#*ccr

[isabellaofparma]

cold case rewatch (16/∞)

I came up from the dark without you and every day has been in shadow. I have begged the tide to wash away my sin and take me to you in the dark but every day I surface again.

2.22 - 'Best Friends'

[theghostavocadoe]

I love AUs that are like this and I think there should be more of them

[anexperimentallife]

[backwardshatnick]

𝗒𝗈𝗎'𝗋𝖾 𝖻𝗋𝖾𝖺𝗄𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗎𝗉 (𝖻𝗎𝗍 𝗂 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗄 𝗂 𝖺𝗆 𝗌𝗆𝗂𝗍𝗍𝖾𝗇)

in which matt works for a call centre of your phone operator.

pairing: call centre representative!matt x customer!reader wc: 1.7k notes: fluff, flirty!matt, frustrated!reader (it's just lacking another one of my favourite F words), use of the name bernard, mention of physics that gives me whiplash 🤓 series masterlist can be found here! [divider credits to: @strangergraphics]

“Shoot,” you grunted, sigh after sigh leaving your mouth before you screamed into your pillow. Your hair was a mess, the mug of warm lavender tea long forgotten and cold by the table lamp while your laptop screen was stuck with the face of your Classical Mechanics professor but his booming voice still on-going despite the scratchy and crackly quality until it finally stopped.

You had done all your due diligence, rebooting the modem, resetting your router, checking your network configurations and even switching to the dorm’s weak internet to your own phone hot spot, but nothing was working despite the full four white bars next to the name of your phone operator company’s name, Cell4. Leaving the dorm just to go to campus’s library is a hassle as this lecture was about to end in 45 minutes. Scrolling through your contacts, you finally found the Customer’s Support number from Cell4 that had been automatically saved when you had registered for your phone number the very first time you held the small pink Samsung in between your fingers.

The dial tone was crisp and audible, the typical hold music dancing through your ears before you were greeted with a woman’s synthetic voice asking you to press certain numbers to fit which representative you were supposed to solve your mobile issues with. It did not take long as you finally heard a gentle and warm voice saying, “Thank you for calling Cell4, this is Bernard speaking. How can I brighten your day today?”

On Bernard’s, or Matthew’s side, there was a moment of static, a slight spark followed by a small, frustrated sigh crackling through the line.

You finally stood up from the wooden floor of your room, back now resting against your bed with your index and thumb softly pinching your nose to ease the stress. “Hi, uh, sorry. I think my internet’s having an absolute meltdown. I’ve tried everything but it seems like I have to use the dial-up internet cause it’s acting like it’s stuck in 2009.”

Matt leaned back in his headset, the corner of his mouth rising up into a cheeky smile after making out the frazzled but clearly young voice. This was finally his time to shine and crack some jokes that were rarely appreciated by his older customers. He cracked his knuckles before clearing his voice to answer, “No worries at all. You’re talking to someone who as a kid dialed his computer teacher in primary school thinking that the internet was monitored by them. You’re in absolute good hands, miss.”

A chortle fuzzed through his headset as you replied with a similar manner to ease the situation, “Are you guys trained to do that? It’s in the manual?”

“Oh, absolutely. Step one: sound vaguely competent and then proceed to step two…” Matt said, his voice trailing off, making you curious.

“Bernard? Are you still there?”

“I was just messing with you. Step two was actually to charm the caller until they forget why they called and were mad in the first place.”

You couldn’t hold in your laughter, bright and clear through your receiver which made Matt break into a wide gummy grin, “Alright, alright Bernard from Cell4. How do we fix this?”

Matt chuckled on the other end, flipping through a binder that had the step-by-step guide to fix your potential problem. Although he knew everything by heart and memory, it was always a habit of him to have something to fiddle with in his hands, which was partly a reason why he got transferred to customer service when his supervisor had found him tampering with the wires and chargers of the display phones.

The sound of the crisp pages flipping could be heard on your end, your dubiousness slowly growing as the phone call quality was oddly good. But it all soon went away as Matt asked you his first question.

“Well, I am going to be asking you some highly complicated and mysterious questions, like… is your modem plugged in?”

“Wow, so we’re going straight to the hard stuff, huh?” “I told you, we’re not playing games here,” Matt answered, fingers still folding and unfolding the corners of the customer guide.

The call proceed for the next six minutes, him guiding you through restarts, reboots, resets and other obscure steps involving buttons and wires you had no idea even existed. Despite his constant jokes, Matt still explained things clearly and earnestly, never sounding annoyed and even calling the internet an “anxious printer who can sense your fear.”

With his guidance, your frustration soon fizzled away. Your complaints and whining disappearing and replaced with strings of laughter and pain in the cheeks. You were sure that your left shoulder was going to be strained tomorrow morning from constantly leaning your neck against it to support your phone in between your ear, but Matt was making it all worth it. Eventually, his help had paid its price when you could see not only he face of your professor, but also his slides where he had already jotted with scribbled numbers, enthralling mathematical symbols and diagrams which could easily be mistaken with a 19th century mathematical discovery.

Matt could hear the voice resonating from your laptop and uttered, “Finally back from the digital afterlife?”

“Thank you so, so much Bernard,” you said, hoping the smile that you had on your face could somehow be heard through his headset, “I can now finally continue listening to my riveting lecture on Euclidean space.”

“Whoah, slow down there Einstein. It’s part of my job. I only expect a Bernard shoutout when you get to do your valedictorian speech,” he teased.

You let out a soft giggle, “I definitely would. After thanking my pug, Mr. Winston and the girl who wiped the lipgloss of my teeth during orientation.”

He stood up for a moment to straighten his back and excitedly answered upon hearing the word ‘pug’.

“Wait, you have a pug called Mr. Winston? I have a stuffed pug called Mr. Wrinkleton!”

“For real?” you said, back straightened as well. “And you’re not offended that you’re gonna be the third person I thank in my speech?”

“You got me with the pug so it doesn’t matter anymore,” he chimed, the gummy smile still evident on his face.

Your face was also plastered with a grin, the excitement buzzing through your body. Bernard, or Matt, is an anonymous entity, but the thrill of his anonymity, with no face claim gives you a kick of confidence to enjoy the conversation without having to be worried about being perceived. The silent pause that you both shared was not awkward, but you both knew that his job here was done but none of you were quite ready to hang up just yet.

Until Matt broke it first.

“So… I can’t legally say this or HR is gonna be at my as- I mean my coattails,” he corrected, knowing that all his conversations are indeed recorded if complaints were to arise from a poor survey and one-star review to the company. “But I feel like I owe it to the future valedictorian that your laugh might’ve fixed my boring night more than I fixed your internet.” You blink once. Twice. Your cheeks now reddening.

“Are you flirting with a customer, Bernard?”

“I am just expressing my appreciation, professionally, for the sporting attitude and well-timed giggles that we had shared, professionally again, of course,” Matt answered proudly.

You laughed again, this time louder before coming up with an equally charming and professional reply, “Well, Bernard from Cell4, I would say that you are my go-to if I ever need help with anything.”

“You know my number. Same jokes, same charm every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday until 7pm.”

There was slight hesitation when you wanted to answer him, but you only live once and it had been a long while since you had such a good laugh now that it is almost finals season.

“Hey, so, um… I know that there’s going to be a survey at the end of this call and my internet package is limited to only 50GB per month… Do you think I can get bonus data if I say that you’re very, very, very helpful and maybe also kind of cute?” you said, stretching the ends of your words.

Matt was basically cheesing now through the mic, now clearing his throat before muttering, “Only if you spell ‘cute’ in all caps.”

“100%,” you replied, the physics lecture only now jumping into your senses when you could hear the professor mentioning the potential topics during your exam, “I should probably go now and pretend to be a competent student.”

“And I should go back and take another call while pretending to be a competent calls rep who pretends to not miss this one.” You could hear your heart skip a beat, the warmth coming up to your cheeks as your stomach felt giddy with butterflies.

This is just another phone operator representative. A different kind of smooth operator.

“Talk soon, maybe?”

He chuckled, “Only if you’re breaking up now. Because I think I am smitten.”

“Bye, Bernard,” you giggled, tapping on your phone to let the call end before he could give you another one of his charms, fingers immediately going to fill in the survey as your lecture played in the background like a podcast.

You knew that Cell4 usually sends in a reply whenever a survey has been successfully received, but this time it was a lot special. And unusually fast.

Putting down the pen that you had in your hand from copying your professor’s slides, you tapped on the green Messages app where you got a text from Cell4.

Thank you for your call. We hope your connection stays strong. P.S.: And so should ours. - M. Bernard ;)

Maybe losing the internet was not so bad after all.

But is M his last name, or is it Bernard? The curiosity itched your brain, but you knew that you could count on your detective of a best friend to search for him on Instagram.

The internet really does wonders to people, doesn’t it?

📤 @vanteguccir

[our-heartless-angels]

giggles and kicks my feet

i love him

[felidae-sims]

GUID Database Revival

I've finished setting up a way to revive the GUID database, albeit not an automatic one, it is low-key, but rather simple. Instructions are on the pinned post. [It's a Dreamwidth community, basically one webpage where people can dump their GUID info, straight from Excel or a list].

It is searchable with multi search add-ons for browser. Search for multiple entries in one go.

Avoid conflicts with originally registered GUIDs (Not foolproof; assuming GUIDs where assigned in a certain way).

Avoid conflicts with new random GUIDs (that are in the DB).

Creators are indexed - see if your favorite active creators are on there.

Everyone can join, but only members can post. Happy Simming! https://sims2-guid-database.dreamwidth.org/ Example:

Obligatory CCR music:

[stairway-to-camaraderie]

Rufus: Now that I know Lazard is my half-brother, I want full intelligence on him, Tseng. Infiltrate, observe, extract. Whatever it takes. I'm trusting you.

Tseng: Understood, sir.

*A few hours later*

Tseng: I've gathered several insights, sir.

Rufus: Excellent. What was your method? Blackmail? Surveillance? Coercion? Lethal force?

Tseng: Lethal force? We had a candlelight dinner.

Rufus:

Tseng:

Rufus: What the fuck kind of intelligence did you get??

Tseng: He uses strawberry lip balm.

Rufus: TSENG—

oh my GOD I LOVE YOU/POS

this made my entire day oh my gosh

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Have You Ever Seen The Rain

[dredgen-dumbass]

this concept has been spinning around in my head for days so here's lodi to the tune of lodi by ccr

[isabellaofparma]

↪top rated episodes of cold case (2003–2010) according to imdb

[backwardshatnick]

in which matt randomly shows up at her dorm.

gif thanks to @vxnitra ♡ divider by @sweetmelodygraphics ♡ masterlist for this series here! happy reading :)

The constant buzzing of her phone against the wooden table caused Peony to look up from her laptop, pressing pause on the TV show that she was binging to grab on it and see who has been spamming her notifications.

She was already in her fuzziest pyjama pants, a blue oversized tee and a still-wet clay face mask stuck to her face—ready to have a good night’s rest in— but one notification from Matt, or specifically a certain @mega_met44, caused her a smidge of unease.

The time was 22:34 on a weekend, sure still not late enough for college students like them, but could Matt possibly be extremely bored out of his mind to come show up unannounced?

Peony grabbed her zip-up hoodie to meet him outside, her keys, phone and entrance pass clutched in her grip, forgetting that her face mask was still intact which almost startled the security guard working her nightly shift at their dorms.

“Good evening, sweetie” she awkwardly hissed, “Got uh… a little something there on your face.”

Peony scratched the back of her head, “It’ll be gone in a few minutes.”

With the spin of the turnstile, she exited her dorm where the chilly summer night air brushed against her clothed arms and legs, causing the hairs behind her neck to stand up as she looked for Matt around the vicinity. Upon catching sight of him, all hunched over on the bench with his knees brought to his chest and hands buried deep in his own hoodie’s pockets, Peony forced out a small giggle and yanked on her hoodie’s sleeves to pull it over her cold, fragile hands.

“You caught me at my peak glamour, FYI. Just a few minutes away from drooling in bed with the face mask staining my pillowcase. And my laptop playing The Big Bang Theory. What’s up, Bernard?”

Matt looked up and repositioned himself on the wooden bench, legs now unfolded where his feet met the ground. His smile was there, etched on his lips but it did not reach his eyes. Not even close.

It tugged at her instantly, that he was not okay, causing her joking tone to fade and to quickly— yet quietly come sit next to him, where their shoulders meet just close enough to not touch. She decided against asking him a typical “What’s wrong?”, no. Instead, she turned to face him with her grey dried-up face and played with the drawstring of her hoodie, asking him softer this time.

“You okay?”

He did not answer right away, eyes everywhere but meeting hers as they shifted from the concrete, the rustling trees and the vehicles at the car park. His jaw was tight and when he went to unclench them to speak, there was something distant in his voice that made her heart almost break for him.

“Have you ever… felt like you’re just too many people at once?” he exhaled, “Like you have to switch personas depending on who you’re with, and eventually forget which one’s actually you?”

Peony stood still, the portion of the clay mask on her forehead cracking slightly when her eyebrows were raised in confusion.

Matt continued, tone now quieter, “Today, I was Bernard at work. Then, two hours after, I was the helpful Comms guy in class. Not long after, I was the cheerful boy in our group chat. It’s like… by the time I’m home, I just feel… hollow. Like I don’t know what version of me is really left within me.”

“Well, you’re now you. You’re here,” Peony swallowed the gulp in between her sentences, but she was genuine with her words, “With me.”

“You didn’t have to come to me last. You don’t have to perform when you’re with me. I’m always here to listen.”

He let out a long breath, “I guess I just didn’t want you to see me like some stupid little bitch. All burnt out. Small.”

“But you’re allowed to be small. We’re all human who’s bound to crash out,” she nudged his knee with hers, “Like, look at me. I literally have a drying face mask on sounding like a therapist. Well, you know what I mean.”

Peony carefully leaned her head on his shoulder, cautious to not stain his white hoodie with her skincare. They sat next to each other closer now, enough for her to hear the rumble in his chest when Matt barely huffed out a laugh. The gaps of stillness between them filled with the sounds of their light breathing and the soft murmurs of cars in the distance.

“You don’t have to talk if you’re too tired,” Peony interrupted, her voice warm and low enough for Matt’s liking, “I’ll sit here with you as long as you need.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling everything fall off from his shoulders upon her words— the pressure, the roles and the performance that he had always been keeping up with a literal mask on his face, leaving behind a small, flickering light of peace that reached his own heart.

“Thank you,” Matt finally said, “So, so much.”

The pure and sincere grin on her face led to more of her face mask to crack, but it definitely did not matter as she returned his words with his own name, “Anytime, Matt.”

His head finally leaned on top of hers to rest as he let out a slow breath, “You’re actually really good at this. Surprised you’re not in my class.”

“Good at what?”

“At being a safe space,” Matt enunciated every syllable with pure honesty, the smile on his lips now finally reaching his eyes.

Peony closed her eyes to savour the breeze that had just passed by, the wild strands of her hair getting caught up in her face mask, “Only for a soft, selected boy who loves to give wrong Instagram handles.”

He chuckled, small but enough to break the heaviness a little. He saw her hands wrapped in the sleeves of her own hoodie and decided to sandwich them between his, warming both of them up as they sit there for a long time.

No scripts. No false fronts. Just existing as Matt and Peony, all tangled up in a comforting stillness.

a/n: can this still be considered a blurb when it's literally 1k long god i literally need to shut my gob!!!!

📤 @httpssturns @oopsiedaisydeer @slvtf0rchr1s @courta13 @a103-chris-mm @mattspillowprincess @izzylovesmatt @loverboysturn @herewegoagain-b @shamsturnz

[krjpalmer]

TRS-80 Microcomputer News June 1983

Radio Shack's latest computer introduction was hooked up to a Realistic-branded "5" color television" and a cassette recorder about as large as it on the cover of this issue. Inside, an article suggested the Canadian Telidon graphics system might one day be used to provide images on CompuServe. The American flag program illustrated on the cover was included inside; there was also a program that would print out the Greek flag on the optional plotter for the PC-2 Pocket Computer.

[casteliacityramen]

How Treacherous.

[nostalgia-eh52]

Creedence Clearwater Revival

[oscconfessions]

I don't know if advertising is a no-go so feel free to delete this ask if I'm crossing any boundaries here

but

Everyone NEEDS to look at this incredible, unique, genuinely fascinating object show RIGHT NOW

It's called Coco-Cup's Risk and it is one of the most interesting takes on object shows as a concept that I have ever seen -- more so than ONE, more so than The Broadcast Objective (though that's another amazing & severely underrated show, go watch TBO)

I don't want to spoil too much, but so far (as of episode 13, which came out recently), the show is non competition, focuses on a small set of objects as they struggle to understand who they are, why they're there, and what the hell is going on -- and it looks like there's quite a lot more going on than meets the eye...

Each episode gets an average of 100 views. This show is so, so underrated and so little-known it doesn't have a single post under its tag. PLEASE go watch Coco-Cup's risk. Please.

It is so, so worth it.

.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bad Moon Rising