#I started being online when I was 12 and I was a computer lab on my lunch break person

[femmeholograms]

please tell me in the tags what is the thing/fandom/community/hobby that prompted you to become an extremely online person

what is your internet origin story? on which parts of the web have you previously lived?

[docholligay]

Forgive me, I have a hobby level interest in some aspects of linguistics* and can’t shut up.

So, phonology is the first thing you pick up as an infant. How the SOUNDS are made. Not words, SOUNDS. All languages can be broken down into a series of sounds, all of which are made by moving your mouth a certain way, to oversimplify it. We learn those mouth movements very young. FIRST. Words come next, morphology, syntax, etc. BUT, to my point, phonology is what we learn first and this is the building block of a language. So, some people ‘keep’ this longer than others, but for most of us the sweet spot is birth-10 or 12 (And frankly, some people lose it earlier). I started hearing and learning Spanish casually when I was...6? I started studying it in earnest, as much as I could, by 8, and I of course went on to minor in it at school, I was a Spanish lab teacher for a few years, until recently I volunteered in the summer to do translation for migrant workers with the clinics. But all this started because I learned the trill early enough. I sound ‘right’ in that pronunciation way. My pronunciation of Spanish is pretty good, but it has nothing to do with me being ‘smart’ or whatever stupid thing we’ve assigned it.

This is true of all languages. There are sounds in Chinese I cannot make. Xhosa is right out, for me.

If someone is an asshole to you about you not being able to roll your R, it’s roughly the same as me being an asshole to a Japanese person at not being able to pronounce the hard R at the beginning of my legal name. You never learned the phoneme! Your mouth is like, “You want me to do what now?” and some people can retrain their mouths, but it’s very very difficult, and this idea that smart people have flawless pronunciation and can all flawlessly imitate any accent and dumb people just can’t hear it or whatever shows a ridiculous misunderstanding of how language works.

I mean this makes sense when you consider that Duolingo is an American company and what reason would we have to learn peninsular Spanish, and also one of the founders grew up Latin America so of course LA Spanish is going to be the go-to, but if it makes you feel any better I find Duolingo nigh-unusuable, because I know enough Spanish that I know there is more than one right answer. If that makes sense. I have learned enough Spanish that I have my own way of speaking, too. I ended up just, before I had the baby, auditing upper-level courses at the college because it was the only way to get that exposure to speaking while also being allowed some...flexibility? I guess? With how things are said. Computers ain’t everything, basically, and they’re bad at teaching language. Also, you know, what’s ‘correct’ and what’s ‘done’ are different. A lot of thing English spoken in the rural community I’m a part of isn’t GRAMMATICAL, but it is RIGHT, you know? There are variances in language and just because ones of privilege win the grammar war--and I have an English degree, I’m not even opposed to a ‘central grammar we all agree upon for say, the news--doesn’t mean that the way things are said in other communities is wrong. Duolingo tries to tell me “Seen you come over here” is wrong and I’m like, “eat my entire ass, owl, that’s how “I saw you come over here” would be said in my circles” ahaha. But I have a hick accent no one is interested in defending but me, that is often the butt of the joke, so.

ANYWAY, all this to say that Duolingo has its uses but it has exceptional limitations. I’m not really a ‘online language learning’ gal, but I do prefer Babel, generally. It was easier for me to skip ahead to the higher-level shit I needed to be engaging with, at least, though it occasionally frustrates me as well.

*It’s just, a huge field. And there are a million ways to be ‘into it’ I would say the VAST majority of my interest is in English, particularly American English in all its variants, but I do have a lot of affection for other English-speaking countries versions of the language--Kiwi English is very fun, I have loved the tightness of the East End/Cockney accent for a very long time, which tracks with the fact that most of my favorite American Englishes are also very working class, any way the point of all this is that the linguistics of, say, Spanish is not really my knowledge base but most of this is pretty broad anyhow

[andstilliam]

Got a sleep score of 87 with 8 and a half hours and I still woke up exhausted, so I went and got a cappuccino from my favourite cafe. Skipped my morning chem class. Chemistry is really stressing me out. If I could drop the course, I would, but I can't because chemistry is fundamental to my major. I need the intro credits. Thankfully, for neuroscience, a 70% is not a required grade for chemistry. I do need a minimum of 70% in biology and and psychology to get into the Neuroscience program.

I like chemistry. I just haven't studied it in well over a year and so I have to review all the concepts from scratch. Additionally, I have chemistry 3x a week this semester and there's 2 pieces of work due before and after every class. So it's a lot of work and I haven't completed any of that so far because I'm literally catching up on basic review. The grading scheme for the course is also really weird and I'm still trying to understand it. Not to mention the GPA scale for this school generally speaking is off the charts. It's not like this anywhere else. It doesn't stop at 4.0, we have 4.3, like what even is that? I don't really understand the purpose of that.

I dragged myself out of bed this morning for a psych lab that I realized doesn't start until the end of September. So here's my reminder to check the lab schedule because I did the same thing for chemistry on Wednesday; showed up to a lab that hadn't started yet lol.

3 courses is full time at my school, so I'm glad I'm only taking 3 courses. Plus I knew it'd hit different taking pure sciences compared to CS.

Still waiting for 1 more person to drop the online psychology class within the next 4 days so I don't have to attend labs in person.

Anyway, I chose this school for a variety of reasons:

1) Minimal entrance requirements. I took the Arts route in high school so it wasn't even required to have grade 12 calculus or any of the pure sciences (though it was recommended). I took a few junior and senior credits to prepare myself, but it was not an academic requirement for the program.

2) Course flexibility. Most programs for both CS and Neuroscience require physics, up to 3 levels of Calculus, Linear algebra and Discrete functions. This school had the least math and no physics. Not that it's a barrier or advantage per se, but I thought that was different. It also meant that for CS in particular, I could take introductory courses that were applied in nature rather than spending the first 2 years of my degree taking pure sciences and maths before learning applicable concepts. The Neuroscience program is slightly different because you have to meet the requirements before declaring the major and so you do have to spend the first year taking the required chemistry, biology, psychology, math and stats courses. But again, that's only 1 year and you can still take electives on top of that.

3) They have a Bioinformatics minor. Bioinformatics programs are usually not accessible to undergrads. They may have a course available, but an actual major/minor is a rare find. This also means that I can easily take CS courses without being a CS major. A lot of CS departments are incredible exclusive and you cannot take a SWE or SWD course without having been accepted and declared as a computing student, which is an increasingly competitive program to get into.

4) Co-op opportunities. Less competition than bigger cities.

5) Research. Everyone knows U15s have outstanding research funding and variety in types of research offered to students and the community at large. At least, that's what's advertised. They are also open to undergraduate students whereas some other U15s are exclusively for graduate students only.

6) Unique programs. They have a grad program in Medical Neuroscience. Who doesn't want a Neuroscience degree with the term "Medical" alongside it? LOL........

7) Combined Honours programs. Double majoring is easier when you can split the courses for each major in half instead of doing 2 majors at once. Some schools will allow double counting, but only up to a certain number of credits.

8) Low CoL compared to a big city where I'm from. I can raise a family out here and own property.

[phoenixmaiden-gaming]

Stray part 7

Now it was time to break out of jail. Which is exactly what I did in this gameplay. I got out of my cage and had to go through and avoid the Sentinels. I found and broke out Clementine and B-12 and then out of the jail itself. From there we made it out of Midtown and got on the Subway to the next part of the story. Which I did same day, but I split it up so it wasn’t too long. Read below how I broke out of Jail.

I had to start back in the cage when I started back up again. I then continued on and figure out how to get down to the lower level using the hanging cage and the swinging bars. I had to go back and forth to line them up and drop down.

Then I had to go through some hallways while avoiding the Sentinels. They were easy enough to avoid. I took a look in some of the cells. There were robot parts in most of them that had rusted and broken apart. In one I saw a robot that was still...alive? But was actively being electrocuted. That’s messed up.

I continued on and I found Clementine! She was okay. I couldn’t understand her because I didn’t have B-12 but she pointed to the office on the other side where there was a set of keys hanging on the wall.

So I made it through an open window through a room. Avoided a Sentinel passing by and around to the office where I grabbed the keys. I then made my way back.

I gave the keys to Clementine and she got herself out of the cell and opened up the next door and crept out to the next door to find a way out.

There was a cut scene when Clementine was trying to open the next door and the cat went over to the railing and looked down and saw B-12 in an electronic cage. He meowed to get Clementine’s attention and she agreed to help get him out.

Clementine opened the door and I had to sneak in and be careful of the Sentinels flying around. Plus there were moving laser walls that I had to bypass.

I eventually made it to the room where B-12 was, but I had to figure out how to turn off the force field off. I went into one of the offices on the opposite side and found a switch. Once I threw it, the power went out and the Sentinels were one alert.

It took some quick maneuvering, but I went around and managed to grab B-12 who was powered off. I then had to hide since one of the Sentinels spotted me. But I hid under a desk....I have no idea how it didn’t see me right there. But it went away and I made my way back to Clementine.

Once I was back with Clementine, I put B-12 down and he came back online. He said that he felt like he was trapped in the lab’s computer system again. Alone. He was glad I came back for him. I was a good friend.

Now that B-12 was back, I could now understand Clementine and she said that she was glad they were together again, but they weren’t safe yet. She then had B-12 use the digital lock and we moved on.

The next room was locked and needed a switch to be thrown to open it. I was confused how to open it and was just running around jumping on everything including the trash container and knocked down some bricks. Clementine saw them and through one through the glass above the door and had me climb on her shoulders to go over to flip the switch to open the door.

The next door Clementine opened but she said she couldn’t go out there because there were Sentinels. She said I could try to trap them in the cells.

So I went out into a wide area where there were a few robots that were in jail for like 750 years. I had to open the cell, get the Sentinel's attention and then run in the cell to make it follow and run back out and close the cell.  Then Clementine came out to the next gate and I had to do it again, but this time with two.

I found one robot  in the corner with a memory and B-12 said that the Sentinels had erased it’s memory. They were ruthless to those who defy them. Now the robot had completely lost its sense of self. No emotions, no self-awareness, no memories. Nothing. So they best not get caught. (Jail Memory #1).

I then had to get the two Sentinels in the big cell and it was not easy. They were quick and when I got one in there and locked them in, there was another one that I had to make sure not to run into. I died a few times before I was able to get both of them in and we could move on.

We got to the main door but it was closed and it was the only way out. We just had to get to the control room. There was a truck there that still had it’s keys so Clementine got in and backed it up so I could climb on top and over the fence so I could get to the other side.

I got to the control room and there was a switch. I pulled it and sirens started going off while the door out of the jail opened. I then had to run back to where Clementine was but there were now Sentinels that had come out of some doors and were already on alert. I got hit twice before I was able to make it back over the fence.

Clementine was being surrounded by the Sentinels and took off in the truck out of the door and I chased after it as I dodged the Sentinels attacks. It took a few times yet again because I had to zig zag.

But I eventually was able to catch up to the truck and jumped onto the back. We then got away and back into Midtown and raced through, dodging the robots in the street. The Sentinels got distracted scanning the other robots and we got away.

We eventually got far enough away and Clementine opened up a gate and let me in, but she closed it behind me. She said that we both can’t make it with the Senetels behind them. She can distract them for a while and I can keep going.

She then said that the Outsiders Manifesto said that one of us must go Outside at any cost. And I was one of them now. I had to make Outside. She then gave me a Subway Key and took off in the truck while Sentinels chased after her.

I was now in the very beginning of Midtown where I had come up. The area with the books was empty. I just followed back down the steps to the Subway. I couldn’t figure out what to do at first but I still had the battery so I guess I had to power up the Subway.

I followed the cable down a corridor to a wall of buttons with a space for the Atomic Battery. The Subway then started lighting up, bringing power back to the place, including the Subway car.

I then followed the cable back to the Subway car. It was really bright now.

I made it back to the Subway car and went inside where I put the key into the slot and the Subway car turned on and started to move.

That is where I’m ending it for now. I have done a lot so far and it took a while to lock those Sentinels in the cells. I took far too long on that part, but I did it and we got out. I just hope Clementine is able to get away. Now I am on my way to the next part by going through the Subway. I did continue on, but then this post will be really long, so I’m cutting it into two parts. Therefore, the next part will be the final one. Until next time. Happy Gaming!

[iloveabunchofgames]

Week In Review - 3/12/23

#JakeReviewsItch Week In Review Archives

This week's reviews:

🧡🧡🧡🧡🤍 Alien Life Lab 🧡🧡🤍🤍🤍 All Haze Eve 🧡🧡🧡🧡🤍 All You Can Eat 🧡🧡🤍🤍🤍 Alone With You 🧡🧡🧡🧡🤍 Alt-Frequencies 🧡🧡🤍🤍🤍 Ambidangerous 🧡🧡🧡🤍🤍 Amelie

It's a week of messes! Steam is a mess! I am a mess! Even the Game of the Week is a mess!

Game of the Week

All You Can Eat is easily the best game I reviewed this week. Alt-Frequencies is the clear runner-up. Game of the Week, however, is a title that goes to the game that's still occupying my brain after the fact...

At the end of my Alien Life Lab review, I said it had a New Game+/Second Quest thing. I think I was wrong. I thought the game was telling me to play again, but this time there would be three aliens who would need to be rescued along the way. In reality, I think this secondary objective had been there from the start, and I just didn't notice. So I played it a second time. I talked to every space person I saw, some of whom followed me. I finished, and found that I'd only rescued 1/3. Rats. I'll probably never see the good ending, and that's okay. Each time I loaded the game, I thought, "I overrated this, right? It's sort of trash, isn't it? Do I like it ironically? And every time, I got sucked right back in to it. I like it more now than when I reviewed it. I like it as much or more than I like the turn-of-the-millennium shooters and immersive sims that it recalls—System Shock 2, Half-Life, Deus Ex...

It is a mess. It's easy to articulate its faults. There's just something about how thoroughly weird and unpretentious it is, though, and even after beating it twice in a week, it still rattles me. It pulls off jump scares just as well in open, brightly lit arenas as it does in darkened, twisting paths lined with squishy, organic matter. Oh, yes, the audio design. That's the real source of dread. Again, All You Can Eat is the game to play this week. It's currently the third-best reviewed game on this site. It pushes the adventure game genre in such an exciting direction that half of my review was just the repeated word, "Genius!" Alt-Frequencies is the most mainstream pick of the bunch, and not because it lacks fresh ideas and idiosyncrasies. It's currently the fourth-best reviewed game on this site. I have another game from Accidental Queens on the review docket for the week after next, and I am jazzed. That studio hasn't missed yet.

Alien Life Lab is stupid and weird. I can't stop thinking about it.

Steam Is Hot Air

Do you remember 2003? Do you remember Valve requiring some big, annoying launcher service for anyone who wanted to play Half-Life 2? If you don't, let me tell you: A lot of people wanted to play Half-Life 2, and a lot of them were not happy about downloading this "Steam" thing. They wanted you to check in online every time you launched a game???

I'd hoped to illustrate the vitriol with contemporary examples. Forum posts, IGN editorials; that kind of thing. Unfortunately, the best archival records I could find come from the creeps at Penny-Arcade. These guys are awful, and I'd rather not link to their site, but they had their finger on the pulse when it came to petty grievances. They were influencers. When Jerry "Tycho" Holkins wrote about being scared of a computer asking for credit card information or about local-multiplayer enthusiasts feeling infuriated because they couldn't connect to Steam from their local LAN café, he was capturing the whiny, online zeitgeist. I didn't have high-speed Internet or a computer capable of running Half-Life 2 in 2003, so that particular controversy didn't occupy much space on my radar. I do remember the first time I played Half-Life 2 at a friend's house. Launching the game seemed like a process, accompanied by a halfhearted rant from my friend that was aimed equally at Steam and the idiots who acted like this mildly obtrusive application was tantamount to a war crime. Let me jump forward and ask: What exactly was the Epic Games Store hullabaloo? Or maybe that should be is; not was. I still see people taking up arms over...something. There are a million valid reason to dislike and distrust Epic as a company, but as far as I can gather, the crusaders are angry that a big corporation threw around a lot of money to complete with another big corporation? I'm generally against impossibly wealthy corporations reshaping the world to their liking, but look consider how pathetic and unnecessary Ubisoft's and Electronic Arts' launchers are. Even with Epic snagging a exclusives and timed exclusives, have they made any kind of dent in Steam's monopoly? Let's talk about the danger of consolidated power.

I've mentioned before that when I play PC games, I use my third-party Switch Pro Controller whenever possible. It feels good. It was dirt cheap. It works for me. Or it did work for me, until a few months ago. Most modern games are prepared to encounter an Xbox controller. PlayStation controller support is not uncommon. Native Switch controller support, though? Forget it. In a recent update, Steam added full, official support for Steam controllers of all kinds...but not my controller. What had happily been accepted as a Switch Pro Controller one day was read as an Xbox controller the next. The Screen Capture Button that had never had any issues no longer does anything, because an Xbox 360 controller doesn't have that button, and apparently that's what I'm using. I lost rumble support on some games. The little surprises never end. And because Steam has historically been the PC's best bet for controller support, other launchers don't offer any competitive options. Go to any Reddit thread where people want to know how to make their controller work, and 9/10 replies are the same thing: Steam Big Picture Mode.

This is the most dramatic update in 20 years of Steam, and Valve just seems to be sinking deeper into the muck each day. If you haven't personally noticed any issues, look no further than the patch notes for proof that everything's in shambles, all the time. I encountered a bug where Big Picture Mode would make a sound like it was launching, and then it would just show my desktop. I found some suggestions online and got things working. Then, in the next update, they broke it all over again.

When it works, I don't have much beef with Steam. I prefer it to the old days of games installing wherever they pleased. I like that having an account that allows me to maintain my game library indefinitely, no matter how many times I replace my computer. Steam has been good to me.

But the naysayers were onto something. Digital Rights Management is only as good or as bad as the rights-holder chooses to be, and we all know how trustworthy and stable corporations are.

My Itch library may consist of "DRM-free" applications, but I'm depending on Itch to keep up its end. If the company folded tomorrow, there's no way I could download and back-up all my games.

I own games through GOG, Ubisoft, and Rockstar. Their launchers are fine, but I'm not comfortable making additional purchases on any service run by companies that (aLlEgEdLy) cover up systemic harassment and abuse. I have handfuls of games tied to this account or that. I'd obviously prefer to have them all in one place, but who can you trust? Can you ever really trust anyone?

Steam is still the best option. It's only real option, which is to say, we don't have options. It's working so far. Except when it's not. Can't wait to see what they break with the next patch.

Jake Reviews #JakeReviewsTwitch

Take a look at the tiny blue text at the bottom of this post. It appears on almost everything I post. But today, it's different. Today, it says, "#JakeReviewsItch" for the first time. I'm in my third month of posting at least once a day, and this is the first time I've noticed that my template has had a ridiculous typo all along. I remember writing "Twitch" when I meant "Itch" on the first day. I corrected it. It's something I've written and corrected many more times since then. I probably should have known to double check for it in my template as soon as I started using a template. I probably did. I probably deleted "Twitch" and wrote "Twitch" in its place. I've made changes to my format little by little since I started. Every day, I think, "I should shake it up. Question everything I'm doing. Tear it down and build something new. I should give scores out of 10, rather than five. Some of these 4/5s should be 3/5s, and some of these 3/5s should be 1/5; better adjust the whole scale. Tumblr isn't the right place for these reviews, anyway. How hard would it be to transfer to another site? And when am I going to write a post about everything wrong with my page?" Maybe it would be easier if I just committed to reviewing every single stream on Twitch

#JakeReviewsItch is a series of daily game reviews. You can learn more here. You can also browse past reviews…

• By name • By rating • By genre

[tea-and-spoons]

All About Accommodations

It’s the start of a new school year for lots of people, so one of my friends suggested this would be a good time to talk about accommodations!  This system is wildly different in grades kindergarten through 12, so I’m just going to talk about accommodations for college students right now.

Accommodations are supports that help students with disabilities to have equal access and opportunities in college (or any school, or a job!)  Providing “reasonable” accommodations is required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), so if you’re a student with a disability in the US, you’re legally entitled to these supports!

By the way, any condition that “substantially limits one or more major life activity” counts as a disability.  So if you have a mental or physical health conditions that creates challenges with taking care of yourself, physical activities (including walking, standing, lifting, and bending), seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, speaking, breathing, learning, thinking, reading, concentrating, or communicating- you’re protected by the ADA, even if you don’t personally call yourself disabled.

For me, the best way to understand something is to have examples, so I’m going to list a whole bunch of common college student accommodations below.  Many of these will apply to a wide variety of disabilities. If it’s helpful for you, it’s helpful for you, no matter why!

Some common accommodations for college students:

-ASL interpreter

-captioning on videos, live zoom classes, or CART captioning for live in person things

-large print and Braille documents

-audio books and recordings of readings

-extended time on tests

-reduced distraction spaces for test taking

-extensions on assignment deadlines

-permission to wear headphones in class

-permission to take breaks during class

-advanced warning about fire drills

-evacuation plan for when the fire alarm is not a drill

-note taker (someone else takes notes for you in class and sends you a copy after)

-multiple copies of textbooks (to avoid having to carry the book around)

-online versions of books

-permission to use a computer for note taking and/or tests

-access to transportation around campus (often a van or golf cart)

-access to a chair during labs

-having classes recorded

-set up to attend class remotely

-extra excused absences

-modified class schedule

-permission to have a water bottle and/or snacks in class

-reserved seating in a certain area of the classroom

-different meal plan

-speech to text software

-screen reader software

-single dorm room, or room on the first floor, or room with a private bathroom, or room in a  quieter location

-being placed in a dorm that is as close as possible to your classrooms and dining hall, or one that’s wheelchair accessible

-permission to have an air conditioner in your dorm room

This list is by no means exhaustive.  The list of possible college accommodations, both academic and housing related, is probably endless!  So if there’s something you would benefit from that isn’t listed here or on your college website, it’s definitely still worth asking about it.  We don’t fix neatly into boxes, so figuring out accommodations can be a creative process.  Even if it sounds really unusual, if it would help you, go ahead and ask!  

So, how do you get these wonderful accommodations?  I’m pretty sure every college in the US has an office that is dedicated to working with students with disabilities.  It’s probably called something like “Office of Disability Services”, or “Office of Student Accommodations and Access”, or “Resource Center for Students with Disabilities”.  Searching “disability accommodations” on your school’s website will probably get you there.  It’s generally better to get this process started as soon as possible, even before you move in, so things will be ready when you get there.  I think I’m going to write a second post soon about actually working with the office of disability services.  It isn’t always an easy process, but please please please remember- you deserve accommodations.  You deserve an education and to be at college.  You deserve to be safe and supported.  Don’t give up!

But before I finish this post, I want to clear up some myths about accommodations.  First of all- they’re not cheating, or unfair to other students!  What accommodations do is level the playing field so you can participate in college in the same ways your non-disabled classmates can.  Your body and/or brain are different, so you have different needs, and that’s 100% okay.  Also, you don’t need to be totally unable to do the thing without accommodations to receive accommodations.  If it helps you to stay healthier and safer and participate more, then you deserve that accommodation.

Best of luck on the new school year!  Now go forth and advocate for yourself, I believe in you!

Source:  https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ofccp/faqs/americans-with-disabilities-act-amendments#Q8 

[getacluedrew]

Nancy Drew book collecting

The Game Books

There are LOTS of Nancy Drew books. Since being published in April of 1930 there have been many versions, rewrites, updates and new mysteries which are still ongoing today in some way! So the question is, “Where to start?!” This is less like book collecting and more akin to comic collecting. Which series? What dates matter? Are some rarer than others? Fear not sleuth! I’ll try and help you out. It’s less a question of “true value” and more the value to you. So start there. What sort books are you wanting to collect.

This post will focus on the Books which inspired the Games

Alright gang lets get down to brass tacks. Many of us are here because one day we sat down and dived into a mystery computer game as teen detective Nancy Drew! Many of our favorite and beloved adventures were inspired from books in the series and this will help serve as that list or knowledge of knowing which you should look for. 

As stated above many of us grew up playing these games and hold them in a special place in our hearts. But what books are they based on? Are they based on one book or several? Well the short hand answer... Yes...

Doesn't make since? let me explain. 

The games are based on the Nancy Drew books, but they borrow aspects from the Nancy Drew Universe as a whole, such as places, names, and details. For the avid reader it’s little things that make these games so special,  you can find all sorts of Easter Eggs and details. The games pull from multiple books and even other media to inspire their game play. So it’s very unfair to say they are based on only one book when they hold details, plot points, mcguffins ect from multiple sources.  

That being said we are here for book collecting, and the fact remains the games ARE EACH based on a Book, or Books in some cases, as their main inspirations. 

So which are they? First thing to know is, most of the Nancy Drew games are mostly based on later books in the series which tended to come out in the 80′s, 90′s and early 2000′s, to the exceptions of a few. Often times these mysteries, not only modern in setting, offered a bit more high stakes and drama than their older 60′s rewrites. However it’s worth noting that the games did not always borrow the names of their respected book titles, so you need to know the book’s name over the game. 

There are many lists here on tumblr, and online that can tell you the names of the books, and I simply wish to add to the pool as another resource for you. So bellow will be a list along with the covers of the mysteries that inspired the game. 

 Some versions of the books will have more than one cover and language. For example “Haunted Carousel” has 4 different versions of cover art and three different language translations, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish. 

So if you don’t want to buy the books for every game you can focus on your favorites and find their various covers. Despite being more recent than the 1930s or 40s, these books are not easy to come by and require some hunting! But that’s a good thing right? It’d be no fun to just be able to order them all in one go ;) 

So if you are a collector that loves nostalgia, wishes to collect the books based on your favorite games, doesn’t mind some hunting, and doesn’t mind having a jumbled collection, then these books are for you! 

If you want to learn more and get into collecting further I highly recommend looking at the Farah’s Guide for more information or check out, nancydrewsleuth.com.

check out other related posts bellow.

Pt 1 “Firsts”

Pt 2 “The Orange Silhouettes” 

Happy Hunting!!! 🔍📚

Bellow is the “List”. The number of the game is on the left and the titles or title it is based on follow. Only one cover art is shown per book.

  The list: 

1. -Nancy Drew Case Files 1 “Secrets Can Kill” August 1986 

2. - Nancy Drew Case Files 17 “Stay Tuned for Danger” May 1991

3. - Nancy Drew 122 “Message in a Haunted Mansion” December 1994

4. -Nancy Drew 128 “Treasure in a Royal Tower” December 1995

5. -Nancy Drew Case Files 36 “Final Scene” August 1989

6. -Nancy Drew 124 “Secret of the Scarlet Hand” May 1995

7. -Nancy Drew “Ghost Stories” 1989 & Nancy Drew 167 “Mystery by Moonlight” July 2002

8. -Nancy Drew 72 “Haunted Carousel” October 1, 1983

9. -Nancy Drew 153 “Whispers in the Fog” April 2000

10.-Nancy Drew 5 “Secret of Shadow Ranch” 1965

11. Nancy Drew 77 “The Blue Beard Room” August 1988

12. - Nancy Drew 1 “Secret of the Old Clock” & Nancy Drew 2 “The Hidden Staircase” & Nancy Drew 4 “Lilac Inn” 1964

13. - Nancy Drew Hardy Boys Super Mystery “Mystery Train” November 1990

14. - Nancy Drew Case Files 30 “Death by Design” December 1988

15. - Nancy Drew 143 “Mystery on Maui” June 1998 & Nancy Drew Hardy Boys Super Mystery “Tropic Fear” November 1992

16. - Nancy Drew 164 “Mystery of Mother Wolf” 2002

17. - Nancy Drew 81 “Mardi Gras Mystery” 1988

18. - Nancy Drew 78 “Phantom of Venice” October 1985

19.- Nancy Drew 168 “Bike Tour Mystery” 2002

20.- Nancy Drew 70 “The Broken Anchor” 1983

21. - Nancy Drew 158 “Curse of the Black Cat” January 2001

22. - Nancy Drew 155 “Mystery in Tornado Alley” 2000

23. - Nancy Drew 56 “The Thirteenth Pearl” February 1979 & Nancy Drew Hardy Boys Super Mystery “Tour of Danger” April 1992

24. - Nancy Drew 64 “Captive Witness” November 1981

25. - Nancy Drew Case Files 43 “False Impressions” January 1990 & Nancy Drew 163 “The Clues Challenge” October 2001

26. - Nancy Drew Hardy Boys Super Mystery “Secrets on the Nile” November 1995

27. - Nancy Drew 165 “Crime lab Case” 2002 & Nancy Drew on Campus “In and out of love” July 1997

28. - Nancy Drew All New Girl Detective 10 “Uncivil Acts” March 2005

29. - Nancy Drew 41 “The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes” 1964

30. Nancy Drew Girl Detective Super Mystery 3 “Real Fake” July 2007

31. - Nancy Drew 60 “Greek Symbol Mystery” May 1981

32. - Nancy Drew 27 “The Secret of the Wooden lady” 1950

33. - Nancy Drew 33 “The Witch Tree Symbol” 1955 & The Hardy Boys 55 “The Witch Masters Key” 1976

[elsewhereuniversity]

About Face

“Do you have any questions about your prescriptions today, uh…m-miss?” The pharmacist’s question is laced with assumptions about who you are. It’s not great, of course, but it’s also not worth your time to fight about today.

“No, I’m good,” your smile and voice are sugary-sweet, but your eyes are daggers as you take the bag and turn back towards the door. The heat and humidity are already staggering at 8 am and you are immediately made sticky by the brief walk to your car. As you start it up, there’s a brief chime of email-receiving from your phone, but you ignore it. Then there’s another ding, this time your lab-mate, Valerie, texting you.

Hey, u almost in?                                                                                     In like 30min. had to stop by pharmacy

K. Jill was looking for u. Also ugh that paper for tomorrow, I’m not even a  birdsong person lol

Lol get over it, I had to read one of your fancy neuro papers last time. Did jill say what she needed me for?

Whatever lol. She didn’t say.

                                                                        Ughhhhhhh

Jill, Dr. Dominguez, is your advisor, and you know you need to get her some figures and sections of your thesis soon, but these damn stats…well. There’s a reason you prefer spending your time traipsing off-trail through the wilderness over sitting in front of a computer all day. Not that this part isn’t interesting and important too, but come on.

Traffic is moving at a sluggish pace, of course, so you’re lost in contemplation and dread of the analyses you need to attempt running today, and the inevitable conversation with Dr. Dominguez that will have to happen at some point. As the traffic finally begins to move, you grit your teeth. Maybe it’s time to consider actually asking for help. I have no fucking clue how to do multivariate shit…You stare ahead as you inch forward, before a frustrating, jolting stop at a red light. Your eye is drawn to a kid crossing the road, wearing a grey hoodie. They look forlorn, for some reason you can’t entirely enumerate, and you glance back at them as the light finally turns.

The sun isn’t very high yet, so there are still some odd shadows stretching across the sidewalk, but you could’ve sworn that the kid had no face.

****

You manage to put the pharmacist and your grandma and the obviously-just-a-trick-of-the-light-I-mean-how-else-could-that-be faceless kid out of your mind for the rest of the morning and actually get some results you can work with from the analyses you’d been worried about. And when Dr. Dominguez pops into lab to talk to you, she is actually impressed at both the pace and quality of work you’ve delivered thus far. In fact, you’re feeling pretty damn good about everything, despite the earlier unpleasantness, so you decide to grab some lunch and hang out with some of the other grad students and lab techs.

Lunch-special sushi in hand, you plop yourself down at one of the rundown old tables in the work room. Valerie is there, along with Raul, one of the grad students from a micro lab down the hall, and Jackson, one of the general lab techs. Everyone says hi, but you’re only vaguely following the conversation as you dig into your spicy tuna roll. Something something TA stipends being cut. Which is such bullshit, of course, but nothing new. You’re just about to jump into the discussion when you get a Facebook notification. It’s your cousin, who tagged you in a post. You stare for a good five seconds at your phone.

Just remembering the good times with my cousin before he decided to be a transsexual.

And then a picture from when you were 14, a picture you’d thought you’d deleted from every conceivable online location. A picture that highlights pretty much every single aspect of your body that made staying in the closet completely untenable. Everything just always happens at once, huh.

“Fucking asshole,” you mutter, and are surprised to feel the hot prick of tears in your eyes.

“Becca, you alright?” Valerie asks, and you belatedly realize that everyone at the table heard you and is now staring. They think you were talking about one of them, or responding to something they said.

“Uh, yeah, sorry. Just something my cousin posted. She’s—she can be such a jerk. Don’t worry about it,” you say as you hastily wipe away the tears.

“What’d she do?” Jackson asks. Valerie glares at him so fiercely that he rolls his eyes and holds up his hands, “Just, like, if you wanna talk about it.”

You sigh. You’re not precisely going stealth, but you also don’t just talk to everyone about being trans. Have you actually come out to Jackson? Valerie knows, and Raul, but you don’t think you’ve ever directly talked to Jackson about it.

“It’s—it’s fine. Just, she posted a picture of me from before I came out, and I really hate thinking about any of it.” You speak with a bit more force than you intend.

“Why is that a big deal?” Jackson asks, taking a bite of his pasta. Valerie glares at him again and Raul just shakes his head.

“It’s just…it took me a long time to figure it out, and I don’t particularly like being reminded of that. And it’s not great for dysphoria, either.” You say this distractedly as you go to the post and untag yourself.

“That’s really rough,” Raul says, frowning.

“Sorry, what’s that word?” Jackson asks with a raised eyebrow, “I guess I just don’t get it? It’s just a kid picture of you, what’s it matter?”

And that does it. You stand abruptly, “I need to get back to the lab.” You hear Valerie and Raul berating Jackson as you walk away, but you’re just so very done. You toss the empty sushi container in the trash at the corner of the hallway, near one of the windows overlooking the main walkway through campus. And you nearly trip over your own feet as you swivel to double check something down below. A gray hoodie. A child with no face looking over their shoulder as they turn a corner.

****

You don’t mean to take the wrong street. It’s already been far too long a day between all of the inanity with your extended family and Jackson. And everything you tried to run after lunch was a bust, making you feel like Dr. Dominguez’s praise earlier was completely undeserved. Given all of that, you decided to get takeout again, even though you really should be cooking, so you’re walking to pick up your order. It is early evening, the shadows having elongated to embrace nearly everything, and while debating whether it’s even worth confronting your cousin about the jab, your feet simply take you the wrong way. You don’t even notice, until you’re standing in front of an empty park that’s three blocks over from where you should be. Or, wait.

Not empty. One lone figure, sitting quietly on one of the swings, wreathed in shadow.

You’ve been walking quite quickly, but over the course of a few steps have come almost to a stop. With a shiver, you glance around the area, but no parents or adults are in sight, and the figure looks young, even from a distance. 12, maybe? Maybe the kid lives in one of the nearby houses? Probably. Should you call someone? Who? Not the cops. They’d just as soon arrest or hurt the kid as help them. It isn’t that late, leaving the kid be is probably the most prudent course of action.

But. The kid feels…familiar. Even from a hundred meters, you can see that their shoulders are hunched, their hands are tight on the chains of the swing. The gentle creaking as those chains move with the slight shifts of the kid’s body is despondent in a way that is known to you, somehow. So, against your better judgement, you leave the sidewalk and walk across the damp grass to the edge of the playground. When you step onto the sand, the kid’s head jerks up and their shoulders tense further, raising almost to their ears. You stop walking and from the new angle a streetlight throws the kid’s grey hoodie into stark relief.

“Are-are you okay?” you have to clear your throat to get the words out and your voice sounds weak and tinny in the still, silent park.

The shoulders shrug. The kid is also wearing jean cutoffs, their scuffed sneakers unlaced.

“Do you need me to call someone?”

A sharp shake of the head, and then their hands release the chains and fall into their lap.

“Don’t need anything,” the kid’s voice is low, you can barely hear what they’re saying. Gingerly, you take the last few steps to the swing set and awkwardly settle into one of the worn rubber seats. Only after you have already done this do you think to question why you are so compelled to talk to this child who—maybe? how?—has been dogging you all day.

“I said I don’t need anything,” the kid says in an emotionless voice. Their face is still completely shadowed by their hood and shaggy hair.

 “I just—look, kid, I think I’ve been where you are, and—”

The kid cuts across you, “I tried to tell them today. But I…couldn’t, I didn’t know how to, so I just ended up saying I like girly shoes and wanted some or whatever.”

Oh. So you were right. You know exactly what’s going on. In fact, you’re pretty sure you had that precise conversation, once.

“That’s tough,” you acknowledge, slowly pushing back in the swing, which creaks beneath you, “It took me a long time too.”

There’s silence. Then:

“That’s what I was worried about.”

You start and quickly glance over at the kid, who has finally turned to face you.

She doesn’t have a face, which, you suppose, really shouldn’t be a surprise. You weren’t seeing things, earlier. There’s just a smooth expanse of dark olive skin. The featureless head tilts to one side and she speaks again.

“I thought you might recognize me.” The voice is plaintive. With every word, you feel a sense of vertigo, like there is a mouth, somewhere, that is making those sounds, that it’s right in front of you, but you cannot perceive it.

You are breathing very rapidly, “I thought—how do you know me? What’s, I mean—”

“This?” the kid gestures at her face, “I don’t know, I can see but I can’t see myself, I dunno what’s going on. All I know is I was walking to the park and then I was here, or I mean, on the road this morning and saw you and I followed you and I just want to go home or just sleep or just melt away but I can’t, okay? There’s just nothing.”

Without noticing, you have sprung to your feet and are backing away from the faceless girl, the faceless girl who can’t tell her parents who she is. Who you are.

“I didn’t want to think about it,” you whisper. Why are you even responding to this? This is a hallucination, or a dream. You’re just reacting to the whole bullshit situation with your cousin and Jackson and that fucking pharmacy tech. Did you fall asleep back in the lab, is that it? You pinch yourself, but no luck, “I came out and that was what I needed. Okay? Why dwell on, on, on all of that shi—stuff that happened before?”

The girl is still sitting placidly in the swing, though her hands are once again clenched around the chains.

“I knew you were me, I guess. So I followed. I don’t think anyone else notices me either, not that that’s anything new,” The note of bitterness in her voice cuts you to the bone, “I thought maybe you—me, future me, whatever—would be able to…fix me? But nothing’s changed, has it?”

You’re backed up to the slide now, “Why are you doing this? What even are you?”

You slump against the side of slide, your knees suddenly weak, “This cannot—this is bullshit, I don’t know how you’re doing this, but—”

The faceless girl is in front of you now, hands jammed into the front pocket of her hoodie. She stands there, contemplating her future self, “I just want to understand,”

The kid, proto-Becca, or whatever or whoever she is, sure sounds like a kid desperately trying to make sense of something, and not some ghoulish nightmare creature.

“Just stop,” you say in a hoarse voice, “I just don’t want to think about it, I shouldn’t have to think about it, I just want to move forward.”

“Yeah,” proto-Becca abruptly falls to her knees, and draws them up to her chest. It takes a few seconds for you to understand the sounds that the kid is making are sobs.

You hug your own knees and contemplate getting up and running away and just forgetting about all of it: this faceless phantom of your childhood self, your relatives’ inability to accept your reality, the absurd, useless, pointless stats and analyses. You’re crying too, desperately trying to refocus on the here and now, instead of being drawn down into the rabbit hole of loneliness and regret and fear that always consumes you when you think too hard about those years in which it felt like your whole body was turning against you and you couldn’t find any satisfactory explanations for what you were feeling.

But the sounds of proto-Becca, of proto-you, sobbing into her knobbly knees bring you back to the present. Ironic, that. No matter what else, however she got here, whatever happened to her face, she’s a kid. She’s a kid. She’s. A. Kid. You were a kid.

You furiously wipe your eyes and nose and sit up, scooting a bit closer to proto-Becca.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” you say in as steady a voice as you can manage, “I was scared, and, and, and I lashed out. It’s not your fault, kid.”

She doesn’t lift her head, but the sobs are quieter.

“I mean, kid, no offense, but you don’t have a face. And somehow you’re me, right?” Okay, that came out meaner than you meant it to, “The truth is that I’ve done my best to forget pretty much everything that happened back when I was…you, I guess. But I can’t.”

She sniffles, “I’m trying to tell them, I am. But the boys at school, every time I try to talk to Mom or Dad I see those boys laughing and yelling and coming at me and I can’t, I don’t—know how I ended up here, or what to do about this or anything. I just want things to be normal.”

And, finally, you get it. Not why she’s here, or how, or what any of this means, but, at least, what to do. You’ve tried to help kids who were like you before. You’d never have told them that they needed to keep their feelings concealed, that they needed to not do anything so as to avoid reminding you of your own past. So why, then, are you doing it to yourself?

“Is it okay if I come sit next to you, maybe give you a hug?” you ask, as gently as you can.

You get a glimpse of the faceless face from behind the curtain of hair, “I—I think so?”

You get to your feet, a task far more laborious than you feel it should be, and cross to her. When you plop down by her side, she twitches, but it’s toward you. Slowly and carefully, you wrap an arm around her narrow shoulders, and hold her close. She’s still crying, and the hood has slipped from her dark curls.

“It’s okay that it’s taking time,” you say, “It’s really, really hard. I meant that. There’s…nothing out there. No one to explain to you, to, uh, us, what these feelings mean, really. I remember. I remember how much it feels like you’re just stuck in the same looped computer program. Endlessly completing the same actions with no idea why, only feeling like something isn’t right. And so scared of what happens if you do anything that breaks that loop.”

“That’s pretty much it,” she says with a note of wait, that wasn’t completely in my head???, “I don’t see how I can explain to anyone, especially Mom and Dad.”

“I think all you can do is be honest. There are some resources out there, although maybe they aren’t published yet,” you glance sideways at her, “But if you just…elucidate those feelings you’ve been sitting on, it at least opens the door to them comprehending.”

“I guess so,” she sighs, and then giggles, “But also, like, no offense, that was, like, a really freakin’ pretentious way to say that.”

You snort and ruffle her hair, “Whatever. Something for you to look forward to, then.”

She’s quiet for a bit and then, quick like a bird, she wraps her arms around you too, “So I’m gonna tell them, then?”

You shrug, “When you’re ready. Whenever that is. And I promise, you are no lesser if it takes a while. Okay?”

“But you’re still going to hate thinking about me, right? I mean, about how long it took me, you, to finally do it?” her head tilts.

You sigh, “I don’t know. It’s hard, I won’t pretend it isn’t. But I think I can at least say that it’s okay. That it’s not my, or your, fault.”

When you look up, her face appears. Smile first. Broad and full of braces, her quick and nervous brown eyes darting to your face and then back to her knees.

“You’ll be fine,” you say, giving her one last squeeze, “I’m the living proof, right?”

Her laugh lingers in the air as she fades away.

x

[the-hidden-writer]

And Into The Fire

Chapter 12: A Definitely-Not-Plan

Summary: Months after the Mitchells saved the world, Linda gets a phone call asking if she’s seen two defective Pal MAX bots. Powerful people are after Eric and Deborabot 5000, and it’s up to the Mitchells to protect them.

Taglist: @squidsushi , @astro-aye , @shitmyex, @sharks-are-friendly, @snakeguy99

Check reblogs for AO3 link!

A Definitely-Not-Plan

One of the worst parts of being a parent, Linda thought, was having to wake up your children when they were sound asleep with peace written all over their faces. As their original plan of spending the night at the campsite was discarded without warning, Aaron fell asleep very quickly into their high-speed journey to Silicon Valley. Even Rick (who had been adamant that he would stay awake) began to snore after an hour or so.

She hadn’t minded. She would much rather her boys be well-rested for whatever they were about to face.

While driving, it felt like the journey was taking forever. But now that they’d arrived it felt like it had taken no time at all. They weren’t too far from the massive Pal Labs facility that looked very menacing as it loomed in the near-distance.

They’d arrived at their destination. And she had no idea where to go from here. Unless they simply charged into the building…

Doing her best to brush all illegal-sounding thoughts from her mind, Linda continued to gently shove her son awake.

“Aaron, sweetie, we’re here.”

“Mmm not yet, Mom...”

She briefly considered leaving Aaron in the car to let him sleep. Which, although it may keep him safe, could also result in him being in a whole different danger that was out of their control. She’d rather keep him close.

“Rise and shine, son.” Rick said, purposefully speaking in a louder tone which caused Aaron to wince and squeeze his eyelids shut tighter. “We need to rescue the bots.”

That caused Aaron to stir a little. “But it’s still dark.”

It was true, dawn was only just beginning to break and soon they would lose the cover of darkness. But at least there was a chance, as small as it may be, that fewer people would be there due to it being the middle of the night.

However, Linda doubted it. Especially if both of the bots were inside.

“So what’s the plan, Lin?” Rick asked her once Aaron began to sleepily climb out of the car.

Shoot. She’d promised to have thought up a plan by the time they’d arrived in exchange for letting her drive the car. And in her defence she had tried, but without knowing what the situation was going to be like she couldn’t think of anything apart from…

“We storm in there and demand that they give them back.”

The hesitance on Rick’s face was totally justified. “Uhh, are you sure? No offence but that sounds like a pretty dumb plan, dear.”

“Got any better ideas?” She quipped back. And although it sounded sarcastic, the question was completely genuine.

“Why don’t you just pay for the bots?” Aaron supplied, shutting the car door in a way that sounded far too loud for the serenity of the night around them. “Just buy them off Pal Labs then they’ll leave us alone.”

“Aar, that’s a great idea!” Rick exclaimed in a hushed voice. “We may be completely broke afterwards, but it is a good idea.”

“Yeah…”

Linda had to admit that the idea was smart and even had a better chance of working than her plan. But there was something about the notion of having to buy her sons back that didn’t sit well with her. To treat them as collectable items, as inhuman as they were, went against all of her instincts.

(Her… sons? The bots. Her boys. Her… sons.)

“Let’s keep that as a last resort.”

“Yeah, that’s a better idea.” Rick agreed. “I’d like to save my money if possible, 'specially since I’m not working at the moment.”

She smiled at her small victory. Now came the hard part. “So… shall we go?”

“What, we just drive right up to them and walk in?” Rick frowned. “We really don’t have a better plan?”

“We never have a plan.” Aaron added from below them. “But we always win in the end, don’t we?”

Linda bit back a comment about how last time was nothing but pure luck. She also admired her son’s optimism and tried to let some of it sink in to calm her own nerves.

“You’re right.” She said, bending down to kiss Aaron’s forehead. “We’ll get them back.”

Even if it meant having to tear the whole building to the ground.

~-.-~

“I don’t understand.” Muttered Katie. “So you were trying to decommission them?”

“That’s what I thought they were trying to do.” Mark replied. “That’s what I was trying to do, but apparently that wasn’t the plan. They want one disassembled and one online for some reason.”

With Agent Ward busy elsewhere and due to the lack of agents/employees at this time of night, nobody was able to supervise the two as they sat in the locked office. It gave them an ample opportunity to have a private chat.

And it also allowed Katie to gather as much information about what the hell was going on here.

“Right… but why?”

Mark shrugged. “Beats me. Unless they want to build their own robot army-”

He paused abruptly- a look of horror growing on his face.

“Oh my god they wanna build a robot army.”

Katie wasn’t even surprised. Of course that was what they were planning, what else could it be? The robots had already proved their worth at being able to take over the world, just imagine what they would be able to do if they were utilized by the government of any country, let alone the United States.

“...Are you sure you can put him back together?” She asked quietly.

Mark Bowman blinked. “What?”

“Eri- uh, that Pal MAX bot in the lab.”

He furrowed his brows. “I’m pretty sure. I specifically told them not to break anything when taking it apart, whether they listened or not is out of my hands.”

“Right.”

They fell into silence for a few moments. Mark was sitting in his wheelie chair while Katie sat on the computer desk at the side of the room. It was surprisingly comfortable.

It was Mark that was the first to speak up again.

“You called it Eric.”

Katie hung her head. It sounded a lot more like an accusation than a comment. “Yeah… I did.”

“Why?” Mark Bowman continued. “Because the Evil Warden can’t be right, you and your family aren’t actually-”

“Working with them?” Katie finished. “I mean yeah, if adopting them counts.”

She knew it was probably a bad idea to tell him the truth, but she really needed an ally in this place, and since Mark Bowman seemed to be a prisoner in his own facility he was the best (and only) person for the job.

It took a few seconds for the implications to sink in.

“...You what? Adopted them?”

“Yeah.” Said Katie nonchalantly. “They helped us save the world, actually. A dinosaur fell on them and they turned defective and told us how to stop Pal. We literally couldn't have done it without them.”

The expression on Mark Bowman’s face was priceless.

“It's a long story. And then when all the other robots switched off, they had nowhere to go so we took them in.”

Mark looked stunned. “So you use them like normal? Get them to cook and clean and stuff?”

“God, no!” Katie cried. “They’re a part of the family! They’re practically children and they have their own personalities and everything. They gave themselves the names ‘Eric’ and ‘Deborahbot 5000’.”

“...And ‘Eric’ is chopped up on a table in Lab 5.”

Katie sighed, the memory of what she’d seen flashing through her mind. “Yeah. That’s it.”

“Well that makes a lot more sense.” Said Mark. “I still think turning them off is the best option though. They may seem nice, but they’re dangerous-”

“No they’re not! They’re absolutely harmless! Deborahbot practically started crying when he stood on a beetle by accident!”

Mark scoffed, but at least he didn’t argue.

“We all love them.” She added. “We just want them back. And I’m pretty sure the whole world is safer if they’re with my family instead of the CIA.”

Mark seemed to contemplate this for a few moments. “I mean…”

All of a sudden, the computer behind Katie began to flash red, causing her to jump straight off and Mark to leap onto his feet.

“What’s that?!” Questioned Katie, pointing at the screen that was flashing the words: CODE #15.

“That’s the alarm.” Said Mark worriedly, rushing to the computer. “Someone’s broken in.”

Comments make my day! :)

[joonkorre]

its crazy late but

@drarrymicrofic prompt: blanket fort

(there’s no plot. none. just dudes being guys, guys being pals)

(caution: not very micro, more like a one shot. a whole lot of anecdotes. i’m writing this under a blanket with snow beating at my window, so of course this has to be very soft and warm. you have been warned)

“Hello?” Harry says into the dark. He’s just gotten home and instead of seeing the familiar orange hue of their beetle-shaped lamp (a gift from Luna, of course), there’s a single sliver of moonlight slipping through the curtains. Nothing else seems to exist in the living room but the echo of Harry’s greeting. Tangerine and sage drift into his nose, followed by the bitter tang of smoke. The scent of Draco’s favorite candle, newly extinguished.

Draco just left. Discovered a breakthrough in his research and fled to the Ministry lab, maybe.

Harry sighs. Unlaces his boots and hangs up his coat absentmindedly only for it to crumple onto the floor. Another sigh. He bends and retrieves it, deciding instead to throw it in the laundry bin. Might as well; he’s been trudging around in Dayhound mucus for hours and neither his dragonhide boots nor coat were spared. 

Walking into the kitchen, Harry grabs a glass from the drying rack and pours himself water from the pitcher in the fridge. It’s ridiculous how a simple act like this can drain his energy so, but it does. Curse breaking isn’t a walk in the park; even walking hurts, considering the amount of magic he expends on shite like a 500-year-old wailing locket on a day to day basis. Exposure to different kinds of magic - dark, Old Magick, elemental, countlessly and endlessly more- for 8 hours straight more often than not result in a fierce ringing in his temples and pinpricks on his skin.

After years of doing it, he can scarcely tolerate one Portkey trip from wherever he’s assigned to back to the main headquarter before getting uncontrollable shivers. Another 30 minutes on the metro, then a 10-minute walk home. In addition, Harry has to sleep for at least 8 hours every night to replenish his energy. Morning comes, he wakes up, Apparates to the headquarter, and the cycle continues.

Why does he even stick with curse breaking at this point? Right, a wry grin graces Harry’s lips, Draco thinks the uniform is hot. Oh, and can’t forget the job benefits, insurance, whole nine yards.

With the glass now rinsed and settled once more on the drying rack, Harry drags his feet to the bedroom. The clock - an antique Draco stole from his cheating ex - hits 7:18 PM, but getting ready to go to sleep sure sounds like a decent idea. Harry palms the back of his aching neck and winces. He’d go shower, scrub the dirt and tension off his limbs, and maybe heat up the leftovers from two days-

“There you are. I was wondering how much longer drinking water could take.”

Harry looks up from his slippered feet to see Draco. Or, more specifically, Draco’s silhouette. Behind some kind of white cloth. A white cloth that’s conveniently placed where the focus of the bedroom should’ve been. 

The relief at seeing his husband evaporates.

“What,” Harry says, “where’s our bed.”

Draco’s silhouette crawls to the opening of the cloth… tent-shaped thing. Pewter grey eyes peer at him behind strands of near-platinum blonde, its icy color soothed by the orange tint of… ah, so he’s brought the bug lamp in here. Neat.

“I,” Draco answers. Pauses. “Might have brought it somewhere else.”

“Somewhere else.”

“Yes.”

Harry shakes his head. An exasperated chuckle escapes his lips.

“Is ‘somewhere else’ the recycling center?”

“Why,” Draco flops down on the floor, appearing tired of holding himself up on his elbows for more than 10 seconds. It’s peculiar to see, the gesture a bit ungraceful for someone like him. Harry is helplessly in love amused. “Do my ears deceive me? Am I being confronted, cornered, accosted for being a good husband? Were the 5 minutes it took to Shrink and Levitate the wretched old thing away from our safe haven worth your condescension, dear lover?”

“I guess I did say I hate-”

“Correct!”

“-the headboard. Nothing but the headboard. Yesterday. While I’m half asleep. Baby.”

“Oh, pish posh, I hate it too! In fact, I’m doing us both a favor disposing of the entire thing altogether.”

“God, however can I thank you? I mean, you did rid us of our bed where we sleep on.”

“You can thank me by taking off those horrid gears faster and come here,” with that, Draco crawls back to where he was sitting before.

“You love these gears,” Harry says, hanging his harnesses and tool belt in the closet and walking into the bathroom for a quick shower, “you love them against your ba-”

“Put a lock on that filthy mouth, Potter, what will the Daily Prophet think?” Draco’s yell almost drowns out the shower spray. Harry laughs, his stomach hurting for the right reason at last.

When he re-enters the bedroom, Draco is leaning out from the tent thing.

“Come, get in, get in,” he beckons with a hasty wave.

Harry points to his wet hair with the hand holding his towel. Draco clicks his tongue and waves his hand more aggressively.

His husband’s level of theatrics is directly proportional to how slow Harry is at doing what he says, so he nods, fondness overflowing, and obeys.

“What’s all this?” He crouches and crawls in, eyeing the collection of pillows and quilts surrounding Draco and what would be Harry’s seat. It seems that he had also lugged in the chairs from their dining room to provide some structural support for the tent.

“A blanket fort, lover,” Draco says, his gaze tender. Harry’s finger tips tingle with every touch of cotton, linen, silk, as he gets situated. It’s been years and years and years and years, and Harry can never get used to, can never take for granted, the weight of his husband’s undivided attention.

“Huh,” he says, sitting down with an ‘oof’, “isn’t this for kids?”

“A blanket fort is a blanket fort,” Draco takes the towel from Harry’s arm and puts the throw pillow Ron knitted in his lap. He hits a button on the laptop in front of them, and Harry’s favorite jazz collection plays. He blinks. He thought Draco would play his questionable atmospheric-white-noise-POV-you’re-having-tea-in-a-gothic-vampire-library playlist, the weirdo.

Velvety smooth sax flows through the air. Harry exhales, easy and content, and lets Draco tilt his head. He towels Harry’s hair, massaging unhurried circles on his scalp and varying the degree of pressure. In no time, his head lolls forward, eyes closed, chin a breath away from his well-worn shirt. A slender, pale hand cups his cheek and holds his head up and steady. Meanwhile, the hand’s owner leans out of the blanket fort to get something.

“Ow.” A grunt. Harry smiles; most likely a cramp from all the leaning.

Then, his husband reseats himself, this time with a smell. A mouth-watering, delicious smell, tickling the back of Harry’s nose. He opens his eyes to see Draco lifting off the lid of a ceramic bowl perched on a tray, steam floating out and fogging Harry’s glasses. It’s purple yam soup, topped with chopped up shrimp and ground beef.

“Your usual order from the Viet place nearby whenever Pepper-up isn’t sufficient,” Draco murmurs, placing a spoon in Harry’s hand, his words warm against Harry’s temple. Huh, he didn’t think Draco would notice. “You said today you’d deal with those disgusting booby traps you showed me, thus I reckoned I should put the yams on our counter into good use.”

Harry stares at the soup, stunned. Draco must have taken his expression as something else.

“Oh, right,” he says, “I heated it up on the stove, but you were taking atrociously long so I casted a Heating charm. Let me take it off, okay?”

Draco flicks his hawthorn wand, a hand squeezing Harry’s shoulder as if he could see the prickling running up Harry’s nape.

He turns to look at his husband. When Harry’s career was starting to take its toll on his magical core, Draco didn’t hesitate to dive headfirst into Muggle living. Easier said than done, and it took months for him to stop frowning at the “absolutely bizarre, Potter, bizarre” appliances, but he got there in the end. Despite his constant bitching about everything, Draco not once raised a word about the drastic switch, effortlessly guiding Narcissa to gossip about the Albescu clan’s abhorrent matriarch when she asks about how he’s faring.

“Gosh, I,” Harry says. Mumbles, really, into Draco’s collarbone, filling his brain with the woodsy aroma of potion making that no amount of expensive body products can mask, “that’s lovely, baby, thank you.”

“Eat,” Draco says, rubbing his chin on the top of Harry still-damp hair and messaging his tense neck. Harry knows he’s breathing him in too. “Or I’ll have to heat it up in the kitchen again, and forgive me but I’d rather stay here for the next 12 hours, at least.”

“Lazy arse.”

Draco laughs, a momentary rumble of his chest, then moves forward to click something on the laptop. Harry’s on his fifth spoonful of pure comfort when the jazz music stops, and on the blank wall opposite from their blanket fort is the title card of a movie. Strange, Harry didn’t even notice the mini projector. He squints.

“Why is there Korean subtitles?”

“Lover,” Draco tosses a napkin at Harry’s crossed legs, “what is watching movies online without the occasional bout of piracy?”

“Pira- piracy,” Harry chokes, the hot soup stinging his palate, “we have a Netflix subscription.”

“You can’t find shite like this on Netflix.”

“Of course we can. Baby, we don’t know anyone who’s good at computer stuff and can deal with the viruses.”

“There’s no virus here, I checked.”

“How,” Harry stresses, “and again, piracy.”

“Sometimes,” Draco says, lowering the speaker volume, “not doing crimes… is worse.”

“What the fuck,” the main character, a square-faced woman with a python around her neck, has a monologue in a completely different language. “What the fuck? Is that Italian?”

“Yes, but I’m French.”

“And?”

“And they’re both Romance languages. I can understand certain words and translate it for you.”

No, he can’t.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Keep eating,” Draco settles amid the pillows, long hair settled on his satin-clad chest, white against emerald. Harry sneers at him - an unfortunate habit he’s gotten from Draco - and turns to watch the movie.

True to his words, Draco translates every dialogue and mimics the characters’ voices with zeal, contradicting his stoic expression and somber, interlaced hands, looking like a cranky judge having to deal with reckless teenagers on their anti-authority phase. Harry can tell that he doesn’t understand a thing, and soon enough he’s woven a story about how the thriller-mystery they’re watching is actually a vicious custody battle over a duck. For each of Harry’s occasional snicker at the absurdity Draco has thought up is a playful kick at his ribs.

Minutes pass. With Harry’s bowl now emptied, he puts it on a chair and goes to wash up. 

The moment he sits back down, Draco’s big toe pokes at his spine. Getting the memo, Harry grins and reclines on the pillows. His left side is flushed against Draco’s right, the kinks in his neck eased off from the angle. They, as per usual, gradually get closer to one another, and at some point, Draco lays his head on Harry’s chest and ear on his beating heart. It’s calming to him, Draco had said when Harry asked, on the third night of their honeymoon. With the war long behind them, there was nothing to fear. Only the constellations existed as their witnesses.

“You died, Harry,” he had whispered, full and tipsy. “It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen, despite all the shite I made you go through.

“You were so far away in Hagrid’s arms, I couldn’t see your face,” the night had been blinding, but his eyes had found Draco’s anyway. “It felt like my heart died with you.”

Harry had kissed his forehead and hugged him close. His heart had always been there for Draco to take.

“What’s up with the blanket fort?”

He has a lapful of Draco, a lungful of peach and cedar scented shampoo, and the sleepy timbre of his husband’s voice against his chest. The Italian movie is the last thing on Harry’s mind. 

“I wasn’t aware of its existence growing up,” Draco says. “Having anything other than an immaculate bed when one wasn’t sleeping was uncouth, see, so you could imagine my surprise when Teddy demanded to play in something as messy as a fort so often.”

Harry doesn’t need to imagine it; he had witnessed it himself. Draco, freshly released from a two-year sentence in Azkaban, mellowed and tentative, yet determined to reconnect with his mother’s sister and his nephew. Harry had been wary too, standing in the corner of Teddy’s bedroom, staring at the fuzz of blonde on Draco’s shorn head and his weak gait. Teddy, the darling boy with his clumsy hold on Draco’s thigh, afraid that the haggard man would trip without help, had led him to his play area.

“Fort, fort,” the boy had screamed in Draco’s ear, but he hadn’t flinched. He had nodded and gone along with Teddy’s babbled directions, then sat back on his heels and fixed a wide-eyed stare at the monstrosity Teddy had called a fort (his designing skills were, unsurprisingly, underdeveloped at the mere age of two). 

Swiveling his head, he had gawked at Harry, who had still been standing in the corner with his arms crossed, confusion and hysteria in the arch of his aristocratic brows.

It had been the first time he had looked at Harry in the eye for years. In seconds, it was 6th Year all over again, with him watching Draco pushing his food around with a fork from across the room, unable to look away. Obsession, a voice unlike Hermione’s helpfully defined, had slithered up and under his skin. It had remained there for years, stubborn and ardent, an emotion he had tried to leave behind time and time again. He’d never succeeded.

It’s Draco, after all.

“He never let anyone but him enter the fort, remember? Back when he’s still making us build it for him?” Draco’s fingers tap a random rhythm on Harry’s stomach. Harry tightens his arm around him, shifts a bit. “So many forts and I still didn’t know what it’s like to be in one.”

Somebody downs a shot in the movie. Harry doesn’t quite register it. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a proper one either until now. Didn’t have enough space in the cupboard. Plus, the hanging around the beds at Hogwarts felt pretty cozy by themselves.”

Draco hums. “Mhmm, I say. Another ‘first’ for us.”

Harry glances at the crown of his head. The man doesn’t sound surprised; Harry wagers that he already knows and decided to make one for the both of them today.

They continue to watch the movie in silence, whites and blues and purples flooding his sight, until Draco yawns and Harry blinks his eyes shut for far too long.

“Baby.”

“Hmm?”

“Sleep?”

“Yes.”

“Where, then? We have no bed.”

“I still maintain that I made the right choice”

“Jesus Christ, you’re so rash for an academic.”

“Well, in my professional opinion, sleeping in a blanket fort every blue moon does wonders for one’s quality of sleep,” Draco gets up on his elbow to smirk at Harry, “we can look at other beds tomorrow, can’t we? Now hush. Rest.”

“Ha,” Harry says, at least 5 more words to follow up on that just on the tip of his tongue. But then Draco runs a gentle hand through Harry’s hair, taking his time with it, the remaining hints of Harry’s migraine from work fading with every curl of hair carefully unknotted. He mumbles this and that, silly, insignificant things, engrossed in his task, and Harry listens carefully as his eyelids lower.

Draco takes off his gold-rimmed glasses (so sweet and soft Harry can barely feel it), cleans them and puts them on a chair. Through half-lidded eyes, Harry watches him cover them both with a quilt and return to Harry’s chest, curling up like a cat. Draco’s arm is around his midriff, peach and cedar pervading his senses anew, and Harry forgets whatever he was going to say.

Cold ankles pressed against bare calves, Harry is already deep asleep when the credits roll.

[sazc94]

If These Sheets Were States

Chapter One

Words: 1.2k

Warnings: A bit of violence, swearing lots of sickly sweet fluff.

A/N Anything Blue, Bold and Italic is a flashback,

Chapter Two

This room's become a mausoleum, filled with relics of regret Paying dues to every moment wasted, on words left unsaid

21:00 CDT Texas.

“Tony, we’re almost at the computer lab are you in position” Steve asked over the coms. Before he could finish his sentence 5 more of Hydra’s men came barreling around the corner with their guns pointed, all though the bullets wouldn’t do too much damage to Steve, he had been shot enough times to know you would be less than impressed if you came home with another bullet wound. Plus, he knew if anything happened to Natasha you’d be even more pissed. Not that she couldn’t hold her own against the men. As Steve threw his shield, he thought about the last time he’d gotten back from a mission with a couple of bullet wounds. Man, you were so pissed you refused to talk to him for 12 hours. He had to give you your credit, you knew how to hold a grudge.

“Hey Y/N come on I said I was sorry for running into the onslaught of bullets as opposed to waiting for Wanda, but in my defense, I was trying to stop The Hand from setting of an explosion which would have leveled the entire state of Hawaii” Steve said as he pulled you into his lap. He circled his arms around you tight and rubbed circles on the back of your hand.

You let out a sigh, of course you understood why he had done it, he was Captain America for Christ’s sake. You just wished he’d allow his team members help him more instead of running into the line of fire all the time and whilst Steve rubbed circles on the back of you hand and you weren’t really that mad you decided to make him suffer a bit more. So you continued with the silent treatment.

“Hey Natasha, I see you brought backup” Darcy observed, for someone who had been held hostage by Hydra for 8 weeks Darcy seemed pretty chipper. Thankfully other than a bruised cheek she didn’t seem to be in poor shape. “Well I decided to be generous and share the fun around” chortled Natasha. Whilst Natasha cut Darcy free from the chair she was tied too Steve tried to reach Tony again. “Stark come on Natasha’s almost got Darcy free and we’ve got 3 minutes left before the generator kicks back in and we need to get out of here” Steve criticized. “Uh a little busy here Cap” replied Tony “You and Natasha are gonna have to get her out of their yourselves, I’ve got incoming and if you want a clear exit outta here then I’m going to have to hold down the action here a little longer” retorted Stark

Steve knew you weren’t really that mad at him but as you were still giving him the cold shoulder, so he had dragged you out of your apartment to the one place he knew would cheer you up, the Disney Store in Times Square. One of the things Steve loved most about you was how you would prefer to spend an afternoon shopping in the Disney Store as opposed to designer clothing stores. You worked as P.A at Nelson and Murdock Attorneys at Law and you earnt a pretty decent wage, but you preferred value over labels. Steve grabbed your hand and dragged you to the back of the store he knew exactly what he wanted and knew that you wouldn’t be able to stay mad at him for long once he had purchased it.

“Steve, why have you dragged me out of the apartment to bring me here? I’m still mad at you y’know” you furrowed your brow. Steve was dragging you to the back of the store. I’m sure if people hadn’t recognized the man you were with was Captain America, they probably would have been alarmed at the fact you were being dragged through the store.

“Darcy, I need you to hold on tight and trust me, Tony’s caught up trying to hold of the Hydra agent’s our intel severely underestimated how many agents there would be here and once that generator kicks back in Hydra’s agents will be back to check on you and the building once the powers back on” Steve ordered as he kicked a window out.

Steve grabbed the biggest Stitch toy available, he knew you’d had a smaller one in your online basket for 3 months now, he knew you were worried you would look childish if you brought it, so he had decided to buy it for you. Along with some other merchandise he knew you would love. “Steve, let’s just-“before you could finish that sentence Steve shoved the giant Stich toy in your arms.

Darcy landed with a soft thud straight on top of Steve. Before she even had time to register she was lying on top of the hunky blonde haired Avenger Steve had rolled her off him and was pulling Darcy to her feet. “Steve get ready to catch this stupid laptop” Natasha said over the coms, she didn’t wait for Steve’s reply before chucking it out the window. Natasha started backing up preparing to run and jump. Natasha may not be a Super Soldier or a billionaire with a fancy hi-tech suit, but she was a skilled spy and she had made harder jumps than this.

Steve had refused to take no as an answer when it came to the giant Stitch soft toy and the basket full of various Disney items. Including some cute Captain America themed mouse ears, for some reason Stark had given Disney a merchandising contract for all the Avengers back in 2014. Steve had even signed a few autographs to get the employees to personalize the Stitch something usually only done for online orders. “Steve you really don’t have to buy me this, I know it makes me look childish” you mumbled, you could feel your cheeks going red, I mean you were 26 dating the sexiest man you had ever known, an Avenger, THE Captain America and here he was buying you a stuffed toy like you were 10. “Hey somethings got to protect you whilst I’m away on missions, it might as well be this blue alien dog” chuckled Steve. Suddenly Steve realized you were staring at the floor and fidgeting with the bottom of your sweater, something you did when you were anxious. “Hey Y/N look at me, I don’t care that you like soft toys still, I love how you still find comfort in them when there are so many strange things in this world. I don’t think it makes you seem kiddish. I find it adorable and endearing” Steve spoke with such tenderness and love you felt yourself tearing up. Before the tears had time to spill out Steve bent down and place a firm but loving kiss on your lips. “So Please Y/N, let me buy you this strange creature and then we can go back to yours curl up with a film and I will tell you again how sorry I am about running into the line of fire” continued Steve.

“Stark, get moving we’re about two minutes out from Clint. Clint, get ready as soon as we are in that jeep you hit the gas and you get us the hell out of here” barked Steve. Thanks to Tony keeping the fight focused on him Steve and Natasha had been able to get Darcy out of there with minimal interference, however Steve was sure that Hydra had figured out what was going on and would be after them by now. If they didn’t get out of here then the 7 weeks of planning and the 7 weeks away from you would have been for nothing. “Roger that Rogers, - see what I did there?” said Tony.

[nothingunrealistic]

naturally was going "hmm what kind of fins (fish) would young taylor in the bathtub wish for. how would we know what they think would be the best fish tail to have" & then was just thinking of Younger Taylor Hcs just in general. got any you'd wanna share, or like, any faves from what's been provided either as unofficial ideas or via those glimpses of info in the show's text. Fave can be in a "truly enjoy this" way & or simply more of a "truly Thinking About This An Extra Lot" sense lol. They

Boy Do I… first, a listing of everything we Know from canon about their childhood / early life / family:

taylor grew up in “a place like” connerty’s small apartment where “the heat pipes bang practically all night” in the winter [2x11]

taylor’s mom would deem the apartment they rented for her & douglas too expensive, and if she & douglas were shopping for furniture, they’d argue about how much things cost [4x07]

taylor never thought they’d be thinking about living a life where they book private jets [2x09]

the masons’ home is hundreds of miles from any body of water (as shown here) and douglas had to fly to nyc to see taylor [4x03]

douglas figures taylor’s mom won’t miss him getting in her way back home [4x03]

taylor has a sister; when she gets married, in michigan, taylor is part of the wedding party [2x09]

at a young age, taylor was always measuring information around them, and sweet / affectionate, especially toward douglas [4x03]

taylor’s favorite cereal as a kid was frosted flakes [4x09]

taylor was never really douglas’s “little girl” like he claims [4x03]

the first time douglas brought taylor to his lab, it meant a lot to them, and the next day they gave him designs to remake it [4x06]

douglas taught taylor: “don’t just have an idea, build the model that proves it” [4x07]

according to douglas, taylor gets the “unyielding compulsion to get it right” from him, and their relationship was best when they “kept things mathematical” [4x03]

douglas wishes he could have built real wealth / success and given it all to taylor [4x03]

wendy mentions to taylor that douglas has “exploited your need for his approval,” and taylor agrees that douglas only cares about his own advancement rather than being a father first [4x07]

douglas dislikes the military / the government [4x06]

taylor is surprised by douglas quoting a pop song [4x07]

when taylor was younger, the bathtub was the only place they could go to be alone and think, and they’d press their legs against the sides hard enough to make them go numb [3x11]

taylor started playing online poker at age 12 under the screen name ZackCody892 and played up to 16 tables at a time (and for thousands of hours) [2x03]

douglas was fired from his job at an aerospace firm when taylor was in 7th grade. this firing damaged their relationship with him and “affected the home life.” for years, taylor thought douglas had been fired so that the firm could steal his invention, and only found out the truth from his personnel file [2x11, 4x05, 4x06]

taylor has had 927 hours of therapy prior to their session with dr. gus, and that number hasn’t changed at their first session with wendy [2x03, 2x08]

douglas, in bringing taylor food and coffee, claims they rarely take the time to look after themself [4x04]

taylor used to lie to themself and others but is now past that, and knows “how hard it is to have things inside you that you can’t communicate” and “what it’s like to face public scrutiny over who you are” [2x08, 3x02, 4x04]

when taylor reminds douglas about their pronouns, he says “this talk again?”, implying it’s a discussion they’ve had before [4x03]

taylor once got into a bar fight with a high school classmate (it’s unclear whether they were still in high school at the time) after seeing y tu mamá también in a theater [5x07]

taylor was active in occupy wall street in college [2x10]

taylor played poker in college against classmates, grad students, & professors, but their opponents kicked them out for winning too much; additionally, the competitive aspect made them sick (described as “malaise” or “vertigo-like symptoms”) [2x03, 4x12]

taylor planned to go to chicago for grad school and study with eugene fama [2x02]

mafee picked taylor as his intern because they were the only applicant who wasn’t boring / didn’t care about the same bullshit that everyone from wharton or harvard did [5x04]

douglas initiated the visit to taylor, claiming it was because he’d missed them, after not being ready to see them even though taylor’s mother wanted to visit countless times [4x03, 4x07]

taylor is trying to be “everything to their father” in funding his company, and neither of them will be able to come back from taylor being forced to betray him [4x06, 4x07]

wow that’s a long list. and now, my own thoughts and extrapolations:

taylor grew up somewhere in the west / midwest with their parents and sister, who’s a few years older than them, in a house small enough that they had to share a bedroom with her. hence, needing to hide out in the bathtub to get any space & time alone.

from very early on, taylor was douglas’s favorite child and he was their favorite parent — douglas saw taylor’s intelligence & insight (and saw himself in them) and chose to put time & effort into teaching / guiding / molding them, hoping they’d one day follow in his footsteps / support his ambitions, and taylor liked that attention & recognition. (douglas’s attitude toward taylor’s sister is essentially “well she’s here too i guess.”)

douglas taught taylor enough about aerospace engineering & mathematics for them to understand the value of his lattice fin concept, and to generally have a better grasp of engineering concepts than your average (even very well-read) business major / financier. (remember how rebecca knew a robot’s “proprietary” power source was a combustion engine because her father was a mechanic? same deal here. see also: the “smash electronics apart to find the microchips inside and figure out who makes them” strategy; taylor comparing losing grigor’s money to building a turbo engine and having the nitrous tank blow up in their face.) this manifested in both directly teaching them in his lab and in playing games like the silverware-stacking game we see in 4x03, or like douglas throwing out math problems for taylor to solve on the spot, or the two of them solving math problems together.

douglas also imparted his taste in music (which does not include anything new / popular) to taylor, though their taste as an adult (or even as, like, a teenager) isn’t identical to his. this is how they discovered rush in the first place and why they have such strong opinions about The Best Rush Albums. (if douglas had such a ranking, it’d be closer to axe’s than to taylor’s.)

listening to rush helped make taylor a libertarian 😔 that’s just life when you’re a neil peart stan, which of course they are. they admire his lyrics + his drumming talent + his absolute poker face in performances.

douglas also taught taylor to play blackjack, which inspired them to go and learn poker on their own and start playing online. they tried to keep it a secret, but it's hard to be secretive about spending hours a day playing online poker on the family computer. (this is 2006 or so, after all.)

taylor figured out that they were Not A Girl (or at least had thoughts of “hm i don’t enjoy being addressed / perceived as A Girl”) fairly young but didn’t acquire a concrete vocabulary for / specific understanding of that for some time. (if douglas is calling they/them pronouns “that woke stuff” in 2019, he sure wasn’t saying anything clear or favorable about trans people in 2009 or 1999. ditto for online poker sites.)

douglas’s firing exacerbated every negative aspect of the mason family dynamic. he doubled down on pushing taylor toward his field, urging them to succeed where he’d failed, and warning them against letting anyone Steal Their Value. money got tighter, taylor’s parents argued more, and any activities taylor was in (like, say, swimming at the ymca) that required payment got cut; they may have figured out how to make money (illegally!) from online poker at this point. the combined stress of financial instability, being torn between pursuing their own ambitions and fulfilling douglas’s expectations for them, and increasing Gendered Expectations in general — plus the whole “playing online poker for hours a day” thing — probably put taylor in therapy within a few months, if they weren’t in therapy already. (how did their parents pay for it? i don’t know either.)

stealing this from that interview asia & brian & david did in 2017: if taylor had not already taught themself to think and speak directly & incisively and look people in the eye when they talk, et cetera, it started here, whether in therapy or on their own time.

taylor went to college in new york city. douglas did not want them to do this, for a number of reasons, and would have preferred they stick closer to home (and study something other than finance), but doing so would have made them miserable.

by the time they finished high school (circa 2012), taylor had properly heard of trans people and figured that they were somehow One Of Them, but not until college did they hear of people being nonbinary and go “ohhhh yeah that’s me.” (they’d also gotten a Short Haircut in high school, but didn’t go full buzzcut until college. unsurprisingly, they got some shit in high school for being Visibly gnc.)

for some period of time while figuring out their gender situation, taylor went by the name neil as a nod to neil peart. (it’s fun to imagine that they still have a faceless twitter / tumblr account where they go by neil. doubles as a way to prevent anyone connecting it to their real life.)

taylor came out to their family while in college. their mom and sister had fairly similar reactions of “well i don’t Get this exactly, but i love you and want to support you and i’m sure you know what you're talking about better than i do and you did clearly hate it every time i urged you to conform to Standards Of Womanhood so sure i can call you Them and my [child / sibling] :)” given some time to think about it. douglas… well. if he’s starting from a place of “i don’t get this,” he’ll end up at “so it must be wrong and stupid, because i’m always right,” especially if This = his favorite child being different in some significant way from who / what he thought they were. obviously he doesn’t react well or supportively, and the strain in his relationship with taylor tips over into full-blown estrangement. bad times for everyone.

if taylor’s bar fight happened when they were old enough to legally enter a bar, it happened after coming out to their family (also after the live poker fiasco), and before making plans for grad school / internships. most likely it was on a summer break they were spending back in their hometown. (another fun thought: taylor seeing the video of axe punching a guy, just weeks after they punched a guy, and going “well maybe i should work for him.”)

if douglas was at taylor’s sister’s wedding (and maybe he wasn’t!), it was awkward for everyone when he and taylor crossed paths again. barest of pleasantries, passive-aggressive comments, et cetera. naturally, it took a few more years — and douglas realizing that taylor, now being fairly wealthy and successful, could probably fund his dream project if they didn’t hate him — for him to decide to visit them.

[wedblog613]

Tagxedo For Mac

Tagxedo For Mac Free

Tagxedo For Mac Computer

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Tagxedo is another word cloud generator, one with even more bells & whistles. Like Wordle, the program counts the number of times a word is used. The more it is used, the larger it appears in the graphic. Small words like 'a' and 'the' are not counted. Both Worlde and Tagxedo can make word clouds from text or websites. I prefer Tagxedo for the images it creates, but for analyzing the message of a literary work, Wordle actually works better. See my previous post about Wordle.

By default, Tagxedo's image editor will put words in the black part of your jpg. Choose 'Add Image' from the 'Shape' options dialog box. When prompted, upload the black on white jpg from your computer. In the resulting dialog box many tiny copies of the word 'Tagxedo' will appear in the area where your word cloud words will show up.

Tagxedo is another excellent choice when searching for websites like Wordle. One of the features that sets Tagxedo apart from the other options here is being able to create word clouds from your Twitter profile, your blog and many other sources online.

Tagxedo can either scan text or sites for words, or you can create a list of your own. Critical Update! Tagxedo is built on Microsoft Silverlight, and Microsoft Silverlight is dying. By April 2015, Chrome browsers will phase out Microsoft Silverlight plugins, but Tagxedo still works fine on Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer — for now.

Here's my Tagxedo image of this blog.

Tagxedo For Mac Free

Before we could use Tagxedo on our Macs, I had to install Silverlight. Tagxedo provides a link for this installation. Similar to Flash, Silverlight allows the interactive display to function. I've never needed Silverlight before, and this took a bit of time, but it was easy. By the way, don't even think about running Wordle or Tagxedo on on Mac OS 10.3. Our lab has 12 machines with 10.6 'Snow Leopard.' The other 18 have 10.3, so my students take turns using the newer machines. We don't have any 'Tiger' machines anymore, so I can't say if Tagxedo will run on 10.4. Perhaps one of my readers can tell me. I believe you need to install before you can properly view this embedded version. Here's an article about embedding Tagxedo on your web page.

The print function in Tagxedo allows you to save it as a PNG or JPG. The graphic above is a PNG. I was curious about which format is better for this type of thing. I found a very clear explanation on Inverse Karma, the blog of software engineer Ganesh Prasannah. I chose PNG based on his suggestion that if the image contains text and hard lines, PNG is better than JPG.

Tagxedo For Mac Computer

I ask my students to save their work and turn it in to my digital turn-in tray--a 'write only' folder on our server. Not only does that allow us to have a paperless classroom, it gives us the option to add the image to a web page, make a slide show, or print in color when I get the color printer working. Both Wordle and Tagxedo have public galleries for you to share your artwork. Be advised that not there may be graphics in the gallery that are not appropriate for the classroom.

Want some more ideas? Check out '52 Interesting Ways to use Wordle in the Classroom.' This is only one of the 'Interesting Ways' collaborative Google presentations started by Tom Barret.

Tagxedo For Mac And Cheese

Tagxedo has more fonts, allows you to use more than 1 font on your word cloud, and offers more controls in layout. It's best known for pouring that word cloud into a shape, like the one below. This is part of the first chapter from my favorite Sherlock Holmes story, The Sign of Four. Cool!

Tagxedo

Benefits

Free.

No sign-in or e-mail required.

Licensed under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial, Attribution, Share Alike License. (In other words, you may not sell items with images created by the Tagxedo application).

It is very easy to copy and paste text from the Internet or from student work in Word or another program into the Tagxedo application. Text may also be entered directly.

Keeps a history of previous configurations during the creation phase, so you may go back and find an earlier rendition of your word cloud.

Allows you to create word clouds in shapes.

Many options for saving to your local machine and on the web.

Many color / theme options.

Tagxedo has a stemming protocol built into the application which recognizes derivatives of a word. For example, walk, walks, and walking would be recognized as derivatives of the word walk and would only appear in the Tagxedo as the word walk.

Not a dedicated educational site, however, the owner has stated that all Tagxedos showcased in the gallery will be educationally friendly.

Several ads appear on the site.

Not as easy and intuitive as Wordle or ABCya.

Several shape options are available. However, the ability to create custom shapes or some of the shapes featured in the gallery require a premium subscription (which is not yet available, as far as I can tell).

Requires Silverlight (not available for older Mac computers).

The Tagxedo site is not searchable for previously created Tagxedos.

Helpful Hints

This short video tutorial is very helpful when beginning to use Tagxedo

Intro to Tagxedo

Multiple word phrases may be entered by using the Tilda (~) between words, but this is only available when adding text through copying and pasting or direct entry. It does not work when pulling text directly from a website.

By allowing to repeat, you can generate a more solid shape. See the embedded images to the right.

The borders of the shape may be set to a 'hard border' to emphasize the shape or the shape shadow may added for clarity of the shape.

When using the embed code provided by Tagxedo, a small image is generated (and does not include the shape outline if left on the Tagxedo). One of the cool features of the embedded image is that you may actually click on a word and a web search is done on that word so if a student did not know the meaning of a word the Wikipedia or other site would be available for help. See the embedded image to the right.

Tagxedo uses a formula to determine the emphasis of the word in the word cloud that is partly based on the number of times the word appears in the text. See the Tagxedo FAQ page for more information.

Default settings eliminate common English words such as the, a, an, prepositions, etc. are automatically disregarded by the application.

Numbers are eliminated from Tagxedo by default..

Words may be removed from a completed Tagxedo by clicking on the Word / Layout Option link and selecting the Skip tab. Simply select the words you want to eliminate from the Tagxedo and Accept the changes at the bottom. This will cause the Tagxedo to 'respin'.

If you are going to embed your image, either keep a record of the URL of the image or download the image as the Tagxedo gallery is not searchable and the embedded image does not automatically link to the URL as it does in Wordle. When creating a Tagxedo for a class, I recommend saving the Tagxedo on the web making note of the URL and saving the image to your own computer. You may then use the image in either PowerPoint Presentations or on a Website and make the image itself a link to the image on the web where the interactive functions are available. See the example below.

[valkblue]

Being a Behavior technician requires a certain amount of dedication to the job — the rigorous type, bordeline rigid. That’s what is expected to be at peak efficiency regarding analysis protocols and diagnostics for host service and calibration.

For that, Vivian thinks she might be the worst tech in her department. 

— masterlist, AO3

Chapter 1 on 12

Chapter wordcount: 2,486 Story status: Complete Rating: General Warning: people swear a lot, technobabble counts as swearing as well (believe me)…

Author’s notes: This is the first time I post a fanfic online. A real big one I mean. Not just crackfics... I’m emotional. I don’t know what the schedule will be yet because my queue is acting up, but everything should be out regularly, or something that looks like it. This first chapter is an intro to the main character and what she does, and I hope you’ll enjoy this story and its characters all the way!  Also, I really want to thank @pheedraws​ and @something-tofightfor​ for their heartwarming feedback on the whole story. Thank you SO much!!

Have a good time reading, and my askbox/messages are open! 💙

— Chapter 1

Now wasn’t a good time to yawn…

And yet, Vivian had nothing else to do but wait right now, wait while the progress bars slowly filled up on her tablet screen.

Now wasn’t the time, simply because some of her colleagues were passing through the hallway, behind the glass panels of her cubicle, and among them was the head of Behavior department — incidentally, her superior.

No doubt they were all about to grab a bite at the restaurant and Vivian held back an almost envious mumble; she was starving! But before she could go eat anything, she had to finish with her last subject on her morning schedule; host ID#DH410829420391, named Mildred.

And Mildred was back at the lab on account of a negative report about her response time during interactions with other hosts but also with guests. A lag that only happened in character mode, not in analysis. So, Vivian started with refreshing her lexical base and improvisation engine. It took some time to check the entire tree but as of now, it was done.

"Can you confirm if the update’s complete?"

"Confirmed," Mildred answered right away, her voice flat and her look vacant.

"Back in character mode."

Mildred seemed to wake up and blinked once before focusing her attention  back on Vivian.

"Mildred?"

"Oh, I’m sorry," she answered with a hint of a shy smile. "I must have drifted off, I believe… The working hours at the farm are ungodly sometimes!"

The response time was more than good, now. The improvisation too.

"I was wondering if there’s a lot of clients at the farm these days," Vivian asked.

The answer was not long to come.

"Certainly! Our cattle sure gives the best milk there is. No matter what the competition says!"

"How many green bottles are standing on the wall?"

Questions and procedures were always more or less the same to determine which bits of code, settings or values could cause an issue or start to glitch like crazy!

But today, for Mildred — and Vivian — everything was back in order, and each/both of them could soon return to the the usual course of their scheduled day.

It was about time for Vivian to take a break, if she was reduced to that kind of wisecrack…

A glance at her wristwatch, even while her tablet displayed a more accurate time than the watch hands, and Vivian concluded her analysis. She folded the tablet, slid it back in her jacket pocket, and left the large glass room after one last embarrassed look at Mildred she was leaving there, naked in the dark. Vivian didn’t even fight down a shiver. It was actually freezing cold in there!

She comforted herself with the thought that Mildred didn’t feel anything in this state, disconnected, and that a team wouldn’t take too long to come get her, do her hair, dress her up and put her back in rotation in no time. Barely as much as Vivian had for her lunch break… and that was just enough to go all the way up to the hub restaurant. But the bosses here didn’t care much about how long the lunch breaks lasted, as long as the work was done in time.

So, Vivian didn’t hurry to get to the elevator she shared with two co-workers who only interrupted their chitchat about hockey results for a vague greeting.

At this hour, the restaurant was a bit more crowded but it still wasn’t too hard to find a seat in the large and relatively peaceful room. The whole vibe in it was corporate though, even in that staff only room; every dish were stamped with the park logo and name — from the bottom of the plates to the salt shakers — and a flat HD screen displayed a bunch of Delos branches ads that looked much weirder without sound.

After a while, one didn’t really pay attention to all this anymore… A few months was enough to make it all part of the landscape and for the mind to simply stop noticing it.

And Vivian had been working here for three years, now.

However, she was still bothered by a few details sometimes, such as the huge white walls that spanned all the way up a balcony floor and a domed ceiling or the fact that the stalls were lit with a pale light under which the food turned to a sickly colour.

Hopefully, under the less saturated lights of the main room, the Caesar salads and the turkey-tomato sandwiches were back to a more appetizing hue.

Her tray loaded with a potato-corn salad, a big glass of water and a piece of bread, Vivian walked towards the tables, eager for her potatoes to lose their blueish glint. Just shy of the screen, she recognised a familiar face, Margaret’s, another Behavior tech from her team. Both were on friendly basis now, where it was possible to enjoy some time together and to laugh a little, even if it took them a whole year to finally break the ice.

Margaret waved at Vivian when she saw her pick her way across the room, inviting her to join them — them being Margaret, and three other guys from their department.

"Did you hear the latest, Vivian!?" she blurted. "I’ve been told that Damon Dyers is in the park, at this very moment!"

"Damon… Dyers?"

Vivian didn’t even hide her puzzlement while sitting in front of her.

"The actor," one of the three guys — Luke — pointed out. "Marge was just exposing how she’ll mooch the control room techs for a footage…"

"Listen, if you were as thirsty as I am about this guy, you’d understand!" Margaret replied.

To that, he quipped:

"My husband would be pissed!"

All chuckled in approval before returning to their almost emptied plates, while Vivian had barely touched her own.

"Can you imagine," Margaret daydreamt, leaning back in her seat as in a comfy armchair, holding her Pyrex glass like a snifter of bourbon. "Damon hunting down Escaton in the hills…"

Vivian scoffed; she could imagine, indeed.

At the table, Charles, Thawal and Luke didn’t pay any more attention to them, carrying on with their chat about retro gaming. Vivian would probably have preferred to be part of that conversation; not that she didn’t know shit about movies and their actors, but more like aside from a few exceptions on which they got along swimmingly, she didn’t have much taste in common with Margaret. But she listened to her friend anyway as she kept going after a sip of sparkling water:

"How am I not supposed to be hot on the idea!? I’ll deadass find someone to bootleg me some footages!"

Vivian smiled out of politeness, not saying much, as always. Her mouth was full anyway.

"Oh, by the way!"

Margaret took another swip of her glass before putting it down on the table and leaning towards Vivian.

"Apparently, they’re going to burden us with a whole new bunch of hosts in two or three weeks," she said, with all the serious she could muster. "I heard that from Elsie. Narrative must be trying to compensate for something, if you know what I mean…"

Vivian knew very well.

"We barely have time to light a fag between two sessions already and they plan to add another hundred on our backs!?"

She snorted disdainfully.

"Don’t know what they’re spicing their coffee with but it isn’t doing them any good."

"No shit," admitted Vivian, a bit testy at the idea. "Unless they also plan to hire? Did Lowe say anything about it?"

Margaret shrugged.

"No idea, I haven’t talked to him in a while."

She patted her blazer pockets then sighed softly; Vivian understood her attitude as relief, and a craving, even a need to light a cigarette.

"You should ask," Margaret pointed out with a smile a tad clenched in the orbicularis muscles. "You like him, right?"

Vivian approved; she admired his thoroughness, his love for details… A lot could be learned while working under his care and Vivian found him both spirited and friendly.

Margaret didn’t quite share the feeling, however; in her own words, he was giving her the heebie-jeebies.

"Anyway, I’m off," Margaret stated with an even greater impatience in her voice. "I gotta light one before the crazy afternoon waiting for me!"

She gathered her cutlery on her tray, adding:

"Not giving up on the idea to come across Damon fucking Dyers, though! At least in video recs. Wish me luck!"

Vivian nodded and Margaret put her tray away on the sideboard before hurrying to the exit.

Her colleagues had changed topics next to her, and now they were talking about cars, motorcycles and mechanics. As she didn’t know much about that topic, not as much as in computers, she listened only a little without taking part.

Then, Vivian finished wolfing down her potato salad and her glass of water; she would soon return to her shift and examine a series of hosts, the characteristics of which she overviewed on her tablet from her timetable’s folders. It was simply routine checks, and Vivian liked that kind of sessions; it was like meeting with a friend, just to catch up with them.

But for now, she would take a few minutes to get some air and natural light on top of the hub before diving back into the high tech depths of the Mesa.

At seven in the evening, closer to eight, Vivian was glad to be back to her on-site apartments. Once again, she had grabbed a snack at the restaurant but the room was much more crowded than it was at lunch and came close to a headache before reaching "home". She could have dined here, cooked something on her induction hob but she was so tired — or lazy — that, tonight again, she still choose to eat at the restaurant over having to do the dishes!

Now, she was getting out of the shower in her bathrobe and throw herself on her bed.

Living like this, it was like being a teenager all over again, back at her parents’, or at the dorm… but once she closed her apartment’s door, Vivian was totally free to do whatever she wanted. As long as it didn’t involve wrecking the place!

But now, even if she wanted to, Vivian wouldn’t have had the strength to break any chair, nor even to make a mess of the bed… About that, she was actually planning on laying there, and falling asleep in her bathrobe while watching a movie or reading any book she had available on her personal tablet. A tablet that was nothing close to the one she was using every day in the Behavior department labs, but a tablet anyway.

She swiped the covers without any real interest; in all honesty, she was feeling too tired to read. Even something she had already read. And she cringed a little when the minimalistic cover with her automatically signed name appeared.

Yeah, even too tired to read her own words!

Besides, it wasn’t great literature at all — a fanfiction. Two, to be precise. Both about the hosts and their narratives as she could have written about a movie, book, or video game’s characters.

Vivian grumbled, letting her tablet fall flat on her stomach, and she stared at the white ceiling before closing her eyes while nibbling her lips. She had written this almost six months after she started working here, taken over by all the motivation, excitement and creativity around her!

She refocused on herself since but, in the meantime, she wrote these. And even though Vivian considered herself to have a fertile imagination, she still commended herself about how better for everyone it was she hadn’t applied for a job in Narrative…

Rising her tablet up again and tapping on the lit screen, she entered the file and skimmed through it, trying to ignore the grammar mistakes she stopped committing since; and mistakes aside, her stories had nothing exceptional, totally influenced as they were by her mood and the not-so-new-but-still-trendy storyline — Escaton’s and his bandits, essentially…

Over a very short time, when Vivian was still more or less trying to fit into the life of the facility and social circles of her co-workers whose names had yet to be caught, she had heard so many comments, appreciations and reviews for this narrative that she looked into it first.

After all, the park afforded Lee Sizemore, renowned author who made a big name for himself with a "hot and grimy" historical saga, a few years back before running out of puff under his editor’s pressure. And a juicy offer by a video game studio to adapt it. 

She understood; everybody, whether staff or guests, was more or less hyped by the brute force brought by Hector Escaton — virile and dark male figure — to the relative tranquility of the park’s starting point.

And Vivian had been no exception.

If her first story was only about made-up characters to explore the pleasing and well rounded context of Sweetwater, her second, on the other hand, was more audacious, altering shamelessly the story from what its authors had surely intended; victorious over the town after killing the sheriff and all opposition, Escaton and his gang enjoyed their plunder at the Mariposa where Hector fell for one of the saloon girls.

That being said, Vivian remained very proper — maybe totally prudish — in these sort of narrative fantasies of hers; nothing turned freaky or utterly violent…

All she did was throwing a few sentences on her writing app for some evenings, when inspiration struck or simply because she urged herself to follow through with what she started. All on her personal tablet. She knew better than to write that on anything system-tethered. Imagining that a bored somebody could just hack into the system all the way up to her personal data… and end up on that giddy nonsense, made her wants to puke!

Not to mention that it might also be forbidden. Even though she never planned to, she knew she couldn’t share it with anyone, nor anywhere. Not as a park employee. If the guests were writing critiques and other reviews online about their stay, herself couldn’t talk about it from the inside. Confidentiality and shit…

Her texts would remain secret, and her silly fantasies with them. In any case, it wasn’t as if she intended to try anything for herself, and even less with Hector Escaton, all the more since he wasn’t even part of the batch her team had in charge. And also, rumor has it that fantasies aren’t always good when act upon!

With a lazy tap, Vivian quitted the reading app and dropped the tablet on her sheets before burying her face in her soft pillow. She let out a deep sigh in it, relaxed, and in fact, she fell asleep almost right away.

[velianmagicalgirl]

An Important Anniversary

So today’s Christmas! Merry Christmas everyone, I hope you had a good one. So anyway, I’m going to write something I’ve kinda wanted to write about for a while now but never knew when to do it it or if I even should. I wondered if anyone would care or if it was selfish of me to want anyone to care. But I’m doing it because I know I want to and if I don’t I’ll be mad at myself for that too.  So this is going to be a bit personal (and probably a bit long because I have a tendency to ramble) so if you don’t want to read it, feel free to skip but I would appreciate it if you did read it :) 

So like I said, today is Christmas and I want to talk about something quite important to me that happened on this day last year.  So last year I was in a pretty different place then than I am now (like most of us). I lived in Florida then, and now I live in South Carolina. I had just finished my first semester at my university and I was about to turn 21 (my birthday’s in January). 

So anyway, it came time to open presents, and among other things, my parents got me a record player which I was super excited for (I planned to buy one myself so I was pretty happy I wouldn’t have to spend the money :p) and one of the records my parents had gotten me was *drumroll please* The Joshua Tree by U2!  Now, this wasn’t a complete surprise to me (well it was a surprise that they got it for me, what a coincidence) but I had actually heard of this album and this band before... 

This is the story of how the universe tried to get me to listen to U2 since I was freaking 12 and I’m so dense I kept ignoring all the *signs* until last freaking year. 

Let’s time travel back to 2012 (sometimes I wish I could...) So I’ve done some thinking and this is the first time I can remember ever hearing anything about this band named after a Cold War era spy plane. Now I’m not exactly sure what year this was, it may have been 2011 but 2012 kept popping up in my head while I thought of it.  So at this time I was 12-13 years old (depending what year it was) and I was in 6th grade. Yes hello, I am a child.  So, really the whole memory is my mom talking to me, saying something along the lines of “That’s Bono! You know who Bono is right? Come on, everyone knows who Bono is! You know, the Irish guy?” and I remember being like “oh yeah!” pretending to remember just so she would leave me alone. Either I had a very vague memory of hearing that name before or I really had no idea who she was talking about and just wanted her to leave me alone.  This whole thing would explain why, up until last year, whenever I thought of him, I thought of him in his 360 look. Even now, that’s like his “default look” to me haha.  When I think about it, it feels like this was all in relation to American Idol which would make sense because I was in love with that show at the time and I had a huge crush on one of the contestants that year, a country singer named Scotty McCreery (I think he ended up winning too). I had a huuuuge crush on him, just ask my mom. 

Anyway, that’s my first memory of them. I guess it doesn’t have to do with U2 as a whole but it’s about Bono so... 

So fast forward about two years. I originally wasn’t going to include this but I just thought of it so in it goes. It’s 2014 now, I’m 15, just moved to Florida and I’m about to start high school. I also just missed out on getting a super cool new free album on my phone because my dumb dad (accidentally) broke my iPhone by dropping it in water. Thanks Dad. So in late August-early September (before September 9th obviously) I get a new phone but end up getting an Android. So I literally by just a few days miss out and getting that. Noooooooo. 

So anyway back to our regularly scheduled program of what I was going to write about. So next year, it’s 2015 now, I’m 16 and about to do a bunch of Stupid Things™ that it seems everyone is required to do while they’re in high school *sigh*. But we’re not going to get into that (😅).  This is another vague memory I have. I just remember having some sort of conversation with my mom about music. And somehow, I end up with the knowledge of The Joshua Tree by this band U2. I don’t really remember how specifically it happened, I just now it had something to do with her. I do have this specific memory of sitting in the computer lab during one of my classes and listening to the album.  Except, for some reason, I only ever listened to the first three songs. Seriously. Why? I have no idea. What was wrong with me? And I liked them (especially the first one). I remember not liking the third one very much (hahaha... how that’s changed...) So I liked them, but for some reason they just didn’t catch on in my head (and I didn’t listen to the others... FOR SOME REASON *kicks self*). 

So anyway, time goes on and I mostly forget about those three little songs. Until February-ish 2018. I’m now 19 and about to graduate high school in a few months (scary). Anyway, I pick up this book at the school library one day called The Memory of Things (by Gae Polisner, it’s actually one of my favorite books, if not the favorite. I really recommend it). So basically the main character Kyle is a pretty big U2 fan. That’s not really the plot or anything but that’s a big part of his character. There’s a part where he’s looking online at pictures of the recent Slane Castle concert during the Elevation Tour and he’s like “I wish I was there” (me too). There’s also a part where he gives one of his friends his PopMart shirt. There’s also a chapter called “Achtung Baby” (I was like “what the heck is an achtung”) where one of the things that happens is he talks about how he likes the song Mysterious Ways (can’t argue with you there buddy). 

So a few months later, I find this movie called “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” on Netflix (also a really good movie, highly recommend, I don’t know if it’s on Netflix right now though) and I’m one of those weird people who likes to watch trailers for movies they’ve already seen so I was watching one of the trailers and Streets started playing and I was like “hey I remember this song!” and got me to start listening to it again (not the other three that I’d listened to before, or the other ones FOR SOME REASON *sigh* Also, here is the trailer if you’re at all interested).  

So fast-forwarding again to 2019. Last year. So like I said, I’m about to turn 21 and I open up one of my Christmas gifts to find that my parents got me a Joshua Tree record. I get excited because I’m like “Oh I remember this!” and I remembered I never actually listened to the whole thing before.  So finally AFTER FIVE FREAKING YEARS, I finally listen to the whole thing. And I really liked it. A lot. Why didn’t I do that before?? Like five years ago?? *kicks self*. Honestly, looking back on this, it really seems like the universe was really trying to get me to listen to them like “listen to U2 listen to U2 listen to U2 damnit!” but apparently I’m about as dense as a boy being flirted to so I had to be basically whacked on the head with it before I got it. 

So then a week or two later it’s now 2020 (it feels weird to think this was this year but it was) and my parents are driving me back to my dorm before the semester starts up. And we’re sitting at this light, I would tell you where it was except obviously you wouldn’t know. But there’s one light and then you take a left and maybe a hundred or 200 feet later there’s another light where you take a right and that takes you into the university campus.  So we’re sitting at this light and this cool song comes on. I look to see who it is (the joys of satellite radio) and I see it’s Mysterious Ways and I’m like “oh cool, a U2 song!” and also “hey, it’s that song from that book!” As much as I try to, I can’t seem to remember if I’d actually heard that song before or if I just thought I did because of that book. But I definitely liked it in that moment.  And I’m not kidding when I say this, but the song comes on and lasts the entire drive from that light to my dorm building parking lot. It ends right as we pull into a parking spot. Seriously. Was it meant to be? 😜 So after that, my parents help me bring my stuff back into my room and after they leave, I look up that song on Youtube and listen to it on repeat a few times while I’m unpacking my stuff. 

So now it’s a few days later, it’s my birthday, I’m now 21 and my dad comes to visit me. He takes me out to dinner and then I ask him to take me to Barnes and Noble so I can get some books. While I’m there I realize they have a record section and I think “hey I have a record player now so why don’t I look?” and so of course I end up at the Us because who else would I be thinking of at this point. So I look and notice that there’s an Achtung Baby album there and I think “hey it’s that album from that book!” and “that Mysterious Ways song is on here isn’t it?” so I ask my dad to buy it for me and he does. 

So I go back to my dorm and listen to it. And I guess like a lot of people did when it was actually released, I sat there thinking “what is this?” as the opening notes of Zoo Station played. Again, like everyone when it was actually released, (the same year my mom graduated high school interesting fact) I had been listening to Joshua Tree and had gotten used to that sound. So when I was first listening to it, I was worried that my new love affair with this band would be short lived (which was pretty dumb because they have a lot of albums but I wasn’t thinking of that at the time) but as it went on I liked One, So Cruel, and of course Mysterious Ways. 

So I ended up buying more of their albums, like All That You Can’t Leave Behind. I was excited to hear that one because I remember reading about it in that book as “their newest album” because of when it takes place. (The book is actually pretty new btw, 2016, it just takes place in the past). And geez, I never realized until now just how much that book has influenced me, and it’s not even about U2, the main character just likes them a lot lmao. The main plot is completely unrelated.  And funny story, but when Beautiful Day came on, I was like 🤯🤯🤯, basically my mind was blown because I remember hearing that song as a kid but I didn’t know it was by them lmao. Same thing with Desire. I remember my dad liked to listen to that in the car and sing along so when I was listening to Rattle and Hum and that came on I was like ????? how many more songs???? 

And in December-January, my step dad got a job promotion but it required him to move to South Carolina so in February they did and I flew up to visit them on Spring Break in early March and then the world ended :D :D :D 

So yeah, that’s my story of how I ended up here. I’ve basically been holed up in my room for an entire year obsessing over guys that are way too old for me. Eh, oh well, what can I say? It’s not my fault that one guy I first heard of when I was 12 was (and is) so good looking.  So yes, I’m a real big noob, only been here a year and I haven’t even seen them live because I couldn’t get my act together five years ago (or anytime between then and now) despite the universe’s best efforts to get me to. *sigh* sorry I’m so dense, universe. But I guess better late than never, better now than later, right? 

Anyway, there’s more I want to say but this is already a freaking novel (sorry but I warned you!) Maybe I’ll write everything else in a separate post sometime, but for now, I hope you enjoyed reading this. And to quote Bono on that “A-Z of 2014″ post he made, if you somehow made it to the end of this, you must be on painkillers. 

[abrunettefangirlnerd]

It’s Too Much

Pairing: Steve Rogers x reader

Summary: You are a college student trying to get into nursing school. Being accepted into NYU’s program you just have to make the grade in one more class to start in the fall. This semester has been difficult and only gotten worse since this COVID-19 required your college to close. Living on campus and your family living in Colorado, makes moving back home extremely difficult. Besides you don’t want to leave. That is when your sweet boyfriend offered for you to stay at his apartment.

Oneshot

A/N: It may be a little long, but the ending is freaking adorable

10:15 pm

             Putting away the last bit of your clothes in Steve’s closet, you sigh in relief. Today has been so long starting with waking up early to move all your stuff out of your dorm. Your college has moved all classes online with the COVID-19 outbreak. Since there is virtually no reason to be at school, you decided to move out to get a reimbursement for the rest of the semester.

             Problem is, your school is in New York and your home is St. Louis, Missouri. There is no way for you to get everything in your car and drive half way through the country. Thankfully Steve, your boyfriend, has been gracious enough to share his apartment with you for the remainder of your semester.

             A warm-muscular arm wraps its way around your waist and pulls you toward an even more muscular body. Turning your body to face him, you burry your face in Steve’s chest as you wrap your arms around his torso. Steve places a soft kiss on the top of your head before leaning his against yours. Feeling the light brush of his breath against your hair lures your subconscious to the impending darkness of sleep.

“Do you want to go to bed?” Steve ask. A smile invades your features. You love how attentive he can be.

“No,” you pout. “Going to bed means waking up, and waking up means studying.”

             Steve’s grip on your loosens, prompting you to look up at him. A twinkle of mischief resides in his beautiful blue eyes. A part of you wants him to tell you what he is thinking, though it may be more fun for him to show you.

“I have an idea then.” Steve smirks.

             His arms encircle your legs before you could ask him what he’s up to. Throwing you over his shoulder he walks you over to the bed, and flips your body onto the soft mattress. Laughter erupts from your chest. You find it so cute when he acts so dominant because he surprisingly loves being submissive a great deal of the time. Though seems like tonight he wants to take the reins, and you are more than happy to let his dominant side take over tonight.

***

Next Morning

Inulin can determine glomerular filtration rate in the renal system because it is only filtered, not reabsorbed or secreted…

Mean arterial pressure can be calculated by taking systole + 2 (diastole) / 3…

Trypsin, chymotrypsin, and elastin are endopeptidase enzyme…

             You woke up, your thoughts running a million miles an hour. Looking over at Steve’s alarm clock you see that it reads 5:45 am. Well, I usually wake up at 6, what is 15 minutes really?

             Carefully shimmying out of Steve’s arms, you grab a new pair of underwear, and a fresh pair of sweats and t-shirt from Steve’s side of the closet. Heading over to the bathroom down the hall you turn on the water, wait for it to heat up, and step inside.

             Lathering your head with citrus smelling shampoo, you make a mental note of all the things you need to do today. A sheet of anxiety wraps around your body like a tight uncomfortable blanket. Taking deep breaths you try to focus on the warm water. Imagining it melt away the anxiety from your body, you begin to feel better. Before you know it, the last bit of body soap has been washed away and it is time to get out and start your day.

             Quickly getting dressed in Steve’s soft and warm clothes you head into the kitchen to make breakfast. Popping a bagel into the toaster, you search for some fruit in the refrigerator. Finally coming upon some cut up fruit, you take the container out and pour some on your plate. About that time your bagel is ready to go and all you need is your coffee. Tasting the warm-stimulating hazelnut coffee against your throat, you take a deep breath and dive into your studies

6:15 am

             Opening your laptop, you guide your mouse to a folder holding the rest of your physiology lecture videos. Your professor had his lectures recorded a few years back and thankfully saved them. Without these, you have no idea how challenging the last half of this semester would be.

             Scrolling through the list, you land upon the next video lecture. Waiting for the video to load, you take a sip of our coffee and plug in your headphones. Steve is an early morning riser but is definitely taking the opportunity to sleep in given the new situation. The last thing you want is to wake him up with your school work. He deserves to sleep in every once in a while.

7: 25 am

             Writing down the last bit of notes from the lecture, you look up and see that your breakfast has barely been touched. The bagel has a single bite and only half of the fruit remains. The floors creek behind the bedroom door signaling that Steve has woken up.

             As if on cue the door opens revealing a half asleep posture. Hearing him yawn you look up and offer a morning smile. As he heads into the kitchen for his own cup of coffee, you refocus on rewriting notes from the recent lecture. You have this rhythm down after the first couple weeks of the semester. After class you would rewrite the notes, neatly into a notebook and study them the next day.

“Want some breakfast?” Steve asks.

“I made me some.” You tilt your head toward you cold bagel and coffee and get a disapproving look from your boyfriend.  

8:00 am

             Taking out your laptop again, you log into your school’s blackboard account. You watch as the computer loads your Nutrition book as a yawn of your own settles across your lips. This is your least favorite class of the semester. It has nothing to do with the content. There is just so much of it and your teacher’s lectures are not helpful whatsoever.

“How about a break?” Steve looks up at you with puppy dog eyes, his head against your shoulder. “You just had to wear my clothes, you’re killing me.”

“Not yet, it is only eight in the morning. And I have to keep you entertained somehow.” A pinching feeling hits you in the gut as you think about taking Steve’s advice. You had the same problem while living in the dorm. You never take breaks unless you can’t see straight or it is time for bed, whichever comes first. Of course there were plans you would make with Steve that would take place of a break.

9:30 am

             Finally finishing the chapter for Nutrition, you head back into the kitchen. You throw away the rest of your uneaten breakfast and grab another pot of coffee. Taking in the precious smell you can feel your stomach start to growl from missing the other half of breakfast. You decide there isn’t enough time to make anything, and figure the coffee will just be enough.

“Hon,” Steve’s cautious voice looms over you. You can tell he is trying to tread lightly. He means well, but neither of you have been in this situation where you are living together.

“(Y/N), maybe you should eat something else.”

“It’s okay. I’ll be fine, thank you though.” You place a reassuring kiss on Steve’s cheek and then head into the living room again.

          The pinching gut feeling returns as you think about Steve’s expression. Maybe I should take a break? You shake your head and conclude you will take one later.

10:05 am

             The simulation for your physiology lab has finally loaded. Your professor for lab has ten lab simulations due this week by Thursday. With all the packing, moving, and unpacking this weekend you haven’t had the chance to get ahead of this. By Wednesday you have to take an online prelab quiz and be prepared to take a post lab quiz at the end of class on Thursday. Since it is all online now you have to definitely zero out time to get it all done on your own.

             Steve comes in with a plate in hand. On it is a piece of toast with a Nutella spread and banana slices nicely resting on top. Involuntarily, your mouth begins to water at the sight of food. Some find it a weird combination but you think it is the best thing you’ve found to eat in a while.

“Here, I made you this.”

             He places the plate of your physiology lab notebook. A tiny bit of annoyance restless onto your surface but you push it away. You know that Steve just wants to make sure you’re eating enough. At the beginning of last semester Steve noticed how little you started to eat with your added stress. This semester isn’t much better, but this way he at least gets to keep a better eye on you. You’ve never had a problem with your appetite. There is just so much on your mind, and so much stress that you barely remember to eat. When you do, it doesn’t take long for your nerves to get the better of you and suppress the want to keep eating.

“Thank you.” You say, and you snake your arm around his neck and bring him in for a kiss.

12:10 pm

“Okay, lunch time!” You claim, excited for a break. “How does a pizza sound?”

             Steve is in the corner of the room working out with his weights. Taking a moment from his current set, Steve nods in agreement. You find a small but noticeable grin hiding against his lips. He is clearly happy to see that you have finally taken a break… well a break to make food.

             The only pizza you guys have is a veggie and chicken frozen pizza. Taking it out of the wrapping, you preheat the oven and wait for it to beep. This moment allows you to turn on the tv and find “Friends” on the screen, your favorite show of all time. Steve crawls up against you even with sweat dripping off onto you.

“Babe! You’re dripping all over the pizza!” You laugh.

“Extra flavor?” Steve’s eyes glimmer as he represses his own laughter.

             After lunch you get back on your computer to log onto your Old Testament/Hebrew Bible class. After the class you organize your notes, work on your paper for the class, and review your notes from both physiology lecture and lab. It isn’t until 6 o’clock that evening before you are done. A friend from a class called needing you to explain something from the lecture today which took a little while.

**

             This routine repeated over and over during this week. Steve recognizes that there was no way this is going to change unless he said something. Though the last thing he wants to do is upset you. He knows how stressed you are about getting into the nursing program. You have a spot actually. You just need to get a B in physiology to keep it, and the first exam did not go as planned.

But Steve does know this isn’t healthy. You are ranging between 7-9 hours of work, with only an hour break at lunch to cook and eat. He would love to offer to cook for you, but he is scared that you’ll take that extra time to keep studying.

“Baby doll?” Steve peers around the corner leading into the living room. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure, one second. I just need to finish writing this thought.” You say as you scribble a few more notes in your notebook.

             Steve comes over and sits on the coffee table in front of you. He helps you move your school stuff away. You knit your eyebrows together in confusion. Normally you aren’t done for the day, it is only 4:30 pm.

             Steve’s knees lightly press against yours and he takes your hands in his. Rubbing circles into your skin with his thumbs you allow the soothing touch to calm your nerves. Steve leans in and presses a kiss to your forehead that you graciously accept.

“What’s up? You’re scaring me.” You say. A sinking feeling rests in your stomach that are sending your nerves in to a frenzy.

“I love you (Y/N). I love having you hear, but…” you can feel your heart drop. “I am worried about you. All you do is study. I’m sure this is what you’ve been doing this last year but I didn’t realize how much you do until now. You’re too tired to want to work out like you normally do, or able to stay awake while we are watching a movie. On top of that, you barely eat. It’s not healthy.”

“I know, you’re right.” A tear falls down your face. “Living in the dorm I never felt like I could get away from school. I felt like I had to constantly study. When I stayed the night here it would help me separate it easier. Though since I can’t leave, and some of my professors have added extra assignments I’m feeling it becoming a bigger problem than before.”

“Well, then.” Steve’s soft lips graze across yours, taking your breath away. “Let me help with that.”

             Pulling you on his lap, Steve’s fingers tangle in your hair. Steve presses his forehead against yours and both sets of eyes close. Stroking his hands through your hair, you focus on Steve’s breathing. You can’t believe you are lucky enough to find a man that actually cares about your well-being. He is right and you know it. From now on you’re going to do your best to not let school be your whole life.

“You know what I want to do?” Your voice is barely above a whisper.

“If you say study,” Steve grumbles, “I’m throwing your notebooks out the window.”

              Shaking your head no, you start by placing a kiss on Steve’s cheek. Trailing down his face onto his neck, Steve grips your hips which brings your body closer. Steve does not understand how great of an advantage he just gave you, and you try to suppress the smile peaking up from your lips. Wrapping your arm around his torso, you wait a moment before reaching behind him. Finding what you are looking for, you bring your lips back to his. Eagerly accepting your kiss he almost doesn’t feel the nerf bullet hit his side.

“Oh no,” Steve’s voice is low and you can feel your heart beat faster. “You’ve done it now.”

             Stumbling to get away, you leap over the back of the couch for cover. Peering over the edge you aim your nerf gun where you last see him, but Steve is already gone. You listen for any sudden movements and try to recall where the other gun was last seen. Remembering it was in the bedroom, you stealthily slide across the floor hoping for another sneak attack.

             Reaching the door, you find it cracked open. You slip your body slowly into the dark room and reach for the light switch. If Steve is hiding, you want to find him before he finds you. The lights turn on and brighten up the room, making your eyes squint.

“Surprise!” Steve jumps from the side of the bed as you feel two nerf bullets attack your abdomen. “I win!”

“But I got you first!” You playfully whine.

“Doesn’t count.” Steve insists. “I win, and I want first place prize.”

             Steve takes even strides toward you. Stopping in front of you, his body towers over your own. His arms pin you against the wall as his wild eyes peer into yours. A burning desire of anticipation ripples through your chest. It is almost too much to bare until Steve finally crashes his lips to yours. Running your hands over his body, and his over yours, you lead him toward the bed and show him how lucky you are to have him.