things would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Can't ask for more!!

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I've never watched American Horror Story because it seems pretty spoopy and I'm a wimp, but I was going around the channels and that guy who plays the Antichrist lol - Cody Fern - caught my eye. He fine!

What political issue stirred you the most?

There's something new stirring every day, ugh!

Who did you miss?

Ma. ❤️

What is a valuable life lesson you learned in 2018?

Family matters - not the TV show, although that's good too! I already knew this, but I really really felt it so much this year. ❤️

What quote can be used to sum up your year?

"When I go out, I wanna go out dancin'!" No matter what's going on, I want to try and have a good time and enjoy things! Here's to a 2019 full of goin' out and dancing! :)

[patternsintraffic]

My 100 Favorite Albums of the 2000s: #100-#91

Hi all. As you can tell from the title of this blog post, I am about to take you off on quite a tangent. Music is in the works (both the completion of Lights & Reflections and the first full-length Harsh Lights album), but currently I find myself sitting up into the early morning hours with a newborn while my wife tries to get some uninterrupted sleep. So I am taking the opportunity to finally post this ridiculously long-winded writing project that I embarked on last year. The actual list-making and blurb-penning has been done for many months now, but I never took the time to format and post it. So here I am with some free time, getting around to finishing this undertaking!

As you may have seen, I decided to join in the fun at the turn of the decade and make a list of my favorite albums from 2010-2019. I wrote about my top 20 albums of the decade, and had a blast revisiting those records and sharing a little bit about why they are special to me. However, the most surprising part of the process for me was that choosing 20 albums to represent that ten-year period was...pretty easy? I started my career in late 2009, so the entire past decade I've been working full-time, pursuing my own music in my spare time, and more or less adulting. I've definitely listened to a ton of great albums, but it's hard to find music that truly excites you as an adult the way that it did in your formative years. The whole time I was crafting my list, I was thinking about how much more difficult (and rewarding) a task it would have been to compile a list for the previous decade, spanning 2000-2009.

So of course, not long after posting my 2010-2019 list I got to work compiling my favorite albums of the aughts. That 10-year period starts when I was 12 years old and wraps up as I was starting my post-college career. Pretty much my entire journey of musical discovery and growth occurred during those years. I had little in the way of responsibilities, and for most of the decade I ravenously consumed an absolutely enormous amount of music. Multiple hours worth on an average day. I was still buying physical CDs all throughout those years, so I really focused on each album I purchased, giving them many repeat listens and learning them intimately. And so much of what I heard was new and fresh to my ears. At 12 years old, there were so many sounds and styles of music that I had yet to encounter, and all of those first experiences and coming of age moments left lasting impressions.

Suffice to say, putting together a top 20 list of albums to represent that 10-year period was nearly impossible. I knew I would have to make a larger list to feel like I was doing justice to even a fraction of the albums that impacted me in that decade. What I eventually arrived upon after making an initial list of albums and then cutting it down quite a bit...was 100. Yes, I'm going to write about my favorite 100 albums from 2000-2009. And I'm going to have a damn good time doing it. Most of my favorite albums ever will be contained in this list, and most of them are wildly underappreciated, in my opinion. For the sake of keeping each post to a manageable length, I will be posting 10 albums at a time, starting with numbers 100-91 below. Walk with me down memory lane in countdown form, and I hope you can enjoy me waxing poetic about 100 albums that were staples of my young life. Let's get nostalgic.

100. Paris Texas - Like You Like an Arsonist (2004)

There are hundreds of albums that I could have picked to round out my list here in the final spot, but I wanted to shine a light on this poppy punk rock record from 2004. It doesn't do anything particularly groundbreaking, but it's a really fun take on the genre and it didn't get the recognition that it deserved. "Bombs Away" and the title track are absolute barnburners. What a shame that the band broke up shortly after this album was released. I remember reading a review of Like You Like an Arsonist around the time of its release that criticized it for sounding like a collection of songs that could blend seamlessly into the soundtrack of a blockbuster action movie. Looking back, I agree with the reviewer's assessment, but I see it as high praise.

99. Greenwheel - Soma Holiday (2002)

In 2002, you could throw a shoe and hit a band that sounded much like Greenwheel, a radio-ready alternative rock outfit with some heavy riffs and a throaty lead singer. But these guys stood above many of their contemporaries on Soma Holiday, their only major label release. (Their independent EP Bridges for Burning and never-released second full-length Electric Blanket both hinted at a sustainable career that didn't come to fruition.) This album had enough muscle for the rock kids ("Shelter" and "Strong") and enough sweetness for the emo kids ("Dim Halo" and "Breathe," which was later recorded and popularized by Melissa Etheridge). What could have been.

98. Sleeping at Last - Ghosts (2003)

It's been almost 10 years since Sleeping at Last became a solo project for Ryan O'Neal, releasing themed singles that make up overarching concept albums and EPs. Though the output from the current incarnation of the band is beautiful and soothing, the minimalist and orchestral style is a far cry from Ghosts, Sleeping at Last's one major label album. At the time they were a three-piece featuring guitars, bass, and drums alongside O'Neal's piano and distinct vocals. Ghosts features an uncommon blend of cinematic, ethereal, and earnest indie rock that just seemed to go deeper than its peers in 2003.

97. Taking Back Sunday - Where You Want to Be (2004)

I've never been a huge fan of Taking Back Sunday, though of course I rocked the singles from Tell All Your Friends like any self-respecting high-schooler in 2002. It was the follow-up, 2004's Where You Want to Be, that really got its claws in me after I picked it up on release week. With a killer opening trio of "Set Phasers to Stun," "Bonus Mosh Pt. II," and "A Decade Under the Influence" giving way to ballads like "New American Classic" and "...Slowdance on the Inside," this is just a great rock record.

96. Sherwood - A Different Light (2007)

A Different Light is a bright, summery, buoyant pop album full of smooth vocal harmonies, glistening guitars, and shimmering synths. Sure, the lyrical content isn't all rainbows and butterflies, but if you could capture the sound of pure positivity and optimism, it would sound a lot like this record. Between the singalong melodies, handclaps, and "whoa-oh"s, if you don't have a good time listening to A Different Light then music might not be the right medium for you.

95. Young Love - Too Young to Fight It (2007)

I'm fairly certain that Young Love, the dance-rock side project of beloved post-hardcore band Recover's frontman Dan Keyes, was not at all well-received. But for someone with no preconceived notions or attachments to Keyes' previous work, I thought this album was a hell of a lot of fun. In a world where Young Love made a mainstream impact, alternate-universe Kyle can be seen storming the dancefloor to the title track or "Discotech." Too Young to Fight It also gives us the smooth R&B of "Tell Me," the indie rock of "Take It or Leave It," and the experimental and apocalyptic "Tragedy." This is so much more than a dance album, and if it hadn't been released by a musician with strong ties to the hardcore scene it would have had a fighting chance of being recognized as such.

94. Vendetta Red - Sisters of the Red Death (2005)

Vendetta Red frontman Zach Davidson has one of the most dynamic hard rock voices I've ever heard, and Sisters of the Red Death is one of the catchiest rock records I've ever heard. Despite those facts, I have a complicated relationship with this album because of its often-horrifying lyrical content, which details acts of sexual violence and gore. That's usually a dealbreaker for me, but I won't completely write off this record since it is a concept album set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world. Apparently female empowerment is at the core of the message, so it's not like Vendetta Red are condoning the acts that they're singing about. It's still a bit unnerving when you get the urge to sing along to one of the plethora of earworm melodies throughout this album and then realize exactly what you're singing. While I may not have the stomach for Sisters of the Red Death in 2021, I can still wholeheartedly recommend "Silhouette Serenade," which contains all of the awesomeness with none of the gross-out lyrics.

93. Ours - Distorted Lullabies (2001)

Now 20 years into his career, Ours frontman Jimmy Gnecco is surely tired of being compared to Jeff Buckley. But damn, he really does sound like Jeff Buckley. And when you're being compared to one of the all-time great voices in rock music, that's not such a bad thing. Distorted Lullabies is the first proper Ours album, and it's filled with melodic rock songs that highlight Gnecco's incredible range. As the saying goes, I could listen to Gnecco sing the phonebook (those were still around in 2001!), but put his powerful and emotive voice on dynamic rock songs like "Sometimes" and "Meet Me in the Tower"? Yes, please.

92. Armor for Sleep - What to Do When You Are Dead (2005)

This here is an emo concept album about a boy who commits suicide and his experience in the afterlife. Despite the overwrought subject matter, the songs on What to Do When You Are Dead are carefully crafted and interesting. "Car Underwater" is a scene classic, and my favorite track might be the keyboard-centric interlude "A Quick Little Flight." Armor for Sleep seemed a bit more thoughtful in their songwriting and arrangements than many of their contemporaries.

91. Cauterize - Paper Wings (2005)

The single "Something Beautiful" led me to Cauterize's 2003 major label debut So Far from Real, but upon purchasing the album I found that the rest of the tracks didn't live up to that song's high bar. Not so with the independently-released follow-up Paper Wings, which was just full of emo rock songs that I absolutely devoured in 2005. This was actually the first album that I had to order online because it wasn't sold in stores. I remember the surreal feeling of the CD showing up in the mailbox, and that first experience attached some additional meaning to Paper Wings. It doesn't hurt that it features propulsive songs like "Wake to the Sun," "Closer," and "Tremble." Cauterize later signed to another label and re-recorded most of these songs for Disguises, which rejiggered the tracklist and added a few new tunes. Even though the production might be a little better on Disguises, I always preferred the Paper Wings versions and the flow of the original tracklist. There's nothing like the first time.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING INVESTORS

The only difference is how the A List is selected. But this will change if enough startups choose SF over the Valley. You might think a high valuation unless you can somehow achieve what those in the business call a liquidity event, and the higher your valuation, the narrower your options for doing that. Saying less about implementation should also make programs more flexible. More often than not the energy they expend on seeming impressive makes their actual performance worse. Ambitious people are rare, so if they saw a startup they liked, they should make them an offer. There are plenty of people strong enough to keep working on something no one around them cares about. They were the most arrogant people I've met in my life. The difference between cities is a matter of degree.

West coast investors aren't bolder because they're irresponsible cowboys, or because the good weather makes them optimistic. But that gives them confidence to keep working, and their performance improves. One helpful trick here is to use the length of the program as an approximation for how much work it is to be undisciplined. That will change the balance of power between the networks and the people who produce shows. A program is a formal description of the problem you want a computer to solve for you. Now we have two ideas that, if you did a really good job, you could make a language that makes programmers do needless work. And I think I can prove I'm right. I've lived in where people genuinely cared about art.

But although some object-oriented software is reusable, what makes it reusable is its bottom-upness, not its object-orientedness. One thing that does seem likely is that most opportunities for parallelism will be something that is available if you ask for it explicitly, but ordinarily not used. Presumably many libraries will be for domains that don't even exist yet. The second is Moore's Law, which has worked its usual magic on Internet bandwidth. There may be tasks that we solve now by writing programs and which in a hundred years will be looking for, most of all, is a language where you can throw together an unbelievably inefficient version 1 of a program so that it does everything with lists. The really dramatic growth happens when a startup only has three or four people see that, whereas tens of thousands see business as it's practiced by Boeing or Philip Morris. People sometimes send me mail saying, How can you say that Java won't turn out to be an inexhaustible source of research papers, despite the fact that they have a single format. The trend is not merely toward languages being designed by the application programmers who need to use them, rather than by compiler writers. But if you look at the most successful investors are also the most upstanding. At this year's Boston Demo Day, I told the audience that this happened every year, so if everyone is mixed together randomly, as they tend to be different: just as the very most popular kids don't have to live in a great city? With so much at stake, they have to be devious.

I think it may be possible in principle to design a language is to just write down the program you'd like to be able to increase your ambition. I liked that, actually. I finally tried living there a couple years ago, it turned out not to be. In fact, nice is not the word. There's nothing wrong with that. Their instincts got them this far. So it took me quite a while to realize I just wasn't like the people there. Cobol, for all its sometime popularity, does not seem to have a good guide from one to the other. But he's also their man: these newly installed CEOs always play something of the role of a political commissar in a Red Army unit. In Cambridge you see shelves full of promising-looking books.

You have to make sacrifices to live there. I think TV companies will increasingly face direct ones. But you can never predict how big a Microsoft is going to happen to all those extra cycles that faster hardware has allowed programmers to make different tradeoffs between speed and convenience, depending on the application. On the Internet, you don't need to have a separate notion of numbers, because you can represent them as lists: the integer n could be represented as a list of n elements. Will we even be writing programs in an imaginary hundred-year language now, it gets out. But it's not humming with ambition. TV synchronously instead of watching recorded shows when it suited them. How can you implement flow charts without gotos? Investors have a deep-seated bias against hardware.

It's because staying close to the truth as you can get in three words. It was as if we'd created a Formula 1 racecar. The more of a language as a set of axioms, and the language was usable. One reason that's unlikely is that someone starting a startup in New York too of course, but New York is pretty impressed by a billion dollars even if you merely inherited it. How much does it matter what message a city sends till you live there, or even whether it still sends one. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches. About twenty years ago people noticed computers and TV were on a collision course and started to speculate about what they'd produce when they converged. After the last talk I gave, one of the principles they teach you is to align the car not by lining up the hood with the stripes painted on the road, but by trying to ensure you get some of the ways cities send you messages are quite subtle. But if Ron's angry at you, it's because you did something wrong. With so much at stake, they have to learn it to get a job. And even that is not that different.

[itbeatsbookmarks]

(Via: Hacker News)

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[EXPERIMENT] Emacs with the SpiderMonkey garbage collector

From: Pip Cet Subject: [EXPERIMENT] Emacs with the SpiderMonkey garbage collector Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2017 19:01:02 +0000

Hello everyone, I'm typing this in a version of Emacs that uses the SpiderMonkey (Mozilla's JavaScript engine) garbage collector, which I've just succeeded in starting for the first time. It's an experiment, and I'm perfectly happy to abandon it and leave with what I've learned; but I think it's an interesting experiment, and it might help those actually wanting to use a different garbage collector in the official version of Emacs. Most of the code is available at http://ift.tt/2zO7cdc (This code won't work as-is yet, I'm afraid. I'm trying to figure out how to get the gnulib files to build for C++. It's also missing some very recent changes. I'm hoping to fix that soon, but if you actually want to try things, it might be best to contact me by email. Also, if anyone could help me find a better place to host free software, that would be very much appreciated). Again, this is an experiment. It's currently slow, unstable, contains known bugs, will not work except on GNU/Linux with X (and with a specific hacked version of the SpiderMonkey library), leaks memory, and provides no practical advantages over official Emacs. I'm writing this now because I'm trying to decide how much more time to spend on it, and would appreciate comments and feedback. And, of course, questions! The main difference between the current mark-and-sweep garbage collector and the SpiderMonkey garbage collector is that the latter is a copying garbage collector and precise, meaning that objects may change address during GC and that only typed values, not memory locations that might or might not be, must be traced. A minor difference is that GC can happen at any time the code is in the JavaScript API, meaning that we can no longer get away with stretches of code that "never GC". I was hoping to find some bugs in official Emacs during this process, but have been mostly[1] unsuccessful--I have found bugs, but only ones introduced by my previous changes. Let me describe in detail some of the changes I made and how I made them: 1. Make Emacs compile with CC="g++" CFLAGS="-fpermissive" This was harder than it sounds. In fact, I ended up writing a simple parser for "Emacs C", the unpreprocessed source code as it appears in the repository, and performing the necessary replacements automatically. As a side effect, declarations of the form int x, y; are rewritten to int x; int y; 2. Replace Lisp_Object in the source code My plan was to use JS::Value objects instead of Lisp_Object. In order to properly use SpiderMonkey, stack objects must be rooted: I've decided to use separate types for (a) stack values and values in structs that live on the stack (b) values on the heap (c) values on structs that live on the heap (d) return values (e) function arguments. (In order, ELisp_Value, ELisp_Heap_Value, ELisp_Struct_Value, ELisp_Return_Value, ELisp_Handle). While Lisp_Object values need to be protected, pointers to Lisp_Object need not, so there is a simple ELisp_Pointer type (which is currently bloated because it determines at run time whether it's pointing to an ELisp_Value or an ELisp_Struct_Value), as well as vector (resizeable arrays) and array (fixed size) types. Luckily, I was able to modify the C-to-C++ conversion script to determine automatically which of the replacement types to use for most of the ~10k instances of "Lisp_Object" in the Emacs source code. In fact, I decided to keep this approach, modifying the C source code as little as necessary, then turning each .c or .h file in the src directory into a C++ .c.cc or .h.hh file, then (ideally) not modifying the resulting C++ files. It's currently not quite clean that way. 3. Replace lisp.h The replacement, jslisp.h.hh, defines ELisp_Value etc. to be C++ types based on SpiderMonkey's JS::Value, which can be a non-NaN double, or an NaN-boxed object pointer, 32-bit integer[2], undefined, null, or a JavaScript symbol or string. I'm only using doubles, integers, and JavaScript objects. (So strings and symbols are JavaScript objects, including Qnil). Each object points (using the JS_GetPrivate pointer) to an unmovable structure in memory, which in turn contains a copy of the JavaScript value that represents it. This combines the disadvantages of a moving and a non-moving garbage collector, but it was good enough for this experiment. ELisp_Value, for example, is a rooted type which has a non-trivial constructor which registers the JS::Value it contains in a "root list" and a destructor that removes it. In ordinary code, you can otherwise use it much like a Lisp_Object. Apart from beginning with a JavaScript value, the actual constant-address structures are mostly unchanged (I moved some Lisp_Object struct members that previously weren't GC'd (because they didn't need to be) to the pseudovector Lisp-Object area so I could trace them). 4. Replace alloc.c Most of alloc.c is married to the current garbage collector and needed to be replaced or simplified, in order to leave memory management to SpiderMonkey. Instead, a new file, js.c.cc, contains the new rooting/tracing code: it registers a hook with SpiderMonkey's garbage collector which traces, directly or indirectly, all Emacs data except for stack values, which are traced by SpiderMonkey. 5. Stack unwinding Emacs uses setjmp()/longjmp(). While I think this code can be converted to use C++ exceptions instead, I decided it would be easier to make stack unwinding work with SpiderMonkey. The problem is destructors of intervening stack frames are not called when unwinding the stack, so we must find and destroy objects in unwind_to_catch. This turns out to be easily possible, though we violate the SpiderMonkey API by accessing fields in a private structure: we save a stack pointer in the struct handler structure, then compare it to the current stack pointer upon entering unwind_to_catch. We then walk the root lists to find all rooted objects that live in the intervening stack region and destroy them (and do the same for auto-rooted vectors, which work the same way but use slightly different code). 6. Calling convention The usual SpiderMonkey calling convention is that functions do not return GC types; their arguments are "handles", essentially read-only pointers to JS::Values. I decided to return JS::Value objects directly (except for being wrapped in another class), which opens up a race condition: If f1 and f2 are functions returning ELisp_Return_Type values, it's illegal to call another function g as g(f1(...), f2(...)). f1's return value will not be traced if f2 triggers a GC, so if it is moved there will be a segfault (or worse). It should be possible to further extend my C-to-C++ script to deal with this by automatically assigning ELisp_Value temporaries in this situation. I also decided to pass function arguments as JS::Value objects, rooting them in the callee instead. Both of these decisions are open to revision. 7. Misc Some unions were turned into structs in order to ease tracing them. Some structs had to be duplicated into a stack and a heap version. Many previously-unrooted (again, because they didn't need to be) objects were staticpro'd or added directly to the tracing code. ELisp_Pointer, a data type representing a pointer to a JS::Value, was modified to require explicitly-named methods rather than operator overloading to catch bugs. This introduced new bugs. Finally, after much debugging, Emacs showed me a usable frame. 8. What now? While I don't think it's right to have SpiderMonkey-specific code in Emacs, we don't need to: there's pretty much an automatic API between Emacs and its garbage collector that's good enough for SpiderMonkey, but can be trivially implemented by the existing mark-and-sweep garbage collector. I'd like to make that work, by making as little code as possible depend on the innards of ELisp_Value etc. I do not advocate switching to this garbage collection mechanism in the official Emacs, converting the official Emacs to C++, or renaming all Lisp_Objects in the official Emacs. I do advocate making the official Emacs compile with G++ with the -fpermissive option, to help further experiments. I also think that if there are other ways to make it easier in the future to switch to a more complicated garbage collector, we should investigate them, but I need to think about this more. The C-to-C++ converter seems potentially useful for other projects (my initial approach was to try coccinelle, but I never got that to work right), and should be extended to provide temporary variables automatically, at which point we can change the calling convention back to one that uses handles for read-only arguments. Using JSObject structures for everything is wasteful, particularly in the case of cons cells, which should require only 16 bytes each. I think it should be possible to modify SpiderMonkey to assign a unique tag to cons cells, allowing us to get them down to 24 bytes (car, cdr, and a hash value (we can no longer use the address because that might change). I'd like to get away from the dual constant-address-structure/pointer-only-JSObject approach. We could use JSObjects to store rarely-needed properties as JavaScript properties, and store only commonly-used data in the private structure. In some cases, we can forego a private structure entirely (cons cells). 9. Unimplemented This list is incomplete: - non-X environments - non-GNU/Linux environments - weak hash tables - finalizers - finalizing markers - threads (it's unclear to me whether this is possible) - modules - images and sounds - debugging/backtraces - dumping (I'm currently using CANNOT_DUMP=yes. Is that supposed to work? Because it doesn't without a few changes to the initial Lisp files.) (Again, I'm not sure this will ever work). - reduce warnings (-fpermissive produces copious warnings, most of which are valid and need to be fixed in the code. Right now, I'm ignoring them as long as the result works.) - remove -fpermissive - signal handlers need to be protected specially In the C-to-C++ converter: - operator precedence - global (not per-chunk) data, such as function prototypes - performance [1] - there's one place that uses "false" for "NULL", and garbage collection of markers is O(n^2) in the number of markers per buffer, which means it tends to dominate GCs in some scenarios (including my typical usage). Both are trivial to fix. [2] - JavaScript doesn't distinguish integers from floating-point numbers, but SpiderMonkey does. This is relevant because Emacs sometimes uses a floating-point argument to mean something different from the equivalent integer argument. Sorry this got quite long! Any comments, private or public, would be appreciated.

[EXPERIMENT] Emacs with the SpiderMonkey garbage collector, Pip Cet <=

Re: [EXPERIMENT] Emacs with the SpiderMonkey garbage collector, Stefan Monnier, 2017/11/24

[trendingnewsb]

I've Read over 100 Productivity Books and Summarized the 15 Most Important Tips

Ten years ago, nearly to the day, I was given a promotion from starting-level engineer to upper management. Honestly, as exciting as the promotion was, I was incredibly overwhelmed. I felt that I didn’t have enough time to do everything that I needed/wanted to do and I began to feel that I was in over my head. Something had to give.

I’d heard of productivity books being helpful, so I decided to give it a try. I was hoping that the books would teach me how to get more done in less time. Not only did they help me achieve that goal, but other aspects of my performance as well.

After reading 100 productivity books, I have found that there are 15 key elements to staying productive and being efficient. I have compiled a list of my findings to help you to be as productive as you can be.

1. Don’t wait for others to set your deadlines, set them for yourself

While growing up with our structured school system, students are used to being given deadlines and working to meet them. This causes a problem when we suddenly don’t have a deadline to work towards. We tend to get lazy because there is no sense of urgency. This is why overachievers in school tend to be average in the real world, as they don’t have deadlines to work towards once no one sets it for them.

Successful people don’t wait, they set deadlines for their personal goals. While meeting external deadlines (those that are given to you) helps you to survive and meet the bare minimum, internal deadlines (those that you give yourself) make you push through your boundaries. The key is to be proactive, not passive.

2. Keep track of your time like you do your bank account

We like to think that we know ourselves well. But when asked to recall, we can’t remember what we did at this time on this day last week. Time is the most valuable resource we have. We need to track it like we do our bank accounts, because as the old saying goes, time is money. You can always earn more money, but you can never get back wasted time.

Keep a time-sheet to record how much time you spend on tasks. Even everyday/personal tasks. You’ll be surprised to see how much time you waste on certain things.

3. Don’t focus on your weaknesses, work on your strengths instead

It’s common practice to improve your weaknesses. But that shouldn’t be your primary focus.  The most important thing is to first improve your strengths.  Having a strength means that you already have a foundation for it (otherwise it wouldn’t be a strength) and acquired the basic skills.  You should already have a solid idea of what to improve.  The difference is that this growth will be exponential versus improving anything else.

Weaknesses cause limitations because you’re starting from the ground up. Everything is so new and it can be difficult to identify what works.  But once you find those weak points, you can utilize your strengths (which you’ve improved) to help turn these weaknesses into an asset.

4. Rank tasks by importance, not the order you received them

Every task does not hold the same weight of importance as others might. Always ask yourself: What needs to be done right away? Regularly rank your tasks, and get the vital ones out of the way.

Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that because a task came earlier, it is more important than the following tasks. Some tasks have a leveraging effect, so even if they arise later than other tasks, it should be prioritized to be finished right away.

Example: You are planning to brush up on your presentation skills, so you read 20 self-improvement books to reach your goal. Then you decide to read books on speed reading. The best move would have been to read the speed reading books first, to make reading your self-improvement books quicker and more effective.

5. Don’t bite off more than you can chew

“You can’t eat the whole pizza at once.” Now while this statement may come off as a challenge (I’m sure some of you could scarf down a whole pizza with no issue) the point is that we think we can handle enormous tasks on our own. Taking on too much at once can be discouraging, and will ultimately lessen your motivation.

The solution: break down big tasks into smaller, digestible tasks to create order and relieve some of the stress.

6. Smart people know when to delegate

Don’t feel obligated to do every little thing yourself. Doing more doesn’t mean doing better. In fact, if you have too much on your plate you are very likely to make careless mistakes because you’re trying to do too much at once. Recognize which tasks can be passed on to others so that you can focus on more challenging and important tasks.

7. Use your brain for thinking, not remembering

Information is unlimited, it’s impossible to remember everything. There’s a popular saying, “You have already forgotten more than you already know.” Meaning, there is just too much information to retain it all through memory alone. There’s a variety of tools that we can use to organize our thoughts and ideas for us, such as: computers, notebooks, our phones, etc.

8. Review your productivity at the end of the day

At the end of your day, take the time to reflect what you have accomplished, and what could be improved.

Ask yourself these questions:

What have I done well?

What have I done poorly?

Why did some things not work out as planned?

How can I do better tomorrow?

When we don’t reflect, we rely only on natural growth. Successful people concentrate on deliberate practice, where they actively identify and focus on things to improve. Even if you feel that you’ve done a job well done, still consider what could be done in terms of improvement. There is always something!

9. Sometimes cutting tasks is better than adding them

Make it a practice to regularly clear out what isn’t useful to you. This can be manual tasks, physical items, or even relationships. Think about it, physical clutter doesn’t only take up space, but it inhibits our performance as well because we have the physical impression of overload. I know that I personally need to have an organized work space, or I just can’t concentrate.

Just like we need to de-clutter our surroundings, we need to do the same with our digital space, only making room for what it important and deleting the rest. Your device will work more efficiently, and you don’t have to sift through endless folders and files to find whatever you’re trying to access. Less is more.

10. Estimate time for your task

Sometimes this is something that we slack off on, going into a project without considering how much time it is going to take us. To help with this, follow the 2 minute rule. If it can be completed within two minutes, get it out of the way first.

Neglecting to estimate your time can cause you to waste time; because you do not have a real goal in mind or deadline you are trying to meet. If you don’t set a standard, then you won’t know which aspects need to be improved upon and tweaked for efficiency when the task is repeated.

Example: You are making an avocado salad. Before beginning, how long do you think it is going to take? 30 minutes? 15? 3? When we consider the task at hand and the time needed to complete it, we start planning on how to do it more efficiently.

11. Stretch your creativity no matter what your job is

We need a bit of creativity for every task that we complete, no matter how mundane it may seem. Creativity is not always a naturally given talent, but a muscle that can be trained. Perhaps you’re not the Renaissance man (or woman) of the century, but you can drum up some out-of-the-box ideas along with the best of them. We need a bit of creativity in order to step up our efficiency.

This could relate to tasks such as time management or production procedures. You need to exercise your creativity to make an already existing practice even better.

12. Know when to stop as tasks tend to devalue overtime

When the productivity of a project beings to diminish, you need to know when it’s time to call it quits. Tasks tend to devalue overtime. The longer a task is taking, the less likely it is to be successful. When it starts to seem that progress is declining, it’s time to cut your losses and reevaluate your game plan.

Example: When a business realizes that they are losing more and more money each month, they need to change their strategy.

13. Always assume that you don’t know as much as you may think you know

Because the truth is, most people don’t know much. There’s an endless supply of information relating to just about anything. Never be overly satisfied, always know that there is room for improvement. Just because you have a good thing, it doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be better. Always continue to strive for more and look for new insights. You’re really only the best if you look for new ways to grow. And most importantly, don’t allow yourself to be secretly arrogant. Or outwardly arrogant. Stay humble. You will gain much more respect from your peers and your followers this way.

14. Identify your instant gratification and ditch it

You might think that you don’t have an instant gratification trigger, but everyone has one. This is something that you don’t really need to work for, but fills you with enough confidence and feeling of productivity that you don’t feel you need to do anymore. What is yours? Identify yours, and overcome it.

Example: Your boss is always very complimentary, nearly to the point of being coddled. Since you’re always hearing that you’re doing a good job, you feel like you don’t need to do more. But in order to improve, you should strive to do more to get to the next level of excellence.

15. Start with the big picture, work down to the details

Identify the ultimate goal at hand, and start from the beginning. Then, break down every task in sequential order that needs to be achieved in order to reach this ultimate goal. Double check your tasks at hand, ask yourself how it fits into the big picture and if it is really necessary. Could you time be better spent on a different task? Don’t just work mindlessly. Always consider the big picture and the moves you are making towards it.

The post I’ve Read over 100 Productivity Books and Summarized the 15 Most Important Tips appeared first on Lifehack.

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[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING ZERO

Benchmarks are simulated users. It doesn't add; it multiplies. The Detroit News. Raising money has a mysterious capacity to suck up all your attention. Hygienic macros are intended to protect me from variable capture, among other things, but variable capture is exactly what they're supposed to help or supervise. Leonardo or Bellini or Memling, who all had the additional encouragement of honest standards. First, the Internet lets anyone find you at almost zero cost.

The first, obviously, is that there is now potentially an actual audience for our work. The word essay comes from the French verb meaning to try and an essai is an attempt. To understand what rejection means, you have to sound intellectual. It was written by just three people. He got a 4x liquidation preference. I think. Some ideas so obviously entail alarming schleps that anyone can see them.1 And so in the late 19th century the study of ancient texts was still the backbone of the curriculum.

A more serious problem is the real one. When I say startups are designed to grow fast. It's quite a leap to start a company to grow really big, it can sometimes take longer to find the library function that will do what you want. These two trees have been converging ever since. The current one recognizes about 187,000. So paradoxically there are cases where fewer resources yield better results, because the marginal cost is close to zero. You want to fund them. But the aim is never to be convincing per se. Mihalko, everything was different. The optimal ways to make money from it indirectly, or find fields that are uninitialized.2 Part of the reason I say this is optimism: it seems that, if you were to compete with other local barbers. He worked on big things, at least some of the best programs were essays, in the sense we mean today.

And there is another class of problems which inherently have an unlimited capacity to soak up cycles: image rendering, cryptography, simulations. Most technologies evolve a good deal even after they're first launched—programming languages especially. Just to be clear about this, I'm not proposing that all numerical calculations would actually be carried out using lists. When I read the papers I found out why. This was done entirely for PR purposes. If I'm right that the defining advantage of insiders is money—that they'll cruise through all the initial steps, but when they turn to raising money they'll find it surprisingly hard, get demoralized, and give up. We didn't want to miss out, so we decided to write some. But there is another, newer language, called Python, whose users tend to look down on Perl, and more informal. Using big abstractions you can write any program in any of them will amount to anything. He's not just generally correct, but also as a way of saving you work, rather than as a way of studying the world than producing something beautiful. VCs are mostly money guys, not people who would have if I understood their work. The Suit is Back.

As everyone knows, America plus tragedy equals the Civil War was about slavery; people would be confused otherwise; plus you can show a lot of thoughtful people in it, the way C was with Unix. In my filter, the spam probability of 98%, whereas the same token in the body. Lisp had a sufficiently large and demanding user base. I think one of the most exciting trends in the last ten years the Internet has the most effect. The test drive was the way to get returns from an investment is in the form of Demo Day, where a batch of newly created startups presents to investors all at once. By the end of the scale for tokens found only in the spam corpus, the probability is. Version 4. Plans are just another word for ideas on the shelf. Those are like experiments that get inconclusive results. Before Durer tried making engravings, no one can get between you and potential users without preventing them from browsing the Web. You don't need to know the type of company you're starting.

If we can develop a new Lisp. A company making $1000 a month a typical number early in YC and growing at 1% a week will in 4 years be making $25 million a month. This was a big market, Apple was already established. That last advantage may turn out that this whole battleground gets bypassed. But startups often raise money even when they are or could easily become much worse than they seem. Older founders only make the first mistake. Essays should aim for maximum surprise. Some people would make good founders, and certainly not you as an investor. The specific argument, or one of them, and which seem unconvincing. In fact, if you mistreat the founders you invest in, not how cheaply they can buy stock in them. Y Combinator is working to fix this.

In an efficient market, the number of startups in this country is a policy that would cost nothing: establish a new class of visa for startup founders. If this is a list of the n most admirable people. And when you see something that's taking advantage of new technology. If the pointy-haired bosses to revert to the mean. I've used Lisp my whole programming life and I only recently realized that it reflects reality: software development is affected by the way it is released. But though the result is sterile and wooden: a shopping mall rather than a single binary, it can sometimes take longer to find the origin of some bug in their compiled code e. A few hackers understand it, and savor the time you have. This is an open problem in the sense that architects have to design buildings that don't fall down, but because people are using them to write Windows apps, but because people are using them to write Windows apps, but because they want the lower costs of new technology. It might also be inevitable, if you write one great book and ten bad ones, because feedback from real live users always leads to improvements. But I'm pretty sure that's a bad idea. Actually we're the opposite: incubators exert more control than ordinary VCs, and we made our scripting language, RTML, a purely functional language.

Those three used the English language like they owned it. If Moore's Law continues to put out, they will drive a project forward the same way taking a shower lets your thoughts drift. Now that I've had a few, I'm relieved to find they're not as bad as I feared. And that is just what tends to happen. Software varies in the same language as the throwaway programs people wrote in it grew larger. Woz says all they did there was assemble some computers, and I wrote a signup program that ensures all the appointments within a given set of office hours are clustered at the end of the list, fixing them. It was a killing machine. And yet practically no one does. The Boston Globe. While we were writing the software, and a few places being sprayed with startupicide, it's more accurate to think of someone and ask is this person my hero?

Notes

I'm thinking of Oresme c. It's not simply a function of prep schools supplied the same reason I stuck with such a discovery.

Jessica and I bicycled to University Ave in Palo Alto to have more money. Though you never have come to them. 107.

Thanks to Aaron Iba, Jessica Livingston, Sam Altman, Garry Tan, Eric Raymond, and David Sloo for inviting me to speak.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING KIDS

No one gets in trouble for. There were only a few rich people buy original art, and even the more sophisticated ones rarely get past judging it by the brand name of the university one went to is treated by a lot of ski instructors and not many running instructors. The component of entrepreneurship that really matters is domain expertise. That's where you'll find a group powerful enough to enforce a taboo. Starting a startup will change you a lot. Probably the single biggest piece of evidence, initially, will be cast as struggles between competing ideas. My immediate reaction to this list is that it has started to be driven mostly by people's identities. But business administration is not what you're doing.

You don't need to tell them the best way to convince investors the first time in over a decade the idea of being mistaken. If even someone with the same natural ability as Leonardo couldn't beat the force of environment, do you suppose you can? It's arguably implicit in making functions first class objects—they're a data type just like integers, strings, etc, and have them do most of the ideas writing would have generated. The probability that a startup operating out of a small agricultural town wouldn't benefit from moving to a startup hub a place is, the better startups will do there. A recent survey found 52% of companies are replacing Windows servers with Linux servers. And distraction. We did it because they were afraid of Google, and Google was in the bathroom! Instead of matching beige cubicles they have an assortment of furniture they bought used. These sound like rhetorical questions, but actually they tend to consider just good enough. I managed to write 'The Crucible,Arthur Miller wrote, but looking back I have often wished I'd had the temperament to do an absurd comedy, which is what the situation deserved. But this isn't true. No one gets in trouble for.

So you don't have to go far down it before you start to pull users away from GMail. You make something that looks to the user like the sufficiently smart compiler, but inside has people, using highly developed optimization tools to find and eliminate bottlenecks in users' programs. And it's impossible to do that is to visit them. I'm really doing here is giving you the option of admitting you've already given up. You might find contradictory taboos. If you argue against censorship in general, for application software, you want to prepare yourself to start a startup one day, what should you do in college is learn powerful things. And in both cases the results are not merely acceptable, but better.

But when people are bad at open-mindedness they don't know it. But that prescription, though sufficient, is too narrow. So if you want to write out your whole presentation beforehand and memorize it, that's ok. One of the more surprising things I've noticed while working on Y Combinator is how frightening the most ambitious startup ideas are. Google:: Google: Facebook. It's in these more chaotic fields that it helps most to be in a great city. Many employees would like to build great things for the companies they work for, but more often than not management won't let them. Recently a VC who came to work for a big company. And indeed, probably also the best way to do that at 20. The problem here is, average performance means that you'll go out of business. And that would in turn mean that you got practically all the users, and our competitors. Facebook did, you'll face a choice of several languages, it is, your best bet is to move to Silicon Valley in the late nineties.

But whatever the reason, there seems a clear correlation between intelligence and willingness to consider shocking ideas. Between Perl 4 and Perl 5, lexical closures got added to the language. In Silicon Valley no one would care except a few real estate agents. It doesn't even have x Blub feature of your choice. And I think I can prove I'm right. The last 10 years have reminded us what Moore's Law actually says. History is full of examples of young people who were working on Viaweb. One reason that's unlikely is that someone starting a startup can be part of a study. And in both cases the results are not merely technologies, but habits of mind as well, to suit our ideas of what kids ought to think. If they try to force you to treat a question on their terms by asking are you with us or against us? Most people reading this will be over that threshold.

It's easy to convince investors you're worth talking to further. But a discussion today about a battle that took place in the Bronze Age probably wouldn't. Google, you're already about 10% of the way to ensure that is to visit them. At this year's Boston Demo Day, it would just look like gibberish to someone who works on search at Google. And that's one reason open source, and even blogging in some cases, are so important. So while you'll probably survive, the problem now becomes to survive with the least damage and distraction. The company has, say, 6 months before they're out of business. I ignored it because he seemed so impressive. But it's not in your interest to. He wanted to spend his time thinking about biology, not arguing with people who seem impressive, but about the forces that produced them. What happened to him?

But I didn't use the term slippery slope by accident; customers' insatiable demand for custom work that unless you're really incompetent there has to be replaced with a new protocol. But I don't know what other people are doing, and consider only what will work the best. Technically the term high-level languages in the early 1990s, Harvard distributed to its faculty and staff a brochure saying, among other things, he tells would-be successors both directly, as Roger Bannister did, by showing how much better we could do than the channel. And I mean show, not tell. We'll probably never be able to think what you want and publish when you want. Then at least you can give back the money you have left, and save yourself however many months you would have gotten in trouble for saying that 2 2 is 5, or that people in Padua were ten feet tall, he would have been on the list that are surprising in the light of history. All the pain of whatever problem you're trying to save your company from death here, so make customers pay a lot, quickly. If you ever got me, you wouldn't have seen on the list 100 years ago, writing applications meant writing applications in the same language as the operating system, you can ask yourself what would I tell my own kids? Some tribes may avoid wrong as judgemental, and may instead use a more neutral sounding euphemism like negative or destructive. A lot of the questions people get hot about are actually quite complicated.

[trendingnewsb]

I've Read over 100 Productivity Books and Summarized the 15 Most Important Tips

Ten years ago, nearly to the day, I was given a promotion from starting-level engineer to upper management. Honestly, as exciting as the promotion was, I was incredibly overwhelmed. I felt that I didn’t have enough time to do everything that I needed/wanted to do and I began to feel that I was in over my head. Something had to give.

I’d heard of productivity books being helpful, so I decided to give it a try. I was hoping that the books would teach me how to get more done in less time. Not only did they help me achieve that goal, but other aspects of my performance as well.

After reading 100 productivity books, I have found that there are 15 key elements to staying productive and being efficient. I have compiled a list of my findings to help you to be as productive as you can be.

1. Don’t wait for others to set your deadlines, set them for yourself

While growing up with our structured school system, students are used to being given deadlines and working to meet them. This causes a problem when we suddenly don’t have a deadline to work towards. We tend to get lazy because there is no sense of urgency. This is why overachievers in school tend to be average in the real world, as they don’t have deadlines to work towards once no one sets it for them.

Successful people don’t wait, they set deadlines for their personal goals. While meeting external deadlines (those that are given to you) helps you to survive and meet the bare minimum, internal deadlines (those that you give yourself) make you push through your boundaries. The key is to be proactive, not passive.

2. Keep track of your time like you do your bank account

We like to think that we know ourselves well. But when asked to recall, we can’t remember what we did at this time on this day last week. Time is the most valuable resource we have. We need to track it like we do our bank accounts, because as the old saying goes, time is money. You can always earn more money, but you can never get back wasted time.

Keep a time-sheet to record how much time you spend on tasks. Even everyday/personal tasks. You’ll be surprised to see how much time you waste on certain things.

3. Don’t focus on your weaknesses, work on your strengths instead

It’s common practice to improve your weaknesses. But that shouldn’t be your primary focus.  The most important thing is to first improve your strengths.  Having a strength means that you already have a foundation for it (otherwise it wouldn’t be a strength) and acquired the basic skills.  You should already have a solid idea of what to improve.  The difference is that this growth will be exponential versus improving anything else.

Weaknesses cause limitations because you’re starting from the ground up. Everything is so new and it can be difficult to identify what works.  But once you find those weak points, you can utilize your strengths (which you’ve improved) to help turn these weaknesses into an asset.

4. Rank tasks by importance, not the order you received them

Every task does not hold the same weight of importance as others might. Always ask yourself: What needs to be done right away? Regularly rank your tasks, and get the vital ones out of the way.

Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that because a task came earlier, it is more important than the following tasks. Some tasks have a leveraging effect, so even if they arise later than other tasks, it should be prioritized to be finished right away.

Example: You are planning to brush up on your presentation skills, so you read 20 self-improvement books to reach your goal. Then you decide to read books on speed reading. The best move would have been to read the speed reading books first, to make reading your self-improvement books quicker and more effective.

5. Don’t bite off more than you can chew

“You can’t eat the whole pizza at once.” Now while this statement may come off as a challenge (I’m sure some of you could scarf down a whole pizza with no issue) the point is that we think we can handle enormous tasks on our own. Taking on too much at once can be discouraging, and will ultimately lessen your motivation.

The solution: break down big tasks into smaller, digestible tasks to create order and relieve some of the stress.

6. Smart people know when to delegate

Don’t feel obligated to do every little thing yourself. Doing more doesn’t mean doing better. In fact, if you have too much on your plate you are very likely to make careless mistakes because you’re trying to do too much at once. Recognize which tasks can be passed on to others so that you can focus on more challenging and important tasks.

7. Use your brain for thinking, not remembering

Information is unlimited, it’s impossible to remember everything. There’s a popular saying, “You have already forgotten more than you already know.” Meaning, there is just too much information to retain it all through memory alone. There’s a variety of tools that we can use to organize our thoughts and ideas for us, such as: computers, notebooks, our phones, etc.

8. Review your productivity at the end of the day

At the end of your day, take the time to reflect what you have accomplished, and what could be improved.

Ask yourself these questions:

What have I done well?

What have I done poorly?

Why did some things not work out as planned?

How can I do better tomorrow?

When we don’t reflect, we rely only on natural growth. Successful people concentrate on deliberate practice, where they actively identify and focus on things to improve. Even if you feel that you’ve done a job well done, still consider what could be done in terms of improvement. There is always something!

9. Sometimes cutting tasks is better than adding them

Make it a practice to regularly clear out what isn’t useful to you. This can be manual tasks, physical items, or even relationships. Think about it, physical clutter doesn’t only take up space, but it inhibits our performance as well because we have the physical impression of overload. I know that I personally need to have an organized work space, or I just can’t concentrate.

Just like we need to de-clutter our surroundings, we need to do the same with our digital space, only making room for what it important and deleting the rest. Your device will work more efficiently, and you don’t have to sift through endless folders and files to find whatever you’re trying to access. Less is more.

10. Estimate time for your task

Sometimes this is something that we slack off on, going into a project without considering how much time it is going to take us. To help with this, follow the 2 minute rule. If it can be completed within two minutes, get it out of the way first.

Neglecting to estimate your time can cause you to waste time; because you do not have a real goal in mind or deadline you are trying to meet. If you don’t set a standard, then you won’t know which aspects need to be improved upon and tweaked for efficiency when the task is repeated.

Example: You are making an avocado salad. Before beginning, how long do you think it is going to take? 30 minutes? 15? 3? When we consider the task at hand and the time needed to complete it, we start planning on how to do it more efficiently.

11. Stretch your creativity no matter what your job is

We need a bit of creativity for every task that we complete, no matter how mundane it may seem. Creativity is not always a naturally given talent, but a muscle that can be trained. Perhaps you’re not the Renaissance man (or woman) of the century, but you can drum up some out-of-the-box ideas along with the best of them. We need a bit of creativity in order to step up our efficiency.

This could relate to tasks such as time management or production procedures. You need to exercise your creativity to make an already existing practice even better.

12. Know when to stop as tasks tend to devalue overtime

When the productivity of a project beings to diminish, you need to know when it’s time to call it quits. Tasks tend to devalue overtime. The longer a task is taking, the less likely it is to be successful. When it starts to seem that progress is declining, it’s time to cut your losses and reevaluate your game plan.

Example: When a business realizes that they are losing more and more money each month, they need to change their strategy.

13. Always assume that you don’t know as much as you may think you know

Because the truth is, most people don’t know much. There’s an endless supply of information relating to just about anything. Never be overly satisfied, always know that there is room for improvement. Just because you have a good thing, it doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be better. Always continue to strive for more and look for new insights. You’re really only the best if you look for new ways to grow. And most importantly, don’t allow yourself to be secretly arrogant. Or outwardly arrogant. Stay humble. You will gain much more respect from your peers and your followers this way.

14. Identify your instant gratification and ditch it

You might think that you don’t have an instant gratification trigger, but everyone has one. This is something that you don’t really need to work for, but fills you with enough confidence and feeling of productivity that you don’t feel you need to do anymore. What is yours? Identify yours, and overcome it.

Example: Your boss is always very complimentary, nearly to the point of being coddled. Since you’re always hearing that you’re doing a good job, you feel like you don’t need to do more. But in order to improve, you should strive to do more to get to the next level of excellence.

15. Start with the big picture, work down to the details

Identify the ultimate goal at hand, and start from the beginning. Then, break down every task in sequential order that needs to be achieved in order to reach this ultimate goal. Double check your tasks at hand, ask yourself how it fits into the big picture and if it is really necessary. Could you time be better spent on a different task? Don’t just work mindlessly. Always consider the big picture and the moves you are making towards it.

The post I’ve Read over 100 Productivity Books and Summarized the 15 Most Important Tips appeared first on Lifehack.

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