#Weekend IT Courses

[spacetrashpile]

y'know what would be super fun to do for halloween/october... watch one movie adaptation of dracula for each day in october and then rank them all at the end of the month

[adam-scott]

MANNY JACINTO for Square Mile Magazine (2024)

[hardly-an-escape]

I believe with all my heart that Buck still struggles during thunderstorms after being hit by lightning. luckily Tommy makes an extremely effective weighted blanket.

Tommy awakens, in the early hours of the morning, to a clap of thunder and an empty bed.

He feels sleepily for Evan; that side of the bed is still warm, so he can't be far, probably just in the bathroom.

He dozes off again. When another rolling burst of thunder startles him back to consciousness a few minutes later, Evan is still gone and the sheets have cooled. The rain is clattering hard on the skylight above their bed. With a groan, Tommy hauls himself out of bed to look for his boyfriend.

Evan is not in the en suite bathroom. Nor is he in the office, where he sometimes retreats to read when he can't sleep; nor yet in the kitchen. Tommy stands in the living room, hands on hips, blinking blearily and considering where he might look next.

Then he notices the blankets on the floor.

They’ve got one of those L-shaped couches with the chaise on one side, big and deep enough for two bulky men to cuddle on. Evan has wedged himself against the couch legs in the corner of the L in a pile of blankets and throw pillows, and Tommy doesn’t miss the fact that he’s about as far from the living room windows as it’s possible to be.

Even bleary-eyed, he doesn’t miss the fact that the blinds and curtains are both tightly closed, though he’s sure they’d been open when they went to bed, to catch the last few rays of sunset before the cloud cover rolled over Los Angeles.

Outside, the rain beats heavily against the sidewalk and the roof and the windows and thunder rumbles again across the sky. Inside, Tommy lowers himself down to the living room floor with a grunt and adds himself to Evan's pile of pillows.

"Hey," Evan says, voice sleepy and small.

"Hey," Tommy replies, insinuating one hand into the nest to gently hold the back of Evan's neck. "Storm getting to you?"

"Yeah. Normally it wouldn't, you know, bug me, but I was already having this weird, like, anxiety dream about my sister, and when the thunder and lightning woke me up, it just –"

"You don't have to explain, sweetheart," Tommy cuts in. "I get it."

"It's embarrassing," Evan says, muffled.

"It's not. We have a scary job. Every firefighter I know has something like this, a call or an injury that stuck with them, and not in a good way. Yours just happens to be a little more... visceral, I guess, than some people's."

"I guess. Thanks for coming to check on me."

"Of course." He can feel Evan flinch as another clap of thunder is followed almost immediately by a bolt of lightning that makes the room glow briefly, even through the blinds and curtains. Tommy tightens his grip on the back of his neck. "If you need to stay down here, I'll stay with you, but I think my back and your leg will thank us if we can make it onto the couch."

Evan considers. "Will you lie on top of me?"

"Sure."

They maneuver themselves and the blankets onto the long side of the couch. After some adjustment, Evan ends up on his belly, bad leg cocked to the side and face turned toward the back of the couch, clutching a throw pillow to his chest while Tommy plasters himself against his back like the world's heaviest weighted blanket.

"Okay, you were right, this is so much better than the floor," Evan says, sighing happily, and Tommy grins, and rubs his nose on the back of Evan's neck, and kisses the curve of his ear.

"Tomorrow I'll look for some blinds or something we can put on the skylight, okay? It would probably help if it didn't feel so exposed, right?"

There's a long, silent beat. "You don't have to do that just for me," Evan says eventually.

"Eh, it gets too bright in there anyway. I'm an old man, remember, I need all the help sleeping I can get. And besides," Tommy adds quietly. "I want to do things for you."

"Oh, well in that case," Evan says. "Yeah, I think it would help."

"Then we'll do it," Tommy says simply. They lie there for a few minutes, listening to the wind. The rain is still heavy, but it sounds like the worst of the weather system is receding, blowing away to wherever storms go when they've blown out all their furious energy. Evan's breathing has evened out, and the tension is receding from his body as the storm gets quieter and quieter.

“Do you, uh, do you remember that storm?” Evan asks. He doesn’t have to specify which storm.

“I do, actually. I was supposed to be doing some training runs that night, but all non-emergency flights got grounded. And then the next day, everybody and their granny heard about the guy who literally got struck by lightning. That was pretty memorable.”

Evan sighs. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess it was, wasn’t it?”

There’s this feeling welling up inside his chest like water from an underground spring. It’s this combination of marvel and abject gratitude and a dash of there but for the grace of God go I, and Tommy is searching for the right words to try and tell Evan what he’s thinking.

“I’m really glad you’re here, sweetheart,” is what comes out.

Evan wriggles happily underneath him. “Yeah, me too, babe.”

“No, I mean –” Tommy clears his throat against the sudden lump. “I mean, you don’t know how glad I am you’re here. There’s so many things that – that could have taken you away from me before I even got the chance to have you. And I would never have known – I wouldn’t have even known you were missing from my life.”

"Yeah," Evan says softly. "Yeah, I think about that sometimes, too. When Chimney told me about saving you from that explosion, back in the day... he was laughing about it, kind of, but I kept thinking, like. That could have been it. No more Tommy."

"No us," Tommy murmurs.

"No us." Evan cranes his neck around. They can't quite kiss, not at this angle, but Tommy can press his forehead against Evan's temple and breathe him in. The smell of his nice moisturizer and under that the smell of his skin, so fragile and so dear.

[verkomy]

happy to announce that my hyperfixationless era is over and I'm about to watch every kdrama and movie with Gong Yoo in it

[torchlitinthedesert]

With Paul out of the room, I answered a knock at the door and met Linda Eastman for the first time. “Hello, may I help you?” I asked. Speaking through me, not to me, she vaguely replied, “Is Paul here?” Over my shoulder she saw Paul coming through the door that led from the bedroom/bathroom portion of the suite, and wham! She went past me like a Notre Dame football tackle. She full-force embraced him in the doorway, push-pulled him through it, slammed the door shut, and that was the last I saw of him or her that day.

Ken Mansfield, The White Book, 2007

[fyllophobia]

[eighthwholove]

Regenerated.

[hyacinthsdiamonds]

You know, in movies where they get a character to essentially glow up to seduce someone, but then they're really, really bad at flirting? That's Charles, seemingly being assigned by the GPDA to swear, and him essentially becoming a wide-eyed country girl in the big city for the first time during this mission* lmao. He tried so hard to make it look casual, but he practically tripped over himself to bring Max and his penalty up at every opportunity in preparation of dropping the swear bomb and possibly joining him in community service 😭✋️.

[sainz100]

Max moments from the 2025 Saudi Arabian GP

[aroaceleovaldez]

one of my favorite recent recurring convention/cosplay things is Zagreus Hadesgame cosplayers and Nico di Angelo cosplayers excitedly referring to each other as brothers

[shallowseeker]

I have two questions for you, really. Just as proof of the point. But first:

[cultivating-wildflowers]

ladies, I need to wander despondently across a foggy moor asap

[notbecauseofvictories]

it is interesting and terrifying to talk to my mother about aging.

she, my uncle, and my father all help take care of my grandparents, and during our call she flat-out told me that, at some point, my siblings and I will likely need to move my parents out of their house into continuing/graduated care. That step would have been so beneficial for my grandparents---for the aging parents of many of my mother's friends---but that generation seems so resistant, so stubborn; they want to age in their homes even if said homes have stairs, sharp corners, haven't been properly cleaned in years. "I am going to try and be more open to change," my mother said with a slightly-embarrassed laugh; we as her children just might need to remind her sometimes.

meanwhile I---a thirty-year-old woman who previously would have described her overall posture on aging as "that's a future problem!!!"---am quietly freaking out.

[shanklin]

Stanford never became friends with Fiddleford.

Instead he got himself a different small friend group who cares a lot about him. At least about the Ford he pretended to be in college.

A kind, soft spoken formerly bullied genius who researches very dull stuff in Oregon and definitely not anything weird. Their Ford would never break any rules or ignore safety measures [unlike that other student they heard about during their college years.]

And then Ford stops answering their calls and loses his grant. 

It’s time for an intervention and they start pestering Ford with letters and calls until he finally agrees to meet them at a science convention, but he’ll take his brother with him.

They’re relieved! Ford is with Shermie! They like Shermie! It's a good thing that Ford still has one brother who isn't a good for nothing selfish criminal who destroyed his entire future!

If they ever get their hands on Ford’s evil twin they’ll make sure he’ll regret ever messing with their friend. Ford is too nice for revenge. They aren’t.

Meanwhile at the not-yet Mystery Shack, the Stans freshly survived their own angsty canon divergent tale of two stans AU and locked Bill out of Ford's mind like a week ago.

Stan: I don’t know how long Ford will keep me around but this will be good for him. He needs some friends to take care of him after I inevitably get kicked out again!

Ford: I only agreed to this because Stan insisted and I still haven’t found a way to thank him and apologize. I hope all my “friends” die in a fire.

[ebenelephant]

also shout out to the line "in the spirit of total honesty there was some... ketamine" this show is the realest thing

[raineandsky]

This is for @pleasantkryptonitewinner who requested the New Better Villain taking on the villain's hero and gettin a lil too violent with it :) hope you enjoy!!

tw: implied violence, blood

The hero, for lack of a better word, looks normal.

The villain isn’t sure what he was expecting. Most people look normal. But all those years under a mask, a charade… it kind of became all that the villain could see him as. The hero. Even now, looking him in the eye as the person he is—really is—it doesn’t seem real.

That and, well— the villain can’t deny that he’s pretty alright to look at. That was certainly an unexpected twist.

The other villain—the bastard he’s cursed to work with, the jackass taking his job, his nemesis, his city—has the hero in a death grip. It feels like it’s all moving in slow motion. The two of them are tousling, kind of, as much as they can tousle with the other villain raining hellfire on a hero that’s well out of his depth.

It’s strange, that the other villain seems to be the outlier here. The hero and the villain have danced around each other for years. It’s been some sort of unspoken rule that they never quite hit hard enough to truly maim. But the hero came here, probably expecting the villain, expecting their usual song and dance, and instead got met with an entirely different tune.

Does the villain want the hero dead? Does he want their game to end? He doesn’t have time to decide.

“[Other Villain],” he snaps, “stop it.”

The other villain leans back, his fist still balled in the hero’s shirt, his other pulled back for yet another strike. “Oh, sorry.” His chest is heaving, as if he’s the one losing here. “You want a go?”

The villain doesn’t know what his answer would be to that. “I think he’s got the idea. Leave off.”

The other villain doesn’t move. The hero wipes idly at the blood painting his mouth.

Like a child asking a genuine question, the other villain simply says, “Why?”

“Because you’re ruining my fun.” True. “You’re taking over on my nemesis.” True. “You’re on my watch.” Half-true, without the supervillain to take charge. “I know this life better than you. Let me do my job and stop butting in.”

“You’ve been fighting [Hero] for years without any progress.” The other villain’s brow knits, genuinely confused. “I’m doing you a favour.”

The villain glances down at the supposed favour he’s getting. Blood splatters the hero’s face, deep crimson painting his clothes. Something of a black eye is already appearing, and the villain hates that noticing that means he also notices that the hero is looking right at him.

He’s not sure why it’s so off-putting. Should he have caused that? Does he want it to have happened at all? His emotions are clashing together in a horrendous cacophony and deciphering any of them is impossible.

“Let go, [Other Villain].”

The slight frown turns into something more hateful. “No.”

“Your violence isn’t welcome in this so-called partnership. Pull it together, or go tell [Supervillain] you ruined his plan.”

“You’re generations out of date, [Villain].” It comes out of the other villain’s mouth as a spit. “Violence is the way forward. I’m helping in ways you’ll clearly never understand.”

The villain isn’t entirely sure why he lurches for the other villain, much like he hasn’t been sure of anything since the hero showed up here and ruined what was already a fairly shitty day.

The other villain has his work cut out for him with an opponent that’s not already half-dead, it seems. The two of them land in a heap on the ground, the other villain’s grappling for his partner’s throat and the villain’s grip tight on the other’s wrists and the air disappears from the villain’s lungs and the world seems so far away and everything is muffled—

The villain gasps his next breath, scrambling away unsteadily. The world slowly comes back into focus, the hum of the city below and his own haggard breathing tuning back in. He swallows nothing, the feeling a sharp burn in his throat, and whips around to look for the other villain.

The villain finds him on the ground, unmoving, the lightest trail of blood trickling from his nose. The hero is sitting next to him with a battered road sign lying at his feet, staring off into nothing.

“Did—” The word hurts. The villain tries to clear his throat and only makes it feel worse. “Did you hit him with a roadwork sign?”

The hero huffs a sort of laugh that melts quickly into a cough. He doesn’t look at the villain when he says, “Think it was about time I hit him back, wasn’t it?”

“I didn’t know you had it in you. You’ve never hit me quite that bad.”

The hero actually laughs this time, the sound choked. “You pull what he just did and I’ll consider it.”

The villain hums a sort of laugh as well, settling on the floor opposite, and the two of them fall into silence. They’re both too tired to say much anyway.

This is another strange experience. The hero and the villain usually fight and go their separate ways. This sort of… hanging out is new. Different—and thankfully not the type of different that got them here in the first place.

The hero smiles at him, and even through the bloody face paint and the blooming bruises, the villain hates that he still looks good. Looks normal. Looks like a nice civilian that the villain would end up curiously following for a couple blocks because his half-decent face caught his attention.

The hero is, the villain supposes, a person too. Another civilian that looked at the state of the world and took up a side, just like the villain did.

“Thank you,” the hero says through the daze of annoyance, “for saving me.”

“Eh.” The villain waves a nonchalant hand. “It’s not like you were going to do it.”

That earns another choked laugh. “Ah, you’re funnier than you like to admit, [Villain].”

The villain scoffs in offence and quiet falls over them again. “Thanks as well, I guess, for…” He gestures vaguely at the other villain lying next to them. “Hitting my colleague over the head with a road sign.”

The hero’s smile grows. “You’re welcome.”

The hero reaches for his mask, just as stained red and tattered as its owner. He turns it over in his hands for a moment, slow and thoughtful, before carefully putting it back over his face. “Back to the heroics, then,” he says lightly.

The villain nods, but he’s not really listening. He finds that, now he’s seeing the person he’s familiar with, he preferred the hero without his mask after all.