#How to factory reset computer

[pcsservices4u]

How to Factory Reset Computer: Step-by-Step Guide

Backing up any crucial data can help you to do a how-to factory reset computer, therefore deleting all information. Navigate to Settings > Update & Security > Recovery on Windows and under Reset this PC, "Get Started". Restart the device and hold Command + R to enter Recovery Mode on macOS; then, wipe the disc and reinstall macOS. See our website for further details on factory reseting a computer.

[i3utterflyeffect]

wait does Alan's PC get destroyed after AVA3 in the selkie au? it would make more sense if it didn't, since how is he going to get a new PC if he's stuck in cursor form. alternatively, it is destroyed, and he gets the Void Experience™ before finding some unused office computer to inhabit/possess...

honestly i haven't thought about it that hard! i guess i was thinking he gets booted into the outernet more than anything, but i hadn't thought abt it since i decided on when exactly he was changed. so. ????????

[a-sad-mage]

Update on the Mac

My mom told me to factory reset the bloody thing

And

Holy fuck

I kid you not, this Mac is not able to reset.

I get a pop-up, and everything saying:

"Sorry, but Mac is not compatible for a reset 🖕"

Like what the actual fuck? Your one job as a piece of tech is to be used and reset whenever?

there is an update pending that might fix it? But knowing my luck with technology, it won't, and I'm probably going to have to leave the piece of crap running all day for the update to go through anyway.

Moral of the story? Never buy an Apple product, and never force someone to buy an Apple product just because it's 'better' because in all reality, it isn't.

[dendroculus]

hello regular pc users. i have a big boy computer now. is xkit still a thing how do i get it

[karliahs]

trying to write on my phone bc I'm at my mums and don't have my laptop and man. at some point my phone keyboard has started recognising my most common typos as Real Words that must be respected and so won't correct them or will even correct things to that misspelling over the actual word. Heinous

[mysoulspiralbound]

i once managed to remove the wifi button on my computer. not, like, i wasn't connected to the internet, or couldn't click the button or whatever. it literally just did not exist, even if you went into settings, the wifi option was just gone. device just would not connect to the internet. i wound up having to do a full factory reset on it when neither me nor the person who worked IT could figure out (a) what the fuck i did or (b) how the fuck to undo it

[simplyanjuta]

Enhancing Sims Thumbnails 🖼️🔍👀

So I have received some questions regarding this post and had another look at the ThumbnailConfig.ini file to see if there is anything else worth tweaking to enhance sims thumbnails.

I also decided to share my settings (though not sure if this is a good idea, I'll see how it goes). Disclaimer, that what works well for me/on my screen, might not be the best solution for you and you might be better off with the default settings. Also remember that generating higher resolution thumbnails can slow down your game. I think that visually the settings (only) make a big difference if you play on a larger screen and/or with an upscaled UI (game accessibility settings).

You can try my settings or use the info shared below (I might update it in the future) to experiment with the settings yourself. You can find examples on how to edit the file in my previous posts here and here and you can use any text editor like Notepad or Notepad++ to do so.

Download and details below the cut ⤵️

Below you can see what I changed (marked in green) and for what purpose as well as what resolution settings there are in general. I only looked at sims thumbnails and ignored everything else. I also think some settings should not be messed with, like the ones affecting pictures that are uploaded to the Gallery (exception is if you wanna extract these pictures for editing purposes) and there are a few settings that are not relevant for gameplay. Some settings I'm not sure about (feel free to share any info).

📥Download:

Sim File Share Last updated: February 27th, 2025

📒How to install:

This override does NOT go into your mods folder. Instead, you need to replace the original game file with it which you should find somewhere along a path like this:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 4\Game\Bin\res

The path might be slightly different for you and depends on where the game is installed on your computer. You can check the location in the EA app. To do so, select The Sims 4 ->  “Manage” -> “View properties” (there should be a similar option on Steam):

Locate the file ThumbnailConfig.ini as described above.

Save a copy of the original file somewhere on your computer in case you need to go back. (However, you can also run a game repair to restore the settings if needed.)

Replace the original file with the override (either with my file or with your own version).

Delete the file localthumbcache.package (see info here), so that the game can generate new thumbnails, then restart the game.

Note that you will need to repeat the steps/redo the changes whenever this file is overriden or updated or by the game.

Current game bug (not a mod/config issue):

It seems that the game currently is regenerating thumbnails each time you restart the game, even when the thumbnails already exist in the file localthumbcache, thus unneccessarily slowing down the game and bloating up this file. I tested this with no mods, with basegame only, in a fresh save, with the thumbnail config file reset to factory settings and it’s still happening. Also added my findings to this bug report. If you noticed the same issue, please hit “me too”.

[mydrink-n-my2step]

Hacking To Your Heart-Yandere Hacker x Chubby insecure reader

You stumble upon an ad for a malware app, unbeknownst to you, it's an invitation to potential stalking.

Author's Note//: AHH Mira's back again! I hope this story is okay for y'all. Let me know what I can do better. BTW: Best Buy is an electronics store where you can also get your technology items fixed by the workers (Geek Squad)

TW//: Fluff, attempted angst, mild smut, masturbation, misuse of work uniform, stalking, internet hacking, Revenge, spoiler: excrement(NOT KINKY, revenge use), y/n is afab, y/n is also pretty desperate. Okay, I hope y'all enjoy this.

DISCLAIMER: I don't condone these behaviors. Please do not act out these actions that my characters commit. PLEASE DO NOT!!!!

6.5k words

Yandere Hacker x Chubby Insecure reader

Five months. It has been five months since he saw you. In January, at his job at Best Buy, you asked for one of the Geek Squad members to help fix your computer screen, which unfortunately had the infamous blue screen of death. You wanted to cry when others before him couldn’t solve your tumultuous problem. They were incapable, teenagers who wanted to make money, so they lied on their resumes that they were experienced in tech. However, Yandere Hacker was more experienced in his field and life. 

You were so thankful once you saw your normal laptop’s wallpaper. It's the dull background you contemplated a week before the change that put a toothy grin from ear to ear. Something in the back of your mind told you to kiss him, but you shut that down immediately. 

Aloysius felt proud of himself, seeing your smile. How your chubby cheeks moved and your eyes creased. It wasn't just the fact that he solved a customer’s problem, but seeing the look on your face, that was the kicker. He loved it when customers expressed their gratification, yet this was different. He was figuratively eating up your joy. Licking the plate and all. “How much is it?” You asked, though he didn’t respond; he was too busy lapping at you. You waved at his face so he could snap out of his daze. “I-I only pressed a few buttons. D-don’t worry, ma’am, it’s on the house.” He was going to miss seeing you in his workplace. Even after his shift, on his way to McDonald’s for dinner, in the shower, and in his bed, he still remembered you. There was Something about you that brightened his day and many more days, weeks, and months to come. 

February came, and despite it being great that he didn��t see you, because you didn’t have any electronic problems, he was still melancholic about that reason. At least come around to buy some snacks or walk around the computer section. He’s aware about your computer being faulty, dammit he only pressed a few buttons and factory reset your old ass electronic. When did you get that computer anyways? In 2015???? Anyways.

February 14th came around. It was typically a day that Aloysius avoided or simply didn’t care about. Until you showed up. He was wiping down the cash register and locking up when the doors slid open. There you were, dressed in a shiny sheer black dress with a pink hibiscus starting from your lower abdomen to your knees. You had on these black Mary Jane flats that had a black bow on them. Your hair was flat-ironed and bumped at the ends, the rest was up in a bun. You were going on a date. But first, you had to drop a gift off.

“Good evening, how may I help you today? Oh, it’s you!” He says, unfortunately, cringing at his response. 

“Um, hi, I wanted to stop by and gift you something.” You opened your bag to pull out a tiny box of chocolates. You had ordered them from a Swedish chocolatier in town. It was a luxurious selection. Almond chocolate, Hazelnut, A strawberry coated in dark chocolate, toffee-covered chocolate. A chocolate orange peel and a bonbon. Luckily, Aloysius wasn’t allergic to nuts. He opened the box, despite knowing his boss would scold him. Fuck it, I’m the manager. “This is for me? Thank you so much, ma’am.” He said, popping the hazelnut one into his mouth. Though he was severely lactose intolerant, his shift was only 30 minutes left. 

“No, I wanted to thank you,” You read his nametag, “Aloysius, nice name. I wanted to thank you for what you did a few weeks ago. That was actually my work computer. I was going to return it the day before, but you saved me, so I bought you a gift. I hope you liked it. I don’t know what you like, so I got some of the popular flavors.” 

“Again, thank you so much! What’s your name, if you don’t mind? I would like to see you again, outside of this store, of course.” 

“It’s Y/n, and here’s my Instagram.” You gave him your Instagram account. He does have an account, though he doesn’t bother to use it at times. But this time, he might bother checking you out. At home, he typed your account in, seeing it pop up in the search, he pressed it. Y/n L/n, a fellow tech nerd and your zodiac sign emoji. That was it, but you had a plethora of photos. Your post count was 580. Was he going to scroll through all your posts all night, maybe, did he care that he was going to stay up all night stalking your Instagram account? Hell no. 

Later that night, he was already at post 301 when he saw that you had finally followed him. And also posted a story. Oooh, a story, maybe she’s talking about me?

In your story, you had posted a picture of an original meme that was captioned, When a series of dates went horribly wrong, so you wrote you your diary about how the world doesn’t want you to meet the one. A little dramatic, but okay. 

Poor Y/n, he thought, immediately going to your DM’s to text you. 

@alo.wtf: Hey Y/n, how are you?

@your_insta_acount: Nothing

@alo.wtf: Are you sure? Your story says otherwise.

@your_insta_acount: Ok, I went on a date, and they stood up on me

@alo.wtf: Oh, I’m sorry

Don’t worry about that person! They don’t deserve you!

@your_insta_acount: tysm Aloysius, but I just can’t help but think I’m the problem. 

Maybe it’s because I’m not pretty enough. 

@alo.wtf: What? You’re so beautiful, Y/n! It’s pretty clear the guys that try to knock you down are pricks! 

You’re gorgeous.

Maybe I went a little overboard with that text. He thought, unsending the text message right away. Unbeknownst to him, she already saw it. 

@your_insta_acount: U rlly think that? 

@alo.wtf: ofc

—-—-

Fast forward to now, you are searching online for a way to watch your favorite show without the costly fees. You weren’t in the mood to pay for any streaming services. To you, they were your enemy, sucking away your paycheck just to give you the bare minimum, like a deadbeat boyfriend. You clicked on a website that had plenty of pop-up ads that you couldn’t remove, or else they would lead you to another website. Some of them fake porn webcams. This scenario bothered the hell out of you, so you decided to watch your favorite YouTuber. Of course, you waited for the ads to end. All five million of them. But one had caught your eye. It was a computer malware protection ad that was a minute long. It showed an older woman who was talking about her computer being plagued with viruses. So her son recommended an app that she could use. The advertisement previewed the app before telling you to download it. 

Something in you didn’t want to download the app, but you felt the need to. So you went to grab your phone, and went to the App Store to search for the app. When you found the app, it had few to no reviews and zero downloads. It must’ve been a new app. But the description was pretty convincing. So you downloaded it. At first, it asks for your name, then your email address, and your pronouns. Weird, but you allowed it. It did ask for your Social Security number, but you decided not to put that in. At first, it was a requirement to put your SSN in, but the screen had glitched when you weren’t looking, changing it to “Optional”. So you skipped that part and were finally in the app. You were in. In the system. 

On day one of using the app, you noticed that the camera light was blinking red. It was night, you were busy…doing something important. Long story short, you were touching yourself. The lights were dim, and you had just turned your Hitachi wand on to the highest level. It was a night of disappointment and pleasure. Another failed date led you to this. Your fingers caress your nipples, you grind against the wand’s head. Muffled breaths leaving your mouth as you grind on your bed. The video you were watching was of another person pleasuring themselves while their partner watches from the side. The freak you were. 

Nights like these, you wished it was another person stimulating your poor pussy. Maybe that cute guy at your nearest Best Buy, what was his name again?

“Ah…ahh, ugh, Aloy…Aloyy~” You moaned as you came undone in your panties. Grinding against the Hitachi one last time to ride out your high. Dropping your phone on your bed, your hand lies gracefully against your hot pillow. Unbeknownst to you, another person was watching you the whole time.

 Aloysius was his name, and stalking was his game. 

Meanwhile, Aloysius was sitting by his gaming setup, in the dark, watching your face as it contorted to an orgasmic face. Your mouth was moaning his name unintentionally, from thinking about him. Aloysius and his blue uniform shirt, his charismatic demeanor, and his shiny, dark, wavy hair that went past his shoulders. 

He wondered what else you could be thinking of. Accidentally gave himself an erection. He rubbed himself through his pants, your constant breathing arousing him more. His work pants were about to be stained with his precum. He remembered when you showed up in that tight dress. The tropical dress that insinuated your curves and showed your pudge. The way your breast filled up the top. Your hair and the way you smell. That cutesy brown sugar smell you had that nearly had him hard at his job. Your voice and that box of chocolate. You must want him and he knows it good and damn well!

Aloysius’ fingers unbuttoned his pants hurriedly. He was too impatient to unzip his pants, so he shoved his hands into his pants. Gradually jerking himself off. Rubbing his head while he was leaking precum still. His index finger pad was going slowly, so he could enjoy the pleasure. Since you put your phone away, he closed his eyes, picturing you in that dress again. You and your pretty smile and cheeks. He imagined provocative things about you, too. You are doing unbelievable things to his imagination.

Soon, he would ejaculate in his pants. Grunting while saying your name out loud. Sure, his neighbors would’ve said something, IF he had neighbors. He lived pretty far from his job. His house is tucked away from society, in 15 acres of woods. It was not much to be considered living in a rural area, but he enjoyed believing that. 

Once he was done, he opened his eyes, looking down at his mess, then flicked his eyes at your screen. You were deleting the video from your phone. Your eyes are squinting at your screen. He chuckled at you, grabbing a tissue to wipe away his ivory mess off his pants. He was going to enjoy this so-called malware app of his.

__________________

It was the month of May. You were taking a hiatus from dating apps for a short period to focus on yourself and work. And so far, it has been a bummer. 

You were gaining weight from stress eating. The girls in your recent work meeting were making backhanded compliments on your project. No one in the Zoom meeting was confident or cared enough to say something. You felt zeroed out. Being one of the only plus-size members of your team of game designers. The staff often behaved like piranhas with their crude comments. 

Some days, you would binge on fast food; other days, you would starve yourself. It was unfortunate for you and Aloysius. He knew something was up when he caught on with you skipping some meals and only going out to walk for hours. It felt like torture to him, seeing his baby harm herself to please others. If she were with him, he would protect her from those types of people. Sure, he was not the brawny type, but with his technological arts, he was capable of hacking into people’s technology. Playing mind games and even taking their information and selling it online. 

Aloysius took this opportunity to DM you on Instagram. He waited for several minutes for you to open your phone and see his message. 

@alo.wtf: Hey Y/n  :{

….

You never opened your phone. You were busy crying in your bed. And he was able to hear. Oh, if only he were there to console you in his arms. Go through your recent work messages and harass the people who were picking on you. Wait, that’s exactly what he will do! Opening your Messenger app, he went through your chat log. Pressing on a person’s name. He figured out through previous messages was the person who was harassing you the most. This girl is named Amanda. Saying backhanded stuff about you and your project. Prepare for what tomorrow brings her. 

@your_insta_acount: Hey Aloy

_______

You showed up at work, seeing people crowding someone’s cubicle. Amanda’s. When you walked by, you stopped, seeing her items covered in shit. Yes, human waste. You wanted to laugh, but if you did, your coworkers would suspect you of being the culprit. So you walked by your only friend, Jeffrey. 

“What the hell happened?” You whispered. 

“We don’t know, but Amanda saw this and screamed. She went to the boss’s office to report it.” He responds. 

Would it be wrong to assume that Aloysius had defecated on the girl’s desk? Yes, but it’s a possibility. Maybe he did it, maybe he had asked another person to do it for $400. Who knows. 

Work was canceled that day so that the janitors could clean her desk, and Amanda was forced to resign. No one could track down the perpetrator, so they assumed that since she hated the job and the majority of her colleagues, she did this herself. She couldn’t defend herself, so she took her leave and packed the next day.

As you were starting your car, you noticed that your phone charger was chewed on. What the hell? Today was crazy as hell, and it’s only 9 AM. But this allowed you to visit Aloysius at Best Buy. While you drove there, you checked to see the time Best Buy opened. You were going to wait an hour for the store to open. 

As you parked in the parking lot, you noticed someone with a low black ponytail walk up to the store. Aloysius had a keychain of keys in his hands, whistling a tune while he was entering the store. You exit the car, running up to him.

“Aloysius!” You called, reaching him as he turned around. Once he noticed you, his eyes brightened. Almost as if they twinkled. He went in to hug you. The hinted of Dove bodywash permeated your nostrils. It smelled similar to your favorite body wash. Pomegranate. It was the same as your body wash at home. 

“Y/n, how are you doing today? You look wonderful.”

“Oh it was a lot of shit. Can I come in? I need to buy something.” 

“Normally, I don’t allow customers in while the store is still closed, but y’know what, fuck it.” 

______________

Aloysius starts his cash register while you search for a phone charger. You end up finding one, heading to the front to pay for it. He couldn’t stop himself from cheesing. Grinning from ear to ear as you looked so good in your work clothes. Your job doesn’t require you to wear a uniform, however, you like to go above and beyond to look your best at your job, mainly so people won’t pick at you. Aloysius couldn’t stop staring at your chest, how your bosom jiggled while you moved, while you breathed. Again, he was taking you in; your scent, clothes, and face and eyes. When they travel from your wallet to him. He grips the counter, stifling himself from doing something he might regret.

“O-ok…the total will be $11.99.” He says as sweat trickles from his forehead. Suddenly, the store grew hot. You pay for the charger, stowing your credit card into your wallet. “Hey, are you doing ok, Aloy? You’re sweating a lot.” 

“I-um, excuse me for a moment.” Aloysius leaves for the employee lounge. He felt his skin turn hot from you. You waited for him to return so you could talk to him some more. You waited seven minutes. He had assumed that you would’ve left around minute five, but you stayed. It shocked him when he turned and saw your face. 

You were on your phone, which was glitching and still flashing a red light on the camera light. “Hey Aloysius, what does it mean if my phone is flashing a red light? This is a constant thing that won’t stop at all, even if I turn my phone off.”

“Let me see?” He asked, knowing that he might get caught in this situation if he “figures out” what is wrong. You waited for his diagnosis with concern in your visage. Only to be conflicted when he told you nothing was wrong.

“Excuse me?” 

“Yeah, I believe that it’s just your phone acting up. How long have you had it?” 

“For over a year now.”

“Yeah, that could be why,” he lied, “and it’s getting hot.” He said, placing the phone on the counter and shoving it back to you. He would never be able to have you for his if he admitted to tampering with your electronic device. Lying was wrong, and Aloysius was against lying to his loved ones, but he didn't want to lose you. 

“I suppose I should buy a new one.” You said, shoving it into your bag. “Well,” he started, “just because it glitches and the camera flashes doesn't mean you need a new one. I can fix it for you, i,f of course, you allow me to take you on a date?”

“A date? I guess that's the deal, here you go. Also, do you know where the restrooms are?” 

“In the back, where the office furniture is. You should see the alcove that has a sign that says ‘restroom’.” 

You leave with Aloysius left putting your password into your phone. The password he knew by a guess from your date of birth on X. Forgetting that you didn't tell him, you turned around, asking for your phone so you could put your PIN in. Aloysius convinced you that he could put it in himself, telling you to trust him that he’d forget it in a minute. He won’t.

While you're gone, Aloysius went exploring. He went through your photos and social media accounts. Analyzing your behavior on the phone. He was having a field day taking a ‘look’ through your phone. And he may have deleted the Hinge app from your phone. Whoopsie!

When you came back, you expected your phone to be fixed by your tech wizard of a friend, but unfortunately, it was the exact opposite. Aloysius wanted to feel bad, but he knew he wouldn't be able to see you anymore if he removed the tracking app from your phone.

Since you were off today, you offered to see him during lunch for a quick meal. He suggested that he could take a day off to hang out with you. You disagreed, telling him he should stay at work and not worry about you; however, he was firm with you, telling you that he had never taken a day off before, which was true. He was loyal to his side hustle, Best Buy. 

He decided to take you to his grandparents’ cafe, Agape. It was a little bungalow situated near your workplace, on the outskirts of your town. He wanted to introduce you to his maternal grandparents before he introduced you to the other family members who also work there. 

Entering the older cafe, you were greeted by a sweet, sticky smell, Baklava. His grandma and sister were whipping some up in her kitchen to sell this morning.

“Yia-yia, Papous? I’m here!” 

His grandpa, who was playing a game with his older cousins, poked his head between the dining room’s threshold. A wrinkly smile was etched on the elder’s face. He stood up from his chair, walking slowly to greet you.

“Hello there, you must be my grandson’s girlfriend? How are you doing?” 

“I’m doing great sir, I’m merely a friend.” You said, shaking his hand. 

“Ah, I see,” suddenly, he called for his missis. She was busy stowing her dessert into the stove when he called. She hurriedly ran out to see what the problem was. 

Agape, the grandfather, took his wife’s hand into his when she showed up. She was a tad bit younger than he was, her silver and black hair in a wavy style and bun. She wore her apron, which had little ducks on the bottom hem. 

“Hello there,” she greeted in her native tongue, “it’s a pleasure to meet you finally.”

“Finally, meet me? What do you mean, ma’am?” You ask, taking her hand into yours to greet her formally anyway. You glanced at Aloysius, who smiled at you while his arm snaked around your waist. “I’ve been told about a pretty lady who had gifted my grandson a box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day. He was so grateful!” She replied. Your face got warm from her response, and so did Aloysius’. He then cleared his throat, insinuating that he was going to take you to a table.

“Find a table, I’ll be right with you shortly.” She says as she leaves to gather some menus.

It had never occurred to you what type of man Aloysius was. But today showed you: While eating, you accidentally had some syrup on the corner of your lips. Aloysius, who was watching you, took his napkin, dampened it with his spit, and wiped your mouth clean. You noticed the crescents on his fingers. He must be working hard. Maybe one day you will give him a chance. A chance to show you the boyfriend he would be. Or maybe it’s all in your head, and he doesn’t feel that way; he’s only nice to me because I’m nice to him. You thought as the warm smile on your face was decimated as you took time to realize that fact. 

Aloysius noticed, asking what was wrong. You told him nothing, remnants of the smile appearing only for a brief moment. He wasn’t going to accept your response, cupping your cheek and scooting closer to you. “If there is something wrong, you can tell me, Y/n.” 

You sigh, “I just can’t shake this feeling that you’re only nice to me because I’m alone.”

“That’s not true at all. I’m nice because I’m a nice person, but I’m behaving this way because…well, because I like you.” He exclaims.

“You do? Oh great, now I feel like a fool for what I said.” 

“No, don’t feel that way. You’re perfectly fine.” You smiled at him, your cheeks flushed.

“Do you like me?” He asks, grinning at you, hoping his assumption would be true.

“I—I don’t know,” you said, your voice barely above a whisper. “I just need a little more time to figure out what I'm really feeling—would that be okay?”

Aloysius paused, frozen in place as though your words had physically struck him. His fingers, which had been resting so delicately on your cheek, slowly retracted close to your purse. You felt the absence of his touch like a sudden drop in temperature. His eyes didn’t leave yours, but you noticed the subtle twitch in his right eye, a small betrayal of something turbulent beneath the surface.

He took a step back, the corner of his mouth twitching as if he were trying to smile and failing miserably. “Ah,” he said, voice tight, strained. “Right. Of course, uh, would you like another milfei? I’ll order it for you.”

—

Your trip to Aloysius’ family-owned cafe was, in your belief, felt like the first time you ever experienced joy from a man. Without sex. It gave you this idea that you did deserve something remotely similar to love. From someone like Aloysius, or supposed, Aloysius himself. However, he did sound extremely hurt from your rejection. Even though he is currently holding your hand while taking you inside the grocery store, he still has that disappointed rejection facial expression. You didn’t realize what was the main purpose of coming to the grocery store.

“Hey Aloysius, what are we doing here?” 

“I wanted to make some dinner for you. It’s the least I can do.” You were confused by his answer, asking him where he would be cooking. “Oh, I should ask, can I make you dinner at your home?” 

“Um, sure, this should be nice, thanks.”

As the two of you entered the store, Aloysius just stood there. Staring into the entrance. With his hands in his pockets, he hesitated to enter the actual store. You took notice of his behavior immediately, placing your hand on his broad shoulders. “Aloysius, is everything okay?”

Aloysius jumped as your hands rubbed on his shoulders with care. Damn he felt extremely disappointed for not being your boyfriend right now. Though he doesn’t mind holding your hands, he drew the line at more physical touch without your permission. “Y-yeah, I’m fine Y/n. Hey, on second thought, I have to use the restroom. Why don’t you pick out what I can cook for you, then I’ll pay myself, okay?” You furrowed your eyebrows, but didn’t question him.“I suppose I’ll see you later.” You said, taking a shopping cart and leaving for the grocery aisle. Aloysius stayed behind, pulling a key out of his pocket.

On the noodle aisle, you found a packet of fusilli noodles. An idea popped up in your head. Why don’t you eat spicy fusilli pasta? Aloysius might enjoy it too. Searching for a pasta recipe, you found a simple and cheap one. All you needed was the pasta, onions, garlic, crushed tomatoes, heavy whipping cream, and parmesan cheese. 

 On the way to the cheese aisle, you noticed that Aloysius had beaten you to it. He had Parmesan in his hands, shooting it into the shopping cart when he turned around.

“How did you know that I needed Parmesan?” You asked, low-key concerned. 

He hesitated to answer you until he came up with a thought, “Everyone loves Parmesan. It’s a nice little snack when I’m cooking for you.”

“Shredded cheese? If I were paranoid, I’d assume you were reading my mind.” Aloysius only laughed, walking next to you to move your hair away from your face. “Don’t install fear into yourself,” was all he said before taking the shopping cart from you and pushing it to the front of the store.

—————————

In your apartment complex, you managed to bring seven bags of groceries all at once to the third floor. Aloysius, on the other hand, was tired by the time he had reached the first floor. 

“Damn ha, how are you not winded?” He asks, catching his breath, while crouching by the rails. His ebony hair was sticking to his forehead and neck, his skin was pink from the humid air (Curse the summer!), his thigh and calf muscles bulged, and he looked too good for someone out of breath. 

A smile stretched your lips, he looked too attractive. What was wrong with you now? You thought of him as merely a friend before, but now you could sense your Progesterone levels surge, causing you to feel aroused. “Y-you, wanna get inside and drink some water, honey?” Honey, why would I say that? 

Aloysius looked up slowly, as if the sound of his pet name on your lips had reached into something deep inside him and stilled like wax. His breathing, which had been ragged and uneven just moments ago, began to quiet, like a storm pulling back from the shore. There was a flicker in his eyes, part vulnerability, part reverence, as though that simple word had the power to ground him, to tether him back to reality. For a moment, he just stared at you, chest rising and falling in a rhythm that finally matched your own; your little pet name had become his anchor. 

“Honey?” He questioned, genuinely surprised, “That’s a cute pet name.” Your stomach was tied in knots, you felt embarrassed immediately. The little tint of red was prominent as a permanent marker’s ink. Your apartment was only five feet away, but you were too stiff to move. Aloysius stood up, his bags of groceries still in his now red hands. He placed his right-hand bags onto his left hand, patting your back and leading you to your home. He waited for you to find your key and open the door, however, it was not in your bag. 

“What the hell?” you muttered, still searching for your key. You were on the verge of spiraling until Aloysius remembered that he had your key. “I’m sorry, Y/n, I forgot to mention, it fell out of your bag when we were at the store.” He says, taking it out of his denim pockets. You were going to take it from him, however, he had already shoved it into your lock. Swiftly, he unlocked your door, pushing it open to see the inside of your home. He was never able to see the whole house through your phone, so he was amused by how homely it was. 

“Oh God, thank you so much, Aloysius. I swear you’re a lifesaver!” 

“Thank you, and I must say, your home is very beautiful.” He allowed himself to enter the one-bedroom apartment. Aloysius took in your apartment’s aroma, almost passing out from how similar it smelled to you. The musky smell that lingered with your strawberry-scented candles you had blown out several hours ago made him remember that you were human, his human. If only he could bask in the smell for the rest of his days.

You giggled at him, though you felt weirded out by his behavior. If he behaves like this when girls invite him over to their homes, you’re in for a confusing night. 

_________________________________

Aloysius watches you in your kitchen as you wait for him to finish cooking the meal. Cooking was never his forte, but he could change for you. If it means you would finally admit your feelings for him. He is aware that you are conflicted with what you want from him, yet his impatience is killing him. He does so much for you already. What will it take for you to wake up and see that he was the man for you? 

While he was wrapping up, tasting the sauce to see if it was missing something or not, he went ahead and surveyed your apartment. Though it was a tad bit messy, something he wasn’t fond of with former girlfriends, he decided that it was okay to have a slightly messy home. One, because he values how you have your style that he will adapt to when he moves in with you today, and two, he wouldn’t mind being your cleaner anyway, as long as he has access to your materials.

“Dinner is ready!” He called, seeing you flicker your eyes to his. You stood up and sat at your dining table. “I can’t wait to try your cooking, Aloysius.” Yeah, me too, baby. He thought, scooping some of the spicy pasta onto your plate. Picking up both of the bowls and taking them to you. You had clasped your hands together, rubbing them together in excitement. Setting the plates next to each other, you noticed that he chose to sit next to you. Which made you smile at him a bit, placing your hand on his and squeezing it.

“Dig in.” The first bite you took reminded you of eating your grandmother’s meals. You didn’t understand how, but Aloysius embodied your grandmother’s cooking into his. It had you tearing up, setting your fork down. “What’s wrong, Y/n?” you look at him, despite your vision becoming blurry from your tears. “I’m sorry if I’m being dramatic, but your cooking is so great. It reminds me of my grandma’s. I learned how to cook from her, and this takes me back to when I would be in the kitchen with her.” Your words had tugged at his heartstrings. God, he wished he could topple you on this table right now.

“Y/n, be frank with me, please?” He asks, scooting his chair closer to you. “How do you really feel about me? I know this is too early to ask, I’m just dying to know!” His tone came off as a little bit whiny, but he didn’t care to acknowledge it. 

“Aloysius, what’s gotten into you?” 

“I just need to know, do you like me, or not?” He spoke in a calmer tone. 

“Maybe I do like you; I’ve been leading you on, and that’s not fair, you don’t deserve someone who toys with your emotions.” 

“Don’t worry about my emotions, I’m just glad that you feel the same way. But it’s not fair that you admit your truths while I don’t.” Suddenly, Aloysius stood from his chair and left. You assumed he would leave your home until you heard your front door lock, followed by a key falling on the floor. And a hissed fuck. 

“Aloysius, what’s going on?” you called, genuinely concerned right now. Aloysius returns, holding onto a pink key. You looked at the painted metal, then back at him. Also contemplating if it was too late to run. 

“This key…” he murmured, holding it between two fingers like something sacred. “I had it made while you were shopping.”

Your breath hitched.

“I was going to wait—wait until you invited me into your life. Into your space. But since we’re being honest now…” His voice lowered, a reverent kind of hunger curling around every word. “I can’t pretend anymore.”

He took a slow step forward, his smile faint but trembling with something unhinged.

“I love you, Y/n. I’ve loved you since the moment you stepped into my world, all soft eyes and hesitant hands. You think I didn’t notice the way you looked at me? You brought me chocolates. That meant something.”

Your stomach twisted. That wasn’t how it happened.

“I know temptation when I see it,” he whispered. “And you—” his gaze dragged across your body like a caress, “you’re the sweetest kind.”

A chill spilled down your spine. Every instinct screamed Run. But your back was to the wall. He had cornered you perfectly—just like everything else

“Aloysius, what is up with you?” 

“What is up with me? What the hell’s up with you? You’re not getting the memo! I’ve done so much for you, and you haven’t said, “Thank you, Aloysius” to me at all! Especially when I fucked that girl’s cubile with pig shit.” 

“Wait a damn minute–you did that?” Aloysius nodded, seemingly proud of himself for his disgusting action.

“What the fuck?” you mouthed, covering your mouth as you were belching. 

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, baby. I had to do it, like how I had to create that app for you to think it was a malware detector, when in reality, it’s a fucking tracker.”

“So it’s all you! That’s why you wouldn’t fix my phone, because of the tracker? What the motherfucking hell you stalking piece of shit?” Eventually, Aloysius set his key on the table to cup your cheeks. He leaned in to rest his forehead on yours, sighing from finally touching you. “I didn’t hack you to be creepy or anything—I just needed to understand you. The real you, not the version you show everyone else. Your texts, your camera feed, your search history… they helped me see you. I know what makes you smile, what keeps you up at night. It’s not stalking—it’s love. I just…needed to know.”

For a moment, the whole apartment grew quiet. Aloysius took this opportunity to press his lips against your plump ones. Not holding back or leaving his place. When he was done, he got up and pulled at your arm, “Come on, let me show you something?” As he leads you to your couch, you take your phone with you. 

“Give me your phone.” Doing as he said, you passed him your cellular object, he typed in your PIN, sliding his fingers across the screen to press on the malware app. You couldn’t believe it. You have a stalker, and he knows every single thing about you. You felt violated, yet…secure? Despite him knowing what you do on a day-to-day basis, you couldn’t help but feel as though you’re warming up to the idea of having a guardian angel. A wicked yet safekeeping idea that was your reality. And when he showed you the tracking app, he made you feel less scared. 

“This is crazy,” you murmured, “It’s wrong, I know, but I just want to protect you, I love you, baby.” He sat on your couch, pulling you into his lap, wrapping his arms around you. “This is only the tip of the iceberg of what I would do for your love. Just let me love you.” He says, pulling you closer to kiss you some more. His flesh pink lips were damp from saliva. Aloysius waited for so long to finally have you. To feel you, to touch you. And you’re allowing him to do so. And maybe that was the scariest part—you were letting him. Not because you believed this was love, but because pushing him away felt heavier than giving in for a little while longer.

So, you stayed.

Not because it was what you dreamed of, and definitely not because it was right. You knew exactly what this was. Aloysius didn’t love you in a way that respected space or boundaries. He loved you like he was trying to rewrite your code—like affection was something to be extracted, not earned.

But you were tired. Tired of pretending everything outside his reach was safe or kind or waiting for you. He was the one who paid attention, even if it was through a screen he never asked permission to look through. And while that should’ve terrified you—and sometimes still did—there was also a strange kind of clarity in it. No guessing, no masks. Just his version of the truth, invasive and unwavering.

You didn’t return his feelings. You probably never would. But in a world where you'd been ignored, overlooked, forgotten… being seen, even too much, felt like something. Not comfort. Not love.

Just something.

And for now, that was what you had.

[mommy-mortis]

Irish Vampire Blues - 12

Cause nothing even matters, at all

-Nothing Even Matters by Lauryn Hill

You and Remmick had laid on the floor and talked for hours feeling each other out; it had occurred to you that you both might have had a warped view of one another.

Remmick had definitely had a warped view of the Shadows; he had saw them as an omniscient being that had taunted him, but in reality it had was a collective of shadow spirits that had banded together, latching onto the strongest being it could find just at the right moment, just so it could watch BET Uncut.

The Shadows’ supposed ‘taunts’ that you were leaving him, had in reality been a heads up that you were leaving, but would return later.

His beef had been a one sided paranoia fest, which had driven the shadows to hang out with the Hobbs.

It thought its absence would calm his nerves, but when he had found out about game night between it and the Hobbs, he lost it; worst of all you had decided to join them.

Paired with the constant need to micro manage his flock to the best of his abilities, and the Shadows influence over you, (its friendly demeanor?) paranoia had over taken him.

You think back to when you were dating Michael. He would give up at the first signs of resistance, pushing his problems on to you; and you always fixed them.

It had been what you thought a good partner would do, and at first it felt good to be needed in such a way.

The novelty wore off pretty quickly; you were no longer a partner he could go to but instead a machine that printed out the solutions to all his problems. In the end he still couldn’t even be damned to change your ink storage, the least he could have done was try to maintain your relationship; but instead he let himself get caught fucking the copying machine.

With Remmick it hadn’t felt the same. Yes he was highly incompetent when it came to managing his flock without the uses of collective intelligence.

He tried the best he could, but ultimately he began to fail, but not once did he fold.

He wasn’t going to give up on his flock, and he wasn’t going to push that responsibility on to someone else, and for that you admired him.

Together you had washed the day off of your bodies, you watched the tension leave his face and muscles, relaxing as the blood washed off his body, circling into the drain.

As you washed your own body you had wondered what kind of life had he lived before becoming what he was, where in Erin’s Isle had he lived and what had been the profession that had given him that body. You hadn’t meant to stare, but you had to admit, he was attractive.

He had caught you staring as your eyes drifted south, you had expected him to give you a cocky grin or even initiate sex, but instead he became timid and looked away. This confused you; after becoming untethered from the collective he had slowly become more reserved, as if he had been hit with a factory reset, this piqued your interest.

You dried yourselves off, you had put on your hair bonnet and you both had put on the matching robes you had bought.

You laid on the couch and he followed your lead as you started work, he was quiet as you tapped away at your laptop. His eyes were closed and he seemed to be resting when he heard you log out of your computer and began putting it away, he looked at the clock, it was much too soon for you to be finished.

“Is everything alright?” his face full of concern, he hoped he hadn’t been bothering you while waiting for you to finish, he knew how much your career meant to you.

“I quit my job, effective immediately, no two week notice.” You said nonchalantly, you even had a slight smile as you said it.

“Has something happened?” he pulls you over deeply inhaling your scent “You’re not sick,” he said as a statement and not a question.

You just smile at him “You know something Remmick, before I met you my career was everything to me.” he slowly furrows his brows, tilting his head and squinting his eyes mocking you for stating the obvious.

You ignore his sassy behavior, opting to just continue what you were saying ”In a way you saved me” He looks up at you, that wasn’t what he was expecting you to say, he places the back of his hand on your forehead to check your temperature.

You playfully swipe his hand away, “I’m serious, you were right when you said there was a deep sadness in me, a loneliness that I drowned by keeping busy” you pause not even knowing where all this was coming from, “After getting to spend time with and then ultimately having to say goodbye to my grandmother, I had an epiphany; I didn’t like who I was as a person.” You look him in the eyes “I want something different from life.”

You sit on his lap taking the initiative and kiss him first, moaning into your mouth he wraps his arms around you to bring you close.

“I want to help manage the community.”

He nods focused on feeling your body “Of course Sweetheart”

You lay little kisses on the side of his lips; you can feel his length began to grow underneath his robe as you rub your pussy against him.

He leaves kisses on your neck then on to your titties, he reaches to loosen the knot on your robe for better access.

Placing your hand over his you pull away to look him in the eye “When’s the last time you got your dick sucked?”

He pauses “Uh, I…” he looks like he’s solving multiple equations at once.

“Have you never had a blow job before?” your eyebrows crinkle waiting for him to answer.

“Of course I have.” he looks insulted by your insinuation that he hasn’t “...it’s just been a while…”

“What do you consider a while?”

He gets a far off look before answering “It had been spring… I think”

You raise an eyebrow in question “Spring of what year?”

“Actually it was the end of summer before my embrace, I remember now cus that was around the time I got marri-”

Your eyes go wide “Remmick you haven’t gotten a blow job since you were human?” he nods watching you become more animated, “And how long have you been...” you had never asked but now you were curious to know.

“Oh, I stopped, uh counting after the first thousand years” smiling at you, determination coursed through your blood as you laid kisses on his body.

“Oh sugar what are you doing?” He said, enjoying the attention you were blessing him with.

“I’m rectifying that right now, It’s a damn shame for your only dick sucking to come from some random you met before you got married.”

His next word came out slow, as if he didn’t particularly know how to word it, “Actually…” Touching your temple with your fingers, you try to process what he’s about to tell you. “Don’t tell the only blowjob you received was from your wife, over a thousand years ago.” He nods.

Placing your hands on his chest, you motion for him to lean back as you slowly roll off his lap and on to the rug placed at the base of the couch.

He slowly opens his legs giving you room to sit between them.

The thigh length robes hide almost nothing, his dick is hard as a brick before you even touch him.

He gives you one of his filthiest fucking moans, as you grab his dick bringing it to your lips to give the tip a lick.

“Oh fuck, Mo Ghrá.” tilting his head back he tightly closes his eyes. You remove your lips from his dick.

“Remmick look at me.” He focuses his eyes back on you and you put your lips back around him while pumping his dick in your mouth, your lips start to move further down until you notice his eyes are closed again.

Confusion paints his face as you pop your lips off his dick, gripping him tightly while you stroking him up and down, “If you take your eyes off of me one more time, I’ll stop completely.”

You can hear the muffled whine of your name while he bites his knuckles ”Oh, Heavenly father.” It sounds like a curse falling from his lips. He drops his hand locking his eyes with yours, “You evil woman” he says while gripping the side of the couch to brace himself.

Remmick watches as you toss off your silky pink bonnet, giving him access to your hair (don’t try this at home) he can’t help himself as he grips the back of your neck, his fingers brushing against the baby hairs on your nape.

His hips lift off the couch as you slurp on him while using both hands. You began rubbing his dick in a circular motion, from the tip to the base and back, sucking and licking the tip.

He tries to speak but it comes out incoherently at first, so he tries again “Fuck! baby girl, I don’t know the etiquette of all this” he let’s out a moan, ”I’m close” he gently gives you a nudge of warning.

Instead of pulling away from you to let him finish, you pick up the pace and in one fluid motion make contact with the base of his dick and back up to his tip, giving it a nice long slurp.

“Fuck, baby” his eyes never leave yours as he coats the back of your throat “Fuck, you are truly the goddamned devil.” You smirk, your lips still wrapped around him; it’s funny how the roles reverse.

Panting hard he looks delirious as you continue sucking getting every drop outta him. “Oh Fuck” he shivers as the last drops of come leave his nut sac “Marry me Darlin’.” You look at him, giving him one last lick from the base then giving the tip a kiss.

You get off your knees, they’re a little sore but the results were worth it. “I’ll forget you said that” gesturing your hands to say no hard feelings.

There’s a fire in his eyes, “I meant it.” You were trying to keep things cool and give him an out.

“Look Remmick many men have proposed while in the throws of passion, that was probably how you got married the first time.” He looks alarmed as you cross your arms sounding more accusatory than you meant to.

“No,” he says as you look down at him “It was an arranged marriage, millers daughter and a farmers son,” his eyes lower to the ground “It hadn’t fully been our choice... I don’t even remember her name.”

Now you felt bad. Remmick never gave you a reason to be weary of him, at least when it came to matters of the heart.

You walk away from him not saying a word. You had put it away as soon as you could; not wanting to lose one of the last things you had of your grandmother. Grabbing the box, you put it in the pocket of your robe.

You come back to find him with his head in his hands, he wasn’t crying but he was going through it, he lifts his head to see you walking towards him,

He stands up trying to apologize “I won’t ask for more than you’re willing to give, just please, please don’t lea-” You place a finger on his lips, and move your hand to caress the side of his face, you watch as he leans into your touch.

“I promised I wouldn’t run away, remember?” You pull out the box in your pocket “I have something to show you”.

Placing the box in his hands, you watch as he opens it. “Before I came back my grandmother had left me everything, but I only wanted a few items including these rings.”

He holds them in his hands with the same softness he holds you. “The next time I get engaged I want my fiance to use them.” He looks at you, hunger in his eyes.

“So ask me again.” Quickly getting on one knee, he looks up at you as if nothing else matters at all.

“My love, Will you marry me?” You nod as he slides the ring on your finger.

“Yes, yes, yes” you can’t hold back the laugh that erupts from your chest as he begins to lay kisses all over your body.

You’re both brought out of your hallmark moment by a knock at the door. Remmick grows tense; you assume he was irritated from being interrupted, you give his shoulder a pat.

“Give me a second to answer that.” Glancing at the entrance you smile ‘That must be the Hobbs; y’all still have to get the apartments ready for tonight.’

You skip to the door excited to tell them the good news. You don’t think to look out the peep hole.

Your blood runs cold as you stare back at a blond haired blue eyed demon. Hands behind his back and badge on his hip, he smiles at you while showing off his canines “Wow I would have Visited earlier if I knew I’d get such a warm reception”.

Taglist

@avidreader73

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

[aspectpriority]

i kinda wish i still had that portfolio tbh. like, would it make my skin crawl with embarrassment? probably! but like...damn. i really did all that.

yknow, sometimes i get really annoyed that i didn't do a "real" computing course in college or uni - i did a design course that was trying to call itself computing. most of what I know of programming and computers, I learned before leaving high school, or after graduating. If i was feeling particularly bitter, I'd say I went to college, and then university, to learn how to use adobe software.

but, I just took the only computing Themed course i could get into out of high school without a basic, high school level maths qualification. I got into my college course primarily on a portfolio and a strong reference from my computing teacher, and then I got into uni as a direct entrant from that college course. The fact I have a degree at ALL with the qualifications I left high school with is borderline criminal to be honest.

I can learn anything "Actually Computing" related I want to in my own time, and at my own pace, and I don't have to be pissy about what teenage me was doing to scrape by to do it.

[its-whimsii-248]

Hi everyone, I have a bit of an announcement to make. Nobody is in trouble, and yes I’m safe and okay. I just wanted to let everyone know that there may be a slight break or pause on art or emojis for a bit, as I have lost all of my digital art, wips, brushes, bases, YCHs, everything including Procreate. I hope to slowly come back over time.

It started with my iPad misbehaving and not allowing me to enter my password. I thought maybe I had simply forgotten my password of 6 years, and kept trying variations. I kept at this over the course of a few days, praying one of them would work. I was certain someone had tampered with my iPad, whether it was a hacker or family member I’m not sure. Today, I finally reached the dreaded “iPad unavailable” screen, meaning my absolute only option was to factory reset it and download a previous backup. So, of course I Googled and Youtubed everything I could, downloading software on my computer to try and fix everything. But my only option was to wipe it.

Once the deed had been done, I logged in and went to download a backup. Though I was presented with an issue; I had no backups (unless you count my mom’s current phone, as my iPad was still tied to her account). There was nothing from that point I could do to get everything back.

The only truly important things on there were my art things, since any photos had been saved or backed up elsewhere by now. I lost all of my Procreate data, including 6 years of art progress, references I had been working on for art fight next month, all of the emojis I have made and continue to use as bases, self portraits, drawings of pets that have since passed, fanart and gifts for friends, brushes I have made personally or downloaded myself, and a very detailed and extensive animatic I had been working on for about a year. All those frames, layers, and pixels are now lost.

It feels really bad, but also freeing. I have a fresh canvas to start from, and empty library to build up, and that’s exciting to me. I am finally off of my mother’s account and I have my own freedom for that device (yes I know it sounds silly), so hopefully I will try new things and feel a little more relaxed with my art.

All of this being said, art and emojis will likely be slow for a bit, if not completely halted for a few days or more. I’m not sure how long, I really want to keep creating but it’s probably gonna be difficult to face an empty Procreate (after paying the $13 fee again… yuck). I’m really sorry, but this is actually pretty difficult for me. But good at the same time.

In summary, my iPad went kaput and erased all of my data, including Procreate and my digital art. Nothing is recoverable. So I will be on a little art break until I can build everything back up again somehow.

Take care everyone, and thank you for reading.

[twist-is-not-sane-lol]

Sprunki AU: After the Slaughter.

TW: Mentions of attempted suicide, self-harm, blood, insanity, implied schizophrenia, death, self-harm, grieving, etc.

After the Slaughter (ATS) is an Alternate universe of Incredibox: Sprunki that takes place after the events of Horror Mode. All characters who were listed as alive or abnormal return in this AU, deceased characters will not for obvious reasons.

Characters:

Gray:

-Incredibly traumatized.

-Rarely speaks, constantly shaking.

-Spends most of his time with Jevin or Fun-bot

-Paranoid, flinches at anything.

-Easy to trigger

-Actually misses the friendship with Wenda before the slaughter, but refuses to visit her.

-Great with medical care. Helped fix up Pinki & Brud's wounds.

Wenda:

-Arrested soon after Black left

-Still insane but does feel some remorse for what she's done

-Currently stuck in a mental asylum

-Never visited by the others

-very sensitive to light

-Talks to herself

-Forgot how to "sing" normally

Jevin:

-Not much changed about him

-He does wear a longer cloak but he doesn't have a reason for it

-Hates Black more than anyone

-Was the first to leave the bunker after the slaughter

Fun-Bot:

-Doesn't understand his own emotions

-Deeply misses his parents creators

-Spends most of his time with his brother(Mr. Fun Computer)

-Has attempted to end his own life at one point, still has thoughts about it.

-Refuses to go anywhere without someone else

-Rarely charges until he's worked his battery to 0

-Bring flowers to Clukr & Garnold's graves every day

Brud:

-Still himself, if a little more jumpy at times.

-Has nightmares a lot but doesn't remember them

-Doesn't have his bucket anymore, so he wear a beanie

-Doesn't know where his brother is, and the others don't have the heart to tell him. (I headcanon Brud & Tunner as brothers.)

Pinki:

-Stays near Oren's grave most of the time. She's fallen asleep next to it before.

-Still has phantom pain in her face

-Wears Oren's headphones, even if she can't use them due to her ears.

-Hates Wenda for what she did, will never forgive her

-Chronic baker

-Blind in one eye

Mr. Sun:

-Doesn't remember most of the events from after he was corrupted

-Although his face is mostly normal, his left eye looks like the eye he had in his horror form

-Not much changed but he's a lot more careful around others.

Mr. Tree:

-Personality wasn't affected by this due to not remembering anything

-Still has the missing poster, shows it to passersby to help find the girl.

Mr. Fun Computer:

-Does remember and is horrified by what happened

-The demented lyrics are still stuck in his head

-Constantly tries to factory reset himself but is stopped by the memory of his brother

-Also misses his creators, wishes he could visit their graves.

Durple:

-Jaw is permanently dislocated

-Cover his mouth with a mask

-Never speaks

-Still has the abnormal mouth, but his personality and awareness has returned

-Often starves himself, having to be forced to eat.

Simon:

-NEVER leave his room

-Often feels hungry for no reason

-rarely leaves his bed

-Horrified at what he did to Brud

-bashes his head into walls, cuts his arms, etc, just to feel something.

-Hates himself

-hates Wenda more

-hates black even more

The AU remains unfinished. Asks will be reopened but ONLY for this AU.

[youzicha]

Normal Accidents

📖Charles Perrow, Normal accidents: living with high-risk technologies, 1984. Second edition 1999.

The Title

This is another example of a book that lives on its title, a great racket which works like this:

Find a proposition which many people would like to be true. E.g., Nations are fake and don't exist except in people's imagination. Victorian doctors used vibrators as a treatment for hysteria. Computer programming used to be gender-balanced and then male programmers took over. There's no way to run a nuclear power plant without accidents.

Find a catchy phrase that strongly hints at the proposition without outright stating it.

Write a few hundred pages of text: long enough that plausibly somewhere in there could be convincing evidence of proposition X, and someone would have to spend a whole day reading to find out whether there is or not.

Congratulations, you are set for life.

The Theory

The book theorizes that there is a particularly intractable type of accident which it calls “system accidents”. They are different from simple component failure accidents and happen in systems that are “complex” and “tightly coupled”. It classifies systems on two axes: a system is “linear” if each subsystem mostly interacts with one subsystem in front and one after (like an assembly-line factory) or “complex” if the subsystems all interact with each other, and it is “tightly” coupled if each subsystem immediately affects the other one without room for recovery.

Perrow then reads a bunch of accident investigation reports from different industries (nuclear, chemical, airlines, maritime, etc) and highlights interactions and coupling. The whole book produces this diagram:

From this we conclude… what exactly? Maybe that system accidents are important, and we should pay attention to them? Or slightly stronger, that there are more accidents in the upper-right quadrant than in the other ones? A big problem is that Perrow never says precisely what he is trying to prove and doesn't apply any objective measures.  I would want to count the number of accidents in different industries, and compare the ratio of system/non-system ones, or compare the absolute numbers, but Perrow just relates a sampling of accidents and says that they are illustrative.

Whether these accidents really are good illustrations of "system accidents" seems to depend a lot on the spin he puts on them. The classification into complex versus linear seems very hand-wavy. In one example of aviation, which is supposedly complex, "even after bailing out … there was room for the unexpected interaction" because the pilot was hit on the head by the falling ejection seat. By contrast the mining industry is assigned the center of the linear-complex axis, and one example concerns a worker who walked under a conveyor belt—and got hit on the head. Basically the same accident can be glossed as interactive or not.

Or how about this airplane accident:

The next accident, an account of problems with a four-engine corporate jet, the Lockheed Jet Star Model 1329, is more prosaic, but it gives some idea of the world of corporate jets and involves a system accident, unusual risks, and a safety change that was responsible for killing eight people. The safety improvement involved new, solid state units in the generator control units and new wiring. The airplane was flight-tested after installation and one generator failed. Repairs were made. In the next test flight, all four generators failed at one time or another, and were manually reset during flight. [Two weeks later] The plane crashed a mile short of the runway […] The NTSB is not certain of the proximate cause of the crash […] The example strongly suggests a system accident

It is typical of the book: there are no statistics showing that system accidents are common, only isolated examples, and in this example he doesn't even know what caused the accident!

(Later in the book the level of rigor goes down even further. For accidents in space, instead of reading accident investigation reports Perrow says "I am drawing here on the immensely entertaining, and exceptionally perceptive book by Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff." Then for accidental war the discussion is based on Dr. Strangelove. And then he turns to DNA technology, which "appears to be complex in its interactions and tightly coupled, but I caution the reader that I know even less about it than I do about nuclear weapon systems." Thanks.)

But the actual central claim that Perrow wants to conclude is something even stronger than that systems accidents are common: he says that there is no way to prevent them. Thus the final chapter says that we should only accept complex-coupled systems if accidents have acceptably small consequences, and otherwise we must replace them with safer alternatives. In particular Perrow wants to get rid of nuclear power; the book started as an anti-nuclear pamphlet written after the Three Mile Island accident. But it seems quite hopeless to prove this impossibility by just reading accident reports.

So the book has much talk about catastrophic risk, but very few testable predictions. In fact, I could only find two. First, there is this paragraph about airline accidents:

With millions of operating years of experience, repeated trials, tests without catastrophic consequences, and considerable government support, the industry has been able to maximize the potential for technological fixes, including buffers and redundancies. Two engines are better than one; four better than two; the jet engine less complex than the piston engine; and of course the industry makes use of exotic new materials and instrumentation. System accidents in flying will remain, but they have been reduced substantially. […] The safety of both automobile travel and airline travel (and military and general aviation as well) has increased dramatically in this century, but since the 1960s and 1970s the safety curve has flattened out; we appear to be in the area where further increases are very hard to achieve.

It seems to say that airline accidents first fell quickly because we solved the issue of component failures, and now will fall no more because the rest is intractable systems accidents.

Second, there's this nicely unambiguous paragraph:

I would expect a worse accident than TMI in ten years—one that will kill and contaminate. […] There will be more system accidents; according to my analysis, there have to be. One or more will include a release of radioactive substances to the environment in quantities sufficient to kill many people, irradiate others, and poison some acres of land. There is no organizational structure that we would or should tolerate that could prevent it. None of our existing reactors has a design capable of preventing system accidents. Perhaps a safe one will be discovered—loosely coupled and linear—but I am doubtful.

Forty years later, there has not been any accidents in American nuclear power plants, so the analysis seems nicely refuted. The airplane accidents also did not come through. The trend in the 20th century was that the accident rate halved every 10 years:

And based on this data the same trend remained. From 1983-1989 to 1990-1999 the deaths per departure halved, from 1990-1999 to 2000-2009 they halved again, and from 2000-2009 to 2010-2017 it decreased even faster.

As it happens, there's a second edition from 1999 with a retrospective afterword, and it talks about how warmly the book was received while skipping over the fact that its predictions were wrong. It says “Commercial jet disasters are at approximately the same (low) level as in 1984, per departure” (no), and “of course we had Chernobyl”. But Chernobyl was not one of the American power plants whose incident reports the prediction was based on, and also it was not a systems accident. There was only one relevant subsystem, the core, and only one relevant parameter, the power output.

The second edition also adds a chapter about the Y2K problem, which could be "a test of the robustness and applicatory scope" of the Normal Accident Theory. While officials are optimistic, those Y2K plans are "fantasy documents" and there could be disaster whose "potential scale and scope dwarfs all other 'normal accidents' discussed in the book". (Notably one of the scenarios discussed in the book is a global nuclear war.) Having seen the actual outcome of Y2K, I think the robustness and applicatory scope comes across as well here as in the other cases.

Annoyances

So the theory seems dubious and the conclusions wrong, but that on its own would not make me write this long screed. What really gets to me is two annoying tics in the writing. First, constant smugness. The style matters because most of the book consists of summaries of accident investigations, and although they are supposed to illustrate his "normal accident theory", in practice he is mostly just writing descriptions without any particular theoretical angle. Of course I love reading accident reports too, but these days you can get all the pdfs you can read at the click of a mouse button, which raises the question what Perrow adds over the source material. And the main difference is that he thinks he is smarter than everybody else, and lets us know so through constant asides.

First, he is smarter than the reader. The first chapter, about the TMI accident, reassures us that it "will be the most demanding technological account in the book, but even a general sense of the complexity will suffice if one wishes to merely follow the drama rather than the technical evolution of the accident." Don't worry your pretty little head, Perrow is here to explain things. This tendency is even more annoying when he doesn't understand what he is explaining. He does not know what the word envelope means, and then projects his own confusion by saying that this aspect of flying has "poorly understood dynamics".

Second, he is smarter than the accident investigation board, and takes random snipes at them. A random board member in a press conference mentions a “remote possibility”, which Perrow jumps on. He comments that in marine accidents "the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) do what they can. But they can do little in this error-inducing system. […] It can happen. It is bound to. The recommendations are futile." I guess his methodology forces him to take this polemical tone, because all he is doing is reading accident investigation reports, so if he didn't complain, there would be nothing added by his descriptions.

In fact, he is smarter than just about anyone, and happy to share his observations even if they are not related to the accidents at all, e.g. “the approach to the Westchester Airport goes right over an interstate highway with one of those curious signs with the fruitless warning: ‘watch out for low flying aircraft’”.

I think this is a general hazard with writing about nuclear policy: both the pro- and anti-sides seem to have a lot of very smug people. I think for me the biggest takeaway from this book was that I should try to tone it down in my own writing.

The other annoyance is that Perrow never mentions any numbers, even in situations that really cry out for them. For example, there are many mentions of plutonium, in criticality accidents or when it was accidentally released from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. An article says “‘in all plutonium incidents to date, only a small fraction of the plutonium involved was released.’ That is like saying that in a war, only a small fraction of the bullets kill anyone.” A Titan ICBM can “literally go off with the drop of a workman’s wrench and possibly release plutonium”.

And beyond these local accidents, in 1964 there was a “cosmic” one: “Most of the failures of the space program have not been death-dealing, and if they were, they were limited to first-party victims—the astronauts or technicians. However, in three cases of failures with plutonium power packs, the risks are potentially catastrophic, since plutonium is perhaps the most deadly substance known to humans. … a navigational satellite sent up in 1964 that failed to achieve orbit when its rocket engine failed. It reentered the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean and distributed 1 kilogram of plutonium-238 about the earth.”

Like, at this point surely you’d want to know how many people were actually killed? From looking around on google a bit, it seems the 1964 satellite may have caused two hundred cancer deaths if you assume the cancer risk scales linearly to extremely small radiation doses. (And it prompted a change in policy to no longer let plutonium burn up in the atmosphere.) To me this kind of number seems essential to judge how catastrophic the accident is.

Another example where the numbers are lacking:

The price of electricity from nuclear power plants does not reflect the very large government subsidies, nor the costs of the unsolved problem of long-term waste storage, nor even the unknown costs of dismantling reactors after their forty allotted years, if they run that long. Had all these been properly considered in the 1950s and included in the cost, this book would have not been written because no utility would have ordered a plant.

This claim is not cited to anything. I believe that people were in fact considering this, but in any case the costs are now known: the long-term waste storage came to 0.41 cent/kWh and the dismantling to 0.24 cents/kWh. Meanwhile electricity prices have varied between 19 cents/kWh and 13 cents/kWh (in 2020 dollars), so the waste + decommissioning costs are a rounding error in comparison to other factors.

At some point he says that “you are good at counting while I (as I tell my quantitative colleagues) don’t count”, but really, you live like this?

Coal versus nuclear

Perry spends most of the book talking about the risk from nuclear power plants. But what is the alternative? In the introduction he says

There is no technological imperative that says we must have power or weapons from nuclear fission or fusion, or that we must create and loose upon the earth organisms that will devour our oil spills. We could reach for, and grasp, solar power or safe coal-fired plants

And then he doesn’t mention those coal plants again until the final chapter. But as he was writing, American coal plants were killing 30,000 people/year. Compared to the deaths from cancer, that corresponds to multiple Chernobyl accidents every year. Does he not know this?

Actually he includes a final chapter about “current risk assessment theory”, where he notes that fossil fuel plants kill a lot more people than nuclear power, but nuclear power provokes more “dread” and “the public’s fears must be treated with respect”. I feel this would be more convincing if Perrow had not spent an entire book trying to stoke that fear.

He gives a more operational description of “dread risk”: “lack of control, high fatalities and catastrophic potential, inequitable distribution of risks and benefits, and the sense that these risks are increasing and cannot be easily reduced by technological fixes”. I think this still doesn’t distinguish the coal pollution and nuclear accidents very well. Neither is controllable, the particulate emissions and the radioactivity both drift with the wind, the parties that take the risk and benefits are the same for both, and the “sense” that technological fixes don’t work is illusory.

Of course, nowadays we know that coal has has another drawback besides the particulate pollution, and this is mentioned in a single paragraph, literally in parentheses!

(One enormous risk which the industrialized nations may be facing is not considered in this book on normal accidents; eliminating this ill would require much more drastic measures than any of the above: This is the problem of carbon dioxide produced from deforestation primarily, but also from burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and wood. This threatens to create a greenhouse effect, warming the temperature of the planet, melting the ice caps, and probably causing an incredible number of other changes, most of them disastrous. If it is significant—the experts do not agree—we may have a few decades to handle this; but it may be too late. It is one of the strongest cards the nuclear addicts can play, though the enormity of the problem, by some accounts, would dwarf the capacities of nuclear industry. We would have to divert our energy and natural resources from much of industry and use it to build nuclear plants for the next generation to meet some estimates. Battalions of scientists, engineers, and operators would have to be recruited and trained, and so on.)

Conclusion

This book is frequently cited (I have even seen tumblr users refer to it), and I think it’s considered a classic, so I was very disappointed. Let’s mark it as another mistake of the 20th century and forget all about it.

[theo-grayson]

I CANT EVEN FACTORY RESET IT???? how does this even happen

my laptop is stuck in a restart loop again :(

[greatestrival]

Yuki Tsunoda: 10 Things I Love for GP RACING MAGAZINE APRIL 2024 ISSUE

scanned by me (please credit if you repost lmao these took so loooong)

text under the cut

10 THINGS I LOVE

RB's Japanese racer on his love of saunas, good coffee and - well, food, of course

Fashion

I like fashion. I like to choose my outfit according to my mood or where I'm going. And I like to show my colours, if you like. In short, it feels good to look good.

Food

There's no particular cuisine I like, but for me a good meal is a kind of tool to reduce stress and feel happier. It doesn't matter what kind of food it is - if it's good, I enjoy it, whether it's tacos or sushi. I really like pasta. When I'm in Italy that's what I usually eat. But it's important for me, wherever we go, to find a good restaurant so I can enjoy the food. Because in a way, as strange as it may sound, it gives me the same feeling as driving a Formula 1 car. When I drive, I just concentrate on that. It's not that I don't think - of course I do, especially during the race - but when it comes to driving, it's more about the senses than thoughts. When I'm driving I don't think about anything else. And it's almost the same with food. You just enjoy the taste and flavour - and I really like that!

Nature

We travel a lot and are surrounded by electronics and computers, Laptops, telemetry, data is our world - and sometimes it's just too much. So I like to get away from it all, to go hiking, for example, or just get out into nature and experience a different environment to Formula 1.

Jason Statham

Definitely my favourite actor, especially after meeting him in Abu Dhabi last year. I've always liked his films and Transporter is my favourite - but sometimes when you meet your hero and get to know the person better, you can be disappointed, can't you? It wasn't like that with Jason. He is such a great guy, really nice, talkative, very respectful and really, really strong! He's got everything you need. He's strong, he looks cool, he's bald. I might go bald in the future to look more like him...

Singing

I'm not the one who sings in the shower, but I do sing in the car. I just feel like it, to feel the rhythm, to have fun. And when I'm singing, I feel like a real singer.

Saunas

It's something I like to use to reset. 20 minutes in the sauna, then a cold shower and lying down - at that moment I feel like I'm in space. And it is an incredible feeling. It feels like your body is resetting itself. It feels like all the stress I have, it just comes out with the sweat, so after the sauna I feel fresh. Like a brand new me. It's funny, I didn't really like it before, but my friends kept telling me how great it was. So one day I just decided to give it another try and finally understood what they were talking about. Now it's one of my favourite things to do: just go to the sauna and relax.

Coffee

I have a good coffee machine at home. I like to grind coffee beans in the morning and make myself a good cup of coffee. Good coffee makes my day.

Wine

I don't drink alcohol very often, to be honest. And I'm not a guy who knows a lot about wine, about different types and varieties of wine. I'm not an expert, if you like. But it's nice to have a glass of wine with good food. It helps you enjoy it even more

Apex Legends

I used to play a lot more when I moved to Europe from Japan - and Apex Legends was my favourite game. I don't play as much now, but during my junior career it was a way to keep in touch with my friends in Japan because we were so far apart. Of course you can call and chat, but doing something together, playing and talking at the same time, is a lot more fun.

Football

I sometimes play football with the mechanics, engineers and other guys from the team in Faenza. And I love it. Because first of all I like the game itself, but then it's also good to hang out with the guys from the team - especially considering that it's usually the guys who don't go to races and stay at the factory, so it's also a good opportunity to bond with them.

[icicleteeth]

I can't even be a hater with Skyrim because god knows how many times I've set aside 8 hours to completely redo and update mods when moving to a new computer or having to factory reset the entire thing (especially after unexpectedly having to do it over again when a computer dies 🤡) I haven't done it again since things finally settled with PC troubles but jesus just listening to the soundtrack again and I"m like. I have to do this again. And I'll do it again....