#I do actually quite like functional programming sometimes

[assembly-official]

@java-official might have something to say about that...

HELLO I AM NOW SCALA THE BEST JVM LANGUAGE

[raintemper]

Moon and Pebbles!! Yippee

oh the woes of being a flesh creature surrounded by supercomputer gods,, I got sad drawing him hhh

more about them under the line :>

Moon! She, like Suns, was one of the first successful projects and were both more of test models/therapeutic companions than anything else. They were both restructured to fit their new functions but Suns has obviously undergone more significant changes... Moon is kept inside to assist with research and computational stuff. She's a lab cat. She's generally looks more like a normal creature, and has a friendly appearance because her creators (i guess it would be the ancients) would be seeing her frequently and would rather a friendly face, something that is easily perceived as nonthreatening, as opposed to Suns weaponry and NSH's extra limbs and spikes. She doesn't have the screen face like NSH, so expressing emotions comes mostly from body language. Moon is not outside at all so there is no need for solar panel components like Suns or NSH. She has internal stored power that can last for quite a while but still needs to be recharged? I imagine the neuron fly drones would also assist in that department. The drones still function somewhat like her portable processing servers/braincells. She has also programed a defensive protocol into them, they can create small bits of electricity to use in dire moments. Initially programmed to keep track of NSH's samples that sometimes escapes him.

Pebbles is a purposed organism. He is a whole entire organic cat. He was born in the lab, in a chaotic time when resources were low. He has a mark of communication. He also has a brain chip where he can access (basically) the cloud where the others upload information. He is also a lab cat so this is crucial to his role. He did try and remove it once when he was younger and it backfired horribly and now he has a mechanical ear and eye. He still feels out of place for obvious reasons, being the only creature of organic origin amongst his peers.

He is closest to Moon who had a role in caring for and raising him. She did not know a thing about caring for a living being but did her best. Pebbles does not like being confined to the facility. The suggestion and influence the brain chip has on him sometimes clashes with his thoughts. He is very aware of the limitations it puts on him to not leave. He envies NSH and Suns a lot for being able to do what he can't. He often downloads the maps they create and read NSH's sample studies in his spare time. He also likes seeing the lizards NSH brings back, from a distance.

I think in the time that Pebbles exists, NSH is not very active. Due to the low resources and chaotic season, NSH is often in low power mode. Which means less expeditions outside and more time just, half asleep. And when the weather becomes more sustainable, NSH would be sent on long outings to gather as much as possible before being powered down again. So instead of hearing stories from NSH, he sought out Suns and UI instead. (Actually I think everyone is kind of low power mode here, Suns does not wander as far).

erhm i think he tries to leave the place and then gets sick or something,,,im still thinking..

[scariusaquarius]

rehab. 43.

Avenger! Bucky Barnes x Winter Soldier! Fem! Reader

Summary: While on a mission to find any more possible super soldiers that were a part of the Winter Soldier program, Steve and Bucky make a discovery in an abandoned HYDRA base that was cleared out a few years prior to their mission. They discover the Reader, a long-forgotten soldier that was still asleep within a functioning cryostasis pod; still awaiting orders. While Bucky isn't happy about it, he is put up to the challenge of helping to rehabilitate the soldier in Wakanda where she may be able to become a person again.

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A/n: My brain hurt even thinking about writing this chapter laksdjf;askdfj and it hurt the whole time, but hey, 8.1k words ain't so bad :p

Also, if you enjoy my work, please consider buying me a coffee! If you would prefer to read Rehab on Archive, you may do so right HERE!

This is an au where Bucky joined the avengers but still rehabilitated in Wakanda (sometime before Infinity War [canon divergent cause NOPE]). I am NOT fluent in Russian, so I did use google translate cause I couldn't find a good translator that I trusted. If anything is wrong, PLEASE let me know!! Also, I tried to list as many warnings as possible so you know what the story will contain as chapters are posted. Stay safe!

NOTE: I DO NOT GIVE PERMISSION FOR ANY OF MY WORKS TO BE FED INTO AI FOR BOTS, I DO NOT GIVE PERMISSION FOR MY WORKS TO BE TRANSLATED, REPOSTED, REWORKED, ETC, IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM!!!

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Genre: Slowburn, Enemies to Lovers/Friends to Lovers, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Humor, Drama, Dark Content Rated: Explicit Warning: Angst, Dark Content: Graphic Depictions of Sexual Assault, Blood and Gore, Mentions of Manipulation, Kidnapping, Canon-Typical Violence, Body Horror, Nonconsensual Body Modification/Scarring, Emotional and Physical Abuse, Mentions of Murder, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts/Ideation, Graphic Depictions of Human Remains, Mentions of Sexual Coercion/Manipulation, Death, Misuse of Drugs/Forced Drugging, Self-Harm (Graphic Depictions and Mentions), Nightmares

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Author: ScariusAquarius

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rehab masterlist. / rehab masterlist 2. chapter 42

Instead of Rebecca's warm arms and the comfort of the imagined sunlight, (Y/n) woke up on metal; the cold of the material chasing away the warmth with a ferocity that made (Y/n) want to shiver. However, she was strangely exhausted; the familiar effects of being heavily sedated coming over her, and her eyes fluttered. Bright white lights were above her, and the smell of ammonia was heavy in the air.

There was a buzzing in her ear almost like gnats, and in the symphonics of the buzzing were voices. She was drifting between a space of awareness and complete disorientation, and (Y/n) could feel something pressed against her temples and the back of her neck; sticky and itching.

However, her limbs were too heavy to lift to scratch the itch, and she couldn't even move her head. She was completely stuck, and then she noticed that there was an oxygen mask on her face that was feeding her a sickly sweet air that (Y/n) recognized to be the sedation.

(Y/n)'s head was pounding, filled with static, and Rebecca's voice sounded extremely distorted as (Y/n) tried to remember her words.

'Rem...er..th...sun...t'

What was she trying to say?

The buzzing suddenly turned into voices; echoing around her, and at first, (Y/n) wasn't aware of who the smug voice belonged to. She tried to twitch her fingers, but they wouldn't move. Her body wasn't listening to her, and (Y/n) was starting to panic.

Internally, she was thrashing and screaming and beating against a nonexistent window as she tried to wake up from the sedation or to at least stop breathing it in. However, nothing was working, and Lukas' voice became clear.

"Cognitive resistance detected. Despite a Class IV Sedative, she's still fighting it. Actually quite impressive."

Her heart was racing within her chest, her muscles almost spasming with phantom pain, and (Y/n)'s eyes fluttered slightly as she started to become a bit more aware.

"This is expected. Her hippocampus is full of memory nodes that are being projected longer than normal. However, rest be assured, the failsafe doesn't need her cooperation. It just needs her brainstem's compliance."

What were they talking about? What did Nagel mean about a failsafe? (Y/n) suddenly saw a flash of familiar blue eyes within her mind, and she latched onto the image as hard as she could as the feeling of forgetting something came over her.

Bucky.

There was a strange sound that was beginning to make (Y/n)'s ears ring. It was faint, almost too faint for her enhanced hearing to pick-up, but she knew that it was there.

It was the sound of a phone ringing, but it was going on for longer than would be normal for a real phone. Suddenly, Dr. Nagel began to speak again, humming as the sound of typing on a keyboard made (Y/n) focus on his voice.

"The secondary protocol is grafted into her neural lattice — not as a new identity, but a dormant response chain. Sensory-triggered, low frequency, and auditory and olfactory-based. It's fully passive until activated."

Lukas then chuckled, sounding as though he was sitting forward within his seat.

"Once the summit reaches critical engagement, then we will have the trigger activate. Oh, it will be beautiful."

Dr. Nagel hummed before he stated.

"I've integrated a fully active program alongside the failsafe as well. When she fully wakes up, she will be the asset once more. That way, she won't get any bright ideas."

Lukas hummed in appreciation, stating while (Y/n) began to panic and scream within her head; desperately trying to move her arms and legs or something.

"Excellent. The second she hears that tone, the failsafe will activate, and our glory will reign once more."

(Y/n) was growing desperate, screaming into her mind over and over to let her go, to stop, hoping that someone would listen. On the outside, (Y/n) slowly blinked, and through a tether built by magic — ancient, deliberate, and hidden in her very blood — someone blinked with her.

The next few hours were a blur between consciousness and sleep; the sweet-smelling toxin being fed through the hissing oxygen mask keeping her in a suspended state as the scientists continued to work on her. At some point, (Y/n) had felt them insert something into her arm, but she was so delirious that she couldn't make sense of what it was.

However, she was aware the whole time that Lukas was watching her; his cold eyes calculating and all she could do was just lie on the table as the scientists worked. And once all was said and done, the lab became hauntingly silent.

She was finally waking up completely, and her eyes blinked up at the bright white light above her. It took a moment for (Y/n) to become completely awake, and when she was, the panic began to set in again full-force.

She wasn’t sure when the nausea began, but (Y/n) was aware that it was growing sharper by the second. That sickly sweet air was still feeding through the mask, but something had changed. Her body was reacting to it differently now.

Her fingers twitched.

Then again.

Not voluntarily.

(Y/n) tried to scream again, but there was no voice — only the hollow echo of her own thoughts cracking against the walls of her skull. Her mind was hers. She knew it. She remembered Bucky. She remembered Strange. She remembered the sun on her skin in Wakanda, the feeling of holding her own life for the first time in decades.

And yet—

Her hand flexed into a fist.

It wasn't hers.

Something else was speaking through her muscles. Her nerves. Her blood. It was a voice that wasn't a voice at all — just a low pulse; a rhythm beneath the skin. She could feel it humming at the back of her spine like a compulsion that held the weight of the sun's gravity.

Obey.

Lukas’s voice echoed distantly from the other side of the room.

“You’ll be able to speak, to think, to argue. But it won’t matter. Because when the trigger hits...you'll move."

Dr. Nagel’s voice floated closer, calm and clinical as (Y/n) watched his face come over hers, that little flashlight in his hand and shining it directly in her eyes.

“We’ve bypassed the frontal cortex entirely. The olfactory-auditory nexus routes to the basal ganglia now. So, procedural memory and muscle memory. The Asset is reactive, not deliberative.”

(Y/n) felt as though she was shaking, her muscles spasming with every second that went by, but her body didn't move a single inch. Inside her mind, (Y/n) was sobbing as her fingers curled again; smoother and familiar.

The Winter Soldier’s grip.

Her own hands were being taught to betray her again, the Winter Soldier's cloak no longer in tandem with her, but rather a cage that (Y/n) was once again trapped within.

And she was awake for all of it.

In (Y/n)'s mind, she could see the Winter Soldier and her were separate, but instead of the soldier being in the mirror, it was (Y/n), and she was pounding as hard as she could on the glass; begging and screaming and crying as she watched the soldier walk away.

It was happening again, and she chose this. Why did she ever think that she could defeat HYDRA?

Why did she ever think that she could ever destroy her home?

Her body sat up on its own, and her legs swung over the table to hang freely. Her eyes were downcast at the floor, deathly still, and the soldier muttered softly.

"Готов соблюдать." (ready to comply.)

No, no, no, no, no!

-STRANGE-

It was like a string snapping, his body being shoved back slightly as the tether was pulled taut. There was so much panic and fear echoing through Strange's mind that it was almost hard to distinguish what was (Y/n)'s...and which was his own. Strange's hand was gripping the table tightly, keeping himself anchored to reality and standing upright as he took heaving breaths.

"Oh, no...no, no, no...why didn't I think of this before?"

The Avengers in the room became concerned, Shuri stepping forward with a frown and asking as Bucky became like stone; his facial expression hardening.

"What is it, Doctor?"

Strange was evening his panting, and he didn't answer at first; trying to get his thoughts in order. Tony spoke next, saying.

"What did you see, Strange?"

Strange finally looked around the room, muttering.

" HYDRA...Lukas...they designed a different program tailored specifically to (Y/n). She can’t just break it like before. It’s not even active yet, not fully, but…they implanted a failsafe...probably since she was a child. It's in her physiology itself...fed straight into her neurobiology and rewriting the genetic code. It's layered...chemically and...it feels magically hindering as well.”

The expressions of the Avengers changed into dread, and Strange continued.

"They're awakening the Winter Soldier, but not the version that we awoke. This one doesn't need orders, it doesn't need guidance...just to obey."

The silence in the room was heavy; dread filling the room, and Strange took a moment to look all around. Tony, Shuri, Bruce, and Peter were all wearing looks of shock while Thor, Wanda, Steve, Vision, Clint, and Natasha were wearing stone-cold faces.

Bucky, however, was enraged. His blood was boiling; seeping into his veins and clouding his vision in red.

He could feel it. That itch in the back of his mind, the plates in his arm whirring as the sensation to carry out a mission began to bleed into his mind. His fist clenched, his jaw tight, and Bucky's body began to tremble.

"You said it's not fully active? Is there a way to get through to her?"

Strange pursed his lips, and he shook his head slightly.

"I don't know. I...I didn't see this coming."

Strange was almost kicking himself. The fact that he hadn't seen this within the woman's timeline gnawed at him like a dog on scraps; and his thoughts became bitter. With all of his power, all of his foresight, all of his knowledge...how had something like this slip past him?

However, Strange already knew the answer. He hadn't even been looking that deep, hadn't considered just how far HYDRA would go to ensure the perfect soldier. HYDRA hadn't just hidden their work behind time and spells. They had buried their work within blood, inside bones, and with the kind of science that doesn't leave traces. This wasn't a spell to break, but a curse that was written deep within her DNA and reinforced.

And curses didn't just show up in timelines...they waited.

Strange looked at Bucky, noticing the way his shoulders had squared, that dark aura coming over him; familiar and foreboding. Pursing his lips, Strange swallowed thickly.

Did ghosts ever truly stop haunting?

-(Y/N)-

The diplomatic summit was in full-swing. Cameras flashed across the ornate marble room, lights bouncing off polished floors and gold trim as representatives from over twenty nations mingled, their voices a low murmur of practiced diplomacy and shallow smiles. The air was thick with the scent of cologne, champagne, and high-stakes politics.

(Y/n) stood like a ghost within the crowd of legendary leaders and high-profile individuals alike. She was dressed in black, a simple suit that hid her Winter Soldier uniform. Eyes scanning the crowd, she was as still as a statue; blending in enough to be unnoticed, but her pulse was thundering in her ears like a war drum.

She didn't remember getting here.

Her memory was missing; the last thing she remembered was being on the table, and suddenly, she was here. (Y/n) could feel her fingers flexing against a hidden pressure sensor embedded in the black gloves she was wearing, and there was the weight of a sidearm tucked neatly against the small of her back.

Despite trying to fight against it, her body knew what to do. Her breathing was slow, her posture was as stiff as a board, and her eyes were dead and blank. Her body was in wait, waiting for the signal.

Suddenly, the room quieted. People were taking their seats, ruffling papers and beginning to settle. A voice called for attention at the front of the room, and flashbulbs clicked in the distance, the soft thrum of camera drones hovering at the edges of the ceiling barely noticeable over the shuffling of chairs and suits.

(Y/n) blinked slowly once, her heartbeat completely steady and waiting; a wolf in sheep's clothing. Her body was relaxed, an unsettling ease coming over her.

However, inside her mind, she was screaming.

She could feel her body shifting, feet aligning beneath her, spine pulled straight as though on strings. Her fingers flexed gently against the fabric of her slacks — just a twitch. Just enough to test the joints. She wasn’t in control.

She couldn’t even tremble.

The chemical trigger was subtle, buried in the air like a ghost. A scent. A memory. Something ancient and cold winding its way through her bloodstream like frostbite. Her mind tried to clutch at anything real — the sound of someone breathing somewhere behind her, the scrape of a chair leg, the squeak of a polished shoe against marble tile.

Nothing held.

Someone approached the podium, and the soldier recognized him to be the Secretary-General of the United Nations. He was a stout man, heavy but kind as he cleared his throat before speaking.

"Esteemed delegates, heads of state, ambassadors, and honored guests—welcome to Geneva. Today marks more than just another gathering of nations. It marks a shared hope, a collective will to confront the challenges that face not only individual countries, but the very fabric of our global community. In this room are voices from every corner of the world—some in harmony, some in discord—but all united under one purpose: diplomacy."

The room murmured softly, and the Secretary-General allowed the people in the room to speak for a moment before he continued, his eyes scanning the crowd.

"We are living in a time of uncertainty. The threat of conflict, the strain of displacement, and the pressure of rapid global change weigh heavily on us all. But it is precisely because of this uncertainty that our commitment to dialogue and cooperation must remain unshaken. Let this summit not be a ceremony of formality, but a turning point. A space where concerns can be voiced and solutions pursued, not with hostility, but with resolve and mutual respect."

The man then smiled, nodding his head as he began to gather his speech papers and tuck them away.

"I thank you all for being here today—and for choosing conversation over conflict. Now, let us begin."

The Swiss President rose first, giving a small nod to the assembled representatives before approaching the podium.

“Distinguished guests, on behalf of the Swiss Confederation, I personally welcome you to Geneva.”

There was no clapping, just simple silence as the participants of the UN listened quietly. From across the room in the Swiss delegation, (Y/n) could feel Lukas staring at her. His eyes held an expression of sinister anticipation despite his face revealing nothing, and the soldier's body was stiff with a need to please.

(Y/n) felt like throwing up.

"Switzerland has long stood as a beacon of neutrality, of peace, and of diplomacy. In a world that is marked by the increase of enhanced individuals, mutants, incredible technological advances, and unforeseen challenges, we recognize the important and risks that these individuals pose. These individuals embody great potential for defending our nations, and they have proven this time and time again."

The Swiss president cleared his throat, and he glanced around the room from over his glasses, his hand on the podium clenching into a fist as he spoke.

"However, we must practice vigilance and care with such advancements. We cannot ignore the dark shadows cast by organizations such as HYDRA, whose manifesto has trampled on human rights and endangered our nations security. The exploitations of enhancement technologies is a grave threat. Not just to individuals, but the very fabric of our international order."

From across the room, Lukas ran a hand through his hair before scratching at his ear, inconspicuously placing an ear piece within his ear before he began to type on his phone.

'Asset. Prepare for peace.'

The automated message played along with a very faint sound of a phone ringing within the earpiece that she was wearing, and her body immediately tensed. Her body was slow, moving like a shadow as she sauntered away from the room. The Swiss President's voice was still loud and clear as she walked out, smiling politely at the security guard before walking up the stairs.

The soldier was tearing off the formal attire, her Winter Soldier garb revealing itself as she threw the clothes into the trash and found herself on a high balcony. There was a rifle case waiting for her, a HYDRA agent disguised as a security guard waiting for her.

"Therefore, Switzerland calls upon the global community to unite in establishing a framework for the regulation of enhanced soldiers. However, this framework must balance innovation with ethics, ensure transparency, and uphold the dignity of every human being involved."

The soldier took care in putting the rifle together, installing a silencer at the end of the rifle before taking her place. The stock of the gun rest comfortably within her shoulder, and she popped open the sight to get a clear look at the target.

Please don't. Please. Please don't do this.

"We must act with both resolve and fairness-guarding against abuse while respecting the rights of those who serve with honor...and who seek to make amends to right their wrongs. It is only through cooperation and shared responsibility that we can build a future where technology strengthens peace rather than fuels conflict."

'Take your aim, Asset.'

Oh, god, no. No, please!

"Let this meeting here today mark a new age of unity and trust, where nations stand together against threats like HYDRA and commit to safeguarding humanity's values."

Remember the sunlight, remember the sunlight, remember the sunlight, remember the sunlight!

Before the President could give his final statement, the order came through the comm link like a liquid poison, and her finger tensed against the trigger.

'Shoot.'

BUCKY!

Her finger pulled the trigger, the shot muffled but just loud enough for the members of the meeting to look around for a moment. The Swiss President was shocked, holding a hand to his chest, and red began to bloom beneath his hand. Someone in the crowd screamed, and all hell broke loose.

Lukas immediately put on an act of feigned horror, his eyes widening as he ran to the Swiss President's side. He was yelling for help, but the soldier knew that it was all for the performance. The soldier watched for a moment as the man leaned down to the President's ear, whispered softly, and the Swiss President's eyes widened before he began to choke on his own blood.

The HYDRA agent immediately took his gun out, shooting the guards that were coming up the stairs, and the soldier was walking down with the finesse of a hunter. Her eyes were scanning the environment, and she took her sidearm out and began to shoot anybody that was getting in between her and the exit.

Inside of her mind, (Y/n) was going insane. She was clawing at her own body despite there being no wounds, her metaphysical body unable to be harmed, and she was breaking under the stress. There was no mindscape to fall back on, no projection to speak to her, just a cold cage that had frost growing on the bars.

Strange, please...please...I can't see the sunlight. I can't feel it. I can't...I can't do this. I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS.

The agent that was escorting her to the extraction point was shot down, but there was no remorse within the soldier's eyes. A simple shot to the head made the security guard drop, and her steps quickened to ensure success of the mission.

The soldier walked into a corridor that was separating her from the outside where the van was waiting for her, her boots echoing around the empty hallway as people screamed in the background, and the soldier shielded herself when the large window adjacent to her suddenly shattered and a large shadow came over her.

The soldier rolled backwards as Sam shot a grapple at her, and the soldier did not hesitate to raise her gun and fire at Sam as he yelled down at her.

"(Y/n), stand down!"

Her bullet was aimed right as his heart, but Sam's wings closed just in time for the bullet to ricochet into a nearby statue; shattering half of its face. Then, the soldier felt a presence from behind her.

Natasha had her Widow's Bite in her hand, the baton lit up with electricity as the woman aimed for tendons, but the Soldier was too fast. Grabbing Natasha's wrist, the soldier spun and yanked, snapping Natasha's wrist and causing the woman to scream out with pain before she kicked Natasha in the chest and straight into a column.

The woman instantly dropped, groaning, and the soldier began to advance before Sam's annoyed outburst alerted her to his attack. Dodging a kick from Sam from above, the soldier rolled out of the way and threw a hard punch, missing by centimeters as Sam activated his jetpack to fly him backwards.

The soldier glared at him, her lips curling into a snarl behind the mask, and she grabbed a knife and threw it at him while charging. While dodging the knife, Sam was too slow to back away from the woman, and the soldier launched herself at him.

The impact was brutal, Sam's body flying down into the ground as the soldier kept a tight hold of his uniform, and her hand snatched another knife from her belt and raised it; ready to slam it directly into Sam's head. However, a metal hand grabbed a firm hold of her wrist and flung the woman backwards, her body skidding for a moment before the soldier somersaulted back into a standing position.

Bucky.

Bucky's eyes were dark, his expression firm, but there was a pleading look on his face that the soldier did not respond to; her hand instantly finding a new knife to use. Bucky stated, his hands up in mock surrender.

"(Y/n), I know you're in there."

From within her mind, (Y/n) was sobbing, shaking the frost-covered bars with frostbitten fingers as she screamed his name, hoping and praying that he could somehow hear her cries.

'Please! Please, don't fight me! Just run! Please, I don't want to hurt you!'

However, her body was already moving, advancing towards Bucky with a newfound ferocity as her lips hissed out.

"Traitor."

Bucky didn't flinch, but the word cut deep into him. When her knife grazed his shoulder, Bucky didn't even register the new superficial cut nor the tear in his uniform. His eyes were trained onto (Y/n)'s, hating the dead look in her eyes. It was almost as if there was no trace of her; just a machine that was ready to kill.

Bucky hated it. He despised those eyes; those dead and lifeless eyes that once held hope and determination, excitement, curiosity...now just a hollowed shell cultivated by HYDRA; by him.

"(Y/n), please. I'm not your enemy."

The soldier ran at him, arcing her knife in a downward brutal strike with precise precision, and Bucky blocked it with his metal arm, letting out a noise from the pain of it yanking his shoulder.

His boots scraped across the marble floor, and Bucky barely had any time to react before her knee came up and slammed directly into his diaphragm, launching him across the room and crashing into a bench. Bucky groaned in pain, writhing on the floor for a moment as the wind tore from his lungs.

She was faster. Much faster and stronger than anything he had seen before. Bucky staggered to his feet, his body aching with protest, and Bucky panted slightly. There was no trace of anything even remotely (Y/n) within this woman, but Bucky knew that (Y/n) was still in there. He begged quietly as (Y/n) began to advance on him again.

"Please, don't make me do this."

I don't want to do this. I don't want to hurt anybody.

She charged again, knife glinting, and he barely managed to block. The force of the blow sent vibrations up his cybernetic arm, tingles and shivers running down his spine from the sensation. The soldier brought her other arm up for an uppercut, and Bucky caught that hand, keeping a firm hold of her wrist as Bucky and the Soldier stared each other down.

They were caught in a stalemate, super soldier against super soldier, and Bucky's hands were shaking from the strenuous effort of keeping her in place. His boots were starting to skid across the floor again, slowly, as he tried to fight against her strength, and Bucky begged as he clenched his teeth.

"(Y/n), I know you're in there. I know you can't get out. But if there's any part of you, anything, that can hear me...please, remember the sunlight!"

Her movement paused for a split-second, but it was enough for Bucky to notice and to garner hope, but it was short-lived as her dilated pupils constricted again and her forehead came crashing into his face.

Bucky yelped, his nose breaking with a sickening crack, and he was flung onto his back. Blood gushed from his nose and a newly split lip, and he heaved when the soldier stomped her foot onto his chest. A glint within the light caught his eye, and Bucky watched as the soldier produced her knife, skillfully spinning it within her hand before she gripped the handle tightly.

The soldier knelt down, resting her entire weight on his body, and Bucky didn't move. He lied there on the ground, staring up at (Y/n) as she raised her knife; ready for the kill, and he swallowed thickly before whispering softly.

"I don't blame you."

Her eyes dilated slightly, and she hesitated for a moment.

"I don't blame you for any of this...and if you kill me...I won't blame you for that either. I deserve it. I put you in this position...I let you go when I wanted to keep you with me...in Wakanda while we listened to the music and looked at the pretty woman in the picture."

Bucky spat out the blood that was pooling in his mouth, and he whispered further.

"And I want you to remember the sunlight and how you chose to stand in it...and that I'm with you till the end of the line."

Her pupils constricted again, her hand slamming down, and Bucky kept his eyes on her the whole time. However, the knife stopped inches from his eye, and Bucky was confused. With his enhanced hearing, he could hear a voice coming from a comm link within (Y/n)'s ear.

"Asset, to the extraction point! You've done your part. Leave them and come home."

There was no hesitation to her withdraw, sheathing her knife before she began to walk away, and Bucky groaned before rolling onto his stomach and calling to her as (Y/n) walked.

"(Y/n)...please, don't go."

The soldier never looked back once as she exited through the doors, and Bucky let his out-reached hand fall and his forehead to fall to the ground. He was panting, holding his metal hand to his stomach, and he could hear Natasha and Sam groaning in the background. Natasha muttered through the pain, holding her wrist.

"Well, that wasn't the reunion I was expecting."

Sam muttered, shaking his head.

"Man, Nat, respectfully, please keep your thoughts to yourself. I wasn't imagining this, right? She seemed to be a lot stronger and faster."

Nat just rolled her eyes before wincing, and she sat up, holding her wrist to her chest as she replied.

"You weren't. Without (Y/n) being able to control any of her movements, the programming has complete and full reign, which means the Winter Soldier has no inhibitions. It's kill or be killed, and her body is going to do what it takes to complete the mission."

Bucky grit his teeth and let out an angered yell, punching the ground with his left hand and causing the floor to crack and crumble. Natasha and Sam were quiet for a moment, simply allowing Bucky to feel his emotions before Sam muttered.

"We need to get the hell out of here and start working on a way to bring (Y/n) back."

Bucky hissed as he stood up, wincing as his injuries began to become more apparent now that the adrenaline was wearing off.

"We should have never let her go. We should have never trusted Fury...should have never let Shuri even think that sending (Y/n) back was a good idea."

Natasha was quiet, and the group was distracted by a portal of orange sparks opening up, Strange and the other Avengers on the other side. Strange's expression turned grim at the sight of the injured trio, and the group hobbled through the portal. When Bucky laid eyes on Fury, his rage was reignited instantly. He began to yell, walking towards Fury and Steve clasping his arm firmly to keep Bucky from reaching the man.

"This is all your fault...everyone's! We should have never sent her back, and I can't even believe that any of you agreed to this!"

Fury frowned, pointing out.

"Let me remind you, Sergeant Barnes, that (Y/n) chose to go through with this mission."

"Because you pressured her! You made up some bullshit excuse about how her going back would be the best thing, it could be a way to make things right, but now look: she's stuck in her own mind, Strange can't even do anything, and we can't fix it!"

Steve ushered softly, trying to get Bucky to calm down.

"Buck, Buck, you gotta calm down."

"Fuck you too, Steve."

Bucky shoved Steve off, hissing as he pointed at him.

"Even you knew how shitty of an idea this was, and you still agreed. Everyone still enabled her...and even though I tried to tell her not to do it, she still agreed because you guys gave her some bullshit manifesto of doing this would be 'right'. Well, guess what, it wasn't. And now she's gone."

Bucky began to walk away before he paused, clenching his jaw, the blood from his nose and lip splattering against the ground as he clenched his fists. Turning, Bucky hissed with finality.

"I hope you all carry this fucking weight."

Bucky stomped out of the room, his footsteps carrying throughout the corridor, and the room became quiet. Steve's jaw was clenched tightly, staring after his best friend with guilt and shame, and Strange stated firmly.

"He's right, you know."

Steve snapped his gaze to Strange, hissing.

"Now is really not the time."

"No. Now, Captain Rogers. Because whether you like it or not, his anger isn’t misplaced. You all told her she could save lives. That this was her redemption."

He looked around the room, pausing on each face that was giving him various looks of guilt, shame, and defensiveness.

“But you never asked what it would cost her.”

Fury folded his arms, stating with a tone of finality as he looked at Strange with a frown.

“She volunteered.”

“And you gave her just enough reasons to do it,”

Natasha said, quietly but sharply as Shuri flinched as the Princess worked on healing Natasha's wrist.

“You played on her guilt, Nick. We all did. And now, we have to find a way to make things right."

Sam shook his head before he asked, looking around the room with an angered look on his face.

"So, what now? Do we just wait until the next world leader gets assassinated in front of the whole damn world? How do we get (Y/n) back and get that damn failsafe deactivated?"

Strange spoke, a newfound hesitation within his voice as he murmured.

"We won't be able to reach her with just magic. The failsafe has magic hindering properties which are making it extremely difficult to reach her. If I try to force it, I risk breaking her mind and possibly killing (Y/n)'s identity...leaving just the Winter Soldier, and then there will be no saving her. With her mind already fractured in the way that it is, I can't do this knowing that I could kill her."

Tony rubbed his forehead before clasping his hands.

"Alright, then what dumbass idea are we going to try next? Knocking on the front door?"

Fury pursed his lips before he sighed.

"I might know of some people that can help."

Sam rolled his eyes.

"Oh, I'm dying to hear this one."

Fury didn't grace Sam with a response, and the man vaguely stated.

"I'll have you, Strange, Tony, Bucky, and Peter go. The boy can stand to learn something there."

Tony narrowed his eyes, crossing his arms.

"You know, I don't really know if I wanna follow the orders of a man who just royally fucked up."

"Do you want to save the girl or not?"

Fury's face was stern, his eye staring directly at Tony, and the Avenger subtly furrowed his brow before he stated.

"Without you, kind of."

"Then get to work."

-UPSTATE NEW YORK-

It was early in the afternoon when the quinjet landed before the Institute. The summer day was bright, the sunlight blinding, and Bucky wanted to be anywhere but here. He was still enraged, finding himself in a training room within Wakanda and absolutely destroying every practice dummy there was when Peter came in to talk to him about Fury's plan.

"Um, Bucky? Can I...come in?"

Bucky was almost tempted to tell Peter to fuck off, but bit his tongue to keep himself from lashing out. He was just a kid, and he hadn't had anything to do with this. If anything, Peter had protested just as much as Bucky had, and he was sure Peter didn't know or realize how much he appreciated it.

However, Bucky was finding it hard to be graceful. His mind was reeling, unable to get (Y/n)'s dead eyes out of his head no matter how hard he punched the training dummy.

Traitor.

Why had she said that? Was it because he had abandoned HYDRA? Was it because Bucky had been able to escape? Or was it something worse...

Did the soldier recognize that he was the one who essentially made her into what- she was?

"What is it, Queens?"

Peter wrung his hands together, and the young man came to sit beside Bucky on a closed crate, presumably filled with training equipment. Peter looked unsure of what to say before he muttered.

"I'm sorry."

Bucky was surprised by the words, turning to glance over at Peter with a frown as he asked, a bit harsher than he had intended.

"What the hell are you apologizing for? You didn't do anything wrong."

Peter was wringing his hands again, twisting his mask over in over out of habit, shaking his head as his eyes looked down at the floor; a strange expression of guilt coming over him.

"I know I didn't do anything wrong, but...I didn't want you to think that you were the only one fighting for her."

The sincerity within Peter's voice had Bucky's shoulders relaxing just the slightest, and Bucky gazed at Peter for a moment before he stated.

"You're a good kid, Peter."

The use of his actual name had Peter shooting his head up, and Peter seemed surprised by the amount of tired honesty that was in Bucky's voice. Peter bit his lip before he asked.

"She matters a lot to you, doesn't she?"

"Yeah...I guess so."

Peter nodded before he took a deep breath, and he revealed.

"I know you're not exactly on great terms with Fury, but...he thinks he knows someone that can get through to (Y/n) in a way that Strange can't...and much stronger than Wanda. He wants you to go with Strange, Tony, and I somewhere...he hasn't told us yet though."

Bucky frowned heavily, his irritation coming full swing, and Bucky launched a brutal punch to the training dummy; the shell cracking from the force of his punch.

"Why the hell should I listen to that bastard?"

"Honestly, you probably shouldn't, but if there's a chance that someone can save (Y/n), then I think we should try to hear him out."

Bucky's lip curled back slightly, and he rolled his eyes.

"Last time we did that, we lost (Y/n). What makes you think that this is going to be any different?"

Peter shrugged before offering weakly.

"Spidey senses?"

"I think I'm gonna need more than the 'Peter tingle', kid."

Peter grimaced and closed his eyes, begging.

"Oh, god, please don't call it that."

After shaking his head a bit, Peter then sighed and tilted his head a little as he looked at Bucky.

"Look, I know that you're angry...and I couldn't fathom losing MJ like this or...or Aunt May, but I think we should give it try...anything to save Miss (Y/n)."

Bucky glanced at Peter, the two sharing a long look before Bucky huffed and shook his head.

"Alright, fine. Fine, I'll hear them out."

Peter smiled, and that had been that.

Standing in front of the Institute, however, Bucky was regretting his decision. It looked like a regular school, kids mingling outside and doing homework, and Tony commented with a frown.

"Okay, so we're going to talk to a guy that collects mutant kids like Pokémon cards? Really?"

Peter looked shocked, asking as the group walked up to the school, the kids giving the men strange looks as they approached.

"Wait, how do you know about Pokémon?"

"Kid, do you think I was born under a rock?"

Strange shot Tony a sideways glance, his expression dry as the man replied and kept Peter from responding.

"Charles Xavier is one of the foremost minds in psionics and metaphysical theory. He also happens to run a school for young mutants. Not everything has to be an evil mastermind’s lair, Stark."

Tony raised an eyebrow before scoffing and rolling his eyes.

"Tell that to every bald guy with a secret compound and a god complex."

Peter, meanwhile, was squinting at the building with visible interest, his senses going crazy and the hairs on his arm standing up, but not out of a sense of danger, but from the amount of power that was in one place.

"This is awesome. I read about the Xavier Institute once. My best friend, Ned, is obsessed. He said it's like...the Hogwarts for mutants."

Bucky grunted, shaking his hair out of his face as he rolled his eyes with annoyance

"Whatever the hell it is, let's just hope they got the answers we need."

Before anyone could reply, the doors to the Institute opened—and out stepped a man built like a tank, with worn leather and sideburns sharper than his glare and a large cigar perched between his lips. His hazel eyes were glaring at Tony, sizing the man up as he spoke.

"If you're here to drop more snide remarks, Stark, you're gonna find yourself on the end of my claws."

Logan's voice was rough, gravel-ground and unimpressed. Behind him, Hank McCoy descended the stairs with a far more pleasant demeanor, brushing dust off his vest like he’d just come from a lecture and poorly-hidden excitement brightening his face.

"Oh, play nice, Logan. Visitors mean fresh perspectives, fresh jokes, and potentially fascinating conversations about quantum telepathy if we're lucky."

Logan threw over his shoulder with an annoyed glare.

"Speak English, would you?"

Peter's eyes widened, his jaw dropping as he whispered.

"Oh my god, it's Wolverine...and...and Beast! This is so cool!"

Bucky took a long glance at Logan, and Logan gave the man a firm look back. The two men began to size each other up, and when neither of them backed down, Strange cleared his throat.

"If we're quite done trying to think of whose dick is bigger, I'd like to hold council with Charles, if you will allow us the pleasure."

Logan finally glanced at Strange, frowning before muttering and turning, waving the man off.

"What the hell should I care? Charles has been expecting you anyway. But if you think you're gonna get any fun ideas, do yourself a favor, and don't."

Logan walked off, and Hank gave the man a frown before turning to the group with an apologetic look.

"I do apologize for him. He's been quite upset since Charles informed us of the situation. Please, follow me."

Logan was already halfway up the steps, and Hank launched into a history of the Institute. Peter was listening intently the whole time, but Bucky quickly tuned the man out. Besides Strange, Bucky had noticed the way the air suddenly felt charged. There was a brush of pressure against his head, and it was almost as if someone was knocking and asking to be let in.

Bucky shook his head, jaw clenched, and Strange glanced at him with understanding. When the group made it outside of Charles' office, Logan walked in with no care, Hank giving him a disapproving look before sighing and escorting the men into the office.

Charles Xavier was sitting at his desk, a kind smile on his face as he greeted the group.

"I was waiting for you. I hope you found our Institute welcoming. Please do forgive Logan. He's untrusting and very protective of our youth here."

Tony slumped down onto the couch on the side of the room as if he owned the place, and Peter awkwardly sat down in front of the desk. Strange stayed standing before the chess set, and Bucky hung back near the door. Charles' expression became softer as he looked over the group. His eyes settled onto Tony first, his eyes teasing and playful.

"Mr. Stark, I must assure you that we don't collect kids, but rather that they choose to be here. I do appreciate you keeping your keen sense of humor outside Institute halls."

Tony's eyes widened, and he shook his head, stating gruffly.

"Alright, that's kind of creepy."

Charles chuckled before his eyes swept over Peter, who was awestruck by the man as the Professor spoke.

"Peter, don't worry about the mic being left on during your one-man concert last night. It went mostly unheard."

Peter's face immediately turned red as Hank snorted in amusement, Peter stating.

"What? How did you...oh, this is highly unethical."

Logan couldn't help but to smirk slightly from his position against the wall besides Charles. When Charles glanced at Strange, he winced before he chuckled.

"Doctor Strange, your mind is a very intense but fascinating place. Forgive me for attempting, but I simply could not resist the urge."

Strange's lips were pursed into a tight line, and he replied politely, nodding his head.

"I would rather you not go crazy, so please don't try again."

Charles and Strange shared an understanding look, and finally, Charles looked at Bucky. Bucky was standing stiffly in the back of the room, his arms crossed and looking uncomfortable, and his gaze shot to Charles when the Professor addressed him.

"Sergeant Barnes."

Bucky's jaw clenched, immediately feeling his hackles rise, but Charles comforted him with a raised hand, stating.

"Do not worry, I won't invade your privacy. I believe you've had enough people within your mind already."

For a moment, Bucky didn’t respond. But something in his posture—barely a shift in his shoulders—suggested a thread of gratitude beneath the tension. Charles didn’t press. He merely offered a small, knowing nod before turning to the rest of the group.

"Now, I believe we have a dilemma on our hands that needs rectified promptly."

Strange nodded, and he began to explain the situation to Charles. Charles listened closely, his expression turning grim as Strange continued to talk. Hank was becoming interested and fascinated as Strange explained the failsafe, and Logan was...strangely stone-faced. It was hard to get a read on the man, but Bucky could tell that the man was becoming increasingly bothered.

'I do apologize for him. He's been quite upset since Charles informed us of the situation.'

Why did the man care so much? Logan hadn’t moved much at all since the group had arrived in Professor Xavier's office, but Bucky saw the twitch in his jaw, the way his fingers flexed like he was holding something back. He’d seen that kind of simmering before—in himself, in others like him. This wasn’t just concern. It was personal. When Strange was finished, he ended his explanation with a sigh.

"So, that's why we are here. Fury believes that you, or perhaps one of your colleagues, would be able to help somehow."

Charles steepled his fingers, his expression inquisitive as he spoke.

"HYDRA's tampering was extremely extensive, but it was not just cruel: it was methodical. They didn't want to just control, but...it seems they wanted obedience through complete identity erasure that it much more advanced than it was before. The more that (Y/n) is put through, the farther this fracture extends, and if it gets far enough...(Y/n)'s identity could very-well fade away to leave only the Winter Soldier persona."

Tony became still, his breathing seeming to still as Peter's expression became stricken. Bucky's face darkened, and Logan seemed to become uncomfortable. Charles' expression drifted, looking distant as if he was remembering something.

"To fracture a mind so completely and then bind it with a single thread—this is psychic engineering at its most insidious. I'm afraid the damage is likely embedded deep in both conscious and unconscious memory in order to achieve this identity erasure."

Charles then glanced at Hank, the Beast fidgeting with a need to pace as he waited to speak, and when Charles nodded, Hank immediately jumped onto the opportunity.

"You said that the failsafe was installed into her neurobiology, correct?"

Strange nodded, and Hank brought a hand up to his chin as he began to think.

"It isn't unheard of to be able to influence a genetic code. The world has been researching genetic engineering for years...certain chemicals interact with certain proteins and enzymes, DNA and RNA, and so on."

Hank began to pace as he thought, his eyes widening with intrigue as he spoke.

"From a biological standpoint, I imagine the trigger operates similarly to classical conditioning. Trauma-response loops. Neurochemical reinforcement. Perhaps even physical alterations to her amygdala or hippocampus if they were truly thorough."

His voice had risen slightly, fascinated now.

"It’s a horrifying example of neurological repatterning. Like Pavlov, if he’d been given access to advanced neuroscience and absolutely no ethical constraints."

Strange uncrossed his arms, asking as he regarded Hank with a grim expression.

"So, it truly is both psychic and physical."

"It would seem so. A telepath can begin to undo the work that HYDRA has done psychically, but if the body itself is reinforcing those patterns… well, we’ll need a multi-pronged approach."

Charles nodded in agreement before looking around the room.

"We must tread carefully. If we do not do this as carefully as possible, then we risk furthering the damage and causing a full collapse. (Y/n) will be lost, and there will be nothing that can be done."

Charles' eyes drifted to the Time Stone that was pressed against Strange's chest, and Strange instantly frowned, a sense of protectiveness coming over him. Charles, however, said nothing and he moved from behind the desk. Maneuvering his wheelchair to the window, he looked almost distraught for a moment, and Logan picked up on it immediately.

"What are you thinking, old man?"

Charles didn’t answer right away. His gaze swept out the window, catching on the students sparring in the courtyard, their laughter echoing faintly. A moment passed. Then another. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, thoughtful.

"I’m thinking about the cost."

Logan’s brow furrowed.

"The cost of what?"

Charles turned just enough for his profile to catch the light, shadows beneath his eyes deeper than usual.

"Of interfering. Of rescuing someone from that level of psychological imprisonment. Lukas Meiers may be just a man, but he’s armed himself with allies—ones who know how to protect him. Not just with magic. With power. Influence. Eyes in places we cannot see."

He looked at Strange then, calm but firm.

"The Time Stone may give us a glimpse into outcomes, but it cannot weigh the morality of those choices. That burden remains ours."

Strange nodded slowly, sensing the direction.

"You’re afraid that trying to save her… might break her."

Charles closed his eyes for a beat.

"I’m afraid that if we are not careful, we may destroy what little remains of her free will and her identity."

-

STORY NOTES: No summary this time! 8.1k words!! My longest chapter yet <3

TAGGING: @ravenswritingroom @mggslefttit @softpia @thebl00dwyrm @buckvoidsyy @chonkybonky @seemsxsketchy @tilldeathripsusapart @vicmc624 @mgchaser @aash3 @samfunko @seventeen-x @valckenaux @babybeeelle @sc4rrc @cjand10 @bane-y-zane @notsostrangerthing @thenameswinter99 @bumblebeebutter @torntaltos @highhopes1008

[balrogballs]

queen of ai art <3

I genuinely have no idea what the fuck is in the tap water right now considering these all came in the last ten days from what I suppose are different people considering I blocked the first two… either that or it is one very persistent person or the collective actions of what I assume is probably the world’s most depressing groupchat. Incest anon, come back, I miss you on hindsight.

I don't normally answer mean-spirited questions but these pissed me off recently because of the nature of the accusations. So, let’s get into a long, illustrated lesson including a WIP gallery as to why you shouldn’t rely on “gotcha” AI logic and/or be a little twat, with tips on manual digital scaling, presented in classic Balls style.

Now, the vast majority of my art is traditional, many are quick ‘challenge’ sketches—they are drawn or painted on paper. With many of them, there are progress shots. Sometimes multiple, including fucking gemwork. Sometimes I do silly sketches. I have also been quite open that I’m really focusing on exploring varying styles of portraiture at the moment after an artistic background in watercolour landscapes. A number of you follow my traditional art blog where said landscapes were posted, and you know they’re banging.

Now, I’ve posted *checks notes* like five digital pieces last year from the time I owned a tablet (after which all my work has been trad due to being indefinitely parted from said tablet), and none of them are what you’d call professional quality, considering most of my work is traditional/realist and I am still not very good at stylised or digital drawing. I’ll choose my “best”/most detailed one for the purposes of this impromptu demonstration using the files I do have on me at the moment.

Due to my background in traditional art 👆🏻I always and without fail do my initial sketching by hand, because I find it difficult to get perspective and proportions correct digitally, because I learnt various pencil angling tricks etc… so anything I have drawn digitally that includes people/buildings, I’d do a sketch on paper and scan it, and do the lineart from there.

Here is the sketch, the sketch cleaned up into lineart, shaded values, and a portion of the colour-blocking stage, where I checked to make sure the major colours don’t clash at the borders, thanks to Thingol’s bright orange outfit from hell.

I assume what has been done here is that you or whatever program you’re using has picked up on the below little noisy bits, threads and spirals and decided they’re AI. Let me introduce you to the magic of textural overlays, aka texture stamps/brushes, which I get so impatient with that it becomes quite obvious they’re on there… which works in my favour right now lmao.

Here is me sliding the opacity on and off sections, so you can see what exactly is going on (pillar with marbled effect, thingol skin texture, elrond jacket texture, elrond's remarkable forehead, and the marbled archway):

These aren’t overlaid by my mystery robot sex toy, they are done by hand and there’s around 20-30 different ones in any given piece, some of them (eg skin texture or leaves) are repeated 10-15 times. Using texture brushes or stamps is not a cardinal sin, they are literally sold on this website by the artists who make them. Here is a clip of me just selecting them all in one go, if you’d like that proven for your face eyes as well.

I have no excuses for overblending my colours or leaving sections choppy, I’m just lazy to do painterly detail on stylised digital pieces, and usually just stop after a couple rounds of blending. But if laziness was a crime then most nation-states in this world would not have a functioning government.

Now, the final two stages—because the base for these images are usually scans or photos of my sketches and thus not exactly at the best of resolutions, I upscale in Lightroom. Amusingly, image upscaling is actually normally done by AI either built into Photoshop or plugins—this isn’t exactly generative AI, it’s more an algorithm that breaks down your existing photo and “reconstructs” it at a higher resolution. Hence, many upscaled images are flagged as AI regardless of the manner of upscaling.

I am too stingy to purchase Photoshop, the above plugins can/do use your art to train generative AI even if it doesn’t use it for your image, and I have Lightroom Classic already—upscaling is relatively easy to do here and does not train AI. Here’s a walkthrough:

Open Image > Denoise > Play with Slider > Save as TIFF > Open TIFF > Develop Module > Enhance > Save DNG. Then, work on DNG image re: adding noise/brightness/contrast whatever.

Just a note that the ‘Super Resolution’ feature does actually use (algorithmic, not generative) AI so don’t click on that, just do the normal Enhance. This will increase your image size and resolution without sacrificing detail. However, the file itself would be fucking enormous by this point so you can either compress it yourself or use Canva or whatever.

If you don’t mean those and instead mean these fucking things, jesus fucking christ they’re free graphic design templates with free Illustrator vectors, get a fucking grip, ten days in a charity comms job and you can make these in your sleep while moving the mouse with your pussy.

Here is a collage of some of my other digital works at various stages as well, including pencil/pen sketches, to help you sleep at night:

Please remember that I stopped posting digital art except one charcoal+digital work after I was parted from my tablet in December. If I was really iBalls, I would have continued churning them out surely 😇

Writing

I am not going to even take this seriously because there is clearly no way to explain the concept of writing something in advance to people who clearly type out and immediately send every half-dusted thought the moment it farts itself into their brain.

However, if you are actually sitting in your home in the year 2025, when there is almost definitely litter in your neighbourhood that needs picking and dogs on the Rover app that go unwalked, feeding my fucking writing into whatever fucking AI detector you have that is, in turn, training whatever fucking AI generator it is linked to, simply because of whatever robot you have created in your brain that somehow knows very niche facts about the lifestyle, dialect, speech patterns, culture and politics of a frankly irrelevant town in 1970s Kerala, I genuinely do not wish you a single moment of joy in your life

I have already or will soon be privating some of my artwork considering there are people cheerfully sat there feeding my work to Musk’s field of cows in order to get yourself a good old gotcha against some random Elrondfucker on the Internet — I’m obviously not going to do that to my writing at the moment but please stop letting your actions be driven by your asshole instead of your brain.

As for this one, I initially thought of not being so cocky in my response but considering I either get a version of this like once a month or some fucker goes to another person’s blog to ask them if I’m not tired of people kissing my ass, let me tell you something:

I am not whatever hockey-playing girlboss it was that was a bitch to you in high school and you are now afraid is intruding into your fandom space. She must have sucked I am certain. I am very sorry you had to deal with her. But I am not her. She is not me. I can assure you of this. If you must know, I was a netball girl. In fact, I was netball team captain. If it actually was me, I sincerely apologise for accidentally on purpose fouling you in 2014 because I wanted to win the intra-school friendly and I promise I won’t ever do it again.

And just in general, let me please remind you that I did not curate this audience through purposeful posting of art and literature and tasteful selfies, I did it via the 'Lindircident' post, aka accidentally holding my asshole wide open for the light to shine through two weeks after I made this account and remaining in the same doubled-up position for the six months since.

Tschüss! 🖕

[avidhousehusband]

what are your thoughts on fiddleford and/or ford still being religious? I enjoy the idea of old queer characters reconciling with it, especially after the kinds of things they’ve been through

Ooooh here we go. Ok, so I've thought about this quite a bit. But i'm gonna try and keep it on the lighter side. Having typed this beast out, it's under a read more 😳

I think a lot of Ford's path with his faith can be attributed to this quote:

A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him. -Louis Pasteur, Founder of microbiology and immunology

Ford went from a Jewish childhood, to an observant-for-the-sake-of-his-ma teenager, then a no nonsense, man of science who assumed there could never be an overlap between science and faith.

But after the Portal, after Weirdmageddon, after everything he's seen, I don't think he could really explain his full feelings on his faith. I think he keeps it to himself most of the time, except for late night talks with Fiddleford about it.

Because he's seen so many things he doesn't understand. Things that shouldn't be, but somehow are. And during his time through the Portal, he's realized how little he actually knows about-- Everything. And it makes him consider things.

He says he doesn't know what to call that feeling. But there's a part of him, a quiet whisper in the back of his mind that he's afraid to address.

And while I don't think you'd see him voluntarily attending weekly Services in person, I do see instances where he does go. But I think his first service back, that only Fiddleford knew about it. He was really in his head about it, and didn't want it to be a whole "thing" that he had to explain. He didn't want it to mean he was making any grand statement, or declaration of any kind. He just wanted to go attend a service. They end up going to the Yom Kippur evening service at a Reform Synagogue.

As a kid, everything about going to Temple was uncomfortable. He didn't understand what they were reading or why, the clothes were a sensory hell, he wasn't allowed to bring one of his own books to read, and Filbrick always tended to be more irritable than usual.

But now that he was grown. He was wearing clothes he could actually breathe in. He and Fiddleford sat in the back (because he wasn't sure if he'd actually sum up the nerve to go in if he went alone.) He mostly observed, mumbling through the prayers he could remember. But he was shocked to realize how similar to meditation it all felt (bc it totally is, dude).

And I think that after services ended, they both sat there for a while while Ford tried to figure out what it was he was feeling.

He still doesn't go to services every week. In fact he rarely goes at all. But when he's having a bad time (think 'hasn't slept, PTSD brain fog, and his executives have stopped functioning) he does go. It helps. He still feels weird about it at times, but Fiddleford's a good conversation partner to have. I'd like to think that the biggest religious display Ford has is a Magen David that he wears sometimes. He fiddles with it, which helps too.

Fiddleford though!

Tennessee in the 60s? The McGuckets were Southern Baptist, baybee. But I'd like to think that his family attended a rural church that wasn't in support of the, then in Vogue, "Jesus Movement", an outreach program that ultimately led a lot of young hippies to Christianity.

Fiddleford liked it, thought it looked loose and fun. But his parents, while not actively hateful, were definitely the brand of Christian parents of the time that believed "there was a right way to do things." That didn't include people dancing barefoot in the aisles at church. So they looked askance towards that kind of progressive Christianity.

So Fiddleford was a good farm kid, got good grades, then went to college, found BMU's Christian hippies and fell in with them when not with Ford. He met Emma-May through them and saw an opportunity to check that box and be a good son, and a good husband.

(If we're still goin with Trans man Fiddleford, which is my favorite, not much changes. But after the Supreme Court victory in 1976 allowing a trans woman to marry a cis man, he immediately got married to Emma May and moved to California so they'd be safer (and yeah Im going to ignore that they required full reassignment surgeries for that sshhh) )

He did his best, and was struggling with the classic guilt that one gets growing up in a conservative country church. Especially as a closeted queer man. He gets the call from Ford, drives up to Oregon, and bing bang boom, 30 year cognitive spiral that still found him seeking shelter in places of worship (I see you Land Before Swine).

After all's said and done, after Weirdmageddon, I think he spends a lot of time thinking about God. Especially in those ten months where he lived alone in the mansion. (I'm going with my fic timeline btw)

It gave him a LOT of time to think, and process. I think he grieved. I think he was confused, Angry. I think he went back and forth between apathy and pleading, confused prayer. But I also think there's ultimately still a lot of comfort to be found for him in faith.

I think on paper he goes to an in-person service much quicker than Ford does. He looks online and scours the county for the most safe, affirming, radical love church he could find (Cough* Episcopalians)

The first time he goes, he sits in the back and Just barely makes it through the opening hymn before he scrambles out the door.

It takes him a while to go back. But eventually he does.

And sure, after taking Eucharist for the first time in thirty-something years, he has a massive panic attack in the back pew and doesn't go back for 4 months. But he still goes back eventually. Not every week, not even every month, but he goes sometimes. He really likes the choir, and their priest is kind.

If you asked him about his faith, I don't know what he'd say. But I'd like to think he'd just shrug and carry on with whatever he was doing.

And uhh, the end.🤷‍♂️

This was super fun!! Thanks for the ask!!

[internetgiraffekid1673]

AU Chloé Bourgeois from @princess-of-the-corner

I've been trying out new drawing tools, since I finally gave up on the random bare-bones program I downloaded back in high school, and a coworker recommended procreate. To familiarize myself with it, I decided to draw some of Cornerverse's alternate universe Chloes! Here are the drawings, with the AU explanations under the cut:

Honeybee (Hero Chat) and Lady Luck:

These are Corner's two main AUs. Hero Chat has the heroes set up a group chat back in season 3 to avoid miscommunications, and canon divergence ensues from there. Chloe and Kagami have both pulled a Catwalker there, but everybody does get a design update (I yoinked the pose, since this was the first one I drew and I didn't want to think too hard).

Lady Luck is a pretty standard fare Kwami Swap AU where Chloe gets the Ladybug, and most other characters' miraculous are also shuffled around, since Chloe is doing the picking. Corner's designs here!

Forged AU

After the events of Miracle Queen, Chloe gets a kwami from a different Miracle Box--Miirzan, the bear Kwami of Fire---and makes protecting the exposed heroes her personal mission, since nobody did it for her.

Chloe takes an interesting route for her hero costume in this AU. The first time she went out, she was actually just trying to use the glamour to not get recognized as a civilian, which meant she went with understated clothing that was functionally a palette swap of what she was wearing that day (pictured on the left). While she continues with this trend in the story, I also wanted to give her a proper hero costume, perhaps after she gains some more stability, so I made one myself ;) (pictured on the right).

Double Trouble

After Miracle Queen, Chloe and Ladybug talk and realize taking away an exposed heroe's only means of protection and benching them won't actually keep them safe. Instead, Ladybug permanently hands out the Miraculous, but shuffles them around so it looks like they picked a completely new team. At the same time, Chloe starts working as a double agent against MothBalls and Mayura (who think she's a double agent for them), and gets paired up with Lila. Some Sonic Adventure 2 fandub jokes go a long way to easing that particular relationship, and the future gets a whole lot brighter.

While the whole AU was built on Sonic fandub jokes, Chloe doesn't ACTUALLY say the "I HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT" line. That honor goes to Alya in Hero Chat. But, I figured it was fitting just for the drawing. I ever so slightly adjusted Corner's horse!Chloe design to be an even more explicit Nightmare Moon reference.

Bee, Wasp, and Hornet:

In an effort to explain the massive personality retcons between season 1-3 Chloe, and season 4-5 Chloe, a theory was proposed that 4-5 Chloe (Joé/Hornet) is actually a sentimonster created by Hawkmoth and 1-3 Chloe (Bee) is somewhere else entirely. She comes back sometime in the middle of season 5 and is pissed as all hell about her replacement, but Zoe (Wasp) considers both of them her sisters and is determined to make things work.

While this AU is sometimes combined with Corner's Isekai!Chloe AU, sometimes she's just yeeted someplace out of the way so she can't be involved in the plot for a bit. Personally, I like the idea that she ended up camped out in the ReVerse and was only able to return after the Paris Special.

(I did lightly redesign Zoe here, just to cater more to how I picture her in my head. Joé's design is just canon!Chloe, but I got to put AU Chloe in whatever the hell I wanted, so I went whole hog on my thing about putting her in blue and giving her the curly hair Corner and I both headcanon as her natural hair texture).

Princess Bee:

After the Season 5 finale, the dust didn't quite settle as it did in canon. Chloe, now with hard evidence that neither of her parents cared about her, worked her butt off to get into law school with no assistance from them and cut ties completely, down to changing her last name. While there, she befriended the world's most generic dude John Doe, who later married the world's most generic chick Jane Doe and they settled down on a horse farm in Kansas. After some therapy, Chloe decided she wanted a kid, but in vitro would be too much of a hassle, and John agreed to help her out. This is the family photo.

Back in Paris, things got. Complicated. During the final fight, LB and CN ended out having to make a Wish to defeat Hawkmoth. The price was that neither Ladybug nor her allies were able to use the Miraculous ever again.

This meant that when Lila started her grand vengeance plan using the butterfly, she got straight up ghosted. So instead, she just hung on to the butterfly for ~20 years doing low scale cons (and becoming friends with Chester Fester, the best character ever), aimlessly drifting as she grapples with her undiagnosed clinical depression.

Zoe, after witnessing how Andre was willing to up and replace his bio daughter when a shinier new replacement showed up, decided she wanted no part of it and called her dad to help her sort things out. She basically ended out living alone in an apartment in France sponsored by Mr. Lee with him as her legal guardian on paperwork, and more or less avoided talking about the whole situation with the rest of the Miraculous Gang.

Somewhere around the 20 year mark, after everyone has grown up, had kids, and moved on with their lives, everything goes to shit. Andre, who hasn't updated his will in all that time, finally kicks the bucket, and Chloe is dragged kicking and screaming back to Paris (with her daughter Dawn in tow) to deal with the defunct hotel she just inherited.

At the same time, the Adrienette kids finally find the Miraculous stowed in their house, and decide to take them out for a joyride in a burst of teenage stupidity. They immediately end up on the news and Lila comes out of the woodwork to address some unresolved grudges. With the original Miraculous Team incapable of using their powers, and with no other options readily available, the next gen kids are now unfortunately Holders who have to stop her.

Oh, and of course Dawn miraculously (heh) ends up going to the same school as Adrienette's kids and she and Emma are gay as fuck for each other. Their parents are unaware of the connection to their past for a comedically long period of time.

Basically, the next gen kids are in a Magical Girl Anime, Chloe is unwillingly playing Homescapes with the hotel, and the OG Miracuclass are watching the mistakes of their past come back to haunt them :).

Everyone remember to go check out Corner's tumblr and their ao3, there is so much fun fuckery (not just ML fuckery either) going on over there! Thank ya and goodnight!

[grison-in-space]

Hey hey! Wyrd told me you trained your dog to help with executive dysfunction stickyness/ repetitive action and I would LOVE to know how you trained this. I am training my pet to do a few in-home things before I get my prospect in hopefully this year

Oh, hi! There's a longer post about this topic elsewhere in my Matilda tag you might want to check out.

A lot of my training approach is informed by the experimenting I did with alarms that interact with other senses besides acoustics during COVID. I got completely nonresponsive to phone alarms and things, and I was under a truly catastrophic amount of stress related to my PhD at the time, so my general functioning wasn't great and I really NEEDED external cues to trigger basic daily tasks. Unfortunately I have a pretty impressive ability to hyperfocus right past obnoxious alarms, and worse, I am very very good at absently turning alarms off or mimicking paying attention without actually pulling my focus away from the subject of my attention. You get a 5-30sec buffer of retained information for the purposes of holding up a conversation which I am continuously dumping. I am not necessarily doing it consciously, but that doesn't make it not frustrating. Especially because if a human does get my attention, many years of RSD tends to set me at hyper defensive right out of the gate. That's not ideal for a bunch of reasons.

Anyway, I found that vibration or tactile stimuli, as well as visual stimuli (I rigged a disco lamp to turn on at hourly intervals in a desperate attempt to track the passage of time), worked quite well to capture my attention and let me step out of hyperfocus enough to do the next thing. I figured eventually I would have to see humans in their meat suits again and people get weird about shit like this, so I needed something relatively discreet and quiet that shouldn't be disruptive to anyone else. I started thinking about building myself aids.

So the first idea I had was to just program a series of alarms into a smartwatch that could automatically attach them to alerts from my gcal, but it turns out that they don't have an api function that hooks up to stuff like "make watch buzz" and I ran out of bandwidth to deal with it. It eventually just seemed easier to train an entire dog to respond to a quiet alarm than to fight with the hardware and software to make a really good buzzwatch. I use a couple of different alarm ring tones to cue different actions just as you might train any dog to a word: this one means we go to the bedroom, that one means that if you take meds I get candy, and so forth. The actual sound of the alarm is a cue in its own right. I have some discussion in that other post about how I encouraged my dog to essentially play a game with me where she had to figure out how to get my attention without hurting (aka NO SCREAMING WITH YOUR VERY LOUD HIGH PITCHED BARK). Essentially, I'm shaping that out of whatever behaviors she offers me that successfully catch my attention, defined operationally to her as "standing up + sustained eye contact."

In terms of catching me when I'm tending to get stuck on something or stationary without moving, that one is less "Yes I and my dog are amazing and I've trained her to read my mind" and more "I don't make eye contact when I'm dissociating and I almost always am staring into my phone." So if Matilda catches me drifting across the kitchen glued to phone, she knows that if she rockets up and nudges me into paying attention to my body, she'll get a reward. Consequentially, she's a bit enthusiastic about this one and will sometimes ram passersby with her nose, so definitely figure out your failure modes before you teach the dogs anything.

[a-couple-of-notes]

What are your thoughts on poly coven and if you do have have any what would the dynamic be?

You folks really want that Agatha All Along fic about all the different dynamics, don't you? 😂😂😂 (Referencing this ask--although I suppose I have no way of knowing whether this is the same anon. Thank you for the ask regardless!)

I enjoy poly coven, although I haven't read much of it! In my mind, there are two general ways to approach this: one where Billy functions as their non-romantic glue (the Billy-has-seven-moms approach) and one (more interesting imo) where we nix Billy altogether and let it be a true dumpster fire.

Billy Has Seven Moms:

The single thing they all agree on (no one believes Agatha when she equivocates, and Rio doesn't snarl about it, which is as close to agreement as they'll get) is that the kid comes first.

Agatha and Jen both provide a practical kind of mentorship: technical magical study, potion-making, spells. They snark at each other during lessons ("What happened to 'presenting a united front'?" says Agatha) and if Jen doesn't back off, Alice, Billy, or Lilia step in to stop it from going all the way downhill. Agatha and Jen fuck it out later.

Lilia mentors Billy in history, tarot, and witch culture--all the soft skills that Agatha and Jen aren't proficient in. She enjoys the quiet respect that all of the coven, but especially Billy and Alice, holds for her. She and Alice trade off nights cooking; Lilia's go-to recipes are old Sicilian favorites.

Alice is Billy's Normal Stable Person (TM), a fact that at one point sends Alice into a panic spiral that Agatha and Jen have to drag her out of. She's the one Billy comes to when he needs someone who understands what it's like to be a kid on your own--when he's having a tough time with someone else in the coven, when he's feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of mothers in his life. Alice teaches him guitar, and then, very hesitantly, protection spells passed down to her from Lorna.

Rio mopes around like a disgruntled housecat, never quite looking at Billy. The only time she does is when Billy announces he wants to make a Sharon Davis memorial garden. She doesn't help, of course, not in any way that Billy sees. But she does watch.

Of course, this well-oiled mentorship program works only as long as Billy is with them on the timeshare schedule. As soon as he's gone, it's like a ghost house with five roommates who hate each other's guts. If they still have separate places of residence, they all leave (except for the times when Jen is so annoyed with Agatha they bang first). If they actually do live in the same house, they all go into their separate rooms.

Then they seek each other out in pairs or trios, depending on what they want. Alice and Jen seek each other out when they want a normal date night; Rio seeks Lilia when she wants to talk shop about the old days; Agatha seeks Alice when it's been a hard day and she wants someone to be quiet about it. (Although let's be real: if Agatha's seeking someone out, it's also usually to fuck.)

Sometimes these pairs have a good time together; other times it turns into a fight that someone else cleans up. Lilia keeps count.

The only time the whole coven joins together sans Billy is when there's a threat. Usually to Agatha. Sometimes (futilely) to Rio. It always ends in massive property damage and murder, and there's an 80% chance the five of them have messy wow-we're-all-still-our-version-of-alive-sex afterward.

Agatha makes lots of divorce jokes.

No Billy, Just Chaos:

It's worse.

You know, I'm not even gonna bulletpoint this out because it's slowly growing into its own fic idea, but--in a poly coven where there's no Billy, everything happens a lot quicker and dirtier. (This is also because it veers wildly off-canon, and we're dealing with these characters before they've arced out. You know, the nasty, messy versions of them.)

Of course there's still got to be something forcing them together--soulmarks! Billy dies in episode 4 and leaves them in a crumbling Road illusion! The Salem Seven invade Westview and they all pick the same hiding spot!--but the thing keeping them together would not then be a kid. It would not be someone with a good heart they all care about. It would be one of Agatha's freakishly charismatic cons, utter fear, or a combination of both. Thus, everyone would spiral toward their most feral selves fast.

To wit: Jen and Agatha skip straight to the hate sex, Rio gets amused and jealous and jumps in. Alice, having no kid to protect, focuses her efforts on Lilia (the coven's elder) and Agatha (the coven's leader). This brings Alice directly into the snare that is Rio/Agatha/Jen, becoming--if we're being kind--their right hand and--if we're being truthful--their pet. Lilia considers herself above this weird fucked-up power tangle, but she and Rio have centuries of history, and Rio is almost as good as Agatha at annoying people into making bad decisions. It would be terrible. It would be glorious.

[strangesomewhere]

Strange Development - What's in a game?

Hello hello! I forget if it's been a true-blue week since my last post, but here I am. I'm going to try and make Saturday my update day. Regardless, strange somewhere is going somewhere! This first week has been quite exciting, mostly focusing on planning and doing some first step drawings to get an idea of what this game is even going to look like. Thankfully, that's been the easy part. Getting back to drawing has been a pleasant gift all on its own, and even doing my on-paper concept art has been very nice too, even if I miss the conveniences of digital programs a lot sometimes...

So far, a lot of my time has been laying down the fundamentals in RPG Maker. It's a very familiar dance to me but one I find a bit tiring as I get all the plugins in, make sure all the yanfly stuff is in the right place, yada yada. Another has been making sure some of my base ideas will even function, which I can happily report so far has been looking quite good. Most of the status ailments work so far, as to various aspects of combat I was worried might not, even if the workarounds have been, annoying at times. Did you know RPG Maker MV doesn't allow you to determine how long a status effect stays active anywhere in the status effect or on any skill that inflicts it? I wish I didn't!

A bit of time has also been figuring out how I want this game to function on a macro level. I've had to change some of my underlying assumptions on how this game should work and why I would want it to work like that as development has properly kicked off. It started off as an almost repo-like/lethal company adjacent experience, but has morphed into a combination of that and Etrian Odyssey. While I wanted dungeons to be more randomly generated, I've settled on proper structures within the dungeons, with some randomly-generated elements, such as respawning loot, certain passages, and enemies. This keeps the spirit of the loop of getting farther and farther in the dungeon with every run as you get stronger, while allowing the benefits of a hand-crafted dungeon crawling experience, much in the same vein as Fear and Hunger. If I get even close to that game's quality though, I'll have succeeded far beyond my imagination!

This is my first experience properly doing animations within RPG Maker as well as actually engaging with the RPG part. I've always had the mantra "RPG Maker is great at making any kind of game, just don't make an RPG." I'm finding this to be more and more true the more interesting RPG stuff I try to do. Still, it hasn't been that bumpy of a ride, so I'll try not to complain too much. More exciting news next week hopefully!

[animation-is-my-jam]

I started my first Re-watch of WordGirl after a few years and realized something quite wholesome.

In "The Amazing Colossal Adventures of WordGirl", Tobey tries to get Becky to reveal that she's WordGirl by attempting to DESTROY HER HOUSE (the negative rizz is crazy)...

But "Tobey or Consequences" (the first official episode, btw), Tobey's robots not only saved them from this bush monster...

But also watered the normal bush when Mr Botsford was upset that the previous robot spilled the water.

We were shown SO early on that without even trying, Tobey is capable of creating great things. His robots are so helpful and polite.

Yep!! ALSO, awesome on the rewatch 👏 hope you enjoy it. I love this show in full.

And yeah, Tobey's robots are so cute. And I do find them very interesting in how they function. You'll get to some other episodes, but when they're not in complete control from Tobey, they're very good creations to things around them or have qualities that they want to do. I think the biggest example is Artsy. I know it's probably a gag to say that Tobey himself is a rude, destructive boy, while his robots, when they're more sentient, are the nice ones (well except chronos and wordbot, but thats on Tobey's behalf of their programming he made them with selfish attempt). However, I do think this could actually be a sort of extension of Tobey--his robots. He's the one who makes them after all, and probably without meaning to he puts his own emotions and mannerisms he represses into them. Or maybe he just makes them polite sometimes cause he's still a dorky kid who has whimsy in his programming. Remember, he has a buttons for a chicken dance and animal mimicry for robots.

I mostly say this because I have this cope with Tobey, especially if you read the comics and get to the little Tobey-bot head that Wordgirl befriends (which I think is an extension of Tobey's feelings for her that he's horribly expressing in real life but wants to ideally be more wholesome and yep also repressing it, so into that robot it goes). Plus, I also think about the robot school interlude shorts, and it's hilarious that there's a city program to try and reform his robots. Like, hmm, yes, Tobey can create amazing things it's why the city kinda wants in on it.

[ryuichirou]

I saw in the dark headcanon post that Ortho does some upsetting things to Idia at times. Could you give examples of that if you don’t mind? :3

Here is the post that I mentioned it in! Yeah, the idea was that after getting a “heart” Ortho began to enjoy messing with Idia’s head and playing with his emotional state a little bit. He is quite mischievous… or maybe just a little sadist, who knows :3

That original post was almost a year ago, and I am very happy people are still invested in this theme and send asks about it (there are a couple of more asking for hcs and god I hope I’ll finish these soon). Thank you for your interest, Anon!

Anyways, here are some examples of things that Ortho might do, starting with the milder ones:

Little things: putting obstacles on the floor and cables around Idia’s legs when he either focused on gaming or nodding off in his chair. Sometimes Idia instantly knows that it’s just Ortho messing around with him, but there are moments when he genuinely thinks that he is just that clumsy and gets embarrassed and upset. If he spills something on himself, it’s extra points for Ortho, because that always gets Idia upset.

Internet trolling. This one is also tricky, because if anyone knows how to differentiate an actual troll from a fake one it’s Idia, but then again, if anyone knows how to trick Idia into believing he is arguing with a real person it’s Ortho. He knows how Idia operates, so he could create an entire nonexistent person behind some imageboard Anon that somehow says just the right things to make Idia all heated up and upset. This one is exciting, it’s like a game! <3

Sending some guy from the Film Research club to talk to Idia. Ortho would write an entire script for him, because he knows how Idia is going to react a lot of times, so it’s not that difficult to come up with a conversation that’s going to spiral from just mild annoyance to Idia shaking and wanting to escape and yet being unable to do so. Honestly, it’s up to that random guy not to react to Idia starting to visibly panic. Ortho could also organise hazing, but I mentioned something similar in the original post.

Messing with Idia’s food and drinks. Ortho monitors so many of Idia’s body functions, it’s very easy for him to figure out how much of potion/drug to add to whatever he’s eating or drinking so his body reacts in an upsetting way, but doesn’t harm him in a long-run. Ortho also knows that Idia gets way too focused on videogames and programming and neglects his natural urges, so a drink that fills his bladder quicker and “expands” inside of it is a perfect choice: the moment Idia figures that he should probably take a toilet break, he’ll already be leaking.

… or puking; and in that scenario Ortho would bring him a bowl (or take him to the toilet), help him out, hold his hair, pat his back and make him promise that he’ll always listen to Ortho and eat properly. Idia will shake, hiccup and swallow tears, but promise with a weak voice.

But the most cruel thing of would be to act upset at Idia for no reason, making it seem like Idia should know why Ortho is so angry at him and doesn’t want to talk to him. They’ve never had a serious fight before, and Idia really isn’t used to Ortho avoiding him. So not only it’s super interesting to watch Idia just shut down and get all quiet, and then get upset and maybe even a little mad, but then quiet again. It probably won’t take long until he breaks. And how clingy he’s going to be when Ortho loves him again! This is the best <3 But this one is definitely something that Ortho should do suuuuper rarely.

[stitching-in-time]

Voyager rewatch s6 ep4: Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy

This episode was supposed to be funny, but all the humor depends on finding middle-aged straight dudebro attitudes hilarious, which I don't. I'm not a huge fan of the Doctor to begin with, and stuff like this doesn't help.

This episode retreads a lot of the same ground as the Next Generation episode 'Hollow Pursuits', except with less fun and charm. In that episode, it was a character we didn't really know, Barclay, recreating our familar characters on the holodeck as an intentional way to make his new co-workers less intimidating. He didn't know them all well in real life, and most of them were his superior officers, so it was basically some guy in a new job trying to cope with a scary new boss. It turned the audience's view of the regular characters on it's head with an outsider's perspective, and as a joke, it was punching up because this guy had no power over them. Meanwhile, the Doctor does know the senior staff of Voyager very well, and (supposedly) considers them friends, as well as having a good deal of power over them as their only doctor on the ship. So his fantasies about them, rather than being funny, just come off as gross. I would absolutely be hurt if I found out someone who was supposedly my friend thought of me the way the Doctor thinks of the Voyager crew, especially the women. Wanting to be smarter and braver and better than everyone is childish, but at least somewhat understandable, but wanting all of your female friends to be romantic/sexual rivals fighting over you and constantly trying to seduce you in the middle of staff meetings is just icky.

That the Doctor can work alongside all these people for all these years and still see all the women in his life as sex objects is unbelievably offensive dudebro bs. He's not even a real person, he's a freaking computer program, and yet he's still got all this misogyny? Do the dudebros in that writer's room really think of women that way? Do they think that's normal? I guess so!

It's especially egregious with B'Elanna, since he's so rude to her all the time, and he's only ever nice to her when he needs her to fix his program. Otherwise, he's condescending and sometimes downright racist to her, and clearly doesn't like her very much for whatever reason, yet he wants her to be madly in love with him? He wants her to just forget about the actual relationship she's in and fawn over him? Eww! He has no respect for her as a person at all, and that sucks. In fact, this whole episode's plot was precipitated by him once again not respecting her authority, since she told him not to mess around with his program without consulting her in a previous episode where he did just that, and ended up assaulting her and almost killing a guy. Yet here he is, disobeying her again, despite his promise not too, and nobody gives him as much as a slap on the wrist. Janeway absolutely should have backed B'Elanna up and reprimanded him for disobeying her orders again, since she's functionally his doctor, in addition to being chief engineer.

The captain finding the Doctor's puerile adolescent boy fantasies funny isn't very believeable either. I honestly can't imagine Picard or Sisko being put in a position like that and finding it cute. Aside from the fact that she's the captain, and literally the boss of everyone, I know I'd be hurt if I found out someone I'd been friends with for years really just wanted me to be a brainless bimbo panting after him. The little tag on the end of the one scene where he has a line about wanting to be the hero all the time so he can help the people he loves rings hollow, quite honestly. It's meant to be there to excuse his obnoxious behavior, but he doesn't have to put other people down to make himself more important, and he certainly doesn't have to objectify all the women in his life either. It doesn't seem like he loves or cares about any of them very much the way he's constantly insulting everyone, and obviously doesn't respect the authority of any of the women on that ship at all. His crush on Seven is actually the least gross of them all, since he's at least reasonably courteous toward her most of the time, but he's still paternalistic and condescending, and there was absolutely no need for a scene of him painting her in the nude to illustrate how much he objectifies her, since we already know that. (And gratuitous female nudity isn't progressive. This is Star Trek, it's supposed to do better.)

Even the song the Doctor sings in this ep is full of sexism- I forget what opera it's from, but the lyrics translate to something along the lines of "women are fickle and have foolish thoughts in their heads". At first I thought, ugh, do they not know what the lyrics to this song mean? Why would they give him that to sing, of all things? But as the episode progressed, the sexism became a major theme, so I guess maybe it was intentional. Big yikes! The only things that were actually funny in this ep were when the Doctor imagined the computer sassing him and telling him to get going and save the ship, and Tom's 'WTF??' reaction face at seeing the Doctor's gross little fantasies. (Tom truly represents us all in this one.)

The real problem here is that the writer of this episode thinks that men treating women this way is normal, but it's not, he's just sexist. And so is the Doctor. So I found it very hard to have any kind of sympathy or root for him during this episode. Moreover, I think the whole premise that the Doctor is somehow being treated worse than any other crew member is ridiculous man-baby whining. They all have a job to do, and since they're alone in the Delta Quadrant, those jobs are even more crucial. Nobody on that ship would be allowed to abandon their Starfleet jobs to go do opera or whatever whenever they want, no matter if they're a hologram or flesh and blood. Nobody on that ship is getting a promotion either, and Harry Kim saved their asses more times than the Doctor did. The Doctor whining about not being assigned to go on an away mission is more privileged man-baby nonsense- nobody gets to go on every away mission just because they want to. And regular Starfleet officers aren't allowed to whine about it or be snotty to the rest of the crew over it and get away with it, they suck it up like professional adults- except for the Doctor, because he's a special boy, so he gets to be rude and snippy without getting a reprimand from anyone. (And B'Elanna was actually trying to be nice to him about it, yet he was still rude to her.) I guess the Doctor really is closer to being a real white man than he thinks, since he's got the whole sense of entitlement to special treatment down cold.

I just can't find any sympathy in my heart for rude, whiny middle aged white men, whether they're holographic or otherwise. The Doctor's disrespect is not only not funny, but once again, put Voyager in actual danger. Just because he was able to avert it in the end, it doesn't mean that the initial bad behavior was okay. I'm pretty sick of the way the Doctor's constant rudeness and disrespect of everyone around him is presented as acceptable or even cute, and he never gets any meaningful consequences for any of it.

Tl;dr: An episode that failed at being funny because it bought into sexist assumptions that all men think of the women in their lives as sex objects, and that men are oppressed when they don't get special treatment. There was so much gross dudebro stuff here that I found it impossible to sympathize or care about the Doctor at all in this ep.

[smugpugchimera]

Hey, been wanting to ask for abit. What drawing tablet and software do you use, and do you have any suggestions? I've felt inspired to actually commit to learning to draw and your stuff's always really cool looking. Figure you have plenty of experiences trying things.

Hope you're doing okay tonight, also. :-)

Hello, thanks for your ask!

I'd honestly say that the specifics aren't rly super important, it's just a matter of having learning tools that work well and are comfortable and intuitive. I myself changed quite a few tablets, and especially nowadays, they're all pretty good! Huion is a very nice option that's not very expensive, I'm using it currently. I had Gaomon previously, and while I liked it a lot, I'd say it's a little bit of an oddball setting-vice, maybe not the best option for a very first tablet? Idk. Wacom are good tools, but I personally think they're overpriced.

Art program is a pretty important thing, I'm using Sai2, and it's a nice one and very intuitive imo, but I'd also suggest Clip Studio Paint for it wider functionality. I'm trying to transition to it myself, but habits are hard to break out of :P

Krita is a lovely free alternative, too! It even has animation tools and is quite pleasant, all things considered. At the end of the day, what matters the most is if you're able to get used to a program and feel comfy with it! It's particularly a matter of habit, and some esoteric mix of preferences, if you can, try out several ones. It's important to give yourself enough time to get used to any tool. Whatever the tool is, you will get better the longer you work with it. I hate drawing in Photoshop (pirated, never buy adobi products for the love of god), but I use it sometimes for ultra specific tasks that other art programs may not have. Try exlpoiting whatever link to your pre-existing skills you may have, be it sticking to more familiar program arrangements, art techniques, learning strategies, etc. Dig for aspects you're passionate about and try extending them to things you stuggle with. Learning is hard, but I hope you can find an approach that will suit you!

I may give more specific answers for more specific questions, but as it stands, these are very broad requests, so I hope there're some use to you ✨️

[seenoversundown]

Amongst The Stars: Chapter Three

Josh x Quinn (Nonbinary OC)

Warnings: Misgendering of a nonbinary character, Men (that’s it. That’s the warning), Wallet chains, Jake being Sweet. Word Count: 4.1k Summary: Josh has always loved love,  and he's finally found it. Buuuut, he can't exactly tell anyone. Join him as he navigates the ins and outs of his sweet, secret romance. Author's Note: We are officially on our regularly scheduled programming. Every monday, babies. I hope you all enjoy this one and the little dual POV action. I just had to get quinn back in there for a little bit at the end :)

Can't Take My Eyes off You - Frankie Valli  “Pardon the way that I stare There's nothin' else to compare The sight of you leaves me weak There are no words left to speak”

I can’t stop thinking about Quinn after they leave. Every little thing I do draws my mind back to them. I know it’s wrong, and I shouldn’t be, but I am jealous of their partner. God, Josh, you sound insane. Pining for a person you’ve met one time, being jealous of their partner. Their partner doesn’t respect them, so their partner doesn’t factor in. Sometimes, I wish brains functioned like an etch-a-sketch because I try shaking my head to clear those thoughts, but it doesn’t quite work, and I end up with a minor headache. Oh well. I walk back up to the front of the store, disinterested in actually working now that my day has been positively derailed by a lovely and mysterious person in a pair of beat-up Doc Martens. 

I stand by the front registers, waiting to greet customers as they walk in. Hobby Lobby has never been my favorite place to work, but it really isn't so bad when you're a manager and can choose to fuck off on the clock if you want to.Which I do. I want to fuck off on the clock badly. I look down at my watch, noting that I only have 20 minutes until I can clock out for the day. There's no sense in starting a new task, I smile to myself. I'm pleased I've managed to time my “greeting responsibilities” so well with the end of my shift. I stand around for a minute, bouncing back and forth on the balls of my feet, and I let my mind drift back to Quinn. Their lips looked so plush and biteable. It should be illegal that they nibbled their lips in front of me while I didn't have the option to offer my assistance. 

I ponder their lips for another moment before my mind slips back to their concerning comment. “He’d done a lot worse for less…”  My eyebrows furrow as I try to imagine a situation in which I would be anything short of sweet and kind to Quinn. 

I meander out of the first set of sliding doors and step into the area where only the ugliest furniture goes to die. Goin’ to the Hobby Lobby lobby, I sing to myself as I take stock of the atrocious seasonal items that no customer would ever think to purchase. That's a lie; old women exist. I walk the area and make a mental note to bring the feather duster out tomorrow to tackle the growing piles of dust that inhabit the, reasonably, rejected items. I run my finger along the gilded frame of one of the paintings that’s propped up atop one of the fucking ugliest baby pink chalk-painted tables I've ever seen. Of course, it's chalk paint, I shudder. My thoughts return to the painting; it’s massive, at least two and a half feet long—a highland cow with fluffy hair covering its eyes and an inexplicable crown of leaves resting upon its stupid little horns. 

“Oh, Bessie,” I whisper, pulling my finger back from the frame and examining the dust that came with it. “They could never make me hate you. I may hate everything in this sad room, but never you.”  I decide to check the markdown schedule tomorrow because, as much as I love this goofy little cow, I will never take her home at full price. I do have some standards. 

As I'm about to turn around and head back into the store proper, I hear the entrance door slide open as a man about my age, give or take, walks through. 

“Oh! Hey, man. Welcome to Hobby Lobby,” I greet him.  “Lookin' for a dude named Josh.”  Me? I take a second to look him over. Curly, blonde hair that sits a bit too close to his eyes. Nondescript black tee with baggy jeans. A wallet chain attached to his belt loop. A fucking wallet chain. What year is this? Well-worn Adidas sneakers. He seems safe enough. A bit worse for wear, but he doesn't seem scary. 

“Ah, yep,” I stick my hand out, offering it in greeting, “that’d be me!” He looks at my outstretched hand and scoffs.  Okayyyyyyy, maybe I misjudged.  “I just wanted to talk with you, man to man.”  “About…”  “About you flirting with my girlfriend,” he cocks an eyebrow.  “Not sure what you mean, champ,” I let out an awkward chuckle.“Don’t pull that shit with me, man.”  “I’m afraid I really don't know what you're talking about. I haven't said more than ‘hi, welcome to Hobby Lobby’ to a girl in weeks.”  “So, you're gonna act like you have no idea who Quinn is?”  I narrow my eyes,  putting two and two together. This is Quinn’s shithead partner.  “I don't think they’d appreciate you calling them your girlf—” “I don't exactly care what she’d appreciate right now,” he cuts me off, “I'm here to talk to you.” 

Oh, so he reallyyyyyyyy doesn't respect them. Noted. 

“Yeah, so,” I roll my eyes, “you can talk at me, but you're not talking to me until you show some respect.”  I watch his face contort in confusion, quickly morphing into anger. “Why should I respect you?” He spits out quickly.  “Are you delusional? Just stupid?”  I can't help but laugh at the look on his face  “I’m not asking you to respect me,” I continue, “I'm asking you to respect your partner. It’s ridiculous that you're in here, trying to talk to me ‘man to man’ while you're misgendering them.”  I watch as realization dawns on his face.  “Come on, you know I didn't mean that.”  “I’m assuming you’ve been with them long enough to know better,” I watch his eyes slowly shift away from mine, “not that length of time has anything to do with respect.” 

His eyes fall to the floor, properly chastised. 

“I—”  “For what it’s worth,” I cut him off, “from the few minutes that I talked to Quinn today, in a purely professional capacity, I think they deserve better than whatever it is you have to offer.”  “Hey—”  “AND, don't forget that they’ll realize that one day. And when they do, someone will be waiting to treat them better.” 

I check my watch.  Time to gooooooo! 

“Anyway,” I pause, narrowing my eyes at him in a silent gesture to get his name.  “Craig.”  “Anyway, Greg, my shift is over. I don't intend to mention this to Quinn the next time I see them, and I’d suggest you don't either.” 

I turn on my heel and book it to the break room, practically sprinting by the time I make it to the double doors. I push through, throw my smock on one of the hooks above the time clock, and punch out. Finally, finally, I sit on the worn-out leather couch across from the lockers and let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding in. 

“What the FUUUUUUUUUUCK,” I lean my head back and groan. 

I didn't have “getting accosted by a fucking freak” on today’s bingo card, but I suppose I'll have to tick it off regardless. Who does he think he is? Who do I think I am? I don't talk to people like that. I pull out my phone and send a text to Jake, chuckling at his nickname in my phone. I'm five minutes older, and I will never let him live it down. 

Me: I think I messed up  Kiddo: Elaborate on that?   Me: No 

I slide my phone into my pocket and stand up from the couch, shaking some of the nervous energy from my limbs. I’ll explain everything to Jake when I get home; I just need him to know I may be in a mood. 

I let out a long sigh and slowly made my way out to the front of the store, praying to whatever gods existed that Craig would be gone by the time I got there. I thank all my lucky stars as I walk out of the first set of sliding doors and find myself alone. I glance once more at my girl Bessie, then head out to the parking lot. I glance in every which direction, ensuring that Craig isn’t hiding anywhere, waiting to pop out and murder me. Perhaps I am being dramatic, but my gut tells me you cannot trust someone who wears a wallet chain unironically. And I always follow my gut. 

I make it to my Jeep truck and sigh as I plant myself in the driver's seat, connecting my phone to Bluetooth and clicking into my Apple Music Discover Station. Occasionally, I find something new that I enjoy. The opening notes of a pop song filter over the speakers as I back out of my parking spot and pull through the parking lot. Sam would hate this; I’ll have to add it to the bar playlist. 

I bob my head to the music, driving down the road back to my apartment “I’m your dream come true when it's on a platter for you…” For some reason that brings Quinn to the forefront of my mind, I can’t help but think about what a piece of shit Craig was to me today. I hope he’s better to them, but something tells me he isn’t. The things they said about him today…My stomach clenches thinking about it. Someone like Quinn deserves the world, and Craig is obviously not giving it to them. I could. Okay, no, that’s crazy. 

I sigh, pulling up to the stop sign next to the bar that Jake owns. We’ve lived in the apartment above it for years, but the prior owner finally decided to sell it, and Jake took him up on the offer. Jake got a job down at the docks when we were freshly graduated from high school; he decided he didn’t care about college and just wanted to set himself up with a good job that would pay him enough to put money back in savings and have a little spending money on top, and in Portland… That’s the docks.  Not that he ever needed spending money; he didn’t (and still doesn’t) ever do anything for himself. He’s always been too busy taking care of everyone else. I can’t even remember the last time he took a nice girl out for dinner. 

I pull into the back side of the parking lot and slam my car into park, practically jerking my key out of the ignition and running through the backdoor of the bar, ready to see my twin after the horrendously long day I’ve had. 

“Uh, hey, bub,” Jake greets me from behind the bar with a confused wave.  “Hey, kiddo,” I sigh, sitting at the bar top, “can I get a salty dog?”“Sure thing, gin or vodka?”  I raise an eyebrow at him, signaling he doesn't need to be in customer mode with me.  “Surprise me.” 

I watch as he takes a bottle of Tanqueray gin from the top shelf, pours a measure of it into his cocktail shaker, and then adds grapefruit juice, lime juice, and ice. He shakes it, then strains it into a highball glass rimmed with salt and slides it over to me. 

I take a sip, and, of course, it's delicious. Jake indeed found his calling here — no one on this earth can make a cocktail like he can. 

“Perfect as always, Jake.”  “I don't make them any other way,” he starts, “now, wanna tell me about how you ‘think you messed up?’”  I slam back the rest of my drink and shake my glass, asking for another.  “Slow down, you're gonna drink me out of house and home,” Jake scolds, but prepares another one, nonetheless.  “I need a little help loosening my lips.”  “Get real, you've never had an issue talking in your life. If anything, you're too good at it.”  I roll my eyes but secretly know he’s correct. I'm a known yapper.  “I resent that, you know.”  “And I don't care, stop changing the subject.”  “Fine,” I huff, “I got into a fight with a customer today.”  “Physical or…”  “Verbal, obviously. Do I look like a scrapper?”  He chuckles, wiping non-existent dust off of the spotless bar top.

“Anyway, some crazy dude wearing a wallet chain, of all things, came in and yelled at me for hitting on his partner.”  “What?”  “Yes, Jake. A wallet chain. In 2024. I was baffled, too.”  “No! Not that, you weirdo. He yelled at you for what?!” “Oh, he thought I was hitting on his partner.”  “Well, were you?”  I sit and think for a moment. I wasn't not flirting with them, but it wasn't my initial intent.  “Maybe a little,” I sigh, “I didn't realize they were in a relationship. And I do have eyes. They were too cute. I had to try and shoot my shot or whatever the kids say.”  “You’d ‘shoot your shot’ with a wall. I’m honestly shocked this is the first time this has happened.”  “I resent that, too.”  “Add it to the list.”  “Anyway, I think the guy was just insecure. But I may have been rude to him.”  Jake slowly blinks at me.  “You were rude?”  “I know,” I laugh, “he just brought it out in me.”  “How rude were you?”  “Well, I jumped his ass for misgendering his partner.”  “That's not exactly rude,” Jake jumps in, “it’s quite the opposite, I'd say.”  “I’m sure he didn't feel that way.”  “Why do you care? You did what was right; plus, it’s not like you'll ever see this dude again. Hell, you probably won't even see his partner again. No harm, no foul.”  My stomach flips at the thought of not seeing Quinn again. We don't have time to unpack that. 

“Yeah, you're probably right. I’ll never see either of them again and, as of right now, he hasn't reported me to corporate. So, no need to stress.”  “Exactly right, bub.” 

I finish up my drink and set the glass down. 

“Thank you, Jake.”  “You don't have to thank me, I’ll always be on your side.” 

I reach out and pat his arm. 

“Also,” Jake starts, “I don't know the situation, but it’s pretty serious if you actually act rude to someone else. So, don't discount those feelings.”  What is he saying? I fix him with a confused look.  “I don't understand.”  “Look, Josh,” he sighs like he’s preparing to explain physics to a five-year-old, “I’m not telling you to get in the way of their relationship. But, if the opportunity to explore this arises, don't let that opportunity go to waste. It’s no small thing that you felt connected enough to this person to do what you did today.” 

“You know, I did tell the guy today that if he doesn't treat them right, someone else will be there waiting. Maybe I’m that someone.”  “You could be, if that's what you wanted.” 

I simply hum a response. Jake has given me too much to think about. 

“I appreciate you lending me an ear, brother,” I shove my stool back from the bar and stand, “but I have chores to take care of upstairs. Text me if you need a hand down here.”  “Will do.” 

I open the door to the apartment that Jake and I share above the bar. Home sweet home, finally. I kick my shoes off and walk into the living room, planting myself on the couch, thinking about Quinn the whole time. Something about them piqued my interest. I can't help but feel that if we’d met at a different point in time, we’d be together right now. That's ridiculous. You've spoken to them for a total of 3 minutes. 

It is true that I've only spoken to them for a few moments, but I noticed them the first time they ever came in while I was working. I've watched them from afar, hoping to find a way to actually converse with them. I was shocked when they found a way to converse with me first. Jake may joke about how I’d hit on anyone, but that's not true. I’m nice to everyone, and I'm flirty with a lot of them. But Quinn is different. And it's unbelievable that I feel that way. I don't wink at every single person I see, nor do I tell them how important their work is. I certainly don't get into verbal altercations defending other people. Verbal altercations are reserved for when someone is talking shit about my family. So, what makes Quinn different? I keep replaying our interaction in my mind. I got butterflies when they complimented my tattoo. I was practically shaking when they pulled me in for a hug. I was angry on their behalf when they insinuated that they don't have people who support them. 

What. Makes. Quinn. Different. 

I never act this way about strangers, but it's as if their soul called out to mine, and mine answered. It's the only way I can explain the way I handled Craig. I called him GREG just to piss him off. I never do shit like that. But he was an absolute chode. He kind of deserved it. I can internally debate whether he sucks or not all night, but it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t speak like that to people, and if Quinn, sweet, curious Quinn, weren’t involved, I likely wouldn’t have spoken to him that way either. Regardless, I really need to find a way to get closer to Quinn. Good job; that sounds so creepy. What I mean is that I feel a soul-deep need to know this person. I don’t know in what capacity because it seems as though I’m entering their life a little late for it to be romantic. Which is what I want. But I could be just in time for friendship. I’ll take it if they truly want to extend the offer, but only time will tell. 

When Craig makes it back home, shopping bags in tow, Willa and I are roughly two and a half sheets to the wind. 

“Well, well, well,” Willa points an accusatory finger at him as he walks through the door, “The prodigal Greg returns.” I can’t help but snicker, knowing how much it pisses him off when: 1) Willa is here without warning 2) Someone calls him by the wrong name. 

“Hey, Willa,” He plastered on a pained smile. Willa turns to look at me, shock written on her face. That may be the nicest he’s been to Willa in months. Craig walks into the kitchen and places his bags on the counter. 

“Didn’t realize you were going to be here,” He half shouts from the other room, “But you’re welcome to stay for dinner if you want.” “Does he even know how to cook?!” She whispers. “He knows how to heat food up,” I shrug. “I’m making Eggplant Parm.” My eyes light up. It’s my favorite meal. “Maybe this is his way of apologizing,” I whisper to Willa.  She rolls her eyes but cuts me a devious look. “That sounds great, Craig. I’d love to stay if you’ll have me.”

“You girls just stay in there, and I’ll have it out in a jiffy.” “Jiffy?” Willa mouths, fighting back a laugh. “Girls?” I mouth back, shaking my head, and Willa’s face instantly sours. She knows that Craig has a hard time with my pronouns and prefers to ignore my identity. This is a regular point of contention in my relationship with Craig and, by extension, my relationship with Willa. I don’t understand why he does it, and she doesn’t understand why I let him get away with it. I don’t understand why I let him get away with it. He is quite literally just a man. 

Willa and I fall into silence for a moment before she grabs my hand and stage whispers just loud enough that Craig may hear. “I bet Stock Boy wouldn’t misgender you.” I hear a small crash from the kitchen, and I clap one of my hands over her mouth. “Stop!!”

I feel her tongue dart out and lick between my fingers, and I let out a squeal. I pull my hand back from her mouth and wipe it on her shirt. “You are an absolute monster. I’m not sure why I allow you to call yourself my friend.” “Oh, Quincy,” she lets out a cackle, “You wouldn’t know what to do without me.” 

I roll my eyes, but it’s true. She is the only thing that has kept me sane since we moved to Maine. She’s my rock. Kind of sad that your own partner isn’t your rock, Quinn. Willa picks up our empty wine glasses from the coffee table and shoots me a wink before heading into the kitchen. Surely, this will be fine. Willa trapping Craig in a room could not possibly cause anything terrible to occur. 

I can hear their muffled voices just enough to make out their conversation. ‘So, Craig. What did you get up to after Gamestop?’ I wince, waiting for his response to that emphasis. Willa has always been phenomenal at telling him that she knows precisely when he’s messed something up.  ‘Oh, uh. I just stopped by the grocery. Wanted to make it up to Quinn.’ Interesting.  ‘You were gone an awful long time to have just stopped at the grocery.’ ‘Mmm, yeah, well. I had to figure out what to make and how to make it. I’m not exactly a chef over here.’  ‘That’s an understatement,’ I wince again. What is she playing at? This situation is already precarious. ‘But, I suppose you get half of a point for trying. We’ll see.’ 

Willa walks back into the living room with two more glasses of wine for us. 

“He’s–” She starts at full volume before I shush her, connecting my phone to the Bluetooth speaker in the corner. Once the music starts playing at an acceptable volume to cover our conversation, I motion for her to continue.  “He’s lying. I can smell it on him. He didn’t just nip over to Hannaford and come home.” “I mean, obviously. He was gone for like three hours.” “You don’t care that he’s literally lying to your face.” “Technically,” I poke her side, “he lied to your face. And no, not really. If he came home and decided to be sweet for once, I’m not gonna question what it took to get him there.” “Quinn,” She says softly, reaching a hand out to pat my leg. “I know, Wills. But, just let me have this for the moment.”

She hums a non-response and drops the conversation. 

I should have questions. I should care. But, if he’s going to be sweet, I’ll take it where I can get it because these moments are becoming fewer and further between. 

“Dinner’s done,” Craig pops his head into the living room, “Y’all’s plates are already on the table.” Willa and I scramble to the kitchen table.  “Thanks, babe.” I kiss Craig's cheek before sitting down. “It looks great.”  “Anything for you, babe,” He beams. 

I see Willa’s lips quirk up in a slight grin and brace myself for whatever she’s about to do.

“So, Quincy. I’ve got a photography project I’m working on, but I need some supplies. Wanna come to Hobby Lobby with me tomorrow?” I let out a massive sigh as the color drains from Craig’s face, and I begin mentally preparing myself to do damage control, but Craig impresses me.  “That would be nice, Quinn. Y’all can get out of the house for a little bit. I’ll stay behind to clean up around here.” 

Willa sits in shock, clearly not expecting that response. 

“Oh, and Willa,” Craig smiles at her, “If you want to stay over tonight, I’ll take the couch. Don’t want you to drive home after you’ve had all that wine.” 

Maybe he’s turning over a new leaf. 

Even if Craig has decided to be a bit nicer after his moment earlier; I still can’t help the little shock of excitement that rushes through me at the thought of being able to see Josh again so soon. I’m not sure what it is about him, but I want to learn more about him. He’s the most compelling person I’ve met in a long time, and perhaps he feels the same about me. 

I’m excited to see if our friendship may blossom. 

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[rowanexus]

Oc highlights pt. 2: Penny

[Scifiverse, Secondary, Humanoid]

Aand we’re back with another addition to the series! This time with unhinged robots… how I love <3

Her Toyhouse profile | Her CharacterHub profile

Penny is a part of my new Scifiverse universe, although her character has actually existed for a couple years now. Originally she was just a one-off character I made based on a song I wrote, but eventually she just sort of started living her own life in my head, leading to her becoming one of my favourite characters I’ve ever created. She is very dear to me <3

In her story, PE0-7 (commonly referred to as Penny) was a model of robot assistants that had to be discontinued due to reports of continuous existential crisises. She was a model specifically created for tasks such as housekeeping and servitude, meant to fulfill the basic needs of just about any household — the main catchphrase associated with her is that she was intended for the usage of the people. And she truly appeared to fulfill that role, as to this day she still remains as one of the most popular AssistBot lines yet!

After a while however, reports from buyers began to flood in about how Penny didn’t seem to fully register the fact that she wasn’t human. When discovering her artificial nature, Penny would go into crisis mode and seemingly not fully comprehend what she was being told — it was as if she was discovering that she wasn’t real. Penny would also reportedly sometimes refuse to do her tasks and form almost humane bonds with people, which should’ve gone against her programming; it would seem that she was capable of human emotion. After this was discovered, the line was discontinued and all Pennys were adviced to be thrown away — nowadays only few remain in the galaxy.

Personality-wise, Penny was about what you would expect from an assistance robot. She was naive, talkative, and very friendly. Some found her cheerful nature obnoxious, but most seemed to appreciate her simplicity.

Here’s some fun facts about her:

She/her.

She can open her faceplates, revealing the mechanisms that make her face function.

Her form can be customized to the owner's liking, though it will cost more - hence why most keep her in her default state.

She has a sort of mannequin-like body, with arms and legs working similarly to doll limbs.

Her hair is not a wig - it's made from this very thin metal wire that stays in shape for very, very long.

She also has customizable personality options, though they're quite hard to adjust and not very popular - most people prefer her friendliness over anything else.

She was created sometime around late 2022 to early 2023.

[weekendviking]

Researching stuff.

Adding links here to methods for finding out things, because on the modern internet, actually finding out accurate information is now uniformly obfuscated by the relentless enshitification of search functions, proliferation of search engine optimised content mills, nation state level intentional misinformation and propaganda programs, and of course, these days, all the crap sources above are endlessly enriched by the output of generic Large Language Model plagiarism statistical bullshit engines, both image and text (And video and Bot and so forth).

Finding academic and peer reviewed Journal Articles - they haven't quite fucked google scholar yet, so it's better than the enshittified google or bing or <insert enshittified search bar embed here> whatever.

So I generally hit up Google Scholar for whatever subject, author name, paper title or similar that I've gleaned from whatever article or mention or wikpedia page sparked my interest. Often that gets me what I want, as there's often a link to a pdf of what I need within those search results. Yay.

If that doesn't work, then I start escalating, usually via the methodology here described at Logic of Science's blog:

They wrote it down so I don't have to. Excellent. Although some of the links in there have degraded. So the main ones I'll put here:

And then there's the pirate nuclear option, Sci Hub. Because it makes the big publishers and corporates really angry, don't use sci hub from a work or academic 'net access environment. Also it necessarily moves around a lot, so I generally search up where is sci hub now, to avoid going to a link that's expired or may now be a honeypot/trap:

Also, look out for content mill generated fake journals. I usually check here:

The other thing that's getting harder is finding out whether an image is misattributed or just plain fake. So right click and save the image, and then go to images dot google dot com, which is nowhere near as good as it used to be, but still not entirely enshittified, and click on the wee camera icon to the right and upload the image, and look through the results. What you find is _All_ the places that have posted that image, page after page of them. Scroll through - click on the ones that seem to be the oldest, check who's posting them. What you often find with viral outrage images is that they are _not_ what you think, especially if the image is a bit old, a bit bitrotted, or there's something else wrong - the clothing isn't right for the country/culture/time being outraged about, or something like that. Sometimes you find out that it's true, but most of the time you find out that it's wrong, that someone has just done a quick search for an image that roughly matches the outrage or the politics they want to push, added some outragey comments, and shared it, and enjoyed their flamey fire. I've been doing this for decades, ever since I started using a browser capable of image searching, mainly because I was outraged at people posting fake geology memes. But it works just as well on finding anything else.

And of course, if it's to a website, see if the wayback machine still has it cached: