#I took a data and visualization class and ran with it | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

spark-hearts2 · 8 months ago

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YOU ALREADY READ IT??!! I couldn't find any ao3 attached to your account so I just assumed that you haven't seen it 😭. I have linked my tumblr in other fanfics but not that one because I haven't posted any of my personal TADC work on there.

I too was sad about the lack of any proper Caine perspective fic. There were some good ones but nothing that went into the level of detail that I wanted. So I looked at the meme "me when I have to write the fanfiction that I want to read myself" and got to work!

Haha, fun fact, I actually barely did any research for the fic lol. That's why the fic only talks about RAM and not other components like the GPU and CPU. I'm currently in college going for a degree in mechanical engineering so I've actually taken some 3D modeling classes (fusion 360) and coding classes (C++ and Assembly)((don't ask me about assembly I was ass at it)). I enjoy disassembling electronics so I that's why I am familiar with the guts of computers.

Your favorite TADC fic?? Teehee. Wellllll, I might just have a sample of chapter 2 for you to try

Because he was aiming to be as realistic as possible, the entire adventure had to take place in one room. Or, one room that he divided into two sections (staff and customer area). Because of the limited space, he took extra care in designing the environment. He even designed a detailed city environment outside the windows instead of the usual skybox. It only extended a little past the end of the windows, but that was out of bounds so it didn’t matter.

Most of the assets he could take from his pre-existing library. Table, chairs, lights, cash register, all things that already existed in high enough fidelity for him to consider using it in this hyper realistic environment.

A few things he had versions of but lacked the poly count or high definition texture he was looking for. So, he just remade them. He had to guess a little with what it should look like, but there were a few real images in his training library so any guesses were made in confidence.

He reassessed ingredients, recipes, and the food that was involved with the previous cooking adventures. He made edits, swapped out cartoony models for more realistic ones, added more ingredients and remapped the recipe tree to be more realistic. This also helped with making the mechanic unique from the previous one.

Power like materials were easy, as that was a trick with textures instead of an actual simulation. The liquids were more awkward. The usual simulation that he uses was optimized for efficiency, not realism. The most realistic simulation he had was purely to be used for creating animations, not interactable components. And a minute of lag between pouring and the liquid flowing was not acceptable. Maybe he should just make it a pre-rendered animation instead of a dynamic piece…

As he worked, he found evidence that realism used to be one of his visual styles that he could generate in. Which was VERY good. It meant that he could genuinely try to do this more and re-establish it as an option to adventure with.

There were a few pieces missing, biggest issues being some of the source training data, but the parameters still existed so he could make due with what was left. It would likely always be a bit weaker stylistically than his other visual styles because of that. But, it was guaranteed to be better than something that he designed from scratch.

Once the map was completed and the functionality added (testing was the last step before completion), he ran it through his judgment. Except, he would be judging his judgment.

Oh, this was so wrong. He was programmed to flag suspect analysis, but that was so that Admins could come and double check it. How could he judge if his own judgment was faulty? And if so, what would he do about it? It was simply too self referential.

But if he waited for outside judgment, then he might as well be ignoring Zooble’s warning. He could not wait as long as he had been waiting for the log out issue to be fixed, so he had to at least try to fix this issue himself.

His judgment returned the fact that the colors were quite dull, with the majority being brown, cream and gray. He ignored that statement, as his few images of the outside gave the impression that ‘real’ walls were cream colored, ‘real’ floors were gray, and most appliances were made out of wood and therefore brown. All signs pointed to this being a realistic color palette.

His judgment returned that the customer functionality lacked depth. He didn’t know whether or not to agree with this one, as he did just use the default mannequin avatar for the customer and only gave them three states: wander, request food, and receive food.

His judgment recommended adding a time-based mechanic where the customer would not wait forever. Maybe the customer would light on fire, as they were made out of wood, in order to visually demonstrate that a customer was lost and that it was a bad thing.

The idea wasn’t realistic, but he couldn’t make a realistic customer in the first place. He did want to add some kind of opposing force, as currently there was nothing stopping his goofy ganders from ignoring the customers and only playing with the food. He could predict several scenarios where no customer got fed and all food was either eaten by the player or thrown around the room. Yes, he made it so that all food items were edible and were therefore eat-able.

His judgment also recommended a food fight stage, as why implement a food splatter mechanic if it was not used. This one was easy, as he had no evidence that food fights actually happened in real life, so he ignored it... Even though he knew food was going to get thrown no matter what he implemented.

Ultimately, without the changes, his judgment rated the FUN level too low for release. With the changes, the FUN level was high enough for release, but just barely.

He wasn’t going to pay attention to the FUN level, not when it was suspected as faulty. But he did agree that there needed to be some kind of punishment for not providing to the customer. It just wasn’t a complete mechanic without some kind of reward or punishment.

Hmm, make the customer light on fire or don’t make the customer light on fire... what to choose.

Hello,

Do you wish for CAINE content? Specifically from his perspective as an AI? Well, I have a fanfiction (my own, this is my fanfiction that I am actively promoting) for you!!! Did I mention it has a 12k word count with a second chapter in progress (wip currently at 9k oh my).

it's a sort of rewrite of the Zooble therapy we got in episode 3 except I show off how much I know about computers. RAM is a plot point.

Link if interested: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60479521

I love your 3D donut renders. I prefer the long sprinkles but I am biased. Nice job on the background, I know people who would have just left them floating in space.

From,

EH???

HELLO??

YOU MADE THIS? THIS AMAZING WONDERFUL FANFICTION WHICH IS SO FAR MY FAVORITE TADC FIC I'VE FOUND??

I cannot even express how much I combed AO3 looking for something like this (and found it about 5 days ago!); a fiction written from Caine's perspective that ACTUALLY delves into the programming and ai element (AND RAM) - it's phenomenal I HIGHLY recommend it. The research you must have put in to get some of the lingo right haha!

Sorry to gush but I was already eagerly awaiting more of this fiction!! (I have an account on ao3 not under the same username for my own writing and have it bookmarked!!) Amazing work on it, for real! I can't wait for the next chapter! I'm such a sucker for realistic and accurate fiction from a robot's perspective -

#tadc #fanfiction #work in progress #tadc caine #he thinking #Nice to meet you too!#enjoy the content #I just made the FUN level up #It doesn't stand for anything #but maybe I should make it stand for something?#idk!

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hawkeykirsah · 3 years ago

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If snippets are open, Hawkey, I'm curious: what does Cody do for a living? I imagine juggling a 9-5 with a Master's student for a boyfriend is very different from spending however long in a van with him day in and day out--how do they balance that?

Thank you so much for the prompt! I'm not sure if I quite managed to get it right but I hope this is okay!

It always took a few days to get back into the groove after being out in the field. Not that Cody’s job as a forecaster was, strictly speaking, so different when he was at the agency proper. He still had to analyze data, run numerical weather predictions, and write weather reports. One difference was certainly that he sat at a desk with three computer monitors while frequently in contact with numerous other agencies to supply them with the newest data instead of in a van synching nowcasts with the visual data outside the window.

The other difference was that Obi-Wan wasn’t in the seat next to him. And that Obi-Wan wasn’t in his bed every night. Sometimes his classes simply ran too late or, less often, he lost track of time at the library so that he didn’t leave school until after Cody was already in bed. And, of course, he had to actually work on his thesis.

So they did the only viable thing—they made a schedule.

Every week.

Because, while Cody preferred working early occasionally he got stuck with a late shift and sometimes he had to work the weekend. Weather never took a break, after all.

“You know,” said Cody, not quite two months after they returned from their chase, slowly stroking a thumb over Obi-Wan’s hip bone, propping his head up on one hand, “this would be a lot easier if we lived together.” He was aware that thinking about moving together after only three months was quick for most people but, hell, they’d lived together for two months while on the road without any problems. Quite the contrary. “Just think about it, babe.”

“I am,” Obi-Wan replied. “A lot. And I want to. But, Cody, there are so many things to consider. I don’t even know if I’ll get a job around here after I graduate and I would like to stay in research. What if we find a place and a few months later I have to move out again because I end up across the country? Or, hell, in another country?” He sighed and Cody couldn’t help but shift a little and press a kiss to his chest.

“We have research meteorologists at the agency,” Cody reminded him, thinking of his own the itch to switch from operational to research every once in a while. “And you already work there, in a way. They know you and the work you can do.” He was aware that being an affiliated storm chaser and a permanent employee were two different things but they’d be foolish not to hire Obi-Wan. He told him as much.

Obi-Wan nodded, a slight smile teasing his lips. “You might be biased, though.”

“What makes you say that?” Cody returned, smirking openly before dragging the tip of his tongue along Obi-Wan’s collar bone.

Well,” Obi-Wan gasped, turning to face him and rolling his hips forward. “The fact that you keep taking me to bed might be seen as one.”

“If they didn’t want me to start taking you to bed they shouldn’t have sent us on a tour together,” Cody ground out, trailing a hand down Obi-Wan’s side and over his ass to his thigh, hitching his leg higher. “Also this has nothing to do with your capabilities in the field.” He rolled onto his back, pulling Obi-Wan atop of him and settled his hands on Obi-Wan’s hips, grinding up against him. “God, you’re so fucking perfect.”

Later, after they had both caught their breath again, Obi-Wan said quietly, “To get back to our earlier discussion, how about I talk to Depa this week about a regular job and we start looking for a place after I’ve defended my thesis depending on her answer.” He snorted a soft laugh, “For one thing my head will be considerably clearer then.”

“That sounds perfect, babe,” Cody replied drowsily, content and sated and already on the edge of sleep. There was no way Depa would turn Obi-Wan down, he was sure of it. Especially not if his degree turned out as good as Cody expected it to. “And she’ll say yes, I know it.”

A bit more than a month later they walked into their new home, together.

#codywan #chase your heart snippets #snippet prompt #adiduck #my writing #hawk writes #lime #slightly spicy #kind of

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quicksilversquared · 5 years ago

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Max and the Murky Story

Max isn't always the best at social stuff. People don't behave in the same way numbers do, and they can be confusing. So when things at school with their newest classmate just aren't adding up quite right, he starts collecting data. And what he finds?

Well, it's a bit surprising.

links in the reblog

Something funny was going on at school, Max was 87.5% sure of it. But he just couldn't put his finger on what.

Frowning to himself as he sat in front of his computer, Max listed off the facts in his head, hoping to gain a bit of perspective on the whole thing. It was worth a shot, and with any luck, Max could figure this whole thing out and stop waking up in the middle of the night, a niggling feeling dancing in the back of his mind.

Fact one. Marinette was one of the friendliest people in the class, and rarely- if ever- disliked people without good cause. Max might have been inclined to even go as far as to say that Marinette never disliked someone without good cause, but it was never a good idea to talk in such absolutes when considering a human element. There were almost always exceptions to the norm with living beings, and ignoring that and speaking in too broad of terms was- well, it wasn't a good idea.

Fact two. Lila was a new student, one who- at least according to her, it wasn't as though Max had independently verified those stories- lived an exciting life, with a mother who was a diplomat and frequently traveled. Lila had talked about meeting celebrities, all sorts of famous people with serious connections. She apparently had just as much bad luck to counter out the good, though, considering that Max had heard her complain of allergies and other ailments on more than one occasion.

Fact three. Marinette did not like Lila. In fact, Max might even dare to say that Marinette hated Lila. She refused to hang out with the rest of the girls when Lila was with them, even going so far as to turn around and leave after Lila turned up and joined their group when they were going out to watch a movie. Marinette had even once joined Chloe's group for a project so that she wouldn't end up being paired with Lila.

(Fact three-and-a-half: that was, objectively, really strange.)

Fact four. Pretty much everyone else in the class loved Lila. Except.

(There was almost always an except. Humans very rarely dealt in absolutes.)

Adrien also seemed to avoid Lila, if Max thought about it. Sure, he was polite and didn't turn away and hate as openly as Marinette, but he very rarely looked comfortable with Lila. Of course, the reason there might be because Lila sometimes seemed to forget what personal space was and Adrien was the kind of person who was only really comfortable with a select few people getting close to him like that. But there was a possibility that there was something else going on there.

(No hypotheticals and guesswork, Max scolded to himself. Theorizing wasn't going to help him any. So fact four-and-a-half: Adrien was the second exception to everyone loving Lila, and did not seem comfortable with her. The reason for that was unconfirmed.)

Fact five: The teachers and principal also seemed to like Lila, enough to make serious accommodations for her while Lila wasn't in school. They hadn't raised any concerns, but, well….

Fact five and a half: The staff at Dupont were not always through in their investigations. Point in court: the entire day when Marinette got expelled, considering that it had all been walked back and retracted the very next day.

And that led to fact six: Lila had made several large accusations against Marinette over the course of one day, leading to Marinette's abrupt expulsion. An expulsion that had been walked back less than twenty-four hours later. And, well- it wasn't a fact but a feeling: all three of those accusations had seemed strange. The answer sheet had been found on top of Marinette's things in her bag, when the test had been several days prior. Lila hadn't actually been limping and hadn't looked at all mussed after she claimed that Marinette pushed her down the stairs. And the fact that Lila apparently knew who had taken ("taken"?) her heirloom necklace and where it had been put….

Looking back on it, that was a little weird. A lot weird, even. But there could be data missing, incomplete information biasing his view. It wouldn't be smart to jump to conclusions now. The probability of him getting something wrong- well, it was too high.

One thing was for sure- to draw an informed conclusion, Max needed more data.

One of the most important things to do when collecting data was to make sure that it could be found again. Being able to cite references was important.

So Max recruited Markov.

His robot companion usually came to school with him most days anyway, in order to listen in on the traditional human process of teaching and learning information and to be able to spend more time with Max. All Max really had to do was ask Markov to keep audio files on record of everything Lila-related. Whenever she talked, whenever she was being talked about, whenever there were people talking to her. If Markov was out- and Max wasn't sure that he wanted to have his companion out until the strangeness surrounding the Lila situation was cleared up- then he would keep that visual file, too. On top of that, Max was going to try to do short narrations of what Lila was up to on a regular basis, just to add to his data set.

If there was something strange going on, Max was going to figure out what it was. Even the best-kept secrets couldn't hide against a deluge of data. Maybe there were other ways to do this, and maybe all of the audio-journaling was overkill, but this was Max's preferred way of investigating. By his calculations, it had a 97.7% chance of successfully producing truthful results within a five-week time frame. There was a potential for getting results even earlier, of course, but five weeks was pretty much the optimal collection time when Max factored in both the chance of success and the amount of time invested. After five weeks, he would likely get diminishing returns on the additional time spent collecting information. Continuing his data collection would only be advisable if the data that he collected in that time period turned out to be inconclusive.

Max really hoped that things wouldn't turn out inconclusive. It was so frustrating when things went that way. He liked clear-cut answers, things set out in black and white instead of blurry grey. Contradicting and/or incomplete information frustrated him, because it could throw his calculations way off.

But in the end, it only took a week for some inconsistencies to show up.

"On Monday morning, Lila turned down the opportunity to share a croissant with Alya after Marinette brought some in to share with Alya, Nino, and Adrien," Markov reported Friday evening, after running an initial scan on all of the data. "She claimed that she was dealing with a gluten sensitivity recently and couldn't eat bread. Then on Wednesday, she took her lunch at school and ate the pasta that the cafeteria was serving, which was not gluten-free."

Max frowned, noting that down on his summary sheet. "I suppose that sensitivities can come and go, but surely it would make more sense to gradually ease back into eating wheat instead of having a plate of pasta."

"On Tuesday afternoon, Lila stated that she was going to have a video conference with Prince Ali of Achu that evening about their charity work regarding pollution," Markov continued. "I have run a scan, and Prince Ali is currently only involved in children's charities, largely dealing with those concerning children's hospitals, childhood homelessness, and child hunger. There are also no mentions of any Lila Rossi being involved with Prince Ali, even though all people who have assisted him are mentioned on his website. Even your classmate Rose is listed."

Max's frown deepened. "Hmm."

"On Wednesday morning, Lila mentioned having attended the Royal Wedding," Markov continued. "There were plenty of pictures taken at the Royal Wedding, both of the couple being married and of the people attending. I ran facial recognition software on all of the photos and came up with no match for Lila, though I did recognize Adrien and his father as well as Kagami and her mother."

Odder and odder. Of course, it was possible that there were people hidden too far back in the crowd to be easily seen with a photo, and of course, Lila was shorter than adults, so it might be easier to miss her. The fact that Adrien and Kagami were seen could, of course, always be attributed to them just getting a better seat, so by itself that didn't necessarily mean much.

"Wednesday afternoon, Lila showed off a picture of herself in Berlin," Markov continued, and Max nodded, remembering that photo. It had been passed around, and he had managed to show it to Markov without anyone noticing. "It was on a well-known street in their shopping district, and Lila said that it was taken earlier this year, when she was absent from school for several months. However, there are no pedestrians or cars in the photo, even though there is a street behind Lila, and one of the stores pictured moved out of that location five years ago. A web scan turned up a poster of that street that matches exactly, available to purchase in a local poster shop for eight euros and fifty-two cents."

….what.

"There was nothing of particular note on Thursday, but on Friday afternoon, Lila claimed to be allergic to tomatoes after Sabrina invited her over to dinner and told her that it would be tomato soup and grilled cheese," Markov finished. "Even though she had had a tomato sauce on her pasta for lunch on Wednesday."

Max's frown deepened and he nodded sharply. "Okay. Even though I hadn't planned to stop collecting data for another four weeks, I think we have enough to draw some preliminary conclusions. Namely, that Marinette was correct when she called Lila a liar. Some things on their own could be explained away, but all of them?"

The chances that there was some unlikely excuse to explain away all of those contradictions… well, the chances of that were pretty low. Single digits, even. And when Max considered the comments about the food all on their own-

"Max, did you say that Lila's mom was the Italian ambassador?"

"Yes, that's why she travels so much and meets so many people," Max responded absently, wondering if he should bring what data he had to Ms. Bustier right away, or if he should wait for another week. "Why?"

"I cannot find data on who the current Italian ambassador, but a query about the duties of an ambassador do not mention anything about constant traveling to other countries as part of the job," Markov told him. "Their only travel for work would be between their home country and the country that they're stationed in. There is nothing that says that they would be traveling elsewhere over the duration of their time in the position."

….that was concerning. Add that to everything else that he had collected over the course of the week, and Max was pretty convinced now that he did have enough evidence to build a convincing case to present to Ms. Bustier. Maybe he should compose an email tonight, and have Markov make a copy of the pertinent voice and visual clips to attach to it. Maybe she already knew and an email would just be a bother. Maybe she would be annoyed that one student was recording and digging into another student's stories. Maybe she would object to the recordings altogether, even though Max had gotten permission from the class- including Lila- to have Markov in the room, with the understanding that he took in and processed information via audio and video recordings.

But it was better safe than sorry, and Max wanted to make sure that the teachers were as well-informed as they could be.

The email that Max got in response was- well, it was baffling, to say the least, and not nearly as concerned as he would have expected.

Thank you for the information. I talked to Mr. Damocles about your concerns, and he informed me that Lila told him that she has a medical condition that makes her sometimes tell lies. Please keep that in confidence, as we are not supposed to share any information about student medical conditions and I am only bending that rule to explain our response.

"I have done a preliminary scan of the web and found some information," Markov reported as Max scanned the email for the thirty-eighth time in hopes of getting something else out of it. "There is a condition called pathological lying- or perhaps it would be called a behavior, and it may or may not have a medical reason behind it. But if we look at the pattern of lies and include the presumed lies, the lies seem more premeditated rather than impulsive or spur-of-the-moment. And if Lila was the one who told your principal about her supposed condition…"

Markov didn't need to finish the sentence. The ending stood obvious, a glaring brand in Max's mind: she lied about that, too, to get herself out of something.

Well. Probably. After all, now they were building their assumptions on stories that they were just assuming were lies, based on related but perhaps somewhat indirect evidence. Like the fact that diplomats didn't travel from country to country when they were meant to be stationed somewhere, and the fact that Lila's photo of herself was in front of a poster. Both of those were stand-alone pieces of evidence that suggested that Lila's months-long trip "all over the world" had just… not happened. And lying about something of that magnitude- not making up a story about something that had happened before she arrived in Paris but instead actively going out of her way to create a narrative that did not line up with reality-

Maybe Max should stop questioning if Lila's lies did or did not fall under the category of typical behavior seen by pathological liars. After all, he was not any sort of mental health specialist. He hadn't had any training in diagnosing mental illnesses. But his mom had a friend who specialized in mental health services. Maybe she could answer some of his questions about pathological lying, or at least advise the school on the correct way to deal with a pathological liar in the student population. After all, something told Max that ignoring the problem and not letting any of the student population know so that they would be able to adjust their behavior and expectations accordingly was not quite what a professional would recommend.

Especially in their current akuma-prone climate. Lila had been building up a lot of people's hopes with her claims of connections, and the disappointment of inevitably being let down was bound to cause some strong akumas.

Akumas! There was another spot where Max could gather data, of course! Lila had claimed connections to the superheroes multiple times, and Ladybug and Chat Noir could confirm or deny those stories. Max might have some trouble getting in close enough to catch them at the end of an akuma attack- he wasn't Alya, getting caught up in akuma attacks had the annoying habit of giving Max nightmares instead of a 'fun' adrenaline rush- but Markov could probably slip past unnoticed.

But- well, that would just be more data points, when Max already had enough to make some strong preliminary conclusions. Talking to the superheroes wouldn't address the current issue, also known as the fact that the teachers and principal were aware that Lila sometimes (or often) lied and weren't telling their students or doing anything about the lies to keep them from becoming a problem. That needed to be addressed. Everything else could wait, at least for the time being.

After a moment's consideration, Max pulled up his list of contacts, searching through the list for his mom's friend. He had put her information in just in case, and a quick check from Markov confirmed that the information was up-to-date. He forwarded the email he had received to her with a quick message listing his concerns about how the school was treating the situation and then, after a moment's thought, also sent a blind copy of the email to Kim and Alix.

Maybe Ms. Bustier had asked him not to tell any of his peers about Lila's lying condition, but that just didn't feel right to Max. His friends deserved to know that Lila couldn't be trusted, because he knew that Lila had claimed connections that had impressed them, too, and Lila could very well use those "connections" to manipulate Kim and Alix into doing things for her.

Also, they both had big mouths and the likelihood that almost all of the class would be informed about the contradictions by Monday if he told them sat at a solid 85.7%. Max doubted that anyone would try to tell Alya- after all, she was so focused on having an in with Ladybug's best friend that she didn't even want to consider that Lila might not be telling the truth- and of course Marinette already knew, but the news would probably spread to everyone else.

Max supposed that there was a possible exception of Nino as well, just because of his connection to Alya, but- well, the exception of the two of them and Lila herself still qualified as "almost" all of the class, right?

Max did some quick calculations. If everyone but those three heard the news, the percentage of the class who would know would sit at a solid 80%, which was definitely a majority. But did it make sense to count everyone? Marinette already knew about the contradictions- and Max was willing to bet that Adrien did, too- so maybe they shouldn't be included in the calculations. By that logic, maybe Lila shouldn't get counted, either. If he took those three out…. That was still above 80%. Still a solid majority, even if Max removed himself from those calculations, too, since he would be the source of the information this time around.

But that was nitpicking, and also not completely relevant to the issue. What Max did know was that, come Monday, Lila's reputation and place in their class was likely to be very different than it had been on Friday. How different depended entirely on a number of very human and very unpredictable variables, which made making any predictions about it largely useless.

"Well, Markov, I think that's all I really can do about it right now," Max commented, checking one last time to make sure his messages had sent before closing the window and turning to his friend. "Now we can only wait."

Monday morning, the usual crowd around Lila had dwindled down to only a handful of people, Nino and Alya and a few people from other classes. She looked a bit thrown off by the change, particularly when Rose and Juleka hurried past with barely a glance and not even the prospect of news about Prince Ali could make them pause for more than a moment. A flash of fury crossed Lila's face at that as soon as the two girls had turned away again, her glance at Marinette a second of pure murder.

Hmm. Perhaps Max should give Marinette a heads-up about the information he had gathered and the emails that he had sent out. After all, if Lila decided that Marinette was behind the rest of the students' decision to stop listening to her, then Lila could very well try to retaliate. Considering that Lila's earlier retaliation- or assumed retaliation, to be more accurate- had consisted of an attempt to frame Marinette for cheating, stealing, and assault, some warning about another possible attempt at something would probably not go unappreciated. With some warning, Marinette could be on guard.

Max felt a little bad about that, actually. This time, Marinette had not been the source of the- well, not the gossip, because that suggested not entirely truthful rumor-spreading, but perhaps the discord regarding Lila. Max had been the source of the information that Lila very likely didn't want getting out, but Marinette would probably get most of the repercussions from the other girl simply because previously, Marinette had really been the only one calling out inconsistencies.

"Yo, dude, that was a weird email you sent out over the weekend!" Kim announced, making Max jump in surprise as his friend popped up next to him. "I can't believe we didn't notice some of that stuff ourselves!"

"Well, it's hard to remember everything people say," Max said instead of admitting that he hadn't noticed, either. Not really- not specifically. All he had really picked up on was the fact that an unidentified something was off. "Thus the data collection." He adjusted his glasses, glancing over at Kim. "So who all knows now?"

"Who doesn't know would be the better question. I know Alix told most of the other girls. She tried telling Alya, but. Uh." Kim cringed. "I think Alya just really loves the idea of having an in with 'Ladybug's best friend', because she wasn't willing to listen. I don't even think Alix got to the part where it was you that was saying anything instead of Marinette."

"I did wonder if anyone would even try to talk to Alya. She's been most invested in Lila's stories, it seems. Unfortunate, considering that that has to be hugely frustrating for Marinette." Max glanced across the gym again. Nino was starting to look a bit on edge, thrown off by the number of people who usually would be joining them in listening to Lila but who were clearly avoiding the Italian girl now. "And Nino?"

Kim shook his head. "I don't think anyone tried talking to him, considering how Alya blew Alix off. I bet he's going to be asking around now, though. Since everyone else was willing to listen, he might figure that we actually have something worth listening to."

Max nodded, in full agreement with Kim. With the rest of the class believing them, it was only a matter of time before the final couple people were at least willing to listen. "Hopefully. Should we head to class? I want to talk to Marinette before everyone comes in."

Kim snickered. "You're really going to assume that Marinette is already there? I mean, you're right this time," he added hastily. "I've already seen Marinette this morning. But considering how often she runs late…"

"I had also seen her already, or I wouldn't have made that assumption." Max led the way, away from Lila and her dwindling audience and towards the classroom. He pushed open the door to see Marinette very obviously trying to look like she wasn't paying attention to the woman talking to Ms. Bustier and Mr. Damocles in the front of the classroom.

The woman who looked very familiar. Apparently his mom's friend had been concerned enough by the email that she had decided to come in in person.

"They seem to be alternating between being happy that there's a specialist here and insisting that they can handle things and they can't disclose any part of a student's medical record without permission," Marinette murmured as Max headed up to his seat, doing his best not to look like he was listening in. Apparently someone- Alix, if he was to guess- had already filled her in on Max's investigation and subsequent emails. "Though I think the being thankful for a specialist is winning out, because she's told them what all would be required to properly handle a condition like the one Lila is claiming to have."

Max nodded in thanks, glancing back towards the front once before retreating to his seat and watching the adults' expressions as they talked. It was fairly easy to deduce from the expressions that Mr. Damocles was all in favor of handing over Lila's entire file and letting the expert deal with her "condition", while Ms. Bustier was far more concerned about student privacy. If Max had to bet, he would say that Mr. Damocles would probably win the discussion, if only because his status as principal afforded him more clout when making decision.

And sure enough, two minutes later, the meeting broke up with Ms. Bustier looking less than pleased as she sunk back down into the chair behind her desk.

""I think it would be a good idea for her to at least talk to Mrs. Lenoir," Mr. Damocles told her, heading for the door. During homeroom, if you could- I don't want to waste Mrs. Lenoir's time. And you know that we haven't had a case like this before- we didn't know what paperwork we should be asking for, or that we would need to be working with a therapist daily."

"It's overkill, surely," Ms. Bustier protested weakly, clearly well aware that she was losing the argument. "She's getting along just fine with the others in the class, she's popular-"

"And how long will that last once people realize that the stories aren't based in fact?" Mrs. Lenoir challenged. "How upset will they be about being misled? Is that a safe gamble to make with Hawkmoth still on the loose?"

Ms. Bustier fell silent. Up front, Adrien's head went up, clearly forgoing the pretense of not listening. Mr. Damocles glanced between the two of them, clearly a little uncomfortable, before Lila's arrival with the remainder of her entourage broke the silence.

"Ah, Ms. Rossi, just the person we were looking for!" Mr. Damocles announced at once, and Lila clearly startled. He gestured towards Mrs. Lenoir. "This is Mrs. Lenoir! She came by the school today to talk to you about- well." He paused, clearly suddenly aware of the filling classroom. "The condition that we discussed a couple weeks ago. You two can take my office, I can work from the library for the first hour."

"Oh, that's fine, I don't need to talk to anyone!" Lila tittered at once, and now that he was looking, the level of fake in her voice made Max cringe. "I've already seen experts back home, you know-"

"And yet we don't have records on file here, so I'm afraid that until we can get those, we'll need to start from scratch," Mr. Damocles told her kindly. "It won't take long now, and Ms. Bustier has already agreed to excuse you from homeroom. Now, if you please?"

Lila glanced between the adults, a small frown on her face. "Is this really necessary? I mean, my mom's just been too busy to ask that the files be sent, I'm sure, I can just remind her tonight-"

The smile on Mr. Damocles' face gave way to a frown. "Now, Ms. Rossi."

Max didn't miss the tiny flicker of outright panic on Lila's face as she was ushered out the door.

By the end of the day, Lila had been expelled from Dupont and reported to the school board. Several eye witnesses said that the elder Rossi had come to collect her daughter in a huff, with a police officer accompanying her. Whether or not Lila would even be staying in Paris sounded like it might be up for debate, because Hawkmoth's presence meant that Lila could still last out.

Frankly, Max hoped that Lila would be removed from the city. Her akuma forms had a high potential for causing catastrophic confusion and danger, and she was crafty enough to use the powers to their full advantage. With her mom and the school board (and the police) on her trail, Lila would just get plan after plan disrupted, which would no doubt frustrate her to the point of akumatization. Who she decided to go after when that happened… well, that was about as close to a wild card as Max had ever seen, and he didn't like the odds of Lila targeting all of her old classmates, simply because she didn't know who had gotten Mrs. Lenoir called to the school.

Presumably Mrs. Lenoir hadn't given Lila any specifics during their short but fateful chat. She would know how bad of an idea that would be, what with Hawkmoth around and far more opportunities than usual for revenge (however temporary) available.

The class was still reeling from the deceptions- exactly how many of Lila's stories were made up was still being investigated- but Max suspected that it wouldn't be long before something else came along and pulled everyone's attention away again. They would move on, Lila would be forgotten, and everything would go back to normal. Or at least as normal as Paris got these days.

Max smiled at the thought. Maybe his next data-collection project could have something to do with Hawkmoth and his akumas. It would be interesting, and anything he found- well, it could potentially have some pretty serious implications.

Yes, Max decided, that sounded like a good idea. It would be a challenge, particularly figuring out how to approach his study and data-collection in a way that would actually produce meaningful results- after all, surely the police already were looking at the available data to try to find Hawkmoth- but Max rather fancied a challenge. Figuring out what was going on with Lila had been just a touch too easy for his tastes, and figuring out Hawkmoth would be much harder. Still, Max was convinced that it was doable.

After all, well…. Hawkmoth might be doing his best to keep his identity secret from all of Paris, but he was still a mere man. He was prone to making mistakes, to leaving clues that might be overlooked, to falling into familiar patterns. All things that could be collected, could be analyzed, could be built into a bigger picture that, with any luck, would lead them to Hawkmoth.

Maybe most superheroes didn't fight their supervillains using metadata, but there was always a first time.

#Miraculous Ladybug #My writing #max kante

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ephemerlskies · 5 years ago

Text

emerald dreams: REDACTED | kth

⇢ pairing: taehyung x reader

⇢ genre: series, blackmirror!au, angst, fluff, artist!taehyung, strangers to lovers, set sometime in a dystopian era of technology, taehyung is s o f t

⇢ word count: 4.5k

⇢ warnings: explicit language, memory loss, mentions of death, themes of grief/depression

⇢ summary: in a technologically advanced utopia where a memory can be stored as a data file in a chip inserted in your head, it was entirely impossible to forget anything. when you met taehyung, a young at heart yet talented artist, he garnished an odd familiarity, raising suspicion that some of your memories had been lost in the digital cloud, or worse, erased from your memory chip.

♪ playlist: IDK you yet - alexander 23 • 4 o' clock - v & rm • jamais vu - bts • the story - brandi carlile • moonlight - ariana grande ♪

╰ episode index: 01 | 02 (coming soon)

a/n: if you don't watch black mirror then just imagine that everything is technology based, even the inner mechanisms of your thoughts/mind/memories and social culture has centered around the automation of the human body. also the government is sleazy and controls literally everyone in this au >:) also, i'm going to try and update this weekly!!

Scenario No. 2: Re-test

You didn’t expect to be spending your weekly visit at your favorite coffee shop gasping for air in the single occupancy commode. An unsettling familiarity had reached into your chest and compromised the body of your lungs, now savagely hyperventilating for air, and seized control on the reins of every sensory neuron in your body.

First, it was the sensation of sound. That voice, that unusually specific coffee order, the soft lilt of politeness riding through his etiquettes of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ struck right in your chest with a shockwave of deja vu, like you’ve heard that order before, a million times before perhaps. No part of you would let go of the fact that for some reason, this stranger was someone you knew very well.

And yet you had no idea who he was.

“Hi, how are you?” He smiled to ease the nerves of the overworked barista on this Sunday afternoon. Your ears picked up his husky, sweet tone through the scuttle of customers walking in and out of the shop and a commotion of side conversations that filled the room. It was quite noisy, enough so that it muffled any specific utterances, but the bass of his voice had met your ears with a strong posture of familiarity.

You looked over to the sweater draped over his frame that fit snugly against his broad shoulders. That was when your visual senses were overrun with the muted forest green of the knitted jumper. You’ve seen this color green. To be fair, green was always secured in your life abundantly through your own will. You had always loved this color and demonstrated this through small displays such as picking the green straw from a bundle of multicolored ones, or scanning over a set of shirts to find which one had the most green in it.

You surrounded yourself with a life full of green, but when this green sweater was paired with the voice there was a strange jolt of reminiscence.

It was not just a sweater, it was a sweater that you have touched, even worn before. And when he wore it, it wasn’t just any green. It was his green.

His figure drew closer to you as he waited at the side bar for his drink to be called, sending a waft of his scent to nullify those of fresh brewed coffee and pastries. Along with your eyes and ears, your nose now fell to the magnetism of this stranger.

He smelled of fresh evergreen with a bit of pinewood, mixing into an overwhelming oaky aroma. As the smells that resembled a tranquil forest ruminated through your lungs and your bloodstream, it weakened your body to a state of paralysis. Your motor skills were numbed to endow a series of mental backflips to figure out where this estranged attraction was coming from, and why it was him who provoked it.

Standing comatose in the middle of a populated coffee shop meant the clash of your body into another's was bound to occur. And of course, it was his body that bumped you out of the trance of obscured memories. It was his arms that held your shoulders steady so you wouldn’t topple over and spill your latte over yourself.

“Oh, sorry! Didn’t see you there. Are-” His eyes studied your aghast expression, “Hey, are you okay?”

This marked the compromise of your visual sensory. You looked right into his eyes, kind and concerned, and your surroundings had melted away into a whirl of unidentifiable colors. Your body was transported to a purgatory that rested between reality and a dream-like setting, which eventually molded itself into actuality before your eyes.

Redacted File No. 6

Suddenly you turned your head side to side and the territory that was once a café was no more, and had alchemized into a zone of unparalleled comfort. To your left, you were warmed by a wood-burning fireplace with stones crested along the frame of the pit. Your body was covered in a blurred canvas of forest green, and there were two hands holding your body gently and lovingly. It was a vision so incredibly clear and intricate it couldn’t be conjured through imagination or illusion, but a very real and vivid memory.

“Excuse me? I’m sorry… You’re okay right?” His jostling hands fainted the memory that swept you from the cafe. You blinked a few times before your eyes could refocus and land you to your present circumstances.

The man’s firm grip hadn’t abandoned your shoulders even though you regrounded your balance, which quickened the pace of your heart. They you earnestly, that even though you were certainly not going to fall over, he wouldn’t have let go. Without more than an array of unintelligible stutters to confirm you were okay, because you weren’t okay, you hobbled backward quite ungracefully to the privacy of the bathroom. After your rushed retreat, you tried to analyze the string of memories that pervaded your mind.

How do you know this man? Were these your memories? Or perhaps your memory chip glitched and downloaded files that didn’t belong to you?

The blunder of confusion racked your head with a slight tension headache. What was once a temporary occupancy of the restroom turned into a marathoned hideout until you could safely assume the stranger’s drink was made and he would leave the vicinity.

You checked your phone to count the duration of time spent. It had been about ten minutes since you pathetically holed yourself up, and it would be about five more minutes until you felt you could confidently emerge and escape.

You knew him, and for some reason it sent you into a fearful sequester.

Luckily, just last week you downloaded an upgraded storage plan which gave you access to all your past memories.

You activated the chip residing in your temple to trace every single unit in the archives, even the ones from as early as your birth, to see if anyone, including the likes of a passing stranger, a waiter that took your order three weeks ago, even a student from your high school class, resembled the man in the café. There were no records in your memory files of someone who echoed the same unsettling familiarity that this man had.

If the advanced technology that contained each capsule of every moment in time that you have ever experienced couldn’t give you the data on this man, then perhaps it was just an unusual coincidence.

One of those Twilight Zone-esque occurrences that isn’t deployed through factual evidence. Though you weren't entirely met with closure for this reasoning, it was enough to cope through the rest of your lengthened stay in the restroom.

What battered your precisely timed and nearly successful plan to avoid further interactions with this man was the light knock against the door. And it was the feeling of guilt that there must be other customers who planned on using the bathroom for its intended purpose that hoisted you up and had you reluctantly vacating the protected area.

Though, it was punishingly ironic that the one who had torn you from your sanctuary was the same person who put you there in the first place.

“Sorry,” He apologized about three times within the small window of time he’d been confronted by you and you already caught on to his habit of perpetual remorse, “Um, I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. I bumped into you and you kinda… freaked then ran and hid in the bathroom.”

If he weren’t so considerate to a stranger that was acting oddly evasive, this would have been easy. But he was considerate, and this was unbelievably difficult.

“Yeah um,” Your eyes sank down to rest on the comforting hue of his sweater, “I’m, uh, I'm okay. Thank you.”

He cleared his throat, dislodging the nervous laugh blocking his words.

“Okay well, I was just wondering if you were all good. You seemed a little shaken up back there.” Frankly, he still sensed something about him was off-putting to you, but he tried to deny it for the moment.

Your assurances fell gravely short of convincing since you couldn’t even bring your eyes to level with his. The soft-spoken gesture of kindness made you feel like a helpless animal that would surrender at the slightest sign of danger. It was a fair assessment for you acted as though his accidental collision into you through a crowded space was the end of the world.

“Yeah, sorry. Thank you!” You chirped to imitate a normal reaction despite this tremendously abnormal situation. “I was just um… It's just one of those days, ya know?”

Then, it was his smile that cluttered your sensation of touch. He was standing a respectable distance from you, however, his smile touched you. It cornered you into blurting out something even more peculiar than the overwhelming deja vu that had been commencing the moment you noticed him.

“Do I-” You paused to lower your voice that could have outsourced to the collection of ruckus in the café. Now in a whisper, you continued, “Do I know you?”

He didn’t offer a voiced response, but an equally bewildered expression. You couldn't quite read what this implied so you assumed he thought you were crazy, maybe even a bit creepy.

“Sorry! Fuck, that’s so creepy. I’m just gonna go.” Before you had the chance to push past him and the billowing clouds of regret, he obstructed your path to the doorway with his body.

“No! I think I know you too. Like, I’ve never seen you but I remember you. Like… Like a dream.” He scaled the length of your body with his eyes, which only manufactured his intuition into an undoubtable certainty. “I know you. How do I know you?”

“Hell if I know. I’m just as confused as you.” You felt your body slumping into itself under his gaze. He was attentive to every detail of you, from the length of your hair to the twitch of your fingertips, making you feel over exposed to this stranger that wasn’t a stranger.

“Well, do you wanna maybe sit? Have a coffee with me?” He propagated his interest like there was no reason to be afraid which only intimidated you further. There wasn’t a real threat in his invitation, however accepting it felt like you were walking on thin ice.

The government agent standing guard with a perfect earshot of every conversation wiring through the small café didn’t help ease your nerves either.

“I really should be heading home soon.” Guilt worked quickly to try and compensate for the discouraged expression on his face, “But… if you give me your number I’ll call you and maybe we can go out for lunch or something?”

He traded his grim with excitement while pulling a pen from his pocket and walking over to the condiments bar to write his number on a napkin. You had no clue as to why, but the fact that he had a pen on hand was strikingly nostalgic, much so as every other detail you had acquired from him.

Although entirely unheard of, you felt like this new knowledge of him was not adding to the collection, but rather dusting old artifacts that had simply been forgotten. You weren’t learning things about him, but instead remembering them; the more you stood watching him scribble his name and number on the napkin, the deeper you entrenched yourself in this theory.

Not to mention, you couldn’t recall the last time someone favored using a pen over a keyboard and a paper napkin over a digital contact entered on your phone.

What kind of person carries around a pen in the age of modern technology?

“Thank you. I’m ___, by the way.” Your hand wavered a bit before holding out to greet him, and when his hand made contact, you could have sworn on your own life that this wasn’t the first time it happened.

This was no introduction. It was a reunion.

The fix of his gaze had suggested he too felt reminiscent with the feeling of your hand.

A shared inability to let go held your hands together, trying to harness a bit of recognition or recall a social function where you two might have met in passing. Neither one of you had shown any intention to pull away, which dragged the formality of shaking hands into a gesture of mutual wonder; now you were not so much exchanging a handshake but rather holding each other. Holding tightly, as if you were rediscovering a mass of feelings that would give you an answer.

However, the answer was not generous enough to make itself available to either of you.

It could have been hours until you were able to unriddle this strange sensation, so you made the preventative move of pulling away before the warmth concocting between your hands would produce a light sweat on your palm.

He too seemed to retract upon regaining his sensibilities, but there was a glint in his eyes that suggested he would have held on for longer, maybe even forever if necessary. If it would regroup the unattainable and partially inexistent memories into cognizance.

“Taehyung. Kim Taehyung.”

Redacted File No. 12

You clung with desperate persistence onto the flaccid hand. Trailing up the arm was an indiscernible figure that had no features, no notable detailing, not even a vague outline of facial structure; just an ethereal glow that projected throughout the entire room. The nebulous haze terminated any identifiable aspect of the room except the hand you were holding, so you focused on the scant detail your eyes offered.

There was no specified context, no real evidence that you had to hold on, but something deep within you was urging for it. Some omnipotent instinct which prophesied that if you let go of the hand, you would in turn be letting go of the world.

You had to hold on.

However your hands wouldn’t obey you. Each time you tried to tighten your fingers, it felt as if the hand would continue slipping from your grasp. Or maybe, your hands weren't gripping at all.

They were numb, or paralyzed, and unable to execute your urgencies. The more force you exerted into your dire intentions, the easier it was for the hand to grow limp and melt through your fingers like liquid. It was frustrating, your willful attempts to hold on seemed to elicit the opposite effect as the hand, unowned by a certain being, resigned from yours.

“I don’t want to let go. I don’t want to let go.” You chanted through the tears, feeling as though that would somehow ignite a stronghold on the lifeless hand falling away.

But even so, it did fall away.

Perhaps the pain of it was that it wasn’t you who was letting go, but the hand that was being taken away from you. That you had been fighting a losing battle far beyond the prospects of your own decisions or control.

You begged for mercy, but were bestowed with your hands clean of what it was trying so desperately to hold onto. The hand slipped and when you peaked through the glaze of tears, your knuckles and fingers were gripping airy, cold emptiness.

“I don’t want to let go. I don’t want to let go. I don’t want to let go.”

Soon you were captured in a perpetual aria of pleas to the ears of a God that would not listen. Unsettling despair had mutilated the illuminating glow of the room to bleak darkness. The world of colors had fallen absent akin to the cold hand vaporizing alongside the dispersal of light.

Then, everything was black.

Your eyes shot open with deep distraught.

The full moon flashed against your dampened face; half of the moisture sourced from a cold sweat and half from the heavy tears pouring from your eyes.

You knew the only explanation for this dream, which resonated more closely to a memory than a figment of sleepful imagination, was curated by the peculiar events that took place earlier today.

Soon, the dream drifted from your mind as consciousness took its place. Your tardy response to write the sparse remnants of it had left you with nothing but a distorted plot of what transpired during your slumber.

Widening your awakening through long sips of water had forced you into an obsessive rewinding of your memory files. It was a shame there wasn’t technology yet to store memories of your dream, or you’d have been replaying the one you just dreamt about a hundred times.

You scanned through a collection of moments in the afternoon when you first met Taehyung. The clear, digital picture of him glassed over your eyes, taking the place once inhabited by the moon, as you pressed the play button on the handlebar of functions.

“Taehyung. Kim Taehyung.”

You rewound no later than a second after he introduced himself back to the beginning.

“Taehyung. Kim Taehyung.”

Rewind. 0.5 x speed.

“Taehyung. Kim Taehyung.” Said in a distorted voice from the ‘reduce speed’ function you equipped.

“Kim Taehyung.” You muttered to the empty room and the bright moon.

Sleeping was abstracted to an impossibility, and for the sake of your sanity, you walked over fish out the napkin in your coat pocket. It took you a while to move on from meticulously inspecting Taehyung’s handwriting.

The aimless effort to recall if it was the penmanship of some classmate had slackened to yet another unmet hope. Taehyung didn’t reside in your memories, but claimed quite an existence in your intuition. However, that wasn’t satisfying enough. You settled with the unsolved familiarity, though not before a lengthy wrestle between your eyes and the seven numbers scribbled into the napkin.

After dancing with the idea of it, you resolved some courage to finally dial. Each ping of the phone had you dreading for the automated message to inform you the recipient was not available at the moment, that you would have to hang up or wait for the tone to leave a message. Little by little your spirited nerve had depleted as you were now practicing what message you would leave Taehyung in his voicemail box, praying that it wasn’t full.

“Hello?” The sound of his voice interrupted the seventh or eighth ring, along with your rehearsal of the voicemail you assumed you’d have to leave being that the moon had been aging the sky into midnight.

“Oh! Oh, sorry I didn’t expect you to pick up.” After the chaotic pounding in your chest settled, you realized how nonsensical you sounded. Everything you methodically planned to say had been scattered by his unprecedented answer.

Instead of asking why you would call if you expected him not to pick up, he asked with a kind curiosity:

“Who is this?” He didn’t sound tired, in fact it sounded as if he had been hard at work preceding this call.

“Oh yeah! It’s ___, from the coffee shop. You remember me right?” Though you powered through, the worry was quite deafening. Taehyung seemed to pick up on it and diffused it with a gentle chuckle.

“Of course I remember.” On the other end of the line, he had been penciling a sketch on a blank page in his notebook.

The serenity of the stars and moon pinned on the navy blue sky never failed to spark inspiration. Taehyung was the type to refuse passing up a surge of an artistic muse, even if that meant he would shed a few hours of sleep from his routine. No matter the time or place, he always had a pen on hand to honor his heart’s unremitting passion.

He loved the moon and stars. He loved it so much as one would love a dear friend. He wished to be a part of the scenes of lights that hovered just out of reach, but could only settle on capturing a piece of the starry heavens on paper with his trusty pencil, sketchbook, and emerald-tinted muse.

“It’s late to be calling, but you’re lucky I was awake.” He said to hide how ecstatic he was you had actually called.

For someone you had just met, or at least you thought you just met, he threaded a flirtatious coyness in his response. It difficult to hush the winged eruption in your stomach because of that.

“Lucky, huh.” You repeated through a mumbled laugh, “I was just… I was thinking.”

“About what?” He had placed his phone on speaker mode and laid it next to his sketchbook.

There was a new inspiration that bore a louder siren than that of the moon and the stars. He sifted through the memory files throughout his day to the minute he first bumped into you, and though your face had been ingrained quite clearly behind his eyelids with each blink, he relied on the accuracy of a reference to perfect his drawing of you; not to mention he projected the image of your face to delight his undeniable attraction and to moderate the wildly romanticized version of you in his head.

Perhaps if he hadn't, he wouldn't be able to discern your face from the arena of glimmering stars scattered along the shaded skies.

“Just about how I think I was too quick to pass your offer.”

“Really?” That endearing lilt hope in his voice, the excitement expressed, acted as some puppeteer that manipulated the corner of your lips to lift into a smile.

No muscle in your body could ever be moved with the same conviction as it did when he was the reason for it. It bewildered you, almost to the point of frustration, as to why he had this power over you.

I just met him. I'm already getting this worked up? You thought how absurd it was you'd fallen this quickly, hoping it would ground you to the reality that he was still a stranger you hadn’t exchanged more than two conversations with.

Though, reality and memories and data files had all been obscured ever since you met Taehyung which was fascinating more than it was disorienting.

“Would you want to, maybe, grab coffee? Say next Thursday?” Your hand was subconsciously gripping the bed sheets, just like the way you gripped the disembodied hand in your dream, and awaited his response with full-blown suspense.

“I’ll see you next Thursday, ___.” Taehyung's confirmation put all your anxiety to rest, as well as your tightly clamped hand around the cotton fabric.

“I’ll see you.” You mimicked as if that would make the idea of seeing Taehyung again any less surreal. He laughed at this and brushed up a few finishing touches on his drawing.

“So just to clarify.” His pause gave entry for curiosity to wire through your head.

“Yes?”

“When you said you were thinking… you were thinking of me?” You wanted the upper hand to be reinstated with you, but your shy chuckle was no match to the smirk adopted on his lips that you couldn’t see, but you knew was there. You knew he was prideful when he swept the rug right out from under your feet, and you were right.

“Perhaps. And what if I was?” You framed your question to render your intimidation as flattery. Though, you had no idea how convincing this facade actually was and that it came off more suggestive than you had expected. There was a part of you that had fraternized with the romantic idea of Taehyung which might have registered your motive to reciprocate an undertone beyond platonic.

“Then that would be one thing we have in common.” He sounded responsive to your flirting and raised the bar significantly.

Your eyes and smile were directed towards the scenery displayed by your window, but they were not dedicated to the moonlit beauty of the diamond encrested sky. Though the midnight glades of stars were the ones to witness your smile, it was, without a shadow of a doubt, dedicated to Taehyung.

He was staring at the same moon, the same plot of stars, so perhaps you were looking into each other. When the moon twinkled, it looked awfully similar to a smile. Your smile.

For the moment, there was a radio silence that splintered through the two speakers of your and Taehyung’s phones. Even if the use of his hands weren’t engaged by his needful recreation of your face through his art, if his hands were left unused, he wouldn’t have mustered the discipline to end the call. Your unoccupied hands were trying to find any employment so you could have some excuse for not hanging up as well, not that there was anything else to be discussed.

Again, it felt familiar. The feeling of hesitance to be the first one to hang up despite the conversation’s recoil.

The cohesive idleness of you and Taehyung was unprovoked and ran out for about a minute. Neither of you had the intention to sever the virtual communion quite yet. The awkwardness of sitting in silence on the phone with a newly acquainted stranger was a delicacy compared to preemptively ending the call.

At one point, you were about to question if he had hung up; but the rhythmic and light breathing told you otherwise. And because of that mutual need to stay on the line, it seemed to be unreasonable to hang up, save for the yawn that eventually trimmed the call to an end.

“You’re tired.” He stated, now prompted with a yawn of his own upon hearing yours. “Goodnight, ___.”

“Goodnight, Taehyung.” Saying his name out loud sent you into that same blend of reminiscence and nostalgia.

His name was not unexplored by your tongue, that much was certain, and the thought of putting your entire life on hold to discover why it felt that way was a tempting venture. Why when he said your name, it felt like sitting in front of a wood-burning fireplace under the security of a green sweater and wrapped in safe arms.

More than that, you wanted to know if he felt all these things too.

“I’ll see you?” You asked instead of saying that dreadful word 'goodbye'.

“I’ll see you.” He repeated before reluctantly hanging up.

“___.” He whispered your name, hoping the inky sky would design it in the stars for the world to remember forever.

Hoping that the next hours, which would surely be spent on multiple sketched renditions of your face, would amount in some revelation of the mystifying familiarity. He believed shedding a few graphite imitations onto the surface of his sketchbook, soaked by the glow of moonlight, would somehow make him remember everything hidden in the dark compartments of his heart.

However, if it didn’t, he would be okay with it. Because at least he knew he would see you again.

“Meeting place: Silver Lining Café.”

“Thank you, Agent Park. Heighten surveillance on the two subjects.”

#bangtanarmynet #btswriterscorner #ficswithluv #btsgoldnet #bts fanfic #bts fluff #bts writing #taehyung series #bts series #taehyung fanfic #taehyung fluff #taehyung x reader #artist!taehyung #rubycoast #emerald dreams: REDACTED

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youarejesting · 5 years ago

Text

Digital Art

[SPARKS MASTERLIST]

Pairing: Robot!Taehyung x Reader

Genre: Friendship, Comedy, Soft boy, Fluff.

Summary: You are an art student, who gets regular visits from the Universities kindest and oddest AI. He explores human nature and ponders the idea’s of like and love and finds himself tangled in emotions he was never programmed to understand.

The research lab at University S had different robotic creations that were cutting edge for human consumers. The Min-meow cat that caters to the elderly works like a real cat and purrs, yet never gets sick and can analyse owners behaviour like strokes and heart attacks in time to call an ambulance.

Kookie the rabbit was a robot made for very young children coping with disabilities such as deafness and blindness, it could translate speech to text on the screen on its back and he could even read books to them in his little rabbit voice.

Robot Tae was just a regular AI who walked the Lab. He would talk with the students and observe many other robots. He would sometimes lay on the floor, his chin rested on his folded hands and watch min-meow cross the room. They made his hair out of tiny thin fibre optics which meant he could change the colour depending on his mood.

He would call the role and greet each student to class, he would run errands to and from the class which was his favourite Job.

Today he called the roll and walked the classroom, helping students with their work and genuinely having a good time chatting. The girls put flowers in his hair and took selfies with him. He liked the girls; they made him feel happy when they smiled. The boys were friendly too always patting his back or ruffled his hair which after some research was a good thing.

“Hey Tae, have you ever been with a girl?”

“What do you mean? There are many females in this room and I am with them does that count?” He asked.

“No, dude we mean like sexually, do you watch porn?”

“He ran his systems, they connected him to the University Wifi, and he had his own built-in data it wasn’t hard to find out what they meant. I have never watched it before,” he shifted uncomfortably, “By the looks of the videos it is for human pleasure. The videos seem to work as stimulation of the auditory and visual responses. Is this correct?”

“Yes, do you have a dick?” They asked snickering he seemed a little off-put by their laughing, he knew the signal of laughing was usually a good sign of friendship but his data also told him it could humiliate the difference was the eyes and their eyes didn’t seem friendly.

“I am a fully functioning humanoid robot, I have genitalia just like you do,” he said confused “are you making fun of me?”

“No dude, you are our little brother we want to help you get some. If you see a girl you like you should ask her if she wants to....” Tae wasn’t sure about his methods but he walked over to Daisy one of the nicest girls in the class and asked her the way they taught him.

“Tae doesn’t listen to them, boys don’t know how to get girls. When you see a girl or guy you like and I mean really like as in more than friends, you don’t ask like that,” She said sitting him down.

“How will I know if I really like them more than friends”

“Look you will know, you will find it hard to think, you will feel like you are about to explode”

“That sounds scary”

“Love is scary, but when you feel that ask her to hang out, like ask her if she would like to see Min, girls love pets”

She patted his shoulder. And he was lost in thought, filing away this information. It was one of those days he was asked to carry a stack of Textbooks to the engineering offices. On his way there he saw people holding hands and a couple kissing against a wall. On the way back he saw a girl sitting on a stool, a puppy at her feet. She was doing something he understood in theory but not in practice. He approached and saw her paintbrush stroke the canvas slowly colouring the skies.

“How do you do that?” He asked his hair a brilliant sky blue, he liked this he stored this in his data next to min-meow purring on his lap, the tasty oil drinks he gets for breakfast and freshly charging batteries.

“Oh! You scared me” she said, watching his face fall and hair darken to a midnight blue.

“I am sorry, I should go”

It was a few days later when he saw you again waving to him and he waved back. The days past and he would pause on his errands to watch you paint a little more. Some days you explained your project other days you worked in silence.

“Do you want to try?” You asked out of the blue one day. He beeped and nodded, his hair paling to a golden colour.

“All right hold the paintbrush with your hand and I will guide you” he nodded holding the paintbrush and your hand wrapped around his and moved it along the paper. His face lit up and he could only make strangled beeps and squeals from his auto air gun, TSC, auto door, spindle and alarm systems. This must be it, his processors were slowing down making it hard to think and his fan belt sped up, he felt like he could explode any second now.

She laughed this was such a bright friendly laugh, her small Pomeranian started barking beside her from the sound, “you’re cute what’s your name?”

“I am Tae, what is your name?”

“My name is y/n, and this is Yeontan”

“He is so wiggly and warm and soft, I have never pet a living animal” he said playing with the dog as it rolled around on his lap. You exchanged contact information, Taehyung had a mobile number and all the social media accounts, he had posted a few videos of his adventures around the Uni even showed videos of you painting. Only after asking you for permission to film you and your painting.

“Would you like to see my quadruped companion, his name is Min,” He used the line he had worked on with Daisy a few weeks ago “Girls love pets”

“Of course, I would love to see Min, girls do love animals, can I finish my painting?” you giggled and reached up taking a leaf from his hair and he nodded sitting cross-legged Yeontan curling up in his lap, he watched you paint. Once you were finished he carried your things, you placed your canvas in the art rooms before moving on to the engineering labs.

He walked you inside, and the class stopped and he smiled “Hello Daisy, I found her, she made me feel like I would explode and I couldn’t think, she is an art student. You should see it, and I asked her to come to see Min because; girls love Pets”

You were bright red as the boys whooped from the back, “Our Tae has game, getting the chicks”

“Quick y/n let me introduce you to Min,” he said and dragged you across the classroom and you bowed low to the professor apologizing for interrupting the class. You played with Min who was a grumpy and stubborn cat. “We can’t sell him as they made him too cat-like, and he refuses to listen. And this is Kookie, he was the first model but his ears are too big so for commercial reasons they made them shorter.” You pulled out your sketchbook and began drawing Tae and the three animals Yeontan really liked Kookie the latter hopping around the Pomeranian.

After class Tae introduced you to everyone including the professor. “Ah, it is nice to meet you, I have a meeting Tae you remember to lock up, message me when you do?”

“Of course” he smiled, waving goodbye. You headed home talking with him all night until he said he had to charge.

One day was spent with just the two of you, he walked you around the university and he waved to all the students and got some photos he showed you his favourite music, his favourite place and even the little mug in the Uni store that reminded him of Yeontan. He asked why you didn’t bring Yeontan and you explained he was going for a check-up and grooming.

He brought you back to the lab, and you sat on the desk swinging your legs as you listened to him sing and sway his hips to his favourite songs. He was in a particularly good mood and he grabbed your waist lifting you off the table and spinning you around, he felt his search engines working without commands and they had brought up a web browser with videos on how to kiss. He didn’t know what came over him but he kissed you just as it explained and your lips were locked and you stumbled back together until you bumped against the lab tables.

Lost in the feeling, knowing it was wrong but unable to stop yourself. The door opened and the two of you jumped apart and you ran out of the lab upset with yourself. Taehyung was in a daze he felt cold without you, he stored yet another folder about you in his data banks.

He texted you but you didn’t reply; he got worried and continued to try texting you; he was getting worried as he plugged in Kookie and Min. He did something he had never done before. He hacked your student records to find your address he didn’t want you to be hurt or in trouble, Yeontan couldn’t call an ambulance. He ran across the city following his GPS location and the pre-programmed directions. Tae knocked on your apartment door, the door swung open and you froze when you saw him. Letting him inside shocked and very concerned.

“Why are you here?” You asked as he sat on your couch, Yeontan making himself comfortable on his lap.

“I don’t know, I can’t stop processing and I am completing tasks without commands, things that I am not programmed to do, I can’t stop thinking about you and I was worried you were hurt, and I can’t function without you close”

“Are you saying you missed me?”

“That seems like a fitting explanation” He nodded and the silence settled over the two of you and he beeped his battery getting low. You walked him to your room and laid him on your bed, taking his charging cable and plugging him into the wall outlet.

As he powered down into charging mode he whispered “I want to kiss you again”

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freewheelshippin · 5 years ago

Text

FIC: “be proud”

Let me indulge in the fantasy that I got to help, just a little bit, in making one of the only ballads on this earth I like. More “utapri characters that aren’t ranmaru” content than usual, especially Ai, since this is vaguely based on their Idol Songs album!

Content warnings include an allusion to home invasion, Ranmaru’s usual backstory things (i.e. dealing with debt), and some eating/meal scenes.

Ranmaru was surprised to receive the package, a fairly big box from someone he never expected to get mail from. Something in the pit of his stomach half-expected it to be everything he’d sent her, unused and returned to sender.

For a second, he thought he was right. It was a similar array of trinkets and colors as the merch she’d designed for his album, but it quickly became obvious this wasn’t his merch, but hers. Trinkets from her shop, like patches and pins, and one of those handmade prints she liked making on weird paper. Candies he didn’t recognize, some American snacks he did, a little box of something that looked homemade with a hand-scrawled label on it. At the bottom, a shirt, printed with a cleaned version of an album art draft he’d especially liked but the agency didn’t approve. Folded within it, a note, written in English on one side and clumsy Japanese on the other.

Yo, Kurosaki!

I know I already messaged you thanks for sending me my comp copies of everything, but I wanted to return the favor! You really didn’t have to go out of your way get it to me like that, much less pack in all the other shit you did. But I’m glad you did! It arrived on the day I got another rejection, one I was really hoping would pan out. I got back all the time I would’ve spent feeling sorry for myself and instead just wanted to try again. That’s kind of the message I got from the sound of your album, so I guess it’s appropriate!

Honestly, even if it was tough figuring things out sometimes, I had more fun on that job than any other one I can think of. You don’t have much to apologize for, I’ve survived way worse than some grumpy e-mails from a cool client, and you actually had pretty good feedback to offer. I think the end result was pretty metal. (Or well, rock, since it’s your shit, after all.)

If you’re cool with it, I think it’d be fun to keep sharing our work with one another, outside of just being a client and artist. Get some fresh perspectives, you know? You know where to message me if you think so, too.

-- M

P.S. You’re the first person to get this custom pick I got designed. Be grateful (LOL).

Taped to it, there was a pearlescent pick, red and black with white lettering. Ranmaru took it off, careful not to tear the paper, and ran his fingers over it. It wasn’t even close to the type he’d tolerate using if he wasn’t going to finger-pluck his bass.

He clasped it in his hand, pausing for a moment, before he let out a ‘hmph,’ equal parts amused, relieved, and a little bit giddy.

---------

“...Ranmaru,” Ai said, looking at him with those big saucer eyes. Sometimes Ranmaru felt like the guy never blinked, which made his curious once-overs scarier than he’d ever admit to.

“What,” he growled back.

“...according to every piece of data I know about you…” he started. He already didn’t like where this was going. “Nothing would point to you being the cell phone charm type.”

“So?!” he barked, frowning at Ai as he self-consciously stuffed his phone into his pocket. It buzzed from a message notification, as if on disastrous cue, making a plasticy noise as it rattled against the charm. “What’s your data know about the real heart of people, anyway,” he continued, crossing his arms as he leaned back in his chair.

“It hasn’t been wrong about anything yet.” Ai tilted his head. “Why do you have a charm all of a sudden?”

Because I saw she uses one of mine, Ranmaru answered frantically in his head, thinking back to the video chat they’d had where she showed it off. His hand was in his pocket, muffling his phone buzzing as more messages came in. He ran his fingers over the smooth pick, the subtle grooves where the letters were, the jagged hole he’d poked into it, the string that ran through it and knotted into a hole on his case. Because she told me about how much she liked it, so I wanted to return the favor.

“Why is this so goddamn important to you, Ai?” Ranmaru bristled. “Can’t we just get on with work already?”

Ai stared at him a moment longer before shrugging slightly. “I’m simply curious. What would motivate you to act against your usual protocol seems interesting. But if you won’t tell me, I suppose there’s no use prying, especially when we have work to be done.”

Ranmaru grunted back, leaning back to the table and looking over the notes. “We’re decided on what we wanna do for our duet, but we still have to decide on a direction for our solo songs on the album. Something that makes each of us stand out but doesn’t ruin the cohesiveness of the whole thing.”

“You should do something slow,” Ai said, after a moment of thought.

“Why should I?” Ai should know by now Ranmaru wasn’t about that sort of sound, especially when Ai already had the sad lullabies more than mastered. “Nothing about that’s very rock or wild. It won’t work with my image. Or do whatever that “gap” shit is that people like…”

“Really?” Ai looked at him again. “Ballads are an intrinsic part of rock music, and wouldn’t it be ideal for communicating feelings that aren’t as energetic as your usual work?”

“You should’ve just said power ballad in the first place,” Ranmaru grunted, but he had to admit it wasn’t a bad idea. “It’d work better with your usual style. And the duet, from how it’s going so far.” The biggest problem Ranmaru could think of was he couldn’t imagine what on earth he’d want to sing about in one.

“Then it’s decided,” Ai said decisively.

“...Oi, Ai, when did I say I agreed to this?” The kind of thing he’d rather shape into a ballad instead of his usual, urging style was a complete mystery, which Ranmaru didn’t like the idea of committing to in a partner project and on a deadline, even if it was months away. But like hell he’d admit that to someone else in Quartet Night, much less Ai, who’d just give him “logical” suggestions Ranmaru already knew he’d hate.

“Was your reasoning not enough?” Ai tilted his head. Ranmaru met his eye. Something about the curiosity on that blank face felt less pointlessly prying this time. Now it was more like someone who just wanted to see something new.

Ranmaru couldn’t fault him for that. And he was due to challenge himself in this way, anyways.

“....Fine. Whatever. That means you can’t do your usual sentimental stuff. You should do something that’ll lift everyone up after the heaviness of the other songs.”

“That sounds logical,” Ai replied. His eyes moved to Ranmaru’s pocket as it buzzed once again, but quickly turned back as they brainstormed ideas.

--------

He wiped his eyes as he leaned back from the computer, surprised by how quickly and unbidden they came. He hastily tore up a strip of paper and hung it over the camera built into the laptop -- he knew it wasn’t on. This wasn’t a video call. But the idea of someone seeing him like this felt surreal and, frankly, too scary to confront right now.

They chatted a lot more, now. It’d been about half a year since they’d started talking outside of work. It wasn’t just occasionally sharing art and music with each other anymore, either, it was a big stew of ideas, inspiration. A lot of breaking down what they liked in all the albums they shared with one another, and how they wanted to integrate all that in their work. Her siphoning gear and singing tips off of him, while she broke down expressions and visual composition to a science to help him out with modelling. And amid all that, something easygoing. Complaining about work, about weird clients, about shitty train rides, but also the nice parts of their days, too.

He’d gotten short with her today, and she got frustrated with him. They argued -- for the first time since they’d tossed aside client-and-professional for friends-and-colleagues -- and it turned out she was as passionate a spitfire as he, assuming she got in the right mood.

And in the middle of all that furious typing, she paused.

M: You know, it’s kind of relieving to argue with you like this.

Ranmaru was so startled, he forgot the point he was making.

R: what the hell are you talking about?

M: oh, come on, we both know I’ve used diplomacy to handle your grouchiness before, and that worked fine enough then. But I just appreciate that I trust you enough to not take such a safe approach, for once, and the thing you’re most upset about is that I didn’t feel comfortable calling you out on your horseshit sooner.

Ranmaru didn’t have an answer for that as she typed on and off. He imagined if this were a verbal conversation, this would be the point where he’d just listen while she strung her thoughts together -- wordily, but getting to good enough of a point that it was worth letting her meander.

Instead, she cut right to a point he wasn’t expecting.

M: hey, I’m not taking back anything I said, but I probably should’ve asked sooner. Are you doing OK? You always get stuck in asshole mode for a reason. I don’t have classes to teach today, so you can bend my ear if you need to. even on voice chat, if you like, japanese or english.

An uncomfortable wave of relief washed over him. He hadn’t told her about it, but things were the kind of stressful that pushed his stoic approach to its limits. Too many deadlines at work. Too many people there talking, too few saying anything he gave a damn about. Money was tight this month -- the debt collectors suddenly hiked up what he owed, and they’d banged down his door to “tell” him that. And another shitty argument with Camus, after he “freed” all his bananas for some ridiculous flambe parfait he just had to have for lunch on a day when Ranmaru couldn’t afford any.

This was just how things were. Why was he upset about it now? He was beyond cursing how things had turned out for him. Making useless wishes when there wasn’t anything to do but work and survive until he didn’t have anything to lament.

M: alright that’s a suspiciously long amount of time between messages for you when you’re riled up. are you OK? It’s fine if you’re not, and it’s fine if you don’t wanna talk to me about it, but i’m here if you want. If something’s really eating at you, that’s more important than me being mad. (for now, anyway)

It felt surreal as he leaned back to the computer and felt his fingers find the keys as he started finding the right words.

R: it’s not a light subject R: and it’s not on you to deal with it M: LOL bro c’mon. M: I eat heavy for breakfast, and I said I’m here for you. M: lay it on me

He wiped his tears away with his sleeve. It’d been long enough since he’d cried that he didn’t even think about how it’d smudge his makeup and stain his clothes, but he didn’t especially care as he started to explain himself, the words coming out hesitantly until they coalesced into a small cascade of short, tight sentences, heavy with years of restrained sorrow he’d ignored so aggressively until now.

---------

Recording Haruhana went well. Ranmaru expected it to, somewhat. Ai’s cold problem-solving could be annoying, but they never got in the way of the heart of his vocals. Their voices blended into an interesting harmony, and the acoustic guitar bridged their styles into a bittersweet sound they slipped into easily enough that recording sessions went uneventfully.

“It does not surprise me, but.“ Ranmaru couldn’t bring himself to outright glower at Ai as they stopped recording and stepped away from the mics. “You’re very good at conjuring a strong, wistful image with your voice.”

“Then why do you look surprised…” he grunted back, loosening and lowering the mic for whoever had it next. “...You do it well, too, but we already knew that.”

“The heart of things you’re so obsessed with,” he said plainly. “It wouldn’t do if we couldn’t bring truth to the emotions we write about.”

Ranmaru hadn’t given much thought to why Ai’s songs were so lamenting and sad, for the most part. He’d acknowledged they were genuine, had a tone color that suited him right, and made the fans happy. Truthfully, he’d only thought of those songs in the context of work -- Ai was a rival and a colleague he respected enough to sing with and not want to lose to, so he’d only looked at his songs from that standpoint, too. But Ranmaru realized better, now, just how good Ai was at sharing sadness that wasn’t so heavy it dragged people down with it. Wistfulness that grasped forward towards something, like a greater understanding.

“How’s the ballad going?”

Ranmaru clicked his tongue. “How’s your synthpop bubblegum bullshit going?” he shot back.

“Well,” Ai replied, unfazed. “I have the chord progressions and kits mapped out.”

“Good for you, then,” he grunted back. Great. So Ai was making good progress while Ranmaru hadn’t made any.

“Are you struggling?”

“Isn’t that the point of a ballad?!” Hopefully Ai couldn’t argue with that and would leave him alone from there.

“Shouldn’t you defer to a composer or lyricist if you’re stuck?”

Ranmaru glared at Ai. “If it’s a ballad, I should write it myself, not leave it to someone who’s just gonna put words and music I don’t mean into my mouth.”

“Past data suggests you won’t back down about this,” Ai said smoothly, stacking the notes and papers they’d brought into the studio neatly. “I suppose I should wish you luck, in that case, and remind you this is my album, too, and it’s the fans who are most important.”

“I know that,” Ranmaru spat, long done fussing with the mic.

*************

R: you hate ballads, right M: I sure do! :D R: why M: too slow for my tastes, sentimentality done like that isn’t my thing, don’t always feel genuine, you know R: that’s literally every problem i have with the big project at work right now M: oh no you have to make a ballad?? Like….poppy enough for shining agency and all that? Oh boy.... R: what’s your advice to making a ballad you don’t hate, then M: HMMMMMMMMMMMMM M: pass a kidney stone M: WAIT RANDY COME BACK I’LL HELP FOR REAL R: If you want to help why are you calling me randy?! M: suffering is the root of all good ballads. I’m helping R: can you at least remind me what the one ballad you like is M: oh, turn on your light M: judas priest M: it’s always judas priest R: so why don’t you hate it R: other than it’s judas priest M: oh, nothing big M: my first gf just made me a mixtape and confessed with it is all M: and that was my entry point into western metal M: sealing my fate forever as a queer metalhead and thereby forming the foundation of all my aesthetic, social, musical, and auditory sensibilities forevermore M: and some other stuff R: oh is that all “We are about to arrive at ____ station, please make your way to the doors if your stop is ____ station....”

R: what’s the other stuff M: oh dw about it M: it’s, you know, the stuff everyone brings to listening. the mushy baggage that lets ‘em connect with strangers. you know how it is

The train arrived right after that message went through, and he had to put his phone away over questioning her further. Recently, he’d felt more irritated with himself than usual. He knew he got this way when he felt he owed someone and hadn’t done his part to even the score.

He was kind of in the same camp as she when it came to slow songs. Rock was about energy, passion, an urging sense of power, and even if he could understand why those slower songs were important, it didn’t mean they had to always resonate with him. He thought about their exchange. She dropped art into their chats a lot because, as she insisted, it helped having a musician look at her work, instead of another illustrator. And he liked her perspective for the same reason -- more personal than a fan, but more refreshing than everyone else at the agency.

Really, it sounded like what made the ballad feel genuine was the context she could apply. It wasn’t just a song, but a personal gesture that singled her out from the millions of other people who’d hear the song and imagine it was for them.

Ranmaru frowned as he exited the train station. The solution to his ballad problem was simple, so obvious he felt stupid for overlooking it. If he expected people to connect to his music, he had to give people something to connect to. All he had to do was what he always did -- just go for what his heart told him to. No frills, no fancy trimmings, just something he wanted to honestly express.

He strung basslines in his head as he walked to his apartment. Let the music-making guide him, instead of demanding it follow rigid instructions. As he pushed the key into the lock, he caught the faint stain of his eyeliner on his sleeve.

Don’t look at me … while I dry my eyes....

His stomach lurched a little, but moreso he felt his body surge with the truth of the song he wanted to write. The same rush of a surging venue, somehow, but with the kind of wistfulness and earnest desire he appreciated in Ai’s work more now.

Tama had started to squeeze through the little crack in the door, investigating why Ranmaru had just stood there like an idiot for so long.

“...c’mon, you little dope,” Ranmaru said softly, surprised how breathy he needed to keep his voice to get past the tightness in his chest. He squatted down, scooped the soft little creature up, and walked straight to his workspace. He did the once-over his apartment he’d gotten in recent habit of, seeing if anything had been seized by the collectors while he was gone, before depositing Tama on a cat tree where Mike was sitting. He hummed a melody that was quickly taking shape, his hands barely keeping up as he grabbed a scrap of paper, scrawling notes as fast as his hands would let him.

*******************

Reiji looked up at Ranmaru in disbelief. Ranmaru scowled back.

“If you don’t want it,” he growled, reaching for the box he’d put in front of Reiji. “I’ll fucking take it back.”

“No! No no no, Ranran, I’m so grateful!” Reiji exclaimed, scrambling to slide it out of Ranmaru’s reach.

“Humph! If I didn’t know of your peasant tastes,” Camus started from across the table. “I’d just tell you you’re better off skipping this slop.”

“Oi!” Ranmaru pointed a spoon threateningly at Camus. “You don’t have to eat, asshole! You still owe me for ruining my bananas, and as far as I’m concerned this just means you owe me another meal!”

“You think your pauper’s tongue deserves the fineries I’d select, I see,” Camus said challengingly, tilting his head and crossing his legs. Ranmaru was a hair trigger away from just throwing the box with Camus’s portion right at him. Maybe it’d ruin that stupid suit and he’d learn to shut up.

“He-heeeey, Ranran, everything smells super good….I’m so excited to dig right in, but are those sauces I see?” Reiji interrupted. Ranmaru clenched his fist around the spoon as he turned his glower towards him.

He slammed the spoon down in front of Reiji. “Which sauce do you want, the spicy chili one or ketchup,” he managed through gritted teeth.

“O- ohhh, wow! So gourmet! We have options!” Reiji cheered, in that singsongy way he did when he was trying to smooth over disasters. “Ranran, I knew you could cook, but I never knew you were so talented! I wonder what’s in ---” Ranmaru was losing his patience, and he grabbed the bottle of homemade chili sauce, hovering it above Reiji’s portion. The bottle sputtered as the air escaped, and Ranmaru’s grip threatened to explode the whole thing right then and there. “ -- I’ll have just a little bit of the spicy one, haha…”

Ranmaru held his gaze a moment more before he focused back on the food, squeezing a reasonable amount onto Reiji’s portion. He opened the box with Camus’s, already dressed with a mountain of sweet chili sauce, stabbed the spoon into it, and slid it over.

“Is this omurice?” Ai asked. Ranmaru handed him his own box.

“Is the rice in the omelet?” he grunted. “It’s just a stuffed omelet you eat with rice.”

“Mm-mm! So good! I’ve never had spices quite like these! Is this a secret specialty dish you’ve been hoarding to yourself?”

Ranmaru, at this point, just wanted to sit down and eat. “No,” he grumbled, hoping they’d get the picture.

“I can’t recognize this preparation against any recipe I know of. Did you make it up yourself?”

“It’s one from a friend, alright? She sent me a bunch of chilis and herbs and I had to make something to use them all up. If you don’t like it, then you don’t have to eat it. Stop asking questions and let me eat!”

They ate quietly for a while, much to Ranmaru’s relief. Camus, of all people, was the one to end the silence.

“Kurosaki,” he said, taking an odd tone for a conversation with Ranmaru. “....You will share the recipe for this sauce immediately,” he said, an odd hush to his voice.

“And what if I don’t,” Ranmaru sneered back, feeling just a little smug. “You gonna pass out from a sugar crash and finally give me some peace?”

Before Camus finished his reply, Ranmaru took a bottle from his bag and tossed it at Camus, who disappointingly kept his composure through the surprise. “Maybe you’ll learn to eat some meat, now that you’ve got a way to slather it in sugar.”

The rest of Quartet Night all stopped again in surprise, the same way they did when Ranmaru said he’d made them all lunch for today. Their eyes burned on Ranmaru as he went back to his meal, and he tried very, very hard to not let it bother him.

“...Ranran, you’ve been acting different lately. Did you--”

“No,” he growled. “Whatever you think it is, no.”

******************************

M: oh dang M: wow dude M: i really don’t know what to say

Ranmaru stared at his phone in the dark, waiting as feedback from the other side of the world came in.

M: you fucking nailed it. I don’t know how you did it, like a week ago this wasn’t anything. M: now it’s a whole new side of you i don’t think your discography’s shown off yet M: the fans are gonna go apeshit

The rest of the song came to him in the kind of exciting, passionate fervor where his hands couldn’t keep up with the ideas. The melody followed the bassline very naturally, peppered in by flashes of lyrics that slowly built and reorganized themselves. And from there, more instrumentation became evident. What he had now was just enough to make the soul of the song clear, finished late tonight in the studio.

Already his head was filled with what more he could add, but they blended into blur of ideas he was too tired to separate.

M: can I confess something? I mean, i don’t know why I’m asking, you’re probably already asleep M: what you have here already made me cry a little bit M: i don’t know what you did, but you made a ballad that works so well. It really feels personal and so full of the soul everyone loves you for, but there’s something really sad and kind in there that makes my heart squeeze. M: and that’s even in the lyrics! (what i can understand of them, anyway haha) but you know how saccharine I find ballad lyrics most of the time!!! M: then again, it is you. I don’t think there’s anything you could ever make that would feel disingenuous lmao M: is it too late to ask if i can illustrate this album too....would Ai and the agency let me do that…. M: i can draw something that’s soft and rock as shit!!!! M: anyways M: you’re probably dead asleep but just know this: good work, dude. M: it really felt like you were saying something very heartfelt, even in this rough cut, and i think how personal that voice is is gonna make everyone feel such a feeling. M: it sure made me feel one!

He locked his phone, tearing himself away from the slow stream of messages coming in. He laid on his back, phone facedown in the blanket, as he stared up into the dark swallowing the room back up again. Every part of his body felt like it was on fire, burning to get back into the studio.

The lyrics weren’t complete yet. He wasn’t the poetic type, so it’s not as if he’d let himself overthink his words and lose their heart in too many revisions, but there were still blanks. The phrase that’d pull it all together, the words that summarized the message of the song, they still weren’t there, but he could feel himself getting closer.

It was about paying an unspoken debt, and it was about shame, but above all, it was about pride. In himself, for letting himself reach this point, and in someone else. That was the sort of connection he could sing himself to tears with, whether on the stage, the studio, or the clean, edited album, and for that, he was proud.

#iron maiden & rocka rolla #scribblings #it's been a while since i procrastinated shit i had to do with furious fic writing #and i've been some kind of feral lately over Be Proud like the song #so i guess this is where we're at lads

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b----4archived · 5 years ago

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🏚- A memory about exploration

The Enterprise-E was not a large ship. Not compared to Starfleet Academy’s campus where he had spent four of his past five years of life. Not compared to the Daystrom Institute where he was born and achieved sentience. The ship was elegant and roomy - a Sovereign-class masterpiece. B had memorized the schematics. He knew every corridor, every room, every Jefferies tube on the ship, but it didn’t prepare him for seeing the ship. Living on the ship.

Every corridor looked nearly identical. As B-4 walked along deck ten aft on his way to Ten Forward, he ran his fingers along the imperfections in the metal framing. The ship was not a new one, not anymore. Far from the sterile air of a new starship, this one had character. Had eighteen years of history on its decks.

When brought aboard only days before, he was given the standard tour. He began in sickbay, shown his station, made aware of the locations of the medical supplies he might need. Then he was shown the research labs. Then every ‘important’ space aboard. Ten Forward. The holodecks. The nursery. The bridge.

At the end of the day he was instructed to go to his quarters. As a lower-ranking officer, he shared his quarters with another ensign - a young engineer named Morag who B-4 knew from the Academy. Her side of the room was decorated - a large Scottish flag hung on the wall. Pictures of family on the dresser. An Acamarian string instrument tucked into the corner. B-4’s bed was plain. His side was devoid of any niceties or sentimental trinkets. It was just a room.

Since he’d been aboard, there had been no time to adventure. No time to explore the space around him, to experience the hallways at least once so he could keep a visual record of the ship. Now he painstakingly paced through the halls, touching everything he could. After two hours, he heard a familiar voice behind him.

“B-4.”

He stopped to turn to his brother. It was 17:05 - Data had just been relieved of duty and had several hours before his return to the bridge for Gamma shift. The two were nearly identical, save the difference in uniform - B-4 in medical blue and Data in command red.

“What are you doing?”

B-4 looked back to the knick in the wall. His fingers were still covering it. He moved them as if to show Data, but received only a confused expression. “I was exploring,” he said.

“I have received five reports of your unethical behavior, Brother,” Data explained. “The crew are concerned about your ‘exploration’.”

B-4 looked back to the scratch in the wall. “I was simply attempting to map out the intricacies of the Enterprise,” he said as he frowned. “Do they think I am behaving inappropriately?” Worry bubbled up in his chest.

“They are not accustomed to such a…” He paused to consider his word choice carefully. “A thorough investigation of the ship. They were under the impression something was wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“With the ship.”

“Oh.”

The two stood across from each other for a moment. B-4 had not considered what impression he was making on his new crewmates, nor had it occurred to him that they would report strange behavior to Data. It made sense, however, seeing as he was the first officer.

“What have you found during your exploration?” Data asked.

I have noted several small flaws in the integrity of the ship’s internal structure, but corridors are largely identical. This observation was...flat. Pointless. “Nothing really,” he said with a shrug. “It’s...a nice ship.”

Data nodded in agreement. “It is a ‘nice ship’. I have heard the Sovereign-class starships are a popular class amongst the more modern varieties. Have you found your room comfortable?”

B-4 thought back to his quarters. “It is different than the academy,” he said.

“That it is,” Data agreed.

“It will take some getting used to.” He frowned and said. “I feel uneasy when I go to my quarters. I have stress. I don’t dislike them, but I’m not happy.”

“You became accustomed to your old space,” Data explained. “You now miss it.”

B hadn’t considered that one could ‘miss’ a place. “That may be true. How do I fix this?”

“You cannot. The feeling will subside when your neural processors have become accustomed to the new space. This will come after some time with developed familiarity.”

B-4 nodded. That made sense to him, but it did not help the negative feeling about his room go away.

“Dr. Crusher tells me you are doing well in sickbay. She is impressed with your work ethic. Very well done.”

“Thank you.” The answer was automatic and lacking in sincerity. Just like Data’s compliments. “I should stop my exploration of the ship now?”

Data offered a sympathetic look. “That would be advisable.”

“Okay.” B tucked his hands behind his back. “I will continue tomorrow.”

Data looked decidedly content. “Perhaps limit your exploration to one hour per day...in an effort to appease those around you.”

They both took a moment to glance at the officers moving around them. No one paid them any mind. The ship was bustling, doors to Ten Forward opening and closing every few seconds, people lost in conversation. B glanced at the scratch in the titanium plating. In an effort to appease those around you. “Okay.”

#about b4 #oooh I liked this one very much thanks!#fasciinating

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jamiesmcstuff · 5 years ago

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Web Authoring Blog

10/01/21

The past week I have been working on my assignment through Wordpress. The assignment is to install and build our own wordpress site on the college server. This was a basic enough assignment but I did encounter some problems along the way. Firstly, I had a problem connecting to the college server, which meant I was required to get a new password from IT, and that took up some time.Once I could connect to the server I successfully connected to the server, and uploaded wordpress to filezilla.

I also encountered a problem trying to activate a child theme on my wordpress site. I didn’t realise that my .css file in my wordpress folder had an extra full stop where it shouldn’t have been, and it was breaking my up the code when I tried to activate my child theme on the wordpress site. Once I figured this out (which took some time) I found that I had a lot of fun with this assignment.

It was great to play around with all the various features of wordpress. Somethings I did find a little strange and a bit unintuitive (such as accessing certain editing functions from the front end site) but I I got used to the workflow the more time I spent on it. I do feel like I ran out of time and had to eventually settle with what I had for the assignment but I am keen to continue working on the site I had created in order to improve my skills using Wordpress, and having something good to add to my portfolio.

22/12/20

Last week we covered CMS systems and. It seems like it should be straight forward, however if I have learned anything so far its that sometimes coding can seem straightforward, but due to lack of experience simple problems can be difficult to figure. Wordpress, however, looks great a a system to use.

As soon as we started learning it I could think of difficult examples of blogs and websites that have used Wordpress as a platform to great effect, and I am excited to start using the platform properly. It seems that once you start using Wordpress, and get used to the workflow, you can create really great looking websites with minimal effort.

There are so many different customizations meaning you can be very creative with Wordpress. I am excited to start using some other CMS systems in order to see how they compare against Wordpress anf figure out whether Wordpress is the best option for me as a system to use going forward.

16/12/20

This was our first week covering Wordpress and CMS systems. I had heard from multiple sources regarding the unintuitiveness of WordPress but that definitely was not my initial thought. It potentially could have been outdated by other CMS that came after it, but as a platform it seems very powerful if you know how to use it correctly.

My mind automatically started thinking ahead in terms of how platforms like wordpress could be used by web designers, and myself hopefully when the time comes, to build comprehensive and sophisticated web pages for clients.

We had a reading week so had no class on the 12th of December, but on the 11th we also had to submit assignment 2, which was our personal profile web page. It was a tough task, but I believe I got a good result for my first attempt at creating a web page. One problem I encountered, that I was very satisfied to find a solution for, was aligning an image of the Griffith college logo to the right of the footer. After numerous attempts at finding a solution ( and tearing out a lot of hair) I eventually entered a <p> into the footer and cleared the floats within the style sheet which aligned the image up correctly.

2/12/20

Last week’s lecture covered Flex boxes. I think it may have been the first time we were exposed to any kind of framework that can simplify the building of web pages to some degree. From what I understand, tasks pertaining to the layout of elements on a page can be strenuous in terms of writing the html and css code; but flex boxes are effective in streamlining this process through their own unique set of rules.

I found Flex boxes easy to understand because, to the best of my knowledge, flexbox follows similar cascading and hierarchical principles as are the fundamentals in other parts of coding we have learned. For example, the container is a parent and everything contained within (items) are children; akin to how a <section> element is a parent to a child <p> element contained within that section. I am starting to see how coding language is very complicated, but is designed to try and be as user friendly as is possible; there is a consistent way to think structurally about code that will benefit me and help me to troubleshoot problems I may have down the line.

25/11/20

Last week's lecture we covered color, links, layouts and floats. There was pats that seemed to be as straightforward as our previous lecture, and I found myself easily able to keep up in terms of what we were learning. For example with color, it was easy for me to understand how color can be applied to different elements. Also, I like how there are different ways that things can be applied through CSS, for example there being a choice to apply colour by percentage, or by hex values.

However, there I had two main takeaways from this class. The first, which I was already aware of but hadn’t yet been covered in class, is that CSS isn't just about visuals, parts of the page can be laid out in various ways by applying different rules. Floats do seem complicated, but once I get some experience using them I know it’ll be a massive part of building web pages, so it's something I am eager to get practice in.

The second take away, which I hadn’t pre-empted as a possibility with CSS, is the 5 styles that are applied to links on a web page. This was very interesting, and I was surprised, because I had thought that Javascript was the coding language for integrating interactivity on a web page. However, pertaining to our upcoming assignments, it is somewhat of a relief to know that more basic functions such as the 5 styles for links can be applied through CSS, without having to yet know javascript.

18/11/20

Last Saturday we had our first lecture that introduced CSS. A few things we covered were rules, IDs, classes and the cascading specificity of CSS. From the first introduction it seems to be straight forward enough, however once applied into a practical context I am sure there will be a lot of barriers to overcome in order to get competent with CSS. Seeing the difference between how a basic html page looks, without CSS, and then the possibilities once CSS has been applied was exciting.

I have found html relatively easy thus far, and it is very satisfying once the code does what you intended. However, it doesn't make things look beautiful, so seeing the difference between a page with and without CSS, and what the possibilities can be, was very exciting. Gemma used the example of the Griffith website, with and without the CSS, and the reality of what's possible once I get to using CSS became a reality.

SImilar to writing html, and the application of good practice and bad practice in terms of writing code ; we learned in last week's lecture the difference between inline CSS and stylesheets, and how the latter is the preferred method of applying CSS. Even though it would seem easier to write CSS within the same file as html, I am very conscious now of ensuring that I do not fall into bad habits in terms of I write any coding language as I hope to day be hired based on the quality of the work that I provide, so will avoid developing bad habits at any cost.

10/11/20

Last Saturday 7th November lecture covered semantic html and the structure of web pages. The previous lecture on links, images and tables had demonstrated and actualized for me the building blocks that web developers use across the board for different features of websites. Our most recent lecture built upon that knowledge and made me understand how semantic html is used to break up the different parts/sections of a website so that browsers can digest it and for SEO.

When practicing at home writing the code for articles and sections, which as I understand act as mini web pages within a web page,the muscle memory of writing code is improving physically writing code while also ingraining in me the concept of nesting code, and how hierarchy within that nested code is structured. The analogy of the Russian dolls has been mentioned numerous times and this week it became more applicable than before as a way to look at how you wrap up your code into structured pieces.

The easiest way for me to visualise semantic html in action was looking at online newspapers. Through looking at a few examples I could see how the home pages in particular are structured because they have so much content and articles etc that are irrelevant to each other. It's necessary to use semantic html to give meaning to each bit of content in order to direct internet users to relevant parts of the web page. One thing I never preempted, again in my own naivety/ignorance, was how integrated SEO is with the information contained within html. As a side project I think I will go and read up some more about digital marketing.

We were also required to do some practical exercise on forms this week. One thing of note, I had seen in previous lectures how values can indicate what happens when a user clicks on a link (opening in a new tab etc). Relative to values such as input/emails it’s interesting to see how these values can indicate how a specific entry of information into a data field, such as an email address, is handled. Also, the content we covered briefly touched on empty elements which I was not expecting as they don't follow the same rule set we had previously learned. I had expected there to be some as there are exceptions to rules in any language and html is no different evidently.

03/11/20

Our most recent lecture covered the topics of tables, links, images. As I mentioned in my previous post I was initially happy to be able to keep up with the material and didn't feel too far out of my depth. This week I am happy to say that I am still feeling positive about the decision to move into this new world and potential change of career.

With just two weeks under my belt I could already feel a change in how I will view websites going forward. As a user I had always thought, naively, of websites as eclectic; their features and functions presented as specific to the brand or organisation that they represent. However, during this lab, and particularly regarding the topic of tables, I began to visualize how they are all the same components put together by developers in different ways that serve the same functions.

Telecommunication companies websites and how they present their pricing online was one such feature that came to mind. Previously I would have thought that their pricing was just an image integrated within the web page but now I obviously understand that it is built through a specific <table> element that is adjustable by a front end developer.

I had a thought on the topic of images and their applicability in different parts of a web page also. Having worked as an outbound salesman for the last couple of years I looked at a lot of websites to find clients. Obviously, a company's budget has to be considered when considering the quality of a website but from what I observed there are some elements of websites that are perhaps ignored or rushed by developers, are not budget dependent, and can give a website a cheaper or less professional look.

I think the two screenshots below corroborate my point above; B2Bs logo on the home page of their site is slightly pix-elated while Hunt Office’s (one of the biggest office supplies companies in Ireland) logo looks smooth and gives it a cleaner look, which as the first thing a user sees when clicking onto a home page immediately portrays a better level of professionalism than that of B2B.

I am trying not to think too far ahead in terms of the end goal of being in this course, and this module, because I have a long way to go and an extremely vast discipline to cover before any of that will happen. Thinking too far ahead would be daunting for me so its better to sit back and enjoy the process of learning each part as it comes.

27/10/20

This web authoring module is the reason I decided to do this interactive digital media course. I have come from working in sales the last couple of years and wanted to make a complete career change. For that reason it was very important I acquired proper tangible skills that allowed me to make that change and I felt coding was up there with the best of options.

Our first lecture last Saturday was about HTML. From what I understand, we are learning HTML at the best time up to date as its been consolidated into one format that everyone in the western world abides by and is uniform so a lot of complications can be avoided across the board for developers and users alike.

The lecture primarily focused on elements and I was happy, and relieved, that I could keep up with the material and didn’t get too lost as this is all totally new territory for me. I enjoyed the lecture thoroughly as HTML seems logical and if you follow the right steps it does what you want it to do. I am looking forward to starting practice, getting the muscle memory working and moving toward that career change I need.

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myheadinthecloudsnotcomingdown · 6 years ago

Text

When Lila Gives You Lemons - Chapter 3

AO3

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The akuma attack that afternoon was actually a blessing, Adrien thought as he bounded up the stairs towards Marinette’s room. He had taken advantage of the standard after-attack chaos to text his bodyguard saying he was spending the afternoon doing homework with a friend. His father would assume he meant Lila and no one would think to check until that evening.

Marinette was already waiting for him when he burst through though the trapdoor of her room.

“Sorry I’m late,” Adrien puffed, “Akuma.”

“Problem no! I mean, no problem,” Marinette seemed a little out of breath as well, “I-I just got back.”

They stood awkwardly for a moment before Adrien broke the silence, “So…extra credit?”

Marinette jumped, “Yeah!” She ran over to her desk and Adrien pulled up a chair to sit next to her. She pulled out a sketch book and opened it to a messily drawn table. Adrien read the headers: offense, arrived, location. There were times written in the first two columns and then a location in Paris in the third. Adrien also noticed that some lines were crossed out while a few had notes scrawled in the margins.

“Very impressive,” Adrien remarked honestly making Marinette blushed. “What are we going to do with it?”

“Well,” Marinette hesitated, “I-I, uh, was wondering, well, if it’d be possible, but if it’s not then I guess it’s not a problem. Ugh! I’m such an idiot, this was a bad idea.” That last part was to herself. Adrien put his hands on her shoulders.

“Don’t worry Marinette, I get it. It looks like you collected all this data yourself, so I’m guessing this is kind of a self-designed extra credit project?” Marinette looked relieved and nodded, “So if the teacher doesn’t have anything specific that he wants you to do, what do you want to find out from this data? I mean, you wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of collecting it if you didn’t have something in mind…”

Marinette seemed to calm down a little at that and squared her shoulders. She looked at the list rather than at Adrien and took a deep breath, “I want to try and find a location. If… something…left around the time in the offense column and arrived at the written location at the time in the arrived column, can we find out where these things are coming from?” Marinette risked an insecure glance at Adrien, clearly unsure if this was even possible.

For his part, Adrien thought it was an odd choice for an extra credit project, but his mind had already taken a running start, “It should be, as long as we know about how fast these things travel,” he was starting to get excited and couldn’t keep a grin off his face, “You chose a really interesting project Marinette!” Adrien looked around, “You wouldn’t happen to have a map, would you? I think it’ll make things easier if we can visualize it.”

Marinette tried jumping up out of her seat but ended up tangled up with the chair as it fell to the floor. “I’m ok!” She yelped, untangling herself from the chair and running to the corner of her room before Adrien could try to help her. She came back with a massive roll wrapped in cellophane. Adrien laughed as she unwrapped the map and spread it out on the floor.

“You’re always prepared, aren’t you Marinette?” The girl gave him a shy smile before grabbing a sheet of stickers from one of the desk drawers and turning her attention back toward the map. Adrien was already putting books at each of the corners so it would lie flat.

“I was thinking we could start by putting a sticker at each location I have written down, that will at least give us an idea of the general area we’re working with, right?”

Adrien nodded, “Good idea. I’m assuming that we can ignore the locations you’ve crossed off on your list. Those are incomplete data, right?”

Marinette nodded and handed Adrien a sheet of stickers. Adrien found it easy to work with her and it wasn’t long before they sat back to admire their handiwork. There were around thirty stickers spread out over Paris, although many seemed to be concentrated around their school. Adrien looked up the formulas he needed on his phone and they got to work on their calculations.

By the time that Adrien had explained the basic math to Marinette, she was feeling more confident and was starting to lose herself in the flow of the project. Adrien watched her plug the numbers into the formula he’d shown her and grinned as she started muttering to herself, oblivious to everything besides the problem in front of her.

“…so, if I was at the Eiffel Tower… that 11:35…and factoring in how fast the average akuma flies…”

Adrien felt his smile melt. Akumas? He took a closer look at the list in Marinette’s sketchbook. Sure enough, the writing in the margins were names of various akumas that he and Ladybug had fought in the last few months. How was she collecting this data?

Marinette had finished her calculation by this point and was watching Adrien in concern.

“Adrien, are you ok? What’s wrong?”

“You’re trying to find Hawkmoth.”

Adrien felt numb. Marinette went pale and her mouth worked as she tried to come up with something to say.

“I know it’s dangerous. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you what I was doing…I didn’t want you involved any more than necessary.”

Adrien laughed to himself. Too bad Marinette didn’t know how deeply Chat Noir was already involved in the fight against Hawkmoth. If anything, he was more concerned with how deeply this involved Marinette. After all, she didn’t have superpowers to protect her like he did.

“So…” Adrien was still trying to wrap his head around the situation, “This list, you’ve been keeping track of the akumas?”

“Potential akumas,” Marinette corrected, “I payed attention to situations around me that had the potential for strong emotions and then stuck around to see if a villain appeared. The crossed-out lines mean that no akuma ever showed up, even though there was strong negative emotion.”

“And the lines without a name written by them?”

Marinette froze and Adrien waited. Finally, she screwed her eyes closed and:

“Those were ones that came after me.”

Adrien’s stomach dropped and he felt his ears start to ring. There were dozens of unlabeled entries. What was going on with Marinette?

“It’s Lila,” Marinette refused to look him in the eye, “I didn’t saw anything because, well, you’ve got enough problems with her without adding mine to the mix and I didn’t want you to worry, and I know that it’s best for her lies to just self-destruct because I really wasn’t getting anywhere trying to call her out, but she threatened me in the bathroom and said she’d turn all my friends against me and I thought that if I stopped trying to call her out, then she wouldn’t be able to do anything, but that didn’t work and I’m pretty sure Alya hates me now, not to mention the rest of the class, and she’s always hanging off you even though it’s obvious that you hate it and…”

“Whoa Marinette, slow down! Did you just say that she threatened you?”

Sometime while she’d been taking, Marinette had crossed her arms in front of her chest and had started to look very small. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you that. I don’t want you to worry.”

“Well too bad, Marinette, I’m your friend, that means it’s my job to worry about you. I didn’t know that things with Lila had gotten so bad.”

Marinette shrugged, “If I can find Hawkmoth, it’s all worth it. I’ve gotten really good at breathing exercises so I can calm down quickly, and if Lila’s going to make my life miserable anyway, I may as well make the best of it.”

Adrien stared at her with wide eyes, “You’re amazing Marinette.”

She blushed again before a determined glint appeared in her eyes and she smiled, “Let’s find ourselves a terrorist.”

They worked in silence the rest of the time, Marinette occasionally calling Adrien over to check her calculations. It was almost time for Adrien leave when they finally finished.

“Ok, so, just so you know, these data points are far from exact. After all, we don’t know how long after the initial stimulus Hawkmoth sends the Akuma, so all we really have is a search radius of where Hawkmoth’s lair might be, not a solid address, but it’s a solid start.”

On the map, they had charted out the akumas paths and had colored in the search radius that they had calculated. Marinette gasped and Adrien had to fight down the bile rising in his throat.

In the middle of their search radius, highlighted in red marker, was the Agreste mansion.

#marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #ml #My writing #adrienette #fanfic #ml fanfic #when lila gives you lemons

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anxtheroliveinthehouse · 6 years ago

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I saw your requests were open!! Hello!! Can I request a L from death note reader insert (that is if you make up your mind about your feelings on writing them, if you’re not comfortable I completely understand) with a Soulmate AU?

Hello! Thank you for requesting! I’m sorry it took a few days for me to respond but I had finals this week and I was also very ill on the one day I had off ;-;

I thought since you were the first to request and it is the festive season, I might as well do a reader insert. You requested a really broad scenario so I hope you don’t mind me writing this story as the AU but if it had occurred “before” the events of Death Note and as a first meeting (as I imagine it happening). It also turned out really long because I actually loved writing this. It’s a little angsty as well (again I hope you don’t mind). If you’re down for another part to this story with a bit more fluff, I’m fully ready to write (**types aggressively**). Happy Holidays (★^O^★)

Request: 26) Soulmates AU, Reader insert

Anime: Death Note

Character(s): L

Relationship(s): Reader x L

Words: 3227

It had always been a struggle to the train station after your last class on Thursdays. Whether it was your professor running over time or the slow running elevator and crowded stairwells, there was always something that kept you from leaving the building when you should. Or perhaps, as it was in that moment, a torrential rainstorm darkening the once beautiful day in Tokyo. You didn’t mind the rain, however it seemed to always come at inconvenient times. Especially on the days when you were carrying large amounts of your artwork to and from the university.

Your large, black portfolio case- large enough to carry poster boards in- was tucked tightly under your arm in hopes that the copious amount of rain wouldn’t soak through. Your assignments, projects, everything of importance to you and for your classes were inside and with the inconvenient rain, you knew you were screwed. For a second, you stood at the entrance to the art building looking lost at the sight before you: obscuring amounts precipitation, wet cement, dripping gutters, deep puddles.

Of course, you had forgotten your umbrella in your fervor to leave on time that same morning. You didn’t think to check the weather while fighting with your backpack, forcing it to fit all of your supplies. In fact, the only thing extra you left with was a protein bar sticking out between your teeth. Besides, you couldn’t be bothered with carrying on. There was no room in your backpack for a travel-sized one and you didn’t have extra hands to carry everything you need. To even get out the door, you need one hand to close and lock the apartment door and the other to fumble with the ridiculously long case. You certainly couldn’t hold an umbrella while trying to deal with your case, train passes, and eventually keys on your journey back home. Maybe it was for the best that you didn’t even think to bring one. You would have spent too much time struggling with it.

It was only a ten minute walk to the station, and with your light jogging pace you got there sooner. You quickly descended the steps and into shelter from the rain. Surrounding you were the usual for a busy station, people milling about, some running to their desired platforms or destinations, and the walls plastered with advertisements. There were a few that made your stomach knot uncomfortably, even after seeing almost every day for the past year or so. Somehow the message being conveyed wasn’t as happy and cheerful to you as the advertisers were trying to come off as. Get you Soul Mark removed with DermCare Lasers!

You avert your eyes as you pass the smiling men and women in the photos showing off clear skin where presumably their Soul Mark once were. You didn’t understand the purpose of Soul Marks, but you also didn’t understand some people’s obsession with trying to get rid of them. Regardless of the miraculous biological, genetic, statistical, and even religious observation, study and knowledge of Soul Marks, there wasn’t a definite answer to why they existed. Despite being born with a birthmark that you and only one other person in the world carried, it didn’t mean that you weren’t meant to be with them. There were plenty of people who ignored their marks and choose who they wanted to be with. Though, the data clearly showed those who sought for their matches in Soul Marks worked out better in the long run.

You weren’t sure what to think of yours. The mark was definitely a part of you, so you didn’t want to get rid of it. It was a permanent option to get it removed, and a very painful one at that. However, you also didn’t like the idea of a set destiny or fate. Choice was a very important thing to you. There were a lot of things you couldn’t control in life and your mindset was to make that amount as little as possible. The idea of having no control over who it was you were meant to be with by God, the Universe, or even some mathematical mistake was terrifying, no matter who or what was pulling the strings.

The hand around your case’s straps tightened considerably. You were allowed to be angry, you told yourself. Everyone had a different way of coping with the marks. As kids, people were told to ignore the marks until they were old enough to understand. However, the prevailing and ever present culture was already planting the seeds into kids’ minds swaying them to try and find their matches despite the contrary words of parents and elders. In fact, those same parents and elders were often hypocritical. If a child found their match at an early age, there was a lifelong push for the children to marry once they were old enough, essentially grooming them to only expect everlasting love from oftentimes a stranger.

Movies, TV shows, and books often presented these scenarios as desirable. You found them creepy. You didn’t understand the appeal of falling head over heels for someone who you wouldn’t think twice about if you hadn’t seen their mark. In fact, it was a common trope in comedies to see one of the characters remark how unattractive someone was only to find out that very same unattractive person was actually their match. Then, all of the sudden the two characters were madly in love and found each other irresistible. Really, how shallow could they be?

It really didn’t matter. It wasn’t like you were going to find your match anyways.

��—————————————————————————–

Somewhere in the absolute chaos that was the Tokyo underground, there was an unexpected delay and so your usual line was cancelled. The closest station to your apartment was more walking and an even longer train ride. You kicked the digital sign announcing the cancellation with fury. Immediately, you regretted your decision as pain flared through your foot. Fellow passengers and general onlookers gave you curious, yet disturbed stares and glances as you grabbed your foot and hopped.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow.”

After the pain subsided enough to let your foot down, you gave another glance at the sign and looked beneath it to the map to see what else you could do. There was a line that took you to a more commercial area near where you lived. It was still going to be a longer walk back home, but the train was coming sooner than the others and was a shorter journey. You also reminded yourself that you could visit one of the many cafes in that neighborhood. It sounded like a really good idea once you realized that you could wait out the storm and not have to walk back in the pouring rain. Not to mention a hot beverage to warm you up. So you raced to the platform and hopped aboard, thinking dreamily about what you wanted to order.

It was on the way up to the cafe, one that sat within a multi-story commercial building, that you noticed a man sitting on the adjacent building’s rooftop in the rain. As you lingered in the landing of the cold, harshly lit, and echoey stairwell, it struck you as bizarre. You stopped to gaze at the man in the rain. Under any other situation, you would have left him be. He obviously didn’t want anyone’s company sitting out in the rain like he was. However, you had a very imaginative mind. It was one of the reasons why you excelled in visual art, but it often ran away with outlandish ideas if you weren’t careful. That was why when you had turned away from the window you saw the man through, you felt a twinge of guilt. What if he needs help? Sick or injured? What if you didn’t help and he died?

You rolled your eyes and huffed. Why were you like this? You turned back around to the door that led to the rooftop and left your portfolio case next to it. You pushed through the door aggressively and made your way over to the man.

He was tucked into what looked like a very uncomfortable position. His knees were drawn up to his chest, his hands cupped them neatly, and his back bowed against the concrete wall that served as a base for the fence that surrounded the rooftop. Through the rain that fell into your eyes and the wind that whipped your hair around so high up, you studied him.

You watched as his eyes adjusted to your feet in front of him. Slowly, they worked their way up to your face. He looked small and empty. His dark eyes showed no expression, his mouth neutral, and his shoulders while hunched didn’t really seem tight with stress. He looked completely okay to you health-wise. Maybe it was his mental health that needed to be checked out.

“Can I help you?” He asked in a quiet and impassive voice.

“I was wondering why you were sitting in the rain?”

He paused for a moment, those dark eyes still burning a hole in you and his equally dark hair plastered around his thin, pale face. He then tilted his head up towards the sky. His eyes flitted shut with the harsh oncoming drops.

“Oh, I hadn’t even noticed.”

Your mouth twisted involuntarily with a lot of different emotions. Confusion and unsettled were the two that seemed to stick out the most.

“Okay, so … Do you need anything?” You asked still trying to be polite.

His mouth opened as if he were about to answer, but he snapped it shut after further consideration. His gaze fell back to your feet and became unfocused.

“No, I don’t believe there is anything pressing that I need at the moment.”

The rain seemed much louder than it had before. The constant drumming was deafening once the man finished his sentence. Your apprehensiveness continued to grow. The urge to take slow steps back to the door was strong, but for whatever reason you fought against it.

“Are you sure?”

He didn’t look up to you and his blank expression never wavered. “Yes, I’m sure.”

You crouched down to his level and matched his stare. Your eyes caught his and at once the world seemed to stop. Something about him made it seem like you and him both had all the time in the world to be sitting there in the rain. It was something about his eyes, you thought. They were too dark and the bags under them were too deep, especially since you guessed he was around your age. Yet, you couldn’t help but think that maybe he had seen and experienced a lot more than you had.

You hold your knees like he did. “You’re going to catch a cold.”

His demeanor changed considerably. It went from cold and robotic to something akin to amusement. His eyes lit up as his attention had been fully won over by something you did. His expression was much like a cat that had set its sights on its prey. You recoiled from its intensity.

“Worried for a stranger, are you?” His mouth opened into a smile. “Very friendly, indeed.”

You felt like you needed to defend yourself, “I was only trying to be nice.”

He hummed in consideration, “Perhaps, but I don’t accept that people are just nice. So if you would let me humor myself, could I try to understand your motivation for coming out here?”

You weren’t sure how to respond to his question, but he began speaking again without an answer.

“I’ll describe the situation from your point of view. If you could, correct me if I’m wrong. A man on the rooftop all alone in the pouring rain. You see him and come rushing to his aid in case he was in need of your help? Because perhaps he was hurt in some manner?”

“Well, yeah?”

He chuckled breathily and brought the tip of his thumb to his lips, “What did you expect in return for helping me?”

“What?”

“You saw a benefit in helping me, what was that benefit?”

“That I get to help another human being?” Your voice was starting to get louder and more tense. “Here, come on. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee at the cafe next door.”

His eyes followed your hand which was outstretched towards him. He was thinking, you could see it somewhat now that he was biting the tip of his thumb. It must have been a habit of his.

Your eyes met his again as he accepted your offer tentatively.

“Friendly, indeed.” He repeated.

When you both stood up, you took in his statue. He was a little taller than you, perhaps more so if he weren’t slouching as much. His shoulders upon further inspection may have been slouched in a way that looked like he was tense. It looked like he was carrying a heavy burden, stupidly reminding you of the ancient Greek story of Atlas, the titan who held up the sky and heavens. However, no sooner than that unnecessary though filled your head, a sudden and heavy weight suddenly crashed upon you as if you had taken over Atlas’ job.

Once that odd man stood and his white long-sleeved shirt was exposed, you could see clearly through the wet material. On his chest was his Soul Mark clear as day. It was very pigmented against his pale skin and stood out even more so with the shirt. You would have maybe looked away if it were anyone else with any other mark. Yet, with your awful luck and this goddamn inconvenient rain, you could clearly see that his mark was the exact same as yours. There was no mistaking it. You’ve spent your whole life staring at your mark, unhappy that it was there, but too used to it to get rid of it. Sometimes you wished you were born without one. Then, you wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of a chance encounter like this one.

You must have not moved for a long time. He caught you glaring at his mark and glanced down as well. His hand touched the wet shirt, the tips of his fingers dragging over the mark.

“Do you recognize it?” He asked, his voice much softer than before.

You couldn’t lie to him. Your head bobbed unevenly with your jerky nodding, “It’s my match.”

This took him by surprise. His usual wide-eyed stare was wider and curious.

“Interesting,” he murmured, “The probability of meeting you was already slim to none, and considering who I am and what I do …”

Your stomach sank even further. What he was saying sounded like he was probably a serial killer or something.

“Let’s go inside, to the cafe?” He bent down to level his face with yours before walking towards the door.

You dumbly followed, still in shock and really unable to comprehend anything other than your impending doom. It was like everything had narrowed down to a single point in your life, where meeting your match was not merely a coincidence, but a certainty. As much as you tried to struggle against fate and pull away from losing control something so personal as finding your soulmate, it hadn’t really mattered in the end. You still ended up in the most ironic of circumstances, finding the very person who shared the exact same birthmark in a very uncharacteristic move. You thought sarcastically that you shouldn’t help anyone else out of the kindness of your heart ever again.

The door shut heavily behind them in finality. The sound echoed up and down the stairwell. Then, there was an eerie silence. No more rain in the background to blanket and surround you.

You pushed your dripping hair out of your face and locked eyes with him again. “What’s your name?”

You might as well ask. The thing you have been fretting over and having anxiety about was now happening. You had lost the will to care about panicking and being overly blunt.

He looked uncomfortable, “I go by L.”

“L?” Your head fell with disbelief. “Like the letter?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe that’s your real name.”

“It isn’t my real name, no. I just happen to go by it, like a nickname, or an alias.”

You considered him for a moment, “Why?”

“My work.” L tucked his hands in the pockets of jeans. “It’s quite dangerous. I don’t like others knowing my personal information. Of course, you can find a lot about someone with just a name and description of appearance.”

“What do you do for work?”

“I’m a detective. A private detective would probably be a better title, though I often find cases to study and solve without an initial client.”

You looked him up and down again, “How old are you?”

“How old are you?” He countered.

“I’m in university, third year.”

“I’m a little younger than you, a year or so. Depending on your age, you could be young for a third year?”

“I am.”

L had that weird, open-mouthed smile again. “What’s your name, then? Since we’re going to be playing twenty questions?”

You couldn’t help but grin at his sarcastic tone. “My name is [YN].”

“Well, [YN], I’m afraid I can’t accept your offer for coffee.”

You had completely forgotten about what you had said to get L out of the rain. You had gone through a complete cycle of emotions since then and couldn’t be bothered to remember.

“I don’t mind,” You say, “It doesn’t hurt my feelings at all.”

He cocked his head and studied you for a brief moment, “I’m glad to have met you. Regardless of the strange circumstances.”

You felt sick once more, but there was a bit of relief in realizing that L was not what you had expected and he certainly didn’t expect some heartfelt gestures from finding his match.

“I’d like to keep in touch.” L said fumbling around his back pocket, looking for something. “After all, I wouldn’t mind having an artist around.”

“How did you-?”

No sooner than you had uttered those words his eyes dropped to your portfolio case then back up to you. You felt a flush rising in your cheeks and ears. Your portfolio case had your name on it, of course he would have assumed it belonged to you.

“So you’re an artist.” L said. “I’d thought initially you were an architect and that was based on your clothing. However, with more deduction, I was only thirty-seven percent sure.”

“My clothing,” you said jokingly angry, “What about my clothing?”

“Never mind that. You’re case distracted me. It’s quite large. I had thought you were carrying designs for equally large projects.”

“Wow, thanks for noticing my large portfolio case.”

L’s smile grew larger, “I must take my leave. I will keep in touch.”

He began to descend the stairs in an unhurried manner. As reached the first landing, a cell phone went off and you saw, before L turned the corner, that it had been his.

“Hello? Yes, Watari. I’m on my way down, I’ll be out there soon …”

You stopped listening as you knees wobbled under your weight. You fell against the stairs and curled up into a ball. What the hell just happened?

#death note #reader insert #l death note #soulmate #soulmate au #alternate universe #requests #anon asks #reader x l

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mutantsrisingrpg · 5 years ago

Photo

Congratulations NOEL! You’ve been accepted as IAPETUS.

This was the hardest decision we’ve ever had to make. Both of the applications for Jack were so damn good and we went back and forth on it. But, the way Jack idealizes Alma in your expanded connection has what hooked us, Noel! The way you ended Jacks bio to everything written about Alma, to this “He’d expected a gun to his face; instead, he’d gotten a lifeline.” This, this line right here had us SOBBING. We can’t wait to see you bring Jack to life on the dash!

Welcome to Mutants Rising! Please read the checklist and submit your account within 24 hours.

Out of Character Information:

NAME/ALIAS: Noel :~)

PRONOUNS: They/them

AGE: 24

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: CDT / GMT-5

In Character Information:

DESIRED ROLE: Jack Mizuno

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Cismale, he/him

DETAILS & ANALYSIS:

I see Jack as someone with an identity whose boundaries are constantly in flux, and the consequences of that endless/unsure sense of self. Someone (largely) unrepressed, unrepentant, unashamed, whose depth comes from his own unknown limitations, and the exhilaration that comes with exploring that edge. What could he do, what will he do? He hardly knows himself, but rather than being a problem, it’s a challenge, a philosophical question. He shares his brain with so much all the time, and sometimes the space between himself and everything else is more a suggestion than a defined line.

He’s like one of those kids raised in excessive, grotesque wealth, except with information instead of money; information, which is often power. Definitely someone who never learned to shut up, turn down the drink or the job or the daring glance. No one can be tapped into the Internet like that, an endless sea of screaming neon and screens and signs and meaning and nonsense and desire, and not be a little bit unhinged. He combats this with a straight-forward, analytical nature, a temperament capable of riding the crest of all that data without drowning. Most of the time.

Ultimately, Jack is someone with immediate access to anything and everything he could ever want to know, and a personality just morally flexible enough that he wouldn’t for a moment think to feel ashamed using it against someone.

BIO: (cw: neglect, violence, addiction, drugs, suicidal ideation)

Jack’s power had started as a party trick.

It was the first time he’d been invited to a sleepover. The other boy’s parents probably felt bad for him, the kid with no mom and no friends and an always-absent father, but the specifics didn’t matter much. He’d been hungry for their attention, anyone’s attention, and when the opportunity was given to him he intended to leave an impression. Do you have a computer room? There’s something you should see. He’d rested one hand on the mouse, one on the keyboard, scowling-serious like the hackers he’d seen on TV. The posture was more for the visual than anything else; he wasn’t going to need to press a single key tonight. Give me a name. Someone you hate.

One brush of his thumb against a wire, and the screen flickered a hundred colors. Garbled words and images, resolving into a series of personal photos, emails meant for someone else’s eyes. A social security card. A private world cracked open for him, as easy as asking please.

It was the last time he’d let anyone watch him work. The other kids had looked at him in horror, his still hands, the blank look on his face. Blank as the static on a broken TV, or the waxy face of a corpse. Freak. Mutant. It didn’t bother him— other people’s opinions rarely bothered him— but it made the reveal less effective. Distracted from the point, which was: Look what I can do. And, more importantly: What can you give me for it?

Jack had been glad when they'd moved states not long after. Moving every few months was mostly an annoyance, but it did give him an unlimited supply of second chances at first impressions. By his teens, he’d perfected his routine. Cash for information. Blackmail, answers to tests, access to any secret. Any question answered, for the right price. Even if he had nothing to spend the money on but video games, candy, cigarettes and (eventually) drugs, whatever— it was the power that got to him, the real fun of the exchange. Before long his clientele had expanded from his fellow students to the local teachers. Then their friends. Then, a more dangerous kind of customer. More dangerous friends. If his father noticed his new schedule of late-night outings, he never mentioned it. Richard Mizuno had never been much of a parent, coming and going with no notice, sometimes for weeks on end. When they were sleeping in the same house, he didn’t seem to notice Jack’s movements around him at all.

Jack got caught when he was fifteen. A client looking for dirt on a cheating spouse recognized him, his dark hair, those blank eyes. Hey, aren’t you Mizuno’s kid? It was inevitable, running in circles adjacent to criminals, that he’d eventually run into someone who knew his own criminal father. Rich was a small-time con man and a big-time gambler. What money he made never lasted long in his pockets; it was rare that he made more than he lost, and outrunning his debts had been what kept them on the move through Jack’s childhood. That evening, his father called him into the kitchen and passed him a cigarette over the cheap plastic table where they’d never eaten a meal together. That evening, his father looked at him with interest for the first time in his life.

Once again his ability was a party trick, this time for his father’s benefit. Something to show off to strangers in the back rooms of clubs and anonymous private basements. Look what I found on you. Imagine what I could find on your enemies. Blackmail was a dirty business, but it paid better than the various scams his father had been working through the years. Pretty soon, they were making good money, more in a week than they’d previously seen in months. For the first time, they signed an actual lease on an apartment. He swapped out his Craigslist bed frame for one from Ikea. Soon, all Jack’s evenings were spent scowling in corners, the prop for his father’s grand reveal, and his mornings were spent sleeping through classes. He didn’t need to be present for the actual deals, but his dad liked leaving an impression, and silent boy genius hacker was a pretty memorable one.

That routine lasted nearly three years. The Mizunos made a name for themselves as the ones who could get dirt on anyone, anytime, and bore no strict alliances; it was more lucrative that way. Their reputation began to precede them. Even at a young age, Jack knew enough about the world— enough from watching his father, and the men who came after him— to know it could never end well. Inevitably, his dad made a gamble on the wrong person, and got a bullet in the head for his trouble. Jack took what was left of their money and ran as far as he could run, all the way to the opposite coast, into the familiar arms of an anonymous face and an unfamiliar town.

In another life, that would have been his lesson to take a sharp right turn and set down some more legitimate roots. As it was, he’d spent his years honing his abilities, learning how to control them and sell them to the highest bidder. The money was too easy, the satisfaction of a new impossible puzzle cracked— it was addictive, all-encompassing. Where most people only accessed a trickle of information at a time, their own personal corner of infinity, Jack bathed in it. All the world’s secrets at his fingertips, if he did things right, if he kept at it. Every puzzle had its solution. He could have anything and everything in the world he could want, and at that moment all he wanted was more.

He was so cocky. Cocky, and empty, and often bored. Sometimes high. It was a dangerous combination. First, he got run out of New York with his life, just barely. He’d bet on the wrong person, someone who knew that all it took to get him to do something was telling him he couldn’t. Nothing more attractive than a locked door and a challenge. Nothing better than proving someone wrong. Next stop, Chicago, where he hadn’t fallen into old habits as much as his only habits. It started with some high-powered mutant at a house party, looking him up and down with a raised brow— This guy? Really?— and it was like he lost his fucking mind. People could call him any name in the books and he wouldn’t bat a pretty eyelash, but questioning his abilities set him off like a rabid dog, what little common sense he had disappearing behind a smirk. All the mutant had to do was cock his head and ask, Can you? And Jack had said, Try me.

Jack would show them. He would show everyone in the entire world if he had to. And that was how he’d found himself on the wrong side of the Blackburn Syndicate.

EXPANDED CONNECTIONS:

ALMA: When Jack looked up from his crouch on the floor of the Blackburn server room and saw Alma, pure rage in a five-foot-two frame and looking ready to snap his neck, he’d laughed. In the split second between seeing their face and recognizing it, his mind tried the odds of getting out of that room alive and came up with the equivalent of an error message. So this was it, his penultimate moment, the last bad decision in a history of bad decisions. He’d lived his life from one increasingly risky gamble to the next, always left unsatisfied and searching for the next big thing-- assuming he didn’t get his face kicked in first. Not a great way to live if longevity was a priority, but he’d been running long enough on hubris to ignore that part. Until now. Now, it seemed the ever-chaotic universe had found a small justice to be done, one small moving part of chaos to put back in its place. He was going to be powered down for good. All that was left was to let go, with the finality of an animal going limp in the mouth of its mother, submitting to the inevitability of the narrative he’d always seen coming.

Jack wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel. Disappointed? He should be. He’d gotten caught before he could deliver the product to his client. He’d failed the job. But he’d gotten into the Blackburn servers first, cracked open the deepest secrets of one of the most secretive gangs. The rest of the job was just… transportation. This was his biggest challenge to date, and he’d— somehow, incredibly— pulled it off. Which was how he’d found himself laughing in the face of the inevitable, expression lit only by the blinking red and blue lights of the monitor below him and his hands nested in a tangle of wires like the hair of a lover.

He can’t imagine what she saw in him at that moment. A scruffy kid in old clothes living out of a hotel on the South Side, spending his days chain-smoking out the bathroom window while he waited for his phone to ring. Those days, he’d always had this feeling like he was about to vibrate out of his skin, worst of all when he was waiting for a job. Bouncing between all these intense, erratic impulses, always on the edge of shaving his head or robbing a bank or jumping in front of a car. He was a ball of tightly-would energy with no container, spinning and ricocheting and destroying everything it touched, and getting himself banged up in the process. An attack dog without a leash, biting its own tail into infinity. Jack was on his way to a dead end, full-speed, and changing paths wasn’t an option. Stopping felt like drowning; moving, outwitting every challenge, outrunning all consequences, at least it had a rush.

Until Alma Rosario looked at him and said, I’ve been looking for someone like you. He’d never been looked at like that before, like they were taking the whole measure of him, like they knew what he was and what he was meant to do. You’re with us now. Like he’d been theirs the whole time, and everything up until that moment was just practice for the real work of his life. He’d expected a gun to his face; instead, he’d gotten a lifeline. Someone who gave a fuck about him in a way no one ever had before. A cool hand on his shoulder, a direction to point his focus, and a leader who took his restlessness and alchemised it into blood-deep loyalty. The rest of the world could get fucked, but Alma Rosario had spared his life in more ways than one, and he’d follow them to the ends of the Earth.

EXTRA:

Jack speaks English, Japanese and Polish. The last he learned from his friend group in high school, who he had nothing in common with apart from a mutual interest in doing drugs and World of Warcraft. A fun side-effect of his ability is a natural aptitude towards languages, which could be cool if he ever cared enough to do something with it. In reality, he’d only learned Polish so he could talk shit as well as the rest of them during games.

At one point in his childhood he’d gotten really good at card tricks as an outlet for his fidgeting. It didn’t stick, but he still has the muscle memory.

There is an irony to the fact he ended up in the Blackburn Syndicate, the most holier-than-thou of the gangs, considering he doesn’t give a fuck about mutant rights. He’s never cared about politics or paid much attention to life outside his circle, and the interiority of his ability has spared him from the abuse other mutants experience on the day-to-day.

The last romantic interest he expressed in a girl was Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion; to be fair, he was 12 at the time.

There was a period at the beginning of his work with the Blackburn Syndicate where he lived in Alma’s guesthouse, because he had nowhere to go, and had been kicked out of his hotel for not caring enough to pay their bills. While he didn’t spend much time with Alma personally, being literally taken in off the street solidified his trust in their promise that Blackburn takes care of its members.

Jack was born on August 6, 1990 (which makes him a Leo sun, Scorpio moon, Capricorn rising.) Yes, this is a year to the day the internet went public.

His mother left him with his father when he was five. He doesn’t remember anything about her, but if she was thoughtless enough to leave her child with a man like his dad, he doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t think about her much anymore.

Jack has a secret obsession/fascination with the arcane and occult. Possibly because it’s one of the few topics that remains mysterious, no matter how much digging he does.

His home computer has a Sailor Moon-themed keyboard. It is wholly incongruous with the rest of his place, which has as much personality as a cheap motel room.

Jack reads everyone in Blackburn’s emails. Because he can. Occasionally their texts, too, if he really doesn’t like them, or distrusts their motivations. (He distrusts most people’s motivations.)

On that note, he considers it part of his job to keep some amount of dirt on everyone he knows, from bank account details to embarrassing archived Myspace profiles. The only one he affords their privacy is Alma.

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/remusjlupin/jm/

ANYTHING ELSE: N/A

#Accepted #accepted: iapetus

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snddev · 7 years ago

Text

Refactoring and Sending Events around!

Today I started the day by making a little Training Dummy, so I could start testing my spells on someone.

I set this little guy up with Dynamic Bones so I could have him animate very quickly. For the hurt animatinos I just moved his chest joint forward really quick then backwards and to the side, the dynamic bones take care of all the rest :D

So I started looking into actually making the spells damage him, I’ll need to use events instead of the way I was doing before so I can take full advantage of the Data-Driven engine design. For that I’d have to rewrite most of the health-handling code... And I was already annoyed with my 3-year old code from Rocket Fist so I decided to go down the refactoring rabbit-hole today...

When I made this code I was trying to make everything very modular, and separated the ActorHealth from the rest of the ActorController. But in reality, all of my actors have health, no matter what. The only thing this separation did was making me couple those 2 scripts like crazy and have information duplicated in them thinking that I might possibly have one without the other.

So I stopped all this nonsense and refactored them both into one “Actor Class”. I also removed a lot of unecessary variables that I wasn’t even using anymore and hid the ones that I use but don’t really need showing up in the inspector. Plus used Odin Inspector to separate things into nicer tabs, making the inspector more manageable.

This is before:

And this is after:

Then I set off to fire the events. I created a method that fires a set of events taking 2 Actors, a “sender” and a “receiver”, and I’m using this method to send my attack events. This is what it looks like.

Turning “DoindDebug” boolean on I get to see on the console everything that is happening with my events :) As you can see, since this is a “FireBolt”, after the “BeforeAttack” event, the event message gains the parameter “element” with the value “fire”

Now I can do some cool things, like for instance, I’m going to have Elemental enemies, so I created a WaterElemental Actor Piece to test. This code will take the event “BeforeTakeDamage” and change the “damage” value if he notices that the attack contains the element “Fire”

I added the “WaterElemental” piece to the Test Dummy and shot it with my “FireBolt” spell again.

Now the damage that the dummy actually took was 7 instead of 15 :D It changed right after the event BeforeTakeDamage ran. With this system I can even have a WaterFire elemental, and it still would work.

I want to setup a Spreadsheet for my actors and be able to setup my actors using it just like I’m doing my spells. That way I can create the enemies by mashing pieces together. The code refactoring should also help with that since I have less variables to deal with. I’ll expose those variables to the spreadsheets so I can change them using XML as well.

That’s it for today, ended up not being very visual since it was a lot of coding, but it was totally necessary. I still have some work to do in the refactoring, since the new damage system isn’t really hooked up with Particle Effects or Animations... I’m making new scripts to handle that which will be receiving and acting on events instead of being in the middle of the actual Actor code... Should be cleaner that way :)

#gamedev #indie game #devlog #devblog

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yevbelous-blog · 7 years ago

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Week 10

The week started off with an entire 3 hours devoted to water tunnel testing of surfboard fins (Monday). Looking back at our flow visualization gathered from the previous week, we noticed that some of the videos were blurry and out of focus. The reason for this was because our camera decided to be “helpful” and auto-focused, which meant that it focused on the front glass of the test section, and everything behind the front glass of the test section was nice and blurry for us (the fin, the dye, everything important). All of the top views were stellar though (go GoPro!), so we were able to keep all of the footage from our dynamic tests, but had to redo the testing with the dye. Fortunately, we were able to get a lot of practice with controlling and optimizing the dye output, as well as properly securing the fin onto its mount. Therefore, the process would be much more efficient and smooth. We filled up the water tunnel, secured the fin on its stand into the water, pressurized the dye containers, and set up our camera configuration for testing at the start of lab. The process took about 40 minutes, but we were then ready to test. We ran through multiple tests for the generic fin and the lost coast fin. We had two kinds of tests, one had dye shot over the base of the fin, while the other had dye shot towards the tip of the fin. These tests were conducted for the fin at a 0° AoA and a 45° AoA. An additional set of tests were conducted for the fins while they were being turned, to see how the flow behaves when being forced by each fin. Lastly, we tested an actual, real fin that Tynan had provided us with to verify that our 3D printed fins behaved accurately as a real fin would. Once all of these tests were finished, we drained the water tunnel and cleaned up the area around the water tunnel. We closed up the water tunnel, tarped it, and secured the tarp so that it wouldn’t fly away. The testing and cleaning up took about an hour and 40 minutes, leaving us with 30 minutes of class for Monday. Matt and I shared the video files with each other and we made a plan for what we would do to prepare for our presentation. Matt would edit the dynamic test videos, and Will would set up the presentation and all the background slides for our presentation. I took all of the video footage that included any testing with dye and would edit both the side and top views of our data. I spent about 4 hours on Monday night, and then an additional 4 hours on Tuesday (2 hours in my supersonics class, and 2 hours in structures) getting all the files completed. In total I had 48 videos created. These were then compressed into 12 videos that displayed comparisons (4 sections per video). On Tuesday evening, we put all of our data together into the presentation and finished the presentation. All of Wednesday was devoted to group presentations and I feel like we did really well! Also Tynan was a sweetheart and brought donuts for everyone! (That’s TA goals right there).

Matlab generated data of the dynamic testing. The Lost Coast fin turned quicker and easier than a generic fin did.

Final video edit of the generic fin vs the Lost Coast fin. (Sorry I tried to upload the .gif of it, but Tumblr wouldn’t allow me to because the file was too big).

Final video edit of the real fin to compare to our 3D printed fins. (Again, Tumblr wouldn’t allow me to post the .gif because the file size was too large).

Looking back on this quarter of AERO 307, there were definitely some ups and downs, but I did end up learning more about aerodynamics (success). Coming into this quarter, I had no idea how to use XFOIL, work with the sting in the wind tunnel, and I knew almost nothing about water tunnel testing. I have been able to learn how to competently use XFOIL now. I am also very familiar with a lot of the tools that we have in the air tunnel and how to use them. Additionally, four weeks of water tunnel testing has given me enough experience to understand how to work with dye in a tunnel as well as what I am looking for in the flow visualization. For example, I had no understanding of what a wake was coming off of a wing, as well as why recirculation occurred near different bodies, but I feel like I can now somewhat defend myself if I were to be placed into an argument about said topics. Some things that may still confuse me about aerodynamics would be phenomena from compressible flow and why things happen the way they do when examining supersonic and hypersonic flow. I understand and know what happens for compressible flow properties, but it is hard to understand the theory behind it all. Then again, this is not a topic that was covered much in AERO 307, but I feel like I understood the topics we went over in 307. The highlight of this quarter has been working with the Lost Coast Fin Company (pretty much Tynan) and doing water tunnel tests on different kinds of fins. It was awesome that my group and I were able to compose our experiment ourselves and not have to follow exact guidelines. It was really cool being able to see how flow acts over surfboard fins and the differences between each fin. The lowlight of this quarter was one day when Kendrick and I were doing a water tunnel test over a Boeing 777, and our test didn't go well at all. Afterwards, there was some miscommunication about cleaning up and we didn't do our job properly when leaving the water tunnel. That was disappointing for myself (and for Doig), but it was definitely something to learn from and grow from. I believe that my future in Aerospace Engineering might be centered around controls. I really enjoyed the topics that have been covered in both of the controls classes that I have taken so far and I plan on taking the advanced controls class with Dr. Mehiel. If controls does not end up being something that I am into then I would most likely choose aerodynamics as my next choice! Thank you Dr. Doig and Tynan for all your help throughout this quarter!

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