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pxper-cranes · 1 year

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Meddling Kids Redesigns

It took a while, but I finally finished all four designs of the main gang. There are still some tings I would change if I were to redesign them again, just by seeing all the other ones on tumblr.

I'll do some headcannons here, and maybe draw them again with plot ideas for a fictionalised series I would make with them.

Fist of all, they would start out as high schoolers, then go into univertity after. either way they would all be adults when the film starts

None of these guys are cishet or neurotypical sorry slays but you cant tell me otherwise

Thirdly, these guys are FRIENDS. they CARE about each other. some have been besties for years others were hard and fast ride or dies but they all really care for one another

They would initially start out unmasking people in monster costumes, but there would definitely be an overarching plot that is defiantly supernatural. by midway through season two, the monsters of the week would be real more often than not, and the gang has to turn to more spooky ways of dealing with them

Aight so

FRED

This man HAS to be nice, and reasonably stupid. He was a himbo Blueprint and we must make sure he stays that way

I want to make him into theatre tech and stuff, which he uses to debunk the monsters and point out all the techniques in the 80s horror movies he likes to watch with the gang.

I'd also say he was a prolific camper and scoutgoer as a child, and intends to work as a camp counsellor once he graduates for a little while

because of this hes pretty much a survival expert and gets pretty intense whenever they find themselves in the woods.

while he is strange himself he still is a leader for the group, and plans a lot of their moves on cases.

He and Daphne start the show dating and they are madly in love with each other, and are the bestest of friends. Fred is the more puttogether in the group though, and regularly has to stop daphne from comitting crimes like breaking and entering or simply trying to beat the monster over the head with a bat

DAPHNE

This version of Daphen would just be a pretty unhinged girlboss. she is the part of the gang who is just itching for a fight half the time, so shes been designated team muscle.

Her family is extremely rich, and while they don't really like her pastimes of going out and solving mysteries, but those funds are the thing keeping the gang going, and funding their trips, as well as bail when they get caught investigating some abandoned house or something.

She is really into fashion, specifically 70s style clothes, and spends a lot of time at home making her own clothes and things for others.

alongside that she is really into journalism, so much so that she practically runs the school newsletter when in high school, and runs it through her brilliant people skills. she intends to go to university to do a media and communications degree.

but shes also regularly unhinged and the fisrt one in the gang who would get into a brawl with a monster if given the chance. shes like a black belt in karate at least, and can definitely ride a motorbike.

I think she would encourage Fred's traps in their cases but if she was left alone she would just use a crowbar to solve her problems.

VELMA

This Velma is a todal dork. she is such a nerd its funny, bun in a way ehre the audience laughs with her. let her talk endlessly about her academic interests and cut back to everyone else dumbfounded.

Also my version of Velma isn't mean in any way. While she can be dry, witty or packed with smart comebacks, she is rarely intentionally cruel.

She doesn't believe in the supernatural at the beginning of the series, but she desperately wants to believe in everything. Cryptids, monsters, aliens etc (She was one of the kids that cried when they made Pluto not a planet anymore)

because of her eagerness to investigate she is practically uncarable, and more interested in anything spooky than she is frightful, which could be used for some good gags, especially since she never realises that she is ever out of her element

Velma brings out the nerdier side of all her friends too. she gets Fred talking about traps and survival skills, Daphne on about fashion and law, and Shaggy talking about food and films.

SHAGGY & SCOOB

Scooby doo is Shaggy's assistance dog, and that's how he is allowed to go wherever the gang does.

I've got some lore ideas about how he talks and stuff, which is basically the same as mystery inc plus some inspiration from the Magnus Archives but I'll probably talk about it another time.

I was thinking it might be funny if he talked kinda like puppycat from Bee and Puppycat, but that's just a thought, all I'm going to say is that's not a normal dog.

Shaggy also comes from a wealthier family but nowhere near as rich as Daphne. His parents really tried to shelter him as a kid after something happened in his childhood (IDK what but it was spooky) and ever since he's craved the independence that he gets with the gang

He has been friends with everyone the longest. I assume he went to a summer camp with Fred when they were little, met Velma at some kind of convention and lived close to Daphne.

He has tons of random skills and knowledge about pretty much anything. hes a trivia god and there could e a running gag that he went to a bunch of summer camps too, but for weird and niche things. he's also the kind to binge read wikipedia articles at 3am

I think we would be really into films, specifically horror and pulp films from the 70s - 90s. He probably has an interesting relationship with horror, scaring easily but still doing it for the thrill.

He also implores that in their mysteries, pointing out a bunch of the technical clues with Fred. He probably really likes mystery solving because it gives him that reassurance and control when they finally unmask them. I'm sure he starts to crack a little once they start going up against real monsters.

Hes also a really good cook and makes great playlists.

#scooby doo reboot #scooby doo #scooby doo fanart #shaggy rogers #fred jones #velma dinkley #daphne blake #scooby doo redesign #scooby gang #these took so long frfr #i really want to do a hex girls set like this tho so look out for that #if people are interested ill talk about my lore ideas #my art

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jaredsinclair · 7 years

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Get Your Architecture Right, Because You Always Have More Time than You Think You Do

When facing an anxiety-provoking deadline for a software project, you have more time to plan your architecture than it may seem. Indeed, you should consider near and medium term requirements and risks to the full extent that it is possible to consider them given current knowledge, even if you choose not address any of them up front. Take only calculated risks. Factor those risks carefully into your initial implementation. Do not touch a keyboard until you have done so. Cut corners, but cut them thoughtfully.

Urgency Versus Anxiety

It's worth noting the important difference between a sense of urgency and anxiety. Before I got into software development I was a registered nurse in an ICU. One evening a patient went into cardiac arrest. In an instant, the room filled with nurses and other folks eager to jump in and help. I was leaning over the patient's bed giving chest compressions to keep the patient's blood flowing. I felt myself swarmed by a small crowd in scrubs and Crocs. There were more people present than necessary, and it made the atmosphere in the room ratchet up from an appropriate urgency to a palpable anxiety. A supervising physician on the scene wisely ordered everyone not currently providing care to leave the room. As the excess folks filed out, I overheard the physician mention something to a colleague about the dangerous anxiety he was correcting:

I'll never forget something an instructor told me in med school about situations like this, "You always have more time than you think you do."

He wasn't addressing me directly, but the lesson stuck: there will never be a medical situation so dire that you literally cannot spare a moment to consider an appropriate course of action. There's no use for anxiety in the mind of a professional doing his or her duty in a crisis. March all the unnecessary anxious thoughts out of your mind and make room for a deliberate response. Give yourself permission to think. In the years since that day, I've found this lesson to be very valuable, even outside of healthcare. Strange as it may seem, I hear echoes of it in my process for sketching out architectural roadmaps for the applications I work on.

(Fr)agile

In an ideal world, agile processes are adhered to with perpetual regularity, pulsing in a cadence of small, iterative changes. In the real world, an organization that can unwaveringly adhere to an agile process is hard to come by. Customer demands, public events, and other factors create constraints that require setting a fixed ship date for a product launch. This is lethal to an agile process because there's no margin of error for iteration. You don't have the luxury of repeated revisions. You barely have time to ship your first draft. Under these conditions, the anxiety of the engineers on such a project skyrockets. Facing a tall list of requirements and a fast-approaching, narrow delivery window, there is a temptation to bust out the keyboards and hammer out some code because how will we ever finish unless we can show immediate and significant progress oh god oh god. Invariably, code written in thoughtless haste is unmaintainable or, worse, unshippable. Technical debt is accumulated at an unacceptable rate. Inappropriate patterns are chosen and implemented haphazardly.

Breaking it Down

It is difficult to break a down a set of large problems into atomic problem units which can be distributed among a team of developers and solved in parallel. In a healthy agile process, there is no single delivery date, but an ongoing process of experimentation and refinement. Impedance mismatches between the output of developers working on separate components are addressed through repeated course corrections. You fully roll out a feature only when it's ready to be. But when there's an aggressive and fixed delivery date, there's no room in the process for such refinements. Each component has to be shippable in its first iteration, and it has to immediately lock into place alongside all the other components.

Under the pressure of a looming deadline, developers may spend an inadequate amount of time considering their architectural roadmap. At worst, this leads to a code base that fails to satisfy the launch-day product requirements on time. At best, the code produced is ill-suited for the life of the product immediately after launch. There's no agile process in place to carry it through future milestones, so the cycle of fixed delivery deadlines and frantic architectural changes repeats until the product fails.

Here's a metaphor for the problem. Consider an illustrator tasked with drawing a human figure. A trained illustrator works like this:

She begins with gesture lines and primitive shapes, blocking out the pose, proportions, and perspective. Progressive levels of detail are added, guided by those initial lines and shapes, until the drawing arrives at its intended appearance. Inexperienced artists try to begin at the end, drawing body contours without the aid of any primitive elements, or they hastily jot down the gesture lines and shapes without regard for proportion and perspective. Either way the result is unsatisfactory.

Carrying the metaphor, what I have seen anxious developers do is start with the far right drawing without any gesture lines. They task team members with drawing each limb separately and at a premature level of detail. When at last the team attempts to pin the components together the perspectives don’t match, the proportions are childish, and the result is hideously unusable. The irony is that — just as a rough pass of detail over an expertly-arranged set of gesture lines can yield a pleasantly unfinished portrait — a simple overlay of features and polish atop an expertly-ordered primitive architecture is the very definition of a minimally-viable product.

There's another software development pitfall suggested by this metaphor. Accurate and pleasant gesture lines are extraordinarily difficult to master. They may look like stick figures to an untrained eye, but they're anything but. Countless hours of practice and studious observation are required to become proficient at drawing these primitive shapes. If you undertake them without care, the resulting drawing will have all the same flaws as a drawing made without any gesture lines. In the same way, an architectural roadmap must be considered with extreme care. Don't just list everything you know, list everything you don't or can't know. You don't have to plan every detail, but you must wrestle with the problem area long enough to be reasonably confident that your architecture will be both efficient in the short term and stable for the medium term. If you're lucky it will be stable for the long term. No matter what you choose, it'll always be a guess. But make it a well-educated guess.

A Concrete Example

Here’s a concrete example of the kind of discussion I think can be spared some time at the beginning of a project without making commitments that over- or under- engineer things. Consider an app backed by a web service with user-specific accounts. Questions that might come up during a planning phase:

How likely do we think it is that the app will ever need to support more than one account at a time?

If we choose not to leave space for multiple accounts in our architecture, how disruptive would it be if multiple accounts suddenly became a requirement?

How much additional up-front effort would it take to leave space for multiple accounts in our architecture though we would only ship with user-facing support for a single account?

How likely is it that we’ll have to support iOS State Restoration, and would this be impacted by our chosen account plan?

What else haven’t we considered, and is any of it risky enough to require addressing now?

And the key points during that discussion might be:

We have no idea how likely it is we’ll need to support multiple accounts. All we know is it’s not currently required.

If we think we’ll never have to support multiple accounts, one option is to provide global access to a singleton instance of an account.

If we suddenly have to support multiple accounts and we’re using a singleton instance fixed to one account, that requirement change would be very painful to support.

Passing an isolated account via dependency injection instead of providing a globally-accessible singleton instance would be comparatively easier to migrate to a multiple-account setup.

Passing an isolated account via dependency injection would have a trivial impact on overall level of effort in a single-account application.

Dependency injection could conceivably make supporting iOS State Restoration harder as that API is based on isolated view controllers re-instantiating themselves via NSCoding. Passing references to specific account instances during or after state restoration is considerably more complex than if restored view controllers had immediate access to a global instance during decoding.

Please note I’m not arguing for one way of the other here. I'm merely sketching out some terrain over which such a discussion might traverse.

Conclusion

In the end there’s always risk. You make the best choice you can given the information you have. I recommend discussing at length both the near and medium term before comitting to a near-term plan. All too often, these discussions either don’t happen or they happen in a rush and so risks aren’t considered to the full extent that it is possible to consider them given current knowledge.

That last line is the bad habit that rubs me wrong:

the risks aren’t considered to the full extent that it is possible to consider them given current knowledge.

This is the point of the quote from that ICU physician I admired so much. You always have more time than it seems like you do. You always have time to consider the impact of what you know and what you don’t, even if you choose not to address any of the risks up front, even if the outcome of that consideration means cutting huge corners. At least the risks you’re taking are calculated.

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nivalvixen · 7 years

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Framed, pt 4

Also on AO3

"Mr. Stilinski, a word before you start your day," Rafe said, practically standing in front of Stiles so he couldn't go inside the room. "Won't be a minute, Sean," he added to Stiles' instructor over his shoulder.

Sean nodded, though Stiles wondered if he looked a little too pleased that he was going to be delayed. He held the strap of his messenger bag a little tighter as he followed Agent McBastard down the corridor to the empty lunch room.

"I passed on your message; Scott says hi. Can I go?"

"Look, we both know that Derek didn't murder all of those people."

Rafe's words stopped Stiles short and he looked at him, suspicious, but not stupid enough to answer and incriminate himself.

"I looked for Miguel Juarez Cinqua Tiago when I got back to San Francisco, Stiles. As you probably know, I didn't find a thing about him. What I did find were pictures of Derek Hale. Don't look surprised; the FBI have access to more databases than you will ever know about. I found pictures of Hale soon after the fire that killed his family, and guess who he bore a striking resemblance to?"

Stiles gulped. "Uh... My cousin?"

Rafe's expression turned stern. "Don't play games with me, Stilinski. I will win."

"What's the prize? Hell, what's the damn game?" Stiles snapped.

Stiles was so angry that he didn't even notice that his messenger bag strap was melting in his his hand. The thought of Derek being used as a pawn in Agent Dickbag's shitty little game was enough to make him feel sick and so very angry.

Derek was more than a pawn, more than a king, more than anything to be used like this, and Agent Wanker had no idea what he was doing by putting Derek's life in harm's way.

"You've put a man's life in jeopardy again because you can't grow a pair and talk to your own son, is that it?! Either talk to Scott or don't, but stop fucking around like this! And stop hurting Derek!" Stiles said, his voice loud.

"Stiles, calm down. I'm not - " Rafe started to say, but Stiles put a hand up to stop him from coming any closer, and the agent was thrown clear across the lunchroom, crashing into a table and several chairs.

Stiles' eyes went wide. "Holy shit." He looked from Rafe to his hand, then to his ruined messenger bag. He regretted the bag more than hurting Rafe, honestly.

Rafe groaned a little and stood up slowly. Stiles couldn't bring himself to move, but stayed at the other side of the room; he was still pretty pissed off, and even if knocking Rafe unconscious would make him feel better, it would probably mean an abrupt end to Stiles' time at the Academy.

Stiles wondered what Rafe was going to do; there was no way he could explain this rationally or lie or bluff his way out of it. He hadn't even touched Rafe, yet he'd gone flying.

Shit, shit, shit. He might as well go home now.

Rafe stood and straightened out his clothes, brushing himself off. He wiped at a spot of blood that had appeared at the side of his mouth, accidentally having bitten his lip when he landed. "Get to class, Stiles."

"W-what?" Stiles asked, surprised.

"Go to class. I want to talk to you at the end of the day, about that, and... Beacon Hills."

Stiles stood taller at his words and glared.

Agent McJerkface had spent one month in Beacon Hills and suddenly, two years later, he's decided that he wants more information?! Stiles was beginning to doubt he'd ever got into the FBI on his own merit, only because Agent McShit was too scared to do a damn thing for himself. It was a thought he didn't want to dwell on for too long, and he had to remind himself that he was in the FBI, he belonged here now.

"Why don't you look for that in those databases you mentioned?" Stiles sneered, leaving to go to his class.

Along the way, he held the two broken straps of his bag and believed that they would mend. It ended up being crooked as his emotions were still a little over the place, but it was better than nothing.

Rafe sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. "Nice one, Rafe," he muttered to himself. He looked up to the camera in the corner of the lunch room and headed to security. At least he could deal with that in a professional manner.

...

"What are you focusing on, Stilinski? You've barely said a word in an hour; didn't think you could be so quiet."

Stiles looked up at the other recruit, blinking at the sudden adjustment from black text and white paper to bright fluorescent lights and white washed walls. "Uh. Sorry?" he said, realising that it was the woman he'd accidentally spat on on his first day.

She didn't seem offended that he obviously didn't remember her name. "Tomika Jones. If you shorten my name to Tom, I will kick your ass during every sparring session we've got."

Stiles grinned and tried not to laugh too obviously. "Not a problem, Jones. Do I dare ask if you have a cat?"

Tomika rolled her eyes at him. "Shut up. And hurry up, dammit, it's time for lunch. Think Agent McCall will be there again?"

Stiles shrugged. "Probably, he's gotta eat too."

Tomika adjusted her bag and frowned at him slightly. "You don't like him, do you?"

"You can tell?"

"You've got a tell on the side of your mouth. It's small, but obvious if you look hard enough."

"You've been looking at me?"

Tomika rolled her eyes. "You're my competition, of course I am. But don't flatter yourself, you're not my type."

"Who is your type?" Stiles asked, hoping to keep distracting Tomika from the fact that he hadn't answered her initial question.

"Well, do you have a sister?"

"No... Oh, got it. I have friends who have sisters. And some girl friends too, though... I think you with either of them might just be terrifying."

She grinned at him in response. "Now that's my type."

Stiles resolved to never let Tomika meet Cora or Lydia.

Agent McShitstain wasn't at lunch, much to the disappointment of the rest of Stiles' peers. Tomika didn't seem to mind as much as the others, drawing people into conversations instead. As Stiles listened and watched, he noticed that it wasn't just polite small talk; Tomika was gathering information from each person.

The questions were small things like how they liked the weather, what their favourite food was, how long their commute to Quantico took, but it gave surprisingly clear pictures of each of their peers and where they came from. More importantly, Stiles noted that Tomika never seemed to answer the questions herself.

Stiles wondered how much information she'd gathered from him so far, and just what she planned on doing with it.

...

It had been three days and Derek had only had small texts from Stiles with updates on what he was doing at the FBI and how his research was going, but very little about Derek's case with the supposed mass murders he'd comitted. Eventually, after unsuccessfully attempting to distract himself with a hot cup of tea and a book, Derek gave in and rang Stiles' number.

"'Lo?"

Derek looked at the time and winced. He'd forgotten about the time difference and while it was a Saturday, Derek still felt bad for waking Stiles up. "Sorry, Stiles. I'll call back later."

"Der'k? No, wait. 'S'good. Just... shit, one sec," Stiles groaned, sitting up with his body sore and aching and probably bruised from top to toe.

Tomika hadn't been kidding about kicking his ass during sparring (he'd called her Tom once by accident, honest!), and Stiles regretted not taking Coach up on extra training sessions for lacrosse over the summer. He was fast and while Stiles could dodge a fist (or a kanima's tail, or a Nogitsune's long fingers reaching out to him), Tomika was just as fast, and she had no qualms about using her full strength to hit him.

"Are you all right?" Derek asked, worried.

"Got my ass handed to me yesterday during sparring. I'm fine otherwise. Well, my pride and ego are hurt as well," Stiles admitted, standing up slowly and testing his limbs gingerly.

The spell and poultice he'd used to help reduce the pain and bruising had worked better than he expected, but they hadn't removed everything, just sped the process up somewhat. He was glad he wasn't blemish-free because that would be difficult to explain to every single person that had seen him get his ass beaten. (There were a lot; it seemed that watching the new recruits beat each other was something of a hobby for the other FBI agents.)

"You're only human."

"Yeah, well, so are they. I think. Tomika and Patrick might not be," he mused, frowning. "I meant to call you about the case yesterday, sorry, Der."

"That's all right," Derek said, more genuine than he expected. He sat down and sighed before asking, "Have you found anything of use, or should I start heading for the border?"

Stiles snorted. "Great, you wait until I leave to get a sense of humour."

Derek looked down at his feet and smiled.

"I haven't found out who's framing you, but I've excluded a few people. Argent's still pretty high on the list," Stiles said, looking to the string and notes he had tacked to one wall.

"Which one?"

"Both Gerard and Kate; they're tied for first in the world's shittiest competition, but, hey, what're you gonna do?" he said, trying for light-hearted and probably not coming across that way in the slightest. Stiles flexed his limbs, hoping to ease his muscles. "I'd frame an innocent person for your hands right now."

"What?"

"Y'know, your magic hands, with the healing thing you do."

"Oh. Right."

It took Stiles a second to realise exactly what he'd said and he wanted to smack himself on the head. "Uh. So... how's things in BH? That hellhound plan working out?"

"Scott and Lydia are dealing with it and the last I heard, Parrish was willing to use himself as bait or mediator, possibly both."

"Ah, good idea. So what've you been up to?"

Derek looked around the loft to the stack of books he'd read, the spotless kitchen he'd cleaned three times in the last two days, the duffel bag still unpacked by the front door. "Not a lot, honestly. I thought I'd be missed, I guess?" he said, scrunching his eyes shut at the admission.

"You were," Stiles replied, his voice soft but certain.

Derek opened his eyes and blinked a few times, trying to determine if Stiles had meant for him to hear that. "I missed you too, Stiles."

Stiles smiled. "Glad to hear it, sourwolf."

...

End of the fourth chapter.

Next parts: five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty

#sterek #NV fanfic #fbi stiles #leave derek hale alone

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