#also giffing this is how i realized the screens are not static

[figueroths]

DIMENSION 20 FANTASY HIGH JUNIOR YEAR episode seven ♡ stress tested

[deusvervemakesgames]

Project RBH Devlog 0026

I lied I found another thing to do to procrastinate making my upgrades spreadsheet.

Okay, before we get into that, I’m going to backpedal a bit to something I talked about last week: the camera.

As I mentioned and demonstrated, it was having a strange problem with how it would only have a significant motion when you crossed an invisible threshold dividing the screen into four quadrants. I ended up scraping the code I had and went looking for how other people had done similar code, which allowed me to find a new math formula to calculate where it should be, and this new formula worked much better—as you can tell from playing the latest build. (Public access now available!)

I do however have to figure out what I’m going to do for controller input because this system is based on the location of the mouse. I have some ideas for it—GameMaker Studio has a specific check for if a controller is plugged in which I can use to change the code to something else entirely, but at the moment the camera will not work properly with controller.

I also realized there was a significant oversight in my code, which I mentioned in the Known Issues of that latest build. Namely, that while I have code to remove upgrades from the upgrade list, I don’t have a way to put them back in when the player dies. As a result, with every run, the pool of potential upgrades get smaller and smaller until there’s nothing left but those upgrades that never run out. This, luckily, turned out to be an easy fix.

The upgrade list is created in what’s called a Global Script. A Global Script runs at the start of the game, making it extremely useful for setting up a lot of variables. The Bullet System also uses Global Scripts, actually, so define a bunch of bullet behaviors that I can call remotely.

What I realized is that I can reset all of the upgrades in the upgrade list by running that script again. However, a Global Script cannot be called to run in code like other scripts can, so I turned it into a normal function script, so that when I run the code to reset the player’s bullet behavior on death I can also empty out the upgrade list and completely reset it. The only issue is that I have to have something manually tell the game to run this code before running the dungeons so that there’s actually a list of upgrades for the upgrade system to reference or the game will explode. Not exactly a problem just something I have to keep in mind. Since I can put code into an individual level that runs whenever the player moves to that level, I can easily find a place to run this code.

Now then, that thing I mentioned back at the start. It’s been about six months since I started recording my progress with this game, and there was a feature I had in my earliest builds before I started this DevLog series that I wanted to have but needed some more work that I never got around to. Namely, I wanted drones that can follow the player around and shoot at what the player shoots at. So I did it.

The actual code for the drones was already in place, like I just said, though I had to update a lot of it based on how development had changed various aspects of the code it referenced.

I also added in a way to have multiple drones following the player around, spaced apart so that they don’t all overlap, as you can see them in a line in the GIF.

However, the line only extends to the left. While the Follow Player movement code works, this static line of the drones makes them somewhat uninteresting and also limits their functionality because they’re always on the left so they’ll have an easier time aiming to your left. I’ll have to find a different way to have them follow the player, maybe something like MegaMan’s Leaf weapon thing that orbits him?

I also intend to add more varieties of drones in the future, that is to say, drones that each have their own attack patterns. Like a drone that fires every few seconds but has a powerful attack compared to a weak rapid-fire drone. I can also have the drones automatically shoot enemies instead of shooting where the player is aiming.

But all of that comes later. This time, this time, I am out of things to procrastinate with other than bug fixes, so I must descend into the spreadsheet once more.

Until next Devlog!

-DeusVerve

Special thanks to my Tier 3 Patrons, Haelerin and Christos Kempf!

Support me on Patreon to get Early Access to builds!

[the-art-of-animated-gifs]

The Art of XCOPY

For anyone not in the NFT world know this:  XCOPY is one of the most famous of all NFT artists.  XCOPY has sold millions of dollars of work and is truly an icon because the work is almost always instantly recognizable as XCOPY.  As I was thinking about Motion Art recently I realized that XCOPY was a great example of the ideas about motion and gif art that I have been writing about here for the past three years.

So what is is that makes XCOPY’s work special?

The answer lies in two parts:  The illustration + the motion. 

And these two parts are truly equal.  XCOPY is an excellent illustrator and on the strength of that alone the work is good.  The rough edged simplistic shapes with minimal colors and glitch elements, almost always on black, is striking.  The amount of detail is always just right - a perfect balance between representation and abstraction.

But where XCOPY becomes XCOPY is in the motion.  XCOPY varies key elements of the initial drawing over time to where it becomes something new, something with great energy that feels alive.

The motion is simple, just a few frames, but there is great restraint and aesthetic judgment there, and I am sure much trial and error goes into making the final decision about which few frames compose the final.  You can feel that because when you look that the work together you can feel the consistency of the motion.  Animators have many choices for how to vary what they do from frame to frame.  And these decisions are what transforms a once static image into an XCOPY, something new.

You can easily see this if you are looking through XCOPY’s work and come across a rare static work.  It feels completely different.  It feels kind of...dead.  What make XCOPY unique is the illustration + the motion.

This is why I say this is a new aesthetic that is only possible because we all now view art on a screen with a computer behind it.  

And there is a great history behind it because the work of XCOPY is a pure representation of gif based motion art, which goes back to the glory days of Tumblr and the period of 2009-2014 when many great gif artists were developing their work. Beeple came out of this period also, but what is different about Beeple is that his work is primarily static while the work of XCOPY is based in motion.

You could have a gallery exhibit of Beeple’s work as high res prints but this would never make sense for XCOPY.  The work would have to be displayed in motion.

--------------------------------------------------

If you have found this content valuable considering getting me a cup of coffee

[inessencedevided]

(You can find the set that this gif belongs to here 💙)

From planning to posting, share your process for making creative content!

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES: When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you’d like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours

I was tagged by @aheartfullofjolllly. thank you so much Pat! it was really fun to reflect about my own process 💗 You can find her post here and @lan-xichens' post that started it all here :)

Also thank you @huigusu 🥰 (who tagged me for my nie brothers set) I'll get to that one in a few days!

Now Pat gave me two sets to chose from to show my process, so obviously I chose the more complicated one :P

I only work in Photoshop CC 2018. I know that there are programs out there for easier cutting and sharpening but I have only just figured out how to do that in PS and I am too lazy to figure out any other programs right now xD

1. Idea and Planning

This set, like most of my sets with lyrics started with me reading the poem, clutching my heart and going "oh shit this fits my favourite characters!!". The idea actually started with me thinking that the first stanza of the poem would go really well with wwx during the burial mounds arc. Then I realized that the last stanza fits lwj better than him and from there came the idea to contrast the both of them next to each other. This is when I realized I wanted to do a dark-light contrast set, though I did not know that I would go with red and blue at that time. My idea in the beginning was just to do a black and white set

I was really impressed by how Pat said that she plans her sets around exact timestamps. Because I don't do that at all ^^ I just get ideas for which scenes would fit (in this case the wwx burial mounds scenes and lwj's kneeling and punishments scene) and then I watch the scenes to narrow them down.

Back when I made this set, I still used a screenrecorder (AceThinker Screen Grabber Pro to be precise. They have a test version that allows you to record up to 3 minutes) and recorded the scenes I needed from Netflix. This worked well enough but now I have the entire show saved on an external drive and it makes a world of difference when it comes to gif sharpness

Now, in this case I had to repeat this step once because when I was almost finished, I realized that I wanted a gif for the lwj corner but let's pretend I didn't do that and that's the way this gif was always going to look because otherwise this post will be way too long ^^

2. Creation

Short disclaimer: The creation process for this gifset was anything but linear. Multiple effects I used here were things I had never tried before. I just had a vague idea and tried to realize it through trial and error. So whenever I say "then I did xyz", it is implied that I ultimately went back to that step several times and changed stuff ^^

I started with the Wei Wuxian part of the gif. I usually use a frame rate of 0,06 (with some variation depending on gif length and size). I work in timeline so I converted all the layers to a smart layer. Then I resized the gif into a square, leaving big chunks of the gif empty (as can be seen below.) I flipped the gif horizontally, so he is looking inwards. This was simple because I felt it fitted the composition better. Then I imported the Lan Wangji part of the gif, again with a frame rate of 0,06. (Image 2)

After that I created a layer for masking in a separate PS document by rotating a square until it was point down (is that a rhombus?). I sized it to match my gif (540x540 pxl) and copied it over. (Image 3) a bit of masking magic and ta da! There's the basic layout (Image 4)

I put a layer of solid black behind wwx to get rid of the transparent bits (Image 5) and then started adding more white and black to both sides by adding solid whit and black layers that i put masks on and changed the opacity as i needed (Image 6)

("reading" direction: from the upper left to the lower right corner)

Then I fiddled with the colours a bit. The first thing I always do is using the curves layer to get more contrast. Then I use the colour balance tool and the selective colouring tool to get rid of that cql-typical cyan tint after that it's just trying to have it look "natural" while the colours still fit the overall scheme. This was difficult here because wei Wuxian’s side of the gif was very dark and when i turned up the saturation to see which colour dominated it was a very weird mixture of multiple colours. That's when i decided that I'd just go with red on his side, since lwj's side was already so blue and those to look great as contrasts.

After that just came a lot of fiddling with selective colour layers and brightness and contrast unti I has happy. There really wasn't much to it ^^. (Image 1)

After that I added the text. I knew I wanted the two lines to for a square of some kind. So I tried different fonds until I arrived at the one below. The two lines are in seperate layers so I could move them around and change the spacing between the letters until I was happy with the layout. I also changed the layer mode for the text to "difference" (is that what it's called in english? my PS is set to german sorry ^^), keeping their colour white. (Image 2)

I originally hadn't planned adding anything else but I felt like the gifs (plural because I switched between the gifs of this set) was still kind of empty and lacking, so I added the tear down the middle (a tutorial for that is either coming up later or already posted. I recently got an ask for this :)) (Image 3)

It still felt empty after that, so I tried different overlays. Okay no, first I wasted a lot of time on different free image sides but then I tried out different ones until I chose the one you can see in the finished gif. I liked that one because a) I felt the round shape was a nice contrast to all the straight lines already there and b) because once I applied a black and white filter to it and switched the layer setting to "difference" (again, i hope this is the correct translation) it looked a bit like a moon. (Gif at the top)

("reading" direction: from left to right)

And that's it! :)

Although in general, these gifs took so much fiddling! I went back and forth between them a lot and sometimes almost redid the entire thing because I had no idea what I was doing in the beginning and by the time I noticed an error, the only way to fix it was ti redo everything. So yeah, this set definitely is the the one that took me the longest out of all the ones I've posted so far.

3. Posting

I save all my gifs to my drafts first to see what they look like put together and to check if they look any different on mobile. Usually i do this several times and change stuff until I'm happd enough with it to hit post. Once i am happy enough, i can't hold back. Doesn't matter if it's at a time when nobody is online, i hit post 😅

And that's it!

Tagging:

@lanwuxiann for this gifset (I adore it so much. I've looked at it and read it severat times since you posted it and the poem just kills me every time!)

@suibianjie for this gifset (The combination of static images and gifs in your gifs is always absolutely perfect! This one is only my favourite of yours because the light coming from behind wwx is just so pretty!!! ^^)

@sweetlittlevampire for this piece (It was soooo hard to pick a piece of yours because I have so many favourites! But this one is just so out if this world, I want to know how you worked that magic :D)

@wei-gege for this set (sparkling shijie! 😭 that set is so incredibly beautiful! I love how you matched the colour of the overlay with her dress!)

@purplexedhuman for this set (your gifs are always incredible! I chise this one because it showcases both your colouring skills and some really intricate effects)

If any of you have already been tagged or don't have the time or energy for this, obviously no pressure to do this at all! 🥰

(btw, I originally tried to place the actual text of this under a "read more" cut but somehow it always messed with the order of the images, so this ended up as a rather long post. sorry!)

[geraldineswriting]

𝐁𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐁𝐫𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧

(𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗠𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁)

𝘚𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘺 = 𝘓𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘚𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘙𝘢𝘧𝘦 𝘊𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘯 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘥𝘶𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘫𝘰𝘣 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥, 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘵𝘰𝘰 𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦.

𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘥 𝘊𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵 = 2𝘬

𝘗𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 = 𝘖𝘊 𝘹 𝘙𝘢𝘧𝘦 𝘊𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘯

𝘞𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 = 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 & 𝘈𝘯𝘨𝘴𝘵 & 𝘍𝘭𝘶𝘧𝘧

(𝘕𝘰𝘵 𝘮𝘺 𝘨𝘪𝘧, 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘰𝘸𝘯𝘦𝘳!)

Small snowflakes filled up the frostbitten window, while the dimming fire started to burn to ash in Liliana’s living room. The wind blew through the vents in the ceiling, filling up the air with loneliness and indecision. The young girl sitting on the couch was lost and in love with a love that didn’t exist. A love that always lived in her dreams but never spilled over to reality. Her soft pajama pants were clean and new but her heart was tattered and bruised. 

Liliana looked over to the picture that had been framed and put on her shelf three years ago, showing a boy and a girl with their arms placed over each other so naturally that it was questionable. She could still feel his arm being placed on her shoulder and his laugh in her ear, “Smile like you mean it, Liliana Stuart.” 

That was the night they first met, caused by her unabashed loud laugh, which resulted in Rafe’s curiosity to see what could be so funny at one of his family's parties. She went home that night, finally knowing what it was like to fall in love with a stranger. It took the next three years for her to find out what it was like to fall in love with someone who couldn’t love her back. 

Liliana had been home for the past six days, not caring to leave her house or turn on her phone. The street lights that burned through her windows kept her company while the thoughts in her head left her haunted. In the past week, she had come to a few realizations that needed to be recognized. For one, she was in love with Rafe Cameron and the choice to pretend she didn’t was no longer an option. Second, she needed to move on because sacrificing even another day of her sanity just so he could unknowingly spend his time in her head was now pointless. And finally, she had to tell him. There was no other way for her to find closure except to hear it from his own mouth. Liliana knew and now she had made a choice.

In the past three years, she had become best friends with a boy, who then turned into a man. She knew the Rafe that hurt people but now she knew the Rafe that had turned his own and others pain into forgiveness. He’s still the same man she met all those nights ago, but now drugs, negativity and immaturity were no longer in the picture. He had opportunity and promise, now not just as a wealthy kook but also as himself. Maybe that's why he accepted the job offer to the mainland. Maybe it was something else. 

Liliana sat up, memorizing the cracks in the floor, trying to understand it all. When did her curiosity turn into adoration? Why can’t she unlove him? Why can’t he love her? She knows every answer but because of the flame that is burning in her heart, she needs to put it out. She needs to be able to wake up everyday and not ache with the false knowingness of imaginary maybes. It was time to move on.

The phone was picked up and turned back on, the screen turning from black to color. A few texts pop up, but only one catches her attention.

Are you alright? Call me. 

Such a simple question that carries such a complicated answer sent from such a beautiful person. It looks like it was only sent a few hours ago as she pressed his contact and called him. She held the phone much tighter than she meant to, nervousness creeping into her bones and settling itself as the goosebumps on her skin. 

“Thank fuck, are you alright?” Rafe asked breathlessly into the phone.

“Yeah, sorry for disappearing, I-I,” She paused, no longer knowing that way with which she wanted this to go. 

“It’s okay, I know what it’s like. I’m just glad you’re okay.” 

“Thanks, I’m fine. I was actually wondering if you were busy right now?” Her nervous laugh filled the sudden silence. Is she being stupid? Reckless? Or is she doing the right thing?

“Uh, yeah, yeah. Sorry I was looking at the time. Yeah, want me to pick you up?” 

“Sounds fine, see you soon then.” 

“See you soon.”

Rafe hung up and her ears were only filled with the faint sound of absolute silence. She felt scared and maybe even terrified. She looked back over to the picture frame on the shelf, his smile breaking her heart. How many times has he given her that same smile, all happiness and teeth, unknowing to the repeated pain it left her with. If only she could unlearn every smile, and laugh so that maybe his curse could be lifted off of her. She could be free. 

She stood up and slipped on a pair of sandals, keeping on her pajama pants and sweatshirt. She decided to wait on the front porch, even if a light snow covered the ground. Maybe the cold could freeze the river of heat flowing through her heart. 

She waited for a few minutes until she saw his small car pull up in her driveway. As she walked towards the car to get in, he jumped out, racing over to her side first. 

“Wait, I think we both need a hug first, it's been too long.” He wrapped her up in his arms and for a fleeting moment she remembered why she ever mistook his friendliness for more. He felt like a healing heart, an ending to end all endings. 

“I missed you Liliana Stuart even if it’s only been a week.”

“And I, you Rafe Cameron.” She could feel the painful lump in her throat, the feeling of tears crawling their way to her eyes. She was able to temporarily blink them back before he pulled away. She couldn’t let him see her pain, not tonight.

They both got into the car, him speeding down the street to stop into a desolate parking lot. She had a feeling that he knew she wanted to talk, which made this conversation somewhat easier to handle. She had to be strong, to not show her weakness. 

Once he parked, her hands clammed up in the pockets of her sweatshirt. Liliana felt his eyes burning into her skin like fire. She matched his gaze, so many different questions burning between the two. He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. 

“What’s been going on Liliana?” He whispered into the silence, trying to make himself seem comforting. Rafe had a deep feeling he knew what this was going to be about.

“It’s been a hard week and I just needed to think about things. With us I mean.” The tears were coming again and this time they were unstoppable. They seared her eyes, even though she used every bit of strength to fight them off. Just like loving him though, it was useless to try and stop.

“Hey, it's alright, you know you can tell me anything.” 

“I don’t know how to tell you this Rafe,” She paused trying to gather her thoughts. “To put this into words just seems impossible.” 

He could hear the anxious thoughts rolling around in her head. He could see the tears cascading down her face like a never ending waterfall of pain. He couldn’t stand seeing her like this.

“Well then how about I start?” He squeezed her hand tighter, now holding her hand in both of his. She looked out the window as she nodded, not standing the fact that she was having such a hard time doing something that should be so simple.

“I uh, we’ve been friends for three years and you mean so much to me. I know that something is wrong but just know that whatever it is, it won’t change our relationship. I’ll still be here.” He took a deep breath, trying to pick his next words carefully. He knew that he didn’t want to hurt her more, or make this any worse. “I’m guessing this has to do with more than just me moving away for that job.”

Liliana couldn’t stand the heartstopping pain that coursed through her lungs from using every bit of her self-control to not say what she couldn’t.

“Rafe, that’s the thing,” She gasped for breath, “I want our relationship to change. It’s the fact that no matter what I do you can’t love me like I need you to. My hands are so empty except for when they’re in yours. I’m just, I’m just in love with you and I don’t know how to make you love me back.” 

The ball had dropped. The unspeakable words were spoken. They both knew his next words would heal or break her heart. She tore her hand away from his hand, holding her head up on her own. The only proof of her sobs was the shaking of her shoulders, face hidden away from his sight. She couldn’t look him in the eyes when he shattered her into pieces.

Rafe wasn’t surprised those were the words that tumbled from her lips. Some part of him always knew her heart belonged to him. He just wished she had told him earlier because now things had changed. He was moving and starting a new life in a land that she had no plans to travel to.

He gently placed his hand on her back, taking back one of her hands with his other. 

“Hey, come here.” He spoke so gently, as he guided her into his arms. She gripped his shoulders, crying into his neck.

“I’m so sorry, Rafe. I’m sorry.” 

“There is absolutely no reason to be sorry,” She felt his hands on her back, holding her like she was a fragile piece of fine china that was breaking no matter how hard he held on.

“You know I love you back right? I always have.” He felt her cries pause as she slowly leaned back from his sheltering hug. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“I never said anything because I never imagined you could feel the same. I thought you only ever looked at me like a friend.” Liliana spoke in a tone she hadn’t used in years, a tone with sincerity and happiness intertwined together. She couldn’t believe it.

“Since the night we met, I’ve always loved you Liliana Stuart. I just wish one of us said something sooner. We both know things have changed now.” 

And there it was. The happy moment that filled the air with static had ended. Reality was once again set into place and it was cruel and unapologetic. 

“So what do we do now?” She asked quietly, scared that if she spoke any louder it would chip further away at their already cracked hearts.

“Well the first option, which is my least favorite, is we do nothing. I move away and every once in a while we'll do our best to keep in touch as friends.”

“I don’t like that option either. Option two?” He was relieved to hear her answer.

“Option two, we try out a relationship until I leave. Then, well I guess, we go back to being friends. Again not my favorite choice.” 

“Please tell me there’s another choice.” 

She wished so deeply that he wasn’t moving away, or that they had this conservation years ago. This seemed entirely unfair for both of them. Love wasn’t supposed to be like this, timing was supposed to be rooting for them, not making things harder. 

“There is our last option,” He held her hand, looking into her swollen eyes. “You come with me.”

“Yes.” She spoke with such vibrance and assurance that it was undeniable. She had made up her mind and nothing could possibly change it. 

“Are you sure? I don’t want you to regret this Liliana.”

“Are you going to regret this Rafe?” He didn’t even need to think twice.

“No, not if it’s you.” 

“Then that’s that. I’m coming with you and we’re doing this.”

They couldn’t stop looking away from each other. They finally had unspoken permission to love each other without the secret glances and stolen touches. They were each other's for the taking, no holding back. 

“Can I kiss you Lil?”

“You better Rafe Cameron.”

[peytonconner]

Reading Response #2

At first, the .gif made me very impatient due to the constant loading signs popping up. But as it continued, I focused more on the different colors that kept appearing in different snip bits. While focusing on the color a little too much the .gif kept repeating different small clips in a strobe light fashion making my eyes become overwhelmed. It was at this point that I thought this could be some type of hypnotist video. The clips began to get more disturbing, and I recognized a few images that were originally two separate pictures. The .gif seemed to be pushing recognizable images at a fast pace making the whole thing come off a bit aggressive.

http://readwrite.com/2012/03/21/how_gif_trash_became_internet_culture_glue#awesm=%7Eovwusn356HMjQR

In this article about .gif culture, I found it to be intriguing because I was not aware of the history behind .gifs. The .gif started back in 1987 and is nothing new to society so I guess that many people my age are accustomed to seeing them causing the lack of interest in these funny images. I like the idea of .gif because they make pictures come to life or combine different memes that are all over social media. With technology continuously progressing since 1987 .gifs have become much more extravagant and common. This creates a very enjoyable feed and lovely thing to do to waste time.

http://www.wired.com/design/2013/10/would-you-pay-2000-for-a-youtube-artwork-someone-did-last-week/

From this link, I really enjoyed the concept of every piece was different and that the 14 pieces added up to a $90,000 profit. The Sony DSC piece was my favorite. This was because of the movement and the directions the linework pulled my eyes. The colors that were used made it stand out even more because it reminded me of staring at a Sony DSC lens and the reflection of colors you see. The 20875-1380807155-Americans-Sequence-1-new-(1) reminded me of television static and how it would be way cooler if this colorful pattern was used instead of the usual black and white screen.

http://blogs.guggenheim.org/the-take/all-that-glitters/

The glittery ad first gives me the impression of a weird video game that is trying too hard to appeal to the female audience. After reading further into it I realized why we see so many moving sparkles in .gifs and how they became a popular trend. By music videos and other famous people using this glittery pop to add to the trend. The glitter is very poorly animated for today's standards and it's easy to see why this was left in the past.

https://chicagoist.com/2012/03/14/animated_gifs_invade_the_mca_an_int.php

I really enjoyed watching the TAGTEAM TWEEN .gif because of the changing between lettering, characters' faces, and the switch of pink to green. I found it interesting that they teamed up with the twohundredfiftysixcolors and after reading this and looking back on the .gif it really shows their style of creating. Also after reading the article it was my first time hearing about .gifs being shown through a gallery and then later the MCA. I really liked the idea of everyone showing up at the same time with their respected laptops ready to view various .gifs created for their pleasure.

https://hyperallergic.com/19769/how-do-you-sell-an-animated-gif/

Watching the video I thought it was smart of Lauren to sell the .gifs at an event where no one else was selling them as well. She is selling them on a 27-inch mac book and has different artists with multiple artwork files up for grabs. It was interesting to hear that what people are actually buying is the animated .gif file on a USB and they take it offline so the collector can have it locally. With your purchase, you can also get a fancy certificate!

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/a-brief-history-of-animated-gif-art-part-one-69060

I like how the article shows the Mario cart clouds for their first example of a .gif. Because it is pretty well-known people will more likely understand the concept of a .gif. And it brings a nostalgic feeling to the viewers. I also like their example of where and how art happens in a .gif called Simple Net Art Diagram. The flashing light bulb shows where the different art occurs and all the unlimited possibilities that can arise from this piece. This piece also only makes the light bulb flash, and it is clear that the bubble is the center focus.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a21457/the-gif-is-dead-long-live-the-gif/

For this link, I could only see the skeleton .gif and not the article that follows. But my first reaction to the .gif was that I've seen it before in a cartoon or newspaper. Reading just the title I can grasp that this .gif is or was pretty well known but has become out of style. This is understandable with technology changing and colors being more appealing than just black and white. The dancing skeletons still give off a sense of fun and Halloween presence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuxKb5mxM8g&feature=emb_title

In this video, I appreciate the quick and understandable explanation of a .gif. And it was the first time I heard about .gif separation due to the division of web 1.0 (the 80s- 90s) and web 2.0 (2000s). The .gif goes away for about seven to eight years but its popularity skyrockets due to multiple new platforms being created and now can showcase .gifs. Tumblr was one of the key factors in .gifs regaining their popularity. Because it is easy to create, share, and even post your .gifs for the whole world to see. People love to watch small clips that they can relate to because it is comforting and fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=wgTWPkK5wvo&feature=emb_logo

At first, I enjoyed looking at Toyin Odutola's artwork and seeing the influence of being a black woman that is owing whatever they make of themselves. As the video continued on I liked the comparisons drawn between comics and .gifs. These separate artworks are both just images broken down to a certain point and time. When Toyin was doing her drawing, I thought about when she finishes it could result in a comic or a .gif. But its purpose was to be transformed into a .gif and I liked that Toyin added a shadow behind her hand because it added much more movement in the .gif.

[dammithawke]

Once every like six months, outside of new hyperfixations, i hit post limit like i used to do daily. And then i casually mention it to a friend. And im reminded that this isnt a THING everyone has encountered.

I casually sigh and mention it to my wife, only for them to give me that look that definitely means they still dont fully understand how i manage to do it.

I bite my tongue. My past is dark. I remember hitting post limit before 10 am. And then hitting it again on my backup account before 2 pm. And then cutting it close to the wire on my third account when i hit it at 10:30 pm, or 11:45 pm -- so close to when the limit counter resets at midnight.

"How do you have so much to say?" Someone asks me.

"i dont," i reply. "The reblogs just give me so much seratonin."

I remember before post limit. But i cant find when it began. Sometime between 2010 and 2012, right? Google wont tell me. I have to rely on vague memories of being in highschool and being annoyed that its suddenly harder or impossible to liveblog my reactions to new episodes of glee AND reblog 7 different versions of every gif and screen cap after. Back when tumblr was also a weird stream of consciousness where suddenly you had inside jokes with mutuals who would reliably respond to everything you posted.

It seemed like followers meant something then, because we didnt realize how removed it all really was. I thought it was impressive ever time i hit another milestone. 10. 50. 100. 200. Then make a new account, because everything is too static but not static at all and my brain needs MORE and DIFFERENT. 50. 100. 200. 275.

I dont look anymore. 2000 followers? 2006? A relic of when this was a legend of korra rp blog, plus the abundance of pornbots.

I follow more then that. My dash can never be at a stand still. Every new hyperfixation, i have to follow more, to outweigh old interest in favor of what makes my brain whirr NOW.

This blog isnt young. But ive been around here longer then it. Its seen my insomnia and my insomnia has taken advantage if it.

I left for a bit. But i returned. Its a habit, a comfort. Its a site that barely works, but no one really can find me here.

Im fine with that.

[the-headbop-wraith]

1 _ 19 Brambles

Soft voices glide through the room, cutting and retuning to a new scene or tone or voice with rhythmic pauses.  It was a delicate matter to set one claw to the button of the remote and press with a stiff finger, cycling through the dull white noise that made up the blubbering television theme of each channel.  What was defined as ‘news’ was scarcely credible, many channels were dedicated to realty programs, infomercials that promised ‘satisfaction guaranteed or money back,’ and as always the static infused HBO special feature.

Therehad to be a better use for television. Humans just refused to find it, or the general population was content tonumb their minds into oblivion with this toxic waste of ozone.  Mystery huffed into the folds of the blankethe lounged over, and pressed his paw to the button again.  None of his companions had said anything, aslong as the soft background chatter remained below audible they were somewhateased by his habit.  The dog halflistened as Vivi went over the next destinations marked on the map, there werea few but they had lost time after the van was put into the body shop for repairs.  Mystery rolled over, sliding the telly remote along the sheet cover as he did, for ease of access and the minimal of movement required of reaching it.

The argument between Vivi and Arthur had been typical, Arthur on the opposing side wanting no pair of hands on the van aside from his own, and Vivi adamant about getting the exterior of the van patched up. Lewis had been like Mystery, huddled outside in the parking lot where it was relatively safe.  In the end, Arthur had folded under the assurance that nothing within the vans metal hull would be tampered with.  That had been the case of course from the beginning, even Vivi didn’t want the off chance of strange people poking through the vans back, and seeing the mess that none of them had made the effort to pick up.  There was no concern shed over the ward scripts, carved stones, and endless containers of sage and salt stashed in the cuvees – all over the floor.  Long ago Vivi had given up any attempt to explain these items to the inquisitive outsider.

“But the baseball stadium sounds more interesting,” Vivi said.  She and Lewis had the selection narrowed down – a hospital, a maternity store, and a bed and breakfast that was on their route.  Mystery personally preferred the bed and breakfast, and they might just stop in along the way since it was literally on one of their roads.  “A batter ghost?  Why is he there, and who is he?”  She scrolled through one of the tabs she had opened on the main page, there were a few pictures but nothing clear, no definite image of a spirit aside from a gray glob that could be easily be explained as lens flares or rudimentary odd shadows.

Behind her hovered Lewis, just above the head rest of the hard chair she had claimed.  Mystery had caught Arthur glancing over at Lewis a few times, from his position on the opposite side of the one bed.  It was probably difficult for him to wrap his mind around the sight, with Arthur being the analytical one of the group, struggling to rationalize whatever science there was into a free floating body.  To describe it, imagine bungee cords that are not visible, Lewis’ body was parallel of the floor but suspended a good two feet above the headrest and peering over Vivi’s fluff of blue hair and into the computer she held on her lap.

“What’s this activity about?” Lewis inquired. His body dips down, folded arms coming within inches of the headrest above Vivi.  He spoke aloud before she could read off the page, “‘Seen after games end on the field, sometimes caught in the stadiums big screen.’  Groovy.”

“There’s speculation he, or she – we don’t know – they could be a fan,” Vivi continued.  “There’s a case where one of the spectators suffered a concussion from a free flying ball, but they never went to the hospital and by the time they realized how serious the concussion had been, it was too late.”  She shifted in the uncomfortable seat, and Lewis raised himself a foot more reflexively.  “They could be trapped there or something.  What do you think, Art?”

Mystery recoiled from his leisure sprawl when Arthur jerked on the bed.  “Who- what?” Arthur sputtered.  He had met eyes with Lewis, when the free suspended body had shifted so Lewis could see him better.  Vivi kindly reminded Arthur the subject they were discussing, and Arthur set aside his notebook as he thought it over.  “Batter ghost sounds the most low key, but what about the rumors?”

Vivi tapped at the laptop, and Lewis shifted to view the key words she searched for.  “There are all the usual grainy shots, most caught when there’s a game. Lots of people, lots of cameras going off?”  She rubbed her finger over the scroll pad quickly, eyes flashing behind her magenta glasses.  “There are a few post game pics, but they don’t look any more better.”

“We could do with another low key investigation,” Lewis chimed in.

“You liked the ‘Owl Widow’ ghost?” Vivi accused, half a smirk on her face.  The Owl Widow had been horrifying as hell, but she was all bark and no bite.

“I can sympathize with anyone who would terrorize people that would hike all the way out to my house, to wreck the furniture and break the windows,” Lewis grumbled.  “But… she had such a gentle heart.  After all those years, it’s a tragedy.”

Vivi sighed and sank down in the chair, she pushed the laptop higher up onto her knees for Lewis viewing ease.  “She’ll be okay,” she persisted.  “Decades gone by and she just keeps on protecting those owls.”

Mystery folded his wrists together and pinned the remote under his lower paw. Those that study the occult would recall a myth which went, when a person and an animal die in each other’s company the souls are bound, and if the trauma of the event was powerful enough, a spirit would return.  The people of the town spoke of a young birder who had a favorite owl she took out to train.  It was believed that hunters may have mistaken her for some animal and shot her, and her owl, or some variation of the scenario.  Murder was suspected but due to lack of evidence ruled out, and the case was never solved.  However, not long following the incident hikers and campers began to tell stories about an abandoned home in the area, where dozens of owls would congregate to roost, and at night the shrill cry of a woman or a shrieking owl was heard within. Few would dare stay in the home, and those that attempted only made it a few hours into the evening before the ear splitting shrieks would drive them out into the night.

The Mystery Skulls had no problem with the Owl Widow and even believed the rumors false, until they as a group ventured up into the unexplored attic where the owls roosted during the day.  Vivi had no way of hailing the spirit, and the Owl Widow was as feral and skittish as any bird.  When the Owl Widow realized she was discovered, she abruptly vanished without a trace.  Later, Vivi learned that it was the local’s thrill seekers sport to stay in the home or try to draw out the Owl Widow for a good scare, and that was commonly done by vandalizing the home.  This disgusted Vivi and she refused to do anything more that would negatively affect the spirit.

Arthur climbed off the motels bed and gave Mystery’s head a warm rub as he waked by.  Mystery took his cue and climbed off the bed and followed his companion to the door, where Arthur pivoted and stopped him.

“Stay here,” Arthur urged, motioning the dog with his metal hand as his other hand took the door handle.  Mystery sat down and tilts his head as Arthur backed out. “I’ll be back in a gif, I’m just gonna check the laundry.”  Mystery raised an eyebrow as Arthur turned away and shut the door between them.

“Hurry back, then,” Vivi answered.  Mystery glanced her way as she resumed scrolling. “It irks me though.”  Lewis hummed in question and Vivi continued.  “This would be a lot of work running around, for one ghost.  Stadiums are huge, unless we find a binding object.”

“What’s the info on our subject?” Lewis asked, and pointed to the screen.  “Is there anything?  A name?”

“We could just use any old baseball I guess, if that’s what caused their death.”  Vivi was clicking links, hunting for a newspaper article in the cities historical database.  “There’s a lawsuit, but when s’there not?  Mystery.”  The dog looked up at Vivi when she called his name.  “Arthur said he wouldn’t be gone long.  Don’t worry.”

“That link there,” Lewis cut in, pointing to the un-highlighted title among the few darker cousin links on the screen.  “I got a good feeling about that.”

“Keep your socks on.  I got it.”  She clicked it and the two read silently to themselves.

Mystery shrugged his shoulders and returned to the bed. The layout of the motel room was as basic, dry, and boring as the thousands they had the privilege to stay in before – table, armchair, lamp, vanity desk, single bed – a picture print of a pasture with deer grazing in the tall grass, a distant lake and tall trees surrounding the scenery – framed and hung on the wall above the bed.  Mystery stretched out over the tussled sheets and adjusted his thin ankles over a stiff fold of the covers.  He raised the volume only slightly and resumed his meditation through channel surfing.

“There was also this guy that overheated and died while in the mascot costume,” Vivi mentioned.  “You’d think he’d come back as some sort of demon bonded to his costume.”

Lewis often wondered over Vivi’s unique style of thinking.  “What was the costume?”

Vivi fixed her hairband, then put her hands back to the keyboard and scrolled.  “A badger?”

“The stadium no longer sounds low key?” Lewis humped.  He rolled sideways in mid hover and folded one arm under his neck, as if to support his head by some invisible tabletop.  “None of the reports remark on any aggression, accidents?”

“No, you big chicken.”

“Bawk-bawk,” Lewis droned, void of any enthusiasm. “Is it too much to ask that we return to cases where some… angry thing doesn’t come crashing out of the shadows with a huge chip on its shoulder?  Have I mentioned, I would like that?”  He nods, as if agreeing over an important matter.

“Well…” Vivi let her voice trail off, and glanced up at Lewis.  They had those cases too often.  Failed cases she categorized them.  The encounters which were too volatile for traditional techniques and it was advised by any veteran paranormal investigator, that if you have no training in that particular field, you have no right to meddle with it.  In those instances it is strongly advised to pack up and book it rather risk harm, or worse.  It was another topic she wanted to ask Arthur about, but she wouldn’t bring it up with Lewis since he was in that realm himself.  

That place, it would have been one, it should have been a Failed case.  They just didn’t recognize the danger in time.  Another notch, a proud scar in their resume.  They never failed a case, but often the case did fail them, and she had failed them.

Packed up and ran away.  No matter what danger they left to those that came in their wake. Let the experienced, the demon hunters, deal with it.

“Huh?” Lewis asked, slanting one dark eye at her.

Vivi gave her head a shake and returned her attention to the screen.  “I thought of something.  Anyway,” she paused, noting she had exited out of some of the history articles. “Just a bunch of sightings. Nothing threatening.”

“Great,” Lewis chirped.  “What were you thinking, then?”

“I was wondering,” Vivi mumbled and curled down into the chairs back.  She looked up as Lewis peered down at her, prompting her to go on.  “Well….”

“Well what?”  There was something in his voice, something that had been absent until recent. Vivi had only realized it herself, but his voice was sounding more natural, vocal rather hollow.  Solid as if projected, rather than suggested through the vague scratch of an outdated radio.  The slight transition had been lost to her, while in constant company of her subject.  She wondered what sort of voice outsiders heard when Lewis spoke with them, or were they oblivious?  She could ask Arthur how much Lewis’ voice had changed.  “Vi?”

“Are you aware you’re floating?”  Vivi looked between Lewis and the floor, through the back of the chair she was nestled in.  “Can you do that intentionally or—” She winced to the audible thud that came. “Uhh….”

“I was not aware,” Lewis’ garbled voice came, somewhere beyond the chairs back.  “Thank you for notifying me.”

“Explain that to me.”  Vivi set the laptop down on the seat cushion and stood up, to peer over the chairs headrest.  “How can you not realize you’re free floating?”  She pulled back and sat on her knees when Lewis poked his head up, skull in place of a face, and he resumed a buoyant hover above the floor.

“I’m kidding,” he said, as he fixed the jacket collar.  Lewis felt his face, recognized the common distinction of solid spectral that symbolized his skull.  “My concentration broke—  I knew I was, but….” He fumbled, voice breaking off into scratches and he gave up. “Hard to explain.”  He winced and looked up to Vivi when she set her hand on the side of his skull.  The embers of his eyes brightened, most noticeably in Vivi’s glasses as she smiled at him.

“I get it,” she hummed.  “I’ll try not to do that again.”  

Lewis let his gleaming eyes dim and fall away from her tender gaze.  He pressed his cheek into Vivi’s palm and let his ethereal essence sooth out, calming from the choppy ripples that dug through his usual insubstantial eminence. Passive waves rolled through Vivi’s aura, strong, vibrant, and cool.  No wonder she had such power over the spirits; how could she not?  It was compelling and desirable, more than the once strong call that had persisted on him in that early time.  As the days ticked away the call became less, and less vibrant, until the draw had subsided into faint tugs; unpalatable and easily ignored.  Bleu Moyen.  High blue waves to dose his fires, severing his ties to the ravenous fury and blind ambition.  So clear. Everything became so crystal clear when he was with Vivi.

A low shudder burned in Lewis, when Vivi leaned over the headrest to kiss the upper edge of his jaw.  His eyes brightened in their dark sockets and a wisp of flame faded as Vivi drew back.  Lewis didn’t want to lose her, he could scarcely recall that time of the between. He only wanted to believe his feelings were genuine.

An interesting segment was on the history channel, describing ancient magicians of centuries past.  Mystery turned his ears up as the narrator described a priest of the pharaoh whom became famous for cutting the heads of various animals, and that animal would function normally, walk around, but without a head; after some time the priest would restore the head to the creature and it would resume life as normal.  This spectacle was never performed on a human, never a servant, the priest would always refuse, and what matter of the illusion was never discovered, though attempts have been made to recreate it.

By the programs end, Mystery was on his side fully content to watch out the conclusion.  No animals were harmed during the making of the program.  A hollow promise, but it had some effect of easing him a little to see the message and be reminded that some humans did care.  He rotates his head over to see Vivi more or less in the chair, she would be in the chair if Lewis wasn’t under her.  They had resumed discussion of what case was more favorable, but softer, as if Mystery wasn’t there.  He took a deep breath and let the air wheeze out of his nose.

Wait.

Mystery rolled over, off the bed and padded to the door.  He sniffed along the edge picking up Arthur’s most recent scent, and pawed at the scuffed up white paint of the door.  Mystery whined and looked up to Vivi and she peered over the computer in her lap, down at him.

“What’s up, Mystery?”

He barked and sidestepped at the door. Arthur.  How long has Arthur been gone?  Mystery resumed scratching at the door, and reared up on his hinds legs to take the L shaped handle between his wrists.

“He should’ve been back,” Vivi paused as she looked to the clock on the laptop.  “Forever ago.”  She stood up off of Lewis and crossed to the vanity desk, where the telly was stationed. She unplugged the computer, shut it, and stuffed it into her overnight bag on the desk.  She fished around for the room key as Lewis raised up from the chair.

“Maybe he had to re-dry the clothes,” Lewis suggested.  He stepped up beside Vivi and set his hand upon the shimmering surface of the mirror, and stared into the steady state of his skull and bright eye sockets.  He had worked on this off and on, he could ‘jolt’ his state back into his more favorable appearance with a flash of a thought.

“Or he could’ve gone for a walk.”  He briefly examined his face, the stubborn dark eyes, then turned to Vivi.  “Clear his head.  Think for a bit?  He’s been really quiet lately.”

Vivi’s attention was directed past Lewis, toward Mystery standing on his rear legs.  Mystery had tottered backwards with the door following his movements, and was now stepping out.  The door began to slip shut, but stopped when Mystery blocked its progress and gave a bark at them to hurry.  “Mystery doesn’t like to be away from Arthur for too long,” she said, as reason.  “I worry about him, I have to.”  Mystery ducked out of the doorway when Vivi stepped over to him.

“I know.”  Lewis snatched his sunglasses off the table as he followed Vivi out the door, and into the blazing sun of midafternoon.  Way past noon, the sky was getting the dusky soft purples that Lewis appreciated.  He wanted to converse with Vivi about the one time when the group managed to get hopelessly lost and spread out around the motel, only because they kept following each other around the main office building, with a length of the wall distancing them apart.  What messed them up was that they were just barely in ear shot, they could hear the nearest person but in all the confusion they never got it across, “Stay right there, I’m coming.”  They had run around in circles all day, but the scenario was straight from a cartoon and they had great fun anyway.

He decided not to encourage the memory.  It wasn’t so much for her benefit, but the thought of it pained him worse than….

“We just barely ate an hour ago,” Vivi mentioned. She and Lewis followed Mystery down the steps and through the small hallway that cut between the two halves of the motel.  As per destiny, the nearest convenience mart was adjacent to the motel.  Night or day, it didn’t matter to Arthur when he drank an energy drink.  Hell, he’d drink one before taking a nap.  Vivi would check there next.  “You didn’t have to come.”

Lewis gave a sheepish smirk, missed by Vivi. “Well, you didn’t stop me.”

Vivi could smell the warm scent of the dyer heaters as they walked along the wall to the laundry room; beside the kids play area, and the gated and tarped pool.  She pulled the door open and let Mystery and Lewis enter before she followed them into the cramped room.  “Not here?” she spoke, as she moved into the adjoining room with the washers and laundry detergent vendor.  

Mystery’s paws scratched and clacked on the cool tile as he wandered around, sniffing under a table and then at the edge of a wall. He turned to Vivi and gave some soft barks that echoed, unintentionally loud, off the walls.  Arthur hadn’t been here lately, but with all the oddball scents it was a trial to discern accurately a time.

The dryer was still thumping and rumbling. Lewis examined the timer and found it had fifteen more minutes.  “If you don’t think you’ll need me, can I have the room key so I can get this stuff up there?” he asks.

“Sure.”  Vivi pulled the car key out of her wrist sleeve and handed it over to Lewis. “We’ll see you back in the room in’a bit.”  She waved to Lewis as she returned to the glass door, Mystery scratched over the slippery linoleum to catch up with her at the door.  “Chao.”

“Good luck,” Lewis answered, as the door shut. A few minutes drift by and a thought occurred to Lewis.  When Arthur stepped out, Lewis wasn’t certain but he didn’t think Arthur had picked up the laundry bag.  If Arthur had come to the same conclusion, Lewis might run into him on his way to or from the room.

The room was still empty of Arthur and provided no insight of a short return.  Vivi shut the door and took the opposite path along the rooms, her eyes scanned about as she walked, in hopes to catch the faint blur of yellow contrasted on the open car lot below.  Mystery padded at her heel as they took the route for the back stairs that ran above the main office.  Below, a group of kids laugh as they race by, shoes slapping on the hard cement.  Vivi tottered at the rail trying to catch sight of the jovial youths; maybe Arthur was down there lost in his own thoughts and mildly discomforted from the innocent play.  It seemed like the situation he would be tossed into when he craved some seclusion.  The sounds fade somewhere, and if Arthur is below she cannot see him from the angle she’s at above.

“It’s a beautiful day,” Vivi murmured.  She paused on the steps to look out from the narrow arch and scanned the clear sky, the moist tinge still on the air from the recent rains.  “There was a park when we rode in, wasn’t there?”

Mystery stood sideways on the steps and stares at the sky.  He gave a soft yap.

“I know this deal with the van put us on a tight schedule, but we can do with a lil TLC.”  She continued down the steps, and Mystery followed.  “We’ve spent so many weeks cooped up together, I forget what open air feels like.”

The road that cut through this section of the city was not very busy, even throughout the day when people would be busy with errands. Vivi with Mystery crossed to the nearest shop mart with the highest gas prices she had seen in a hundred miles.  Down the sidewalk from their current residence, it was only a few blocks among the stores and cafes to the open flat of the body shop where the van was being adjusted.  The body shop was only going to fix up the ragged sides where the van had fallen and scraped, part of the deal was allowing Arthur to do the paint job himself.  That would leave the van looking half finished and metallic until they returned to home base.

As Vivi pushed the door of the convenience store open, a blast of balmy air hit her.  Immediately the clerk at the cashier counter piped up:

“I’m sorry, miss.  No dog’s allowed.”

Vivi let Mystery in anyway, and Mystery went on his way examining the racks assorted foods, and the doughnut case positioned across from the cashier counter.  “He’s a therapy dog,” Vivi answered.

The cashier, a tall woman with curly hair, hesitates as she looks back to the white dog free of a leash.  “Do you have papers?”  She seemed uneasy as Mystery sniffed along the corner of the tall doughnut case.  In Mystery’s defense, the doughnuts smelled exceptional that day.

“That depends,” Vivi rebuked.  She turned from the woman and looked over the near empty store, a few people drift around picking at the inventory in various sections – sweet, salty, and standard household goods.  “Did you see a guy come in here?  Shocked yellow hair, quail curl, orange vest.”  She turned to the cashier and the blank stare the woman wore.  Vivi motioned her elbow.  “Metal arm?”

__

Indeed it was a beautiful day.  Arthur was glad he had stepped out to enjoy it, get some fresh air.  He hoped the van was all right, he hated the thought of strange people putting their greasy hands all over his pride and joy.  Even if the van liked to break down in the harsh weather conditions, or guzzled gas like a leech did fresh blood, they didn’t pay for it.  He never asked how much it was going to cost, but Vivi had been the one driving at the time and she always insisted on these matters. Arthur gave up trying to fight her about it long ago.

He sighed and leaned back into the cool wall in the stores shadow.  It was cold only in the shadow, but standing in direct sunlight had warmed his chest too much and so here he stood in the shade, listening to the children in the nearby neighborhoods whoop and holler in play.  He put his hand back in his pocket, pushed the pack of gum aside, and pulled up the chainless pocket watch.  Four thirty-nine.  The laundry should be done by now, he didn’t want a collection of his pants in bacon ripple style.  Sickly yellow, bacon ripple style… whatever.

The watch went back in his pocket and Arthur brought the cigarette back to his lips for another draw.  His eyes half closed and he let the sizzle work in his throat. Two more minutes.  He calculated the time up in his head, two more minutes coupled with the walk back to the motel—, he forgot the bag.  Get the bag, go back down and collect the freshly dried pants and shirts.  Or he could forget the bag, have five more minutes to let his blood mellow.

“Arthur!”

He jumps in place and turns to Vivi’s accusing stare.  “Hey. I didn’t worry you, did I?” he rasped. Arthur took another breath and looked down from Vivi, to Mystery huddled behind her legs.  When Vivi began towards him, Mystery turns and bolts out of sight. Arthur backed up and hit the wall. He gets out a vague question as Vivi slaps the cigarette out of his metal hand.  “Whoa now!  What gives you the right—” He shut his mouth when Vivi grips the front of his shirt and heaves back a fist.

“You promised me you quit!” she snarled.

“I did!  I DID!”  Arthur tenses but makes no move to defend his face.  He probably deserved it.

It was on the prescription, among the long list of drugs compiled into his blood to keep his kidneys from shriveling up, his heart pumping, his capillaries clear of toxins.  They worried about toxins in his blood.  Arthur had laughed that day, it was so out of character they had to call in a psychiatrist to evaluate whether or not his brain had suffered mental trauma that was not foreseen since his earlier evaluations. Oh what medical science was blind to; oh what they were willfully ignorant of.  The only person that might’ve gotten the joke, wouldn’t have gotten it anyway.  That cruel irony made looking at her twice as difficult for the remainder of the month, but he found his way out of it.

The doctors advised Arthur to quit, obstructed capillary networks was what they labeled it.  It was common in amputees.

“Was this your first pack?” Vivi growled, tugging Arthur towards her.

He choked and spat out a no.  “I’m gonna stop though, I will!” he stammered, leaning back.  Why was Vivi so strong?  Arthur was no heavyweight, but she could pick up Lewis when he was alive.  “It always helped, with the… it just helped!”

“We have sage!” she hissed, face twisting, tears brimming in her eyes.

“But that’s so rude!”  Arthur cringed down fully expecting the blow to connect and knock some sense back into him.  He bought gum and sometimes chewed that instead, but it wasn’t the same.  He’d show Vivi once she calmed down.  He was hauled forward, staggering through the dark shade of his thoughts and awaiting the flash of light from her fist to cleave through his mind… but the harsh blow never comes.  Instead, soft arms wrap around him.  Arthur risks opening his eyes and stares down on the weed riddled pavement behind her blue heels.  His muscles remained locked, he didn’t dare move even when Vivi’s shoulders quivered. Arthur clenched his fists at his sides and rested his chin on the poofy sweater around her neck.

“I should have asked,” she mumbled into his shoulder.  “I should have asked you.”  She squeezed tighter around Arthur’s chest, as if fortifying his presence with her embrace. “Why didn’t I?”

“You…” he began, and hesitated.  Vivi said nothing, hadn’t calmed down, and Arthur went on, “already knew the answer.  Nothing’s changed.  This is fine.”

“No, it’s wrong.”  She pressed her forehead into the collar of that stupid amber vest Arthur always insisted on wearing.  “I wasn’t thinking about you, I wasn’t worried that….  Jesus, I don’t think.”  How could she forget?  Why had she been blind to this?  For all her intuition, her flexible and quick mind, how could she overlook such simple, yet crucial details?  Essential, yet fragile.  Delicate, but poisonous.  A balance that tipped dangerously.  

Arthur brought his arms up and wrapped them around her shoulders, gently.  “Vi, we’ve talked,” he insists.  “I told him I was solid.  I don’t have the right—” Arthur froze again when Vivi recoiled and pushed him back by his shoulders.

“That’s not an invitation!” She snapped.  “That’s submission!  That won’t do.”  Arthur let his head hang, but Vivi cups his chin in her fingers and pushed his face up. “No, Art.  Look, I’m not mad, I’m frustrated.  Well, maybe that’s not the truth.   I’m mad at me, not you.  But— Would you look at me!  I’m frustrated, that’s it.”  She stares into Arthur’s face as his eyes crease and his brows stretch, into a conflicted expression she was too familiar with.  “You’re not allowed to destroy yourself.  Are you listening?”  He nods, and tries to let his eyes drop from her steady gaze.  “What did I just say?”

“Don’t wreck myself,” he mumbled, below a breath.

“That’s good enough, I guess.”  Vivi sighed, and raised a thumb up to touch the lone tear that had made it past Arthur’s resistance.  “How do I save you?  How do I save my boys?”

“I miss Lewis,” Arthur says.  He shuts his eyes and begins to slip down to the cold ground, his knees fold up under him.  Vivi helps him down, pulling at his vest and trying not to grip the upper space of his left arm where metal met flesh.  “I’m keeping it together, pulling myself back.”  Vivi kneels in front of him and pulls him upright when he begins to sag sideways over his knees.  “I’m not gonna fuck this up too.  I can do this.”  He shuts his eyes and presses his metal palm to his forehead in an effort to cool his fevered brow.  “I can do this.  Just… just give me some time, and I’ll work it out.”

“Hey.”  Vivi brought her hands up and clasped Arthur around his forehead, his shocked blond hair folded under her palms as she held him.  Arthur tucked his eyelids shut and winced to her touch.  “Don’t push yourself so hard.  It’ll… you’re going to hurt yourself.”

“I know my limits,” he murmured.  Arthur feels his heart being ripped in two, skewered by icy teeth and shredded across his ribs.  “I can endure.  I can.”

“Don’t give me that,” Vivi hissed.  “You’re not impervious to— Art, wait!”  Arthur had ripped himself from her hands and managed up onto his feet, stumbling a bit as he spun away from Vivi still crouched on the broken asphalt. Vivi hopped to her feet and followed his stabbing steps. “Art’ur!”  She jerks back when he whirls on her.

“I’m not fragile, Vi!  God, I’m not going to come apart and scatter in the wind.” Arthur screams, his body movements erratic as he gestures with his hands; the prosthetic arm is dull and awkward while he’s amid a state of distress.  “My legs are strong, my mind’s still here!  I’m okay!  Just… chill.” He motions his arms, bringing them down to his hip level as Vivi watched.  “You don’t trust me?  Do you?”

Vivi searched for something else to focus on, and settled for the edge of the motels roof beyond the corner of the convenience store Arthur had hidden behind.  “Sometimes you forget Art,” she says.  “You’re so focused on anything else, you avoid the little things.”  She shakes her head and then looks back to Arthur.  “I don’t want to forget for you.  I can’t drag you down.”

Arthur stuffs his hands into his pockets and toes at the crumbling cement, trying to dislodge a thick stubborn stalk of a wilting weed.  He recollected on Vivi before the Cave, ambitious headstrong Vivi, always leading the way.  Lewis always right there for her, to grab her and pull her back from the edge of disaster when it suddenly opened up in her path.  And Arthur… him, always a step behind, the last one into the room, always lagging behind the others.  The first to run, or the one somehow caught.

“Vi,” he says, “you never dragged me.  If anything—” He stopped, and looked up at her.  “You brought me back.  You were there when I woke up.”

Vivi doesn’t meet his eyes as she moves towards Arthur.  She takes him by the wrist of his metal arm and pulls the hand into hers and examines the stiff, numb digits, Arthur had carved himself.  “I wasn’t always there,” she confessed.  “I didn’t want to be there.  Art?”

“Hmm?”  The air became chilled when a cloud, or the sun, had inched behind some obstruction that blocked the strong yellow rays.  He couldn’t feel Vivi’s fingers tracing the mars and etches in place of his metal palm, he could only detect the vibrations he had grown accustomed to when faint touch fell onto his false limb.  When he had built his first prosthetic and attached it, Vivi had never taken a second look at it.  He had always been gratified by this.  

“We should look for Mystery,” she suggests, and tugs him by the wrist with no force applied.  “I think he went this way.”

Arthur followed without protest.  “We should talk a bit.”

“We’ll talk a bit,” Vivi echoed, leading Arthur behind her by his hand.

“It’s such a nice day, or was,” Arthur muttered, and squinted at the darkening contours of the sky.

Vivi led their way towards a dark alley behind the convenience store, chain link fences and the clay floor packed down, overgrown with trees and weeds.  It looked more interesting and secluded than the open sidewalk beside a road.  “I thought we could hit the park tomorrow.” Vivi’s voice brightened a bit.

As they departed the wall and Vivi’s voice twittered with the prospect of a day for just them, a dark shadow rose across the glossy paint of the brick.  The shadow seeps from the walls surface and reforms itself, bright magenta illuminates along its outline and spreads across its torso and legs.  A gilded heart pulses at the broad chest as the dark hue fades by degrees, until it is restored to its pacified shape.

Lewis took a step from the wall and leaned back onto it, he crossed his arms over his chest as he watched Vivi and Arthur disappear down the alley.  He thought of following them and making certain Vivi was safe, but he decided that may have been a lame excuse to eavesdrop on following conversations. He’d… done enough of that.

“What happened to us?  I mean, why did we let this happen?”

Vivi’s words rattled in his mind.  He remembered Arthur then, catatonic, sleeping.  His aura had been in its most indolent in that state, and Lewis had for a moment believed Arthur had died, if not for the shallow movement of his chest.

The questions plagued his deepest contemplations, alternating, “Why did we? What happened?”  As if she were before him now asking the same question, inquiring for some form of answer he too yearned insight into.  There remained the questioned he flittered away from, the ones that he could ponder over for long hours, while time held him prison to witness superficial events from afar.  The locket thrummed at his chest, always steady, sometimes thunderous, and then at other times its as somber as a coo.  The questions in their most basic function nibbled at him:  What and Why?

It was all a ruse, he promised himself. He only intended to frighten them.  Get them to abandon his mansion and force them far-FAR away, never to return.  Leave him to sleep and forget, and fade away with each pulse of his heart.  That was his intent, he swore it was all that he meant to do. Play up the theatrics, convince them it was not worth their time or sanity.  He was incapable of killing.... unlike Arthur; it was beyond his nature, he swore it wouldn't go that far no matter how much… he suffered. The long, endless cycle of time tormenting his existence, abandoned and betrayed by someone he thought of as a dear friend. Something...  somewhere… it all went wrong.

  Reuniting with Arthur. The event brought something out of him, something he never genuinely contested before. Not with earnest. The unbridled horror in Arthur's features when Lewis emerged from his coffin, the unsightly attributes which cost everything he held dear and precious; his brazen perplexity upon seeing this… ghost. It pissed him off. He wanted to wipe it out, make Arthur taste some of that spite that curdled his soul. He couldn't stop, he absolutely could not stop himself. How far could he drive Arthur on before he broke? Arthur deserved the suffering, the torment and hostility unleashed by his failings. Nothing would make this right, but Lewis also couldn't elude that anger. It was as much of a part of him now as the locket affixed to his chest. Inseparable. 

And then she was there.  It had happened so fast and Lewis couldn’t bear it.  The ache in his hollowed chest when he saw her for the first time since….

He said goodbye.

Why he remained far past his expiration was never a controversy for him.  The question that stumped him when he was not careful, and it came upon him when his defenses were down: What was he now?

Lewis rounded the corner of the convenience store and walked across the parking lot.  He saw Mystery on the sidewalk beyond the gas pumps waiting for Vivi, or him, he was on the sidewalk beside the crosswalk marks that bridge across to the motel.  The dog perked up at Lewis’ approach, and Lewis said nothing until he reached his four legged ally.  “How’s it going?” Lewis rattled, his voice near toneless.

Mystery’s answer was to tilt his head and lower one ear at an angle.  He stood and pivots to cross the road, glancing around for any speeding traffic; there were no cars but Mystery was careful to look anyway.  He spins about when Lewis begins to walk off, and Mystery pads up to follow at a distance.

“I’m not going back to the room yet,” Lewis explained.  “Vi and Art are looking for you.”

Mystery’s steps slowed and he fell back.  That didn’t make sense, any one of them knew without a fail that if he was separated from his company, he would either turn up at the van or the current place of occupation.  He gave his head a shake as he resumed his quick pace, struggling to keep up with Lewis long stride.  It was evident Lewis was in no hurry, but Lewis probably wanted to be alone and Mystery knew he couldn’t allow that.

They came to the busier district of the widespread city.  Mystery recognized it down the road from the motel, an easy to and from for some of the better diners and the cafes.  Arthur was impossible when it came to the prospect of being stranded, and the distance to a place for a worthwhile cup of coffee.  Mystery woofed at Lewis’ back.  Lewis didn’t need a reminder that he was out in public, and not dressed for one on one interactions.  Numerous shops throughout the city block catered to tourists, featuring carved wooden animals, jewelry, or rugs and quilts.  The small clumps of people they passed would give Mystery odd stares, and Mystery began to wonder what for.  It wasn’t unusual for people to stroll around with a ‘pet’ off the leash, was there a city ordinance he was not aware of?

Then it dawned on him.  No shadow was cast under Lewis and he had no reflection in the shop windows.  Lewis was hiding.

This didn’t alarm Mystery, if it was Lewis’ wish to go unnoticed then he was entitled to that.  For Mystery matters were complicated.  Head up, chest puffed out, ears proud and forward facing.  He had someplace to be and that was where he was headed.  He observed that humans rarely bothered a dog with confidence, minding his or her own business and on their way to wherever dogs go.  What humans did not trust was a timid, confused, lost creature that scuttled away from attention or drifted around.  If he kept moving it would make tracking him difficult.  Even so, he had his collar and tags and people would regard that and conclude he was just a regular out for a walk.  He would be fine, and he had some notion of Lewis’ destination.

As predicted they arrived at the body shop where the van was left.  Show Car Remake and Renew, a general garage and minor vehicle repairs.  The main garage was a long gray building with a few windows along the uppermost walls, and the large shutter doors at the base drawn down and locked for the evening.  The far side of the lot was overnight parking, the cars and trunks caged in by tall barbed wire fence.  Mystery followed Lewis to the fence but was forced to wait, as his transparent companion slipped through the metal links and entered amongst the many vehicles.

Mystery lost sight of the ghost as his tall figure weaved around the portion of large vehicles and trunks.  Mystery spun around and looked back to the road as the first streetlamps snapped on, cars sped by and after a short time of waiting the street quieted.  It was getting late, the air grew colder.  He sat down and gave the spot behind his ear a dedicated scratch, working to straighten out the hair bent there.  He tensed when a white utility trunk drove by and seemed to slow down – at least to Mystery it looked like the vehicle was stopping – but no, the truck sped up and the dog let out a sigh.  Never was the best time to run off and get lost somewhere in a strange city, with strange people, and strange beliefs.

Vivi and Arthur would be wondering where he was, if they had managed to reach the room by now.  They shouldn’t worry, but Mystery admitted he was not immune to dangers, or the mild irritations offered by the few humans he could do without meeting.

The sudden awareness of a presence at his back caused Mystery to twist around.  It was only Lewis, slipping through the large chain links in the fence.  Mystery examined him over and noted the piece of cloth tangled in his hand.  Ah.

Lewis looked at the cloth between his fingers as he untangled it.  “Are you still afraid of me?”  Mystery raises his snout higher and glares through his spectacles at Lewis.  “Would it be enough if I apologized?”  He unfolded and refolded the cloth and straightened out the creases to the best of his ability.  It had been folded and pressed wrong for quite some time.  

Mystery give a soft woof and steps back from Lewis. They should head back now.  The dapper specter wouldn’t budge.

“You were there for Arthur,” Lewis whispered, traces of flames bud from his shoulders and hair.  “But not for me.  Why not? Why is it…?”  He tightened his fist around the sad piece of cloth, “Why did I have to be the one abandoned?” He looked down when Mystery stepped forward and set a paw on his foot, the white face looked up at him.  Before Lewis could utter a word, Mystery had whisked away and was already halfway across the parking lot, the faint tapping of his claws fade as the ghost stares after him.

He could have just haunted Arthur.  Or he could have remained in his mansion, his sanctuary from the world ticking by with the tempo of the seasons cycling through, worlds moving; moon sweeping through crescent to quarter, harvest and back to the new moon.  What time had passed while he had slumbered?  Existing but not in a state of present, not dispersing but not fully cumulative either.  A piece of himself was lost in every wedge of every day, not noticed and not missed. Small segments of his childhood, the places they frequented as kids, the warm smiles of his parents.  How could he miss what he couldn’t reflect with?  It may have been a process of Acceptance, or it just happened naturally.  He ceased to worry, and he couldn’t care.  The lethargy of simply existing drained him heavily, and he fed on the lone coal of his passion, his raison d'etre.  What purpose, and what meaning had come to him, when the cycle of existence had evicted a squatter?

It was Mystery’s aura that had stirred him. That wild, untamed thing – a font of composer and class, with a writhing tangle of insanity that clawed for escape. He would know it anywhere, it was the last, and first thing he had latched onto before the fulcrum of his final volition had scattered.  He didn’t remember much in that span of time between… before….

The light of the motel room was out.  The curtains were drawn shut, as Vivi had left them, and the walls would be absolutely silent, if not for the dull rattle of the heater.  Night was well upon the motel now, and Vivi and Arthur would not be far behind it. Without a thought Lewis pushed his palms into the cracked stucco of the wall, and allowed his unsubstantial shape to slither through the cold molecules of cheap drywall and plaster.  Mystery gave a soft yap at his back as he faded, and then, the room was opened up before Lewis.  The interior air warm from the buzzing heater in the wall, bags and a few essential supplies sat in grainy detail along one wall, the bed was overtaken by blues and yellows.  Lewis turns back to the door and pulls the handle, but stood in the way when Mystery tried to nudge through and enter with him.  Lewis picked up the piece of cloth he had dropped, but paused as Mystery searched for a way around him.

Somewhere in the parking lot below the walkway, Lewis could pick up on the soft warble of Vivi’s voice accompanied by the timid tones of Arthur’s speech.  “Hold on,” Lewis murmured, as he shooed Mystery out of the threshold.  “They’ll let you in, but I have something to do real quick.”  Mystery stiffened when Lewis gave his scalp a comforting rub, an action Mystery was unaware of how much he missed.  Mystery stepped away when Lewis straightened up and shut the door.

What… just happened?  

Mystery whined.  That was not fair!  He scratched at the door and sniffed at the crack along the frame and listened for the muffled sounds from behind the door.  He tugged at the handle, though he knew the door couldn’t be opened without a key.

“What up, Mystery?” Arthur was the first to ask. He stepped behind the dog and raised his knuckles to the door, rapping gently.

Vivi leaned down and hugged Mystery around his shoulders, plucking him up off his front feet as she rocked him.  “Did Lew leave you outside?”  Mystery whined and stared at Arthur, pleaded at Arthur’s back with his eyes.  “I’ll talk to him about it, and we’ll fix this.”  Mystery strained his whimpers, and Vivi took note of that tone in his voice. “D’you have a key, Art?”

“Hmm?  Yeah, sure,” he muttered, as he began digging through his pockets.  Arthur found the thin plastic card easily, and with one swipe the red light on the handle lock flicks to green.  “Lew?”  He asked softly as he pushed the door open, intent to enter before Vivi for once. “You left Mystery outside.”  The heater of the room chattered as it stuttered off, and the dark plain before Arthur was left with the reverberations of its silence, along with the strange emptiness of the room.  The scarce glow of the few streetlamps outside tumbled around his shoulders as he stood in the doorway.  He was startled only briefly by his own reflection in the mirror, directly across from the doorway.  “Damnit,” he gasped, and clutched at his chest as his heart pounded behind his ribs.

“Lew?” Vivi chimed in, as she and Mystery pressed in behind Arthur.  She shuffled to the tall lamp stationed in one corner of the room and flipped the light on, coating the walls and floor with its pale white coat.  “Are you here?”  She had the impression that he was hiding for some reason.  Vivi brushed past Arthur and crossed to the bathroom at the furthest side of the room.  Mystery followed, sniffing along the bed and the corner of the wall.  

There was nothing in the bathroom.  The light blazed harshly over the white walls and plastic floor, a few bottles of shampoo sat around but mention nothing of guests. Vivi was usually comforted by the fragrant soaps, but she had only noticed them now when she was uneasy.  It didn’t feel right.  The bathroom heater came on with the light, but the air retained a chilled quality.  The whole of the room felt reticent, inhospitable.

Vivi shut the light off and stepped out.  She felt unnerved and was not certain where this sensation had crept out from, but it was there and she couldn’t shake it.  She heard the door shut as Arthur entered fully, he cast his eyes over the walls and the short carpet as if anticipating Lewis to pop out from a surface at any given moment.  Arthur sprang in place when Mystery poked his head up from the opposite side of the bed.  Vivi shared a look with the white face, then their sight feel onto the bed.  

The scent of fresh laundry overpowered the room, and Vivi with Mystery examined the shirts, skirts, and pants laid out over the bed covers where they wouldn’t wrinkle.  Further evidence of Lewis’ presence was not visible, aside from the large leather jacket draped over the back of an uncomfortable armchair.  On the table rests the room’s twin key card, beside a pair of dark purple sunglasses.  There was nothing to suggest anyone had been in the room recently.

[fandomlit]

midnight coffee (five x reader)

requested by anon “Can I please request 19, 20, 6, 44, & 80 with Five?”

summary five has trouble sleeping at night and decides to pay you a late night visit.

a/n they’re obvs aged up in this,, ps my og ended sucked so it’s just left to your imagination enjoy

oh hey i do writing prompts,, those used in this fic will be in bold

gif cred belongs to @bensklaus

you woke up in the middle of the night to your phone ringing and groaned, rolling over to face it. but just as you opened your eyes it stopped. you huffed and closed your eyes again. but just as you were about to fall back asleep, it started again.

you begrudgingly sat up and glared at the bright screen. even better, it was your best friend calling you at 2:26am.

you swiped your phone to answer, but before you could say anything he breathed out, “look who’s finally awake.” his husky, sleepy voice would’ve given you shivers if it had been any other time of the day.

“why are you calling me at two in the morning?” you droned with a yawn.

“can’t sleep,” he said and you knew he was shrugging from wherever he was. the slight inconsistent static told you there was wind.

“are you outside?” you asked.

“yeah,” he said casually. “outside your apartment building, actually.”

you shot out of bed and ran over to your balcony, forcing the door open and looking over the edge. “five!”

said guy looked up at you and waved. you gave him a confused look and he lifted to phone back up to his ear.

“how long have you been standing there?” you asked, finally waking up more. “are you drunk?”

“please let me in.”

five was sitting on your couch, scrolling through tv channels while you made coffee.

when you finally came back in with two cups, you asked, “what’s on your mind, five?”

he grabbed the warm cup from your hand and shrugged. “couldn’t stop thinking. and i uh...”

you arched an eyebrow.

“i didn’t wanna be alone,” he voiced quickly, staring down at his cup of coffee.

you nodded in understanding. there were nights where he’d stay up with you either on the phone or at his apartment because you didn’t want to be alone. that’s just the kind of friendship you two had.

“do you wanna blanket? you look freezing,” you said before you sat, placing your coffee down on the table. he nodded. you quickly moved across the room to the chest you kept your blankets in, grabbing his favorite. you could feel his eyes on you the entire time.

“thanks,” he muttered as you handed him the blanket. you curled up in the opposite side of the couch as he situated the blanket over himself.

“wanna talk about it?” you asked. he wasn’t usually this reserved at 2am. he was usually bursting to get his thoughts out. he was also usually drunk if he came to your apartment.

he sighed and took a sip of his coffee. “i just... i realized something, and i...” he shook his head, not meeting your eyes. “i had to come over.”

“hey,” you said gently, leaning forward to catch his gaze. his eyes curiously met yours. “whatever it is, you can tell me. do you know how many insomnia ridden nights i’ve spent at your place?”

“thirty-two,” he said. “but who’s counting?” you cracked a smile. that was more like the five that you know.

“there you are,” you sighed, leaning back again and grabbing your coffee. “you can tell me anything, five.”

there was a pause as he collected his thoughts, tentatively sipping his coffee. your eyes flickered over to the tv as you waited patiently for his answer.

“i can’t stop thinking about you,” he finally said, his voice bold and honest, but still tired. your gaze whipped to him as he looked at you gently. you shivered under his stare. “i can’t stop thinking about your laugh and your smile and your eyes and your jokes.” you didn’t dare break your eye contact as he continued, “i can’t stop thinking about how you know exactly how to make my coffee, how you know which blanket is my favorite...” he took a slow breath. “i know this is sudden and new and possibly the last thing you ever wanna hear coming from me, but i think i just realized im in love with you.”

[onepunchmiss]

OPM s2e2 Liveblog

The Human Monster

So I posted my (vague) predictions for this episode yesterday, lets see how wrong I was! As last time, I’m watching this from the perspective of someone who’s read the manga and webcomic. Long post ahead, but let’s get to it!

Alright, looks like we’re picking up right where we left off. This marks the first legitimate Garou episode, doesn’t it? I’m so excited to see the trash son in action.

Garou’s! VOICE! I know we’re already heard it briefly but AHH! I didn’t look into the voice actor ahead of time so I didn’t have much more of an idea as to what he’d sound like but I was expecting it to be...deeper? And honestly I like this way better than what I thought it would be please keep talking my boy you cocky bastard please please

Woah ok I had to pause again to point out how much I appreciate this music. Is this gonna be the recurring Garou theme? I hope so, it’s way darker sounding than any other music in the show that I can recall and I am LIVING

Oh FUCK Heavy Tank’s arm is some body horror right there why is the skin so lumpy???? “Baaaka~” Garou is not one of my top favorite characters but at this rate I think the anime might get him there pretty quickly. And I see JC staff is cutting no corners when it comes to animating his physique I’m sure LOTS of people are gonna be happy for that

Oh my fuck Aaaand more body horror, the sound effects make it worse. I knew this was coming but I forgot. Somehow.

Um excuse me but JC STAFF WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? WHAT ARE THESE COLORS. WHY. ITS NOT EVEN LIKE YOU’RE CENSORING IT. YOU’VE ALREADY SHOWED THE WHOLE SEVERED HAND AND THE BLOOD WHAT IS THIS EYESORE. Like, the sudden randomly fast animation of Blue Fire’s hands caught me off guard completely and had me laughing even though I don’t think that was supposed to be funny? I though that was a kinda jarring animation choice but what the hell is this?

Ah yes thank you opening theme please cleanse my eyes of what just happened.

Yeah I’m never gonna get over seeing Zombieman’s pissy face at least TWICE every episode thank the heavens for that really. Also Phoenixman. I just think he’s neat ok

Also, I just realized they gave Choze silver hair when I totally imagined it blond. I guess they figured the Nazi imagery would be TOO MUCH given the character already?

OH MY GOSH ARE THEY GONNA DO A DIFFERENT S CLASS EVERY TIME?? LOOK AT THIS BABY. DOES THAT MEAN Z WILL GET ONE TOO IT WAS TATSUMAKI LAST WEEK FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

As expected, on to the Fubuki confrontation. But first I’d like to take a moment to appreciate Geno’s apron. Oh sonic SONIC! we ARE getting the TOASTER VS NINJA THIS EPISODE YES! YES! WAIT a 20 minutes later cut?? I swear they better not skip the action….

“Yo, I’m Saitama” Fucking hell the inflection of his voice when he says that is perfect. Anyway- the boarding in this sequence is messing with me. Is it just me or is every really monotone? Something just feels kinda off. There’s so many panning shots? Keep the screen still its making me a bit motion sick. This isn’t an action sequence there doesn’t need to be movement 100% of the time, it doesn’t fit well here. I’m gonna need to rewatch this beginning to end without pausing for the blog to judge it better [EDIT: after watching it in one go, its still noticable, but not AS BAD. Slightly more forgivable imo]

Fuck the fucking obligatory boob jiggle god damnit

“Are you gonna fight me with rocks n stuff? Better not” Was that a Geryuganshoop callback??

ok I put my finger on it. This whole sequence has been riddled with unnecessary panning of the camera. (90% of which is focused on Fubuki for whatever reason). This shot for example would have been fine with just gusts and rocks flying everywhere. but instead they panned up in this shot in a crooked gliding motion. why?? It keeps happening?

Why is it zooming in and turning sideways it’s getting distracting when the subject matter within the frame is relatively stagnant. Also, it got much better quickly with more action, but the Saitama speech on newbie-crushing felt kind of underwhelming. Maybe it’s just because I was already so distracted but it felt much more impactful and forceful reading it than listening to/seeing it just now.

WAIT

YES! YES!

Please let this fight be on a better note! aww, no smug Genos face. Let the boy smile for once in the anime pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee? And side note- I can’t wait for every single Shot of genos to be turned into a compilation of gifs, cause thats how the fandom do these days

This whole fight just had me shouting YES at the screen THIS IS WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT it got so much better! So much better!! A huge sigh of relief from me over here. There are so many good shot of Genos here oh my god thank the heavens yes. Oh that muffled voice effect with the clones is cool too, oh man. JC Staff loves sonic I’m convinced. Yeah, some bits are over the top with the flashing but I kinda don’t care

YEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS SAITAMA YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

I’m so glad they nail this art style! Also I’d like to say that the anime delivered the serious series: Serious consecutive side hops 100% that is some GOOD SHIT.

OH MY FUCK did they seriously just rip the face directly out of the manga panel???? I Mean it’s perfection so i can’t blame them???? Oh Shit that’s fuckin gold and the now-vocalized ‘DOAUGHU’ is perfect.

Y’know, I knew they had to animate the tatsumaki spoon panel that shit was just too cool looking to not include. AH! Atomic Samurai’s Disciples! Oh my god I can’t wait to see them actually! Look at Kama my QUEEN

And ya know, I was completely willing to forgo the lil Aamai mask cut away but here it is. I’m gonna spare yall his stupid face. If you like Amai mask I’m sorry, you’re stronger than me.

Hah, “there’s also King, the world’s strongest man.” I just paused it before he walks in the door. Little do you know, gurl, little do you know. Oh, I appreciate the little ‘Hmph’ Fubuki does, too. Reminds me that she and Tatsu really are sisters. Ah, aaaaand there King is. AAAaaaaaaand its over just like that. Lets get through the end credits before I summarize my thoughts i guess!

well FUCK I WAS SPOT ON WASNT I?? The episode ended with Saitama and Genos getting their Hero Names and Garou walking away from Tanktop Vegetarian. Not gonna lie I’m proud I called it to a T.

All in all, I didn’t love it as much as the first episode, but I loved it nonetheless. Aside from the one color disaster and the Fubuki confrontation scene (which admittedly, is a big deal) I was REALLY digging it all the way through. It seems to me they struggled with making an emotionally impactful scene with only minor elements of action. The King scene last week was great, no nauseating camera movement or anything- just exactly what it needed to be. The full on action sequences were also fine this and last week. I don’t know if it was the combination of dialogue and static characters mixed in with Fubuki using her telekinesis that threw them for a loop but it definitely felt like they had issues with that scene. Not as bad as I initially felt, like I’m not mad at it per se, but they’re still there. Otherwise no pacing issues or anything- actually they covered exactly as much ground as I guessed they would and it felt great! I have today come to the conclusion that JC Staff loves Sonic and also has a weird thing about panning shots of Fubuki. Good episode still had me shouting YES repeatedly at the screen.

Seeya next week!

[ablodhere]

Chase Brody and Antisepticeye the originals: Theory™

(Trademark symbol just because. :P)

Disclaimer: All of this was just a little idea I had so I have some "evidence" but most of it is just filler to make an understanding of who @therealjacksepticeye 's alter egos are. It makes sense that they’re split personalities, but I want to push the bar and say that it all starts with Chase and Anti as the first in line. Again, this is my theory (Some would argue fanfiction) so I hope you respect my thoughts and ideas and maybe it will help you think about it or expand on your own theory. If you don't agree with it, don't worry. It is why it is a theory and somewhat story since I can only do so much with video clips of these characters. 

Speaking of which, I will be mentioning some video series of Jack's. I will add some of the links but only if I say the title video name and add a timestamps. All the gifs are from Jack's videos. Now, let's get into the theory.

Let's start off with Chase Brody and "The Jacksepticeye's Power Hour - Chase Brody." Now this is when we first meet Chase. Clearly it is supposed to be a stage name of some sort (especially if you want to consider that Jack has made fun of the name once in “HOW TO BE BEAUTIFUL! | Douchebag’s Chick” 10:25), so this is most likely supposed to be an earlier or later version of Jack who has had a family and kids, who wants some type of fame if they don’t already have or want more. As we see though, his family is taken away because of his neglectance, he is now depressed because his wife and him got a divorce and she took the kids with her and the show is being run by people who just want views and tasks that are near impossible to complete. Later, “jokes” in the show, such as the drive-by shot and his depression caused by “suicide” makes him “shoot” himself on camera, in order to end Chase’s time on air. 

Later, he takes up or takes back the name Jacksepticeye and continues making videos, but on his own terms. As stated in “SPLIT PERSONALITIES! | Reading Your Comments #47″ Stamp: 00:14-00:24, he has split personalities (when the video was made, I’m sure it was just for a joke, but for the sake of this theory/story, we are going to treat it as if it is a character trait Chase/Jack has). In the clip shown, it is clear that the other voice is aggressive, so if we are assuming that the voice isn’t Chase or Jack, then who would it end up being? It is a voice prone to violence and harm, not only on 1others like in the power hour with the “drive-by”, but also to himself, again, shown in the power hour and the split personalities video, not only making it seem like he committed suicide, but is also verbally aggressive against his other personalities.

Now to Antisepticeye. What do we really know about him? He seems to be a type of glitchy demon to be the opposite of our beloved YouTube star. (Clips here is not linked to Jack’s videos, but to a YouTube channel called @helen92edits, thank you, you made my job so much easier.) “Antisepticeye Clips” is a compilation of Anti moments, and I’ve noticed that yes, he is prone to harming Jack, says he’ll harm others, said he has killed with the earliest clip “You aren’t allowed to see the dead bodies,” enjoys the uneasiness and the creepy feel he projects to others and see them uncomfortable, helpless or in pain. In all honesty, we know a lot about Anti, and he is a demon. After all, he does occasionally flash his blacked out eyes at the camera, which is a signature mark of a demon. 

Now to put the story together. These are recent videos Jack has made, but not in order. First is “TIE - A Game About Depression” Stamp: 12:00. Chase is playing the game, we know based off of how Chase knows how it feels to feel depressed and probably still is depressed saying that his mind is racing, maybe from voices in his head, or thoughts planted there and longing for things to go back to how they were before. Then the video shows Chase is sporting a black shirt and black pants, drinking whisky, and is distressed. He puts his hat down and walks away. 

Next video: “WATCH THIS WITH THE LIGHTS OFF | Stories Untold - Chapter 1″ Stamp: 22:01 (Also, I want to say that I think the intro sequences for the Stories Untold are referencing the three, Jack, Anti, and Chase. 2 is probably foreshadowing to the ending of the Dark Silence video which I will cover, 3 is maybe about or to Chase’s kids when referencing a missing father, and 4 was cut short, but is maybe about Jack not recognizing himself in the mirror and feels like someone else is looking at him, which correlates to depression, or if he has split personalities like we suspect, it would mean he realizes that he isn’t the only one in that body). In the middle of the outro, Jack is interrupted because he hears rustling sounds, scraping as it says in the subtitles if you turn them on. The door then opens, he turns and it cuts to a TV on a desk after lightning claps. A second or two after, an image of Jack, or someone who looks like him (Anti), flashes on the TV, where he looks directly at you before it is just static.

“DARK SILENCE” Stamp: 20:35 Jack is then out and walking around a house he doesn’t recognize based off of the seemingly confused look on his face. Most likely he is in his mind since these alters can manifest in both real life and in his head. A child’s laugh can be heard when walking around. Then a woman’s scream and whispers as he turns towards his left to go upstairs, then a child crying and more whispers as he turns right to see Anti waiting there in a doorway in front of him. He screams “Where are they?! What do you want from me?!” to Anti before he advances to the camera. (This was the Chapter 2 reference, first you turn to a door on your left, then to your right. Just listen to it, it is a bit of a stretch though.)

“EXPLORING AN ABANDONED HOSPITAL | Exiles” Stamp: Very opening and then 14:29. In the middle of his sentence, Jack stares at the camera as he starts bleeding from his eyes. Similar to when he started bleeding from the corner of his eye and face in one of the sister locations videos (I don’t remember which one so “Antisepticeye Clips” Stamp: 2:27). You hear whispers as Jack bleeds and it gets louder. You start hearing them say “All your fault, you did this,” repeat over and over again.

In “Barry Has A Secret” , we notice Jack is acting a little strange and at 12:19 he fidgets and panics when we leave, only for us to find a (prop) baby hand in his cupboard and him saying we weren’t supposed to see that in a malicious manor. He lunges his hand toward us, then the camera goes black.

(I’m not sure what the blinding light at the the end of “THEY ARE LISTENING | Stories Untold - Chapter 2″ Stamp: 30:27 means, but the beginning again refers back to Dark Silence, which came out later then this video, but maybe you guys can try and help me figure out what the light means.) “THEY’RE HERE! |Stories Untold - Chapter 3″ Stamp: 40:50 . Whispers start and the screen goes black and you hear this dialog “Jack... Jack! This is Chase. You need to wake up!” Meaning he is hearing this in his head, Chase is another entity in his head, another persona that he can take. Also that would mean Anti is able to be in Jack’s head or in real life if he is truly a demon.

“IT WAS ALL CONNECTED! | Stories Untold - Chapter 4″ Stamp: 45:07 we are greeted to Jack tossing in his bed  while whispers are heard. He sits up panting and then looks into the camera and says “I remember what he did to me...” then the camera goes black. (I should also mention that “Try to Fall Asleep” is a bit weird, the intro is probably Anti telling us to try to fall asleep since it would be the easiest way to possess us, the play through itself is Chase and the ending at 19:55 is maybe Jack still in a dream until he is scared awake, which is what causes the Chapter 4 ending. Yet it doesn’t really seem like it fits right. Maybe you guys will figure this out too if you want.)

What does all this information mean? Well, Chase/Jack  (Chase is the show guy and he goes by Jack in videos now since he “killed himself”, and I am using the name Jack instead of  Seán because I don’t want to somehow misspell his actual name. I don’t want to forget the accent on it, I’m very picky about that. But Jack is more of the planner, the one that makes the schedules while Chase is the show boat. They are practically the same person, but Jack will call Chase by his real name while Chase just uses Seán’s nickname Jack.) is depressed about losing his family, so instead of moving on, he makes a deal with a demon in efforts to get them back. Now this demon inhabits Jack/Chase’s body in the form we know as Anti. And that’s it. It is that simple. It is the reason why Chase (TIE ending) is seen wearing the same clothing as Anti does in literally anything else he does. Why Chase hasn’t woken up since he got “captured” by Anti (Stories Untold - Chapter 1 ending). It is why Chase looks so confused in Exiles, it is Jack at the desk while Chase is trapped wondering their mind (Dark Silence ending), until Anti finds him, which is why he yells about the his family, he figures if the demon is their then his family would be back, that was the deal. Instead, Anti most likely killed the wife and kids (Barry Has A Secret) after taking over, ( which is why he has a baby hand in the cupboard and why he says we weren’t supposed to see that) and him taking over causes Jack to bleed like he did (Exiles). It is also way in Barry Has A Secret, it is evident by his demeanor in the beginning and end of the video that it wasn’t Jack or Chase. Despite the circumstances, Chase is able to break out of Anti’s control but it causes Jack to fall asleep in Chase’s place. So Chase tries to wake him up (Stories Untold - Chapter 3) and why when Jack did wake up (Stories Untold - Chapter 4) he says, “I remember what he did to me...” He remember that Anti used him and killed his ex-wife and kids. Then again this last little bit that doesn’t seem right and I feel we are missing a piece somewhere in past or in an upcoming video but we just need to wait and see.

This is what I have, hope you guys liked my theory/Story. I spent a lot of time figuring this out and setting up a timeline. This took about a week for me to make this. From having the initial idea, I had two days of research, aka watching the videos and a full day of sorting out the video orders to have it make sense and three more days of writing and editing. Feel free to share this idea around, modify it to make it better or just ignore it if you don’t like it. If you have anything that helps support or think some parts don’t have anything to do with this, feel free to say so. Hoped you enjoyed the long explanation. 

[bxcketbarnes]

Betrayed By Our Own

Pairing: Bellamy Blake x Reader

Author: @ninja-stiles

Words: 3135

Author’s Note: I’m really liking this a lot. I hope you guys do as well, plus I made my first Bellamy gif! Go me :))

Bellamy woke up dazed and confused in the underground bunker Jaha found. The bunker that started the conclave resulting in the winner’s clan to be safe in the bunker during Praimfaya. He looked around, seeing Clarke and Jaha conversing as he slowly got up from the chair they had placed his unconscious body on.

The two noticed that he was awake as Bellamy stood up, narrowing his eyes in confusion towards the blonde. “What the hell did you do?” He asked Clarke, stepping towards the table as Jaha looked up at the young man.

“If only one clan could survive, it might as well be ours,” Jaha answered as Bellamy glanced at Clarke, fuming with anger.

“Clarke, you agreed to this?” Bellamy asked the blonde once more and she stayed quiet as Jaha answered for her once more.

“It was her idea.” Bellamy’s eyes widened at the thought of her risking their people’s lives who are still above us.

“We did what we had to do,” Clarke informed him and he pressed his lips together, trying not to get too angry and lash out at his co-leader.

“How could you do this? There were only four warriors left and Octavia was one of them. She might have won,” Bellamy spoke, trying to reason with these two.

“And she might not have,” Jaha countered, earning the young man’s attention as Bellamy stared at him with an unreadable face, not wanting to think that his baby sister is dead.

“Bellamy, you’re right. She had a chance, but Luna was in the final four as well. Which means that there is an even better chance of nobody getting this bunker. Nobody surviving the end of the human race. Can you understand that?” Clarke asked, looking up at Bellamy as he scoffed quietly, nodding his head.

“Yeah, I-I can understand it. You did what you think you had to do, like always, but you can’t -- you can’t expect me to stay down here not knowing what happened to my sister or even Y/N for that matter,” Bellamy explained, getting emotional at the thought of losing the two people he loved most.

“We’re not opening that door, son,” Jaha mustered up and Bellamy glanced over at him, narrowing his eyes.

“You know what? I must have missed the election that made you Chancellor again,” Bellamy spat, running his hands through his hair as the door to whatever office they were in open, revealing Abby.

“Y/N’s becoming more stable, but she isn’t awake yet,” she spoke as she walked in, closing the door behind her as Bellamy swallowed the lump in the back of his throat. Y/N’s here?

“Wait, what do you mean she’s not awake?” Bell asked, glancing back towards Clarke. “What did you guys do to her?” He questioned, growling as he could feel the anger pulsing through his body. A gentle hand laid on his arm as he snapped his head back towards Abby.

“Hey… she’s fine. She’s been sleep deprived, so her body is taking a little more time to wake up. Y/N should be up in the next hour,” Dr. Griffin softly spoke, giving Bellamy a reassuring smile as he let out a breath of relief. “While I was setting up the infirmary I heard people in the corridor. Did we win?” She asked, looking at the three of them as Bellamy shrugged.

“We don’t know,” Bellamy spoke curtly, crossing his arms over his chest as he looked towards Jaha and Clarke.

“Where’s Marcus?” Abby asked, worried about her lover as she was met by silence, watching her daughter look towards the ex-chancellor.

“He was in the tower. We sent some people for him, Bellamy, Y/N, and Octavia. Bellamy and Y/N were the only ones we could get in time,” Jaha explained as Bellamy rolled his eyes, placing his hands on his hips as he shook his head. “I’m sorry.” Clarke looked at the floor, not being able to handle all the tension and guilt in the room as Abby demanded to give her a radio. Jaha shook his head, “the walkies are no good down here,” he spoke as the blonde walked over to the desk, pushing a button that raises a part of the table up. “Clarke,” Jaha exclaimed, looking towards the young lady.

“I’m letting them say goodbye,” she spoke bluntly as she motioned for them to do their thing. Bellamy walked over to the screens, looking over them as Abby soon made her way over, but Jaha stood in her way, explaining that there was nothing but pain on the other side since the radiation level has started to become critical.

“Get out of my way,” she spoke, not giving a damn about what he said as Jaha stepped aside. Abby stood beside Bellamy, glancing at the screens.

“The walkies are set to 21.5 megahertz,” Bellamy mentioned, tuning the channels as static could be heard through the speakers.

Y/N was squirming on the bed, her hands gripping the sides as flashes of Octavia dying played through her mind, hoping that one of her best friends is alive and well…and hoping that she won. A small groan escaped her lips as she slowly fluttered her eyes open, squinting at the bright light above her as she awoke in a place she did not recognize.

“Where the hell…?” Y/N muttered to herself, sitting up as she looked at her surroundings, seeming to be in an infirmary, but where? No one had won the conclave yet. She pressed her hand against her forehead, draping her legs over the side of the bed as she felt a bit groggy for being knocked out for so long.

She stood up, making her way towards the door as she looked around the hallway, realizing that she was in the bunker. Y/N fiddled with her hair, hearing a bunch of chatter coming from her right as she decided to make her way towards it, needing to get to the bottom of this. “Bellamy?” She softly spoke out, wanting to know if her best friend is okay, since the last time she saw him he was walking on the battlefield.

Y/N made her way into what seemed like the entrance to the bunker, seeing three metal door-like blinds, heading towards it. She softly knocked on it, wondering if there was anyone inside as she saw Clarke, Abby, and Jaha in the middle of the room through the slits.

“We did the right thing, Clarke,” Jaha told the young girl.

“Yesterday, we were right. Today, we have to live with being wrong,” Clarke mentioned, her arms crossed over her chest as Jaha sat down.

“We’re back on the Ark,” Y/N heard Abby speak, the doctor’s fingers pressed against the side of her head as she stared at nothing in particular. “Killing our own people so that we can live.”

Y/N heard enough and didn’t wait for someone to let her in as she opened the door, inviting herself in as she looked around. “What the hell is going on here?” Y/N asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “What does she mean we’re killing our own people?” She asked angrily, glancing towards Clarke as her eyes were wide and her lips were pressed together.

“Clarke and Jaha have decided to take the bunker for Skaikru before the conclave was even over,” Abby explained, throwing the two right under the bus as Clarke looked her at her mother with hurt in her eyes.

“You did what? What about Kane, Octavia, Bellamy?! You’re just going to leave them up there to die?!” Y/N screamed, moving her hands in all sorts of directions as she was super pissed at the blonde.

“Bellamy’s not up there,” Clarke calmy spoke and Y/N’s shoulders relaxed only a little bit. That means...

“We need to get them. They’re our people!” She explained, looking towards Jaha as he shook his head.

“We can’t do that,” he calmly spoke and Y/N scoffed, raising her eyebrows while crossing her arms over her chest.

“Wow, okay,” she muttered bitterly, looking towards Clarke. “Where’s Bellamy? I’m sure he’s going to hate this,” Y/N mentioned and the blonde sighed, running her hands over her face.

“Bellamy already knows. He’s also locked up,” she mentioned and my lips parted.

“Who the hell are you? I honestly don’t recognize this Clarke and I’ll gladly take the other one back anytime,” Y/N spat, glaring at the two as Abby and her left the room. Abby continued walking away as Y/N stayed behind, quietly listening to what they were talking about. The girl rolled her eyes when Jaha told Clarke she was stronger than her mother before he mentioned something about how Bellamy has a lot of friends in the guard, so they needed someone at his door that would rather survive than be liked. Murphy.

Y/N hid in the crowd as Clarke came out of the office, going to find Murphy as I tailed her, making sure she doesn’t see or notice me. She found the man she was looking for, making their way towards an elevator as Y/N stayed behind, looking at what floor they were heading to. When she figured it’d be safe to follow, she pushed the button to summon the elevator, waiting for the doors to open before pushing the same floor number as Murphy and Clarke went too, making sure to grab a blunt object in the process. Just in case…

Y/N carefully looked out when the doors opened, looking both ways to be sure she can’t be spotted when she could hear someone chatting followed by muffled yells. Bellamy… She tiptoed down the hall, finding a janitor's closet near the intersection of hallways as she slipped inside it, quietly listening.

“We’ll take it from here,” Murphy spoke, hearing thudding and grunting noises coming from beside Y/N as she led her forehead against the door, hating to hear Bellamy in such a state. Silence filled the area of people as Miller glanced at Murphy’s hand before looking over at Clarke, who nodded her head, letting him know it was alright. The jingle of keys was heard as Miller plopped them into Murphy’s hand before him and the other guard left the post, heading back upstairs. “You’ll talk to him?” Murphy asked Clarke as Y/N rolled her eyes, squeezing her hands as it took all her might to stop herself from popping out of the closet.

“Yeah,” Clarke muttered, her voice cracking as tears came to her eyes.

“Ugh! Ah,” Bellamy’s grunts could be heard from outside the door. “Let me out!” He yelled and Y/N bit her knuckles. Just wait a little longer…

“I’ll relieve you in six hours,” Clarke spoke, handing Murphy the shock baton before turning around the corner, not being able to stand his cries for help any longer. When Y/N could no longer hear her footsteps she quietly left the closet, hiding her body against the wall as Murphy opened the door. This is easier than I thought.

She quickly squeezed through the closing door, lifting the blunt object into the air before swinging it across the back of Murphy’s head, knocking his ass out. The shock baton and keys left his hands as she quickly grabbed the keys, walking around the corner to hear Bellamy groaning. A gasp left her lips once she saw his wrists all bloody and he turned around at the soft noise.

His eyes widened at the sight of her, glad she was okay as Y/N quickly dropped down in front of him, taking his face in her hands as tears began pooling in her eyes. “B-Bellamy, oh my god,” she spoke in a whisper, moving some of the hair out of his eyes as his hands instantly wrapped around her dainty wrists.

“You’re okay,” Bellamy breathed heavily, looking up at the girl in front of him as Y/N chuckled softly, gently stroking his cheek as her heart fluttered.

“I’m okay. Apparently, a well-needed nap was in store for me,” she joked, earning a snort coming from Bellamy who shook his head. Y/N’s eyes went to his wrists, frowning as she moved the restraints, gently running her thumb over the blood.

“How’d you get down here? There’s no way Clarke or Jaha would willingly let you see me,” Bellamy mumbled as she smirked, wiping her shoulders confidently.

“I did a little eavesdropping and followed her and Murphy down here,” Y/N told him, running her fingers through his brunette curls. “You think after they told me you were locked up that I wouldn’t do anything about it?” She asked, pressing her lips to his cheek.

Bellamy’s breath hitched in his throat, fluttering his eyes closed as he felt his heartbeat pick up. “God, you’re so incredible,” he whispered, his fingers gently touching her face as she could feel her cheeks heat up.

“Well you’re going to love me even more because I have a present,” Bellamy’s best friend grinned, pulling the keys out of her back pocket and his eyes widened. She went to release his chains when Murphy hit Y/N with the shock baton, the girl falling to the floor. Murphy went to go hit her with the baton again when Bellamy screamed out for him to stop. Y/N laid on the ground, grunting and shaking as she began to breathe heavily.

“Sorry about that, Y/N,” Murphy muttered, grabbing the keys from her hands. He went to get some restraints for the girl as Bellamy kept his eyes on her, wondering if she was alright as her eyes were closed, panting heavily as she just laid on the ground.

After Murphy tied and chained Y/N, he moved back to stand in front of the two, sighing at Bellamy’s wrists that were currently bloody from trying to get out of his restraints.

“Murphy. Murphy,” Bellamy started, standing up as he held his hands out to the younger teen. “Untie me, please.”

“I can’t do that,” Murphy answered and Bellamy sighed, stepping away from him a bit as he looked down at the girl he loved, her chest heaving as she laid against the metal object. “Look I’m -- I’m sorry about your sister-.”

“You let me go! Let her go!” He charged Murphy, his wrists getting tugged on as he stepped too far, panting with anger.

“Hey, I can’t okay?” Murphy muttered as Bellamy groaned, his hands shaking as pain shot through his wrists. Bellamy kicked the metal tube, releasing his anger as Murphy raised his voice. “Okay, w-we can’t open that hatch. So stop doing this to yourself before I call medical and knock your ass out.”

Y/N breathed heavily, glancing up at her best friend as he paced in front of her and Murphy, narrowing his eyes at the teen. “You haven’t changed. You only care about yourself,” Bellamy stated, walking back towards her as she gave him a tired smile.

“You’re wrong,” Murphy mumbled, gaining the attention of the two friends. “Look, this is only gonna be for a few days,” he tried to reassure them.

“She’ll be dead in a few days!” They both yelled out, Bellamy’s voice much louder than hers as she laid her head in her hands. Murphy looked at the floor, muttering a quiet yeah as he apologized once more, glancing between the two before leaving the turbine room. “Ah, Murphy! Let us out!” Bellamy yelled, tugging on his chains as they heard the door close.

“I’m sorry,” Y/N whispered, looking up at the shaggy-haired man as he shook his head, walking over towards her, sitting down on the floor next to her. “I-If I had gone a little faster and waited until after to have our reunion we wouldn’t be in here.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder, looking at her wrists as she was trying to squeeze her hands out of the restraints, wincing slightly.

“Hey, hey, stop,” Bellamy muttered, taking her hands into his shaky ones, softly rubbing the back of her hand. “This isn’t your fault,” he whispered, pressing his lips to the side of her head. “Plus, Abby and I have a plan.”

Y/N picked her head up immediately, lips parted as a scoff left her lips. “Why didn’t she tell me when we left the office!” She laughed, shaking her head.

“I don’t know, but I guess this is better. I get to spend more time with you, even if we’re locked up,” Bellamy shrugged, looking down at his best friend as she just grinned at him, staring into his dark brown eyes.

“Yeah, because this,” Y/N lifts her bounded hands up, “is totally romantic.” She laughed, biting her lip softly as a sigh left her lips.

Bellamy looked down at his best friend, admiring her face as she had a small smile on her lips, her head leaning against the metal tube. “It’s our kind of romantic,” he muttered, shifting to the side, lifting her chin up with his finger.

Y/N’s breath hitched in her throat as Bellamy leaned towards her, the gap between them diminishing. His forehead rested against hers, one of his hands resting on her cheek as he closed the gap. Her eyes widened a bit, feeling his lips against hers has been something Y/N’s thought about ever since they first got to the ground.

Her eyes fluttered shut, moving her lips against his as she tried to run her hands through his hair, the chains tugging on her wrists as she winced, pulling away from Bellamy. “Goddamnit,” Y/N muttered, chuckling softly as Bellamy grinned down at the girl.

“Do you need me to bend down a little?” He smirked, teasing her slightly as she rolled her eyes, her cheeks tinting pinkish as she looked away from him.

“Shut up,” Y/N grumbled, grasping his jacket in her hands, pulling him to down to connect their lips together. She couldn’t help but smile as Bellamy slowly pulled away from her, pressing a kiss to her forehead before Y/N laid her head on his chest. “So, tell me about this plan.”

Tagging: @writing-in-riverdale @autumnleeann13 @imarypayne @esoltis280 @lachicadelamanzana @cutie-potatox3

[nainz717-blog]

11/11 GIF Review: Suno Chanda

REWRITING THIS FOR THE SECOND TIME. Hi Guys! Long time no see, literally forgot the password to the forum some time ago and just really didn't have a reason to post anything. But I promised a friend and here I am. And since forum gave me a hard time, decided to open a tumblr and post it here! Lets see if this works!! Creds to Mina Birdie for helping me with layout questions! 

When Abhi broke Pragya's fast during Karwa-chauth:

So the "OMG YES" Naina loved it. She was all about this! I have been wanting to see possessive, "she's mine" Abhi since Drunk Abhigya at Puliyah's engagment way back in 2014 when they were chotay motay bachay! You know, when he ridiculed her at every point in time? When he wanted absolutely nothing to do with her? When he had tried to minimize her rituals, including their first karwachauth and couldn't see beyond the materialistic things he thought he wanted. When he took forever in realizing theres more to her than just "Chashmish?" YEARS Later, we're seeing that same Abhi run around frantically trying to find a pot to fill water with so that he can make it in time for Pragz to see him first right after the chaand comes out so that he can break her fast and they can be bounded together religiously for saath janam. 

HECK YEAH. 

That really happened. HOW EPIC. The guy who didn't believe in God, the guy who thought rituals were a joke, the guy who didn't think these things could ever create an everbinding relationship is now HANGING ON DESPERATELY at all of these rituals for a chance to have any remaining bits of a relationship with Pragz. Y TO THE ES. Whether that be when he feels estatic after he accidentally fills her parting with sindoor, when he gets sad seeing Pragz buy an mangalsutra in Kings name at the jewelry shop, when he doesn't break Tanu's fast, when he doesn't put an mangalsutra on Tanu in front even as a show. He does another head bump cause Daasi had said bumping your head twice is auspicious! He's become as SANSKAARI as PRAGZ-BABY!!! 

But then I realized alls not well: 

Here comes the catch. SO in his mind, he fully thinks without a doubt that Pragya is married to King and has been for the last seven years. And even if he thinks there are residual feelings Pragz may have for him, she seems content with King and was fasting for him. And remember, this is the girl that was with Abhi through thick and thin and never gave up on him regardless of any poor choices and decisions he made....and yet after her surviving through the revenge part of the marriage, tolerating tanu as the constant third wheel in their relationship, being kidnapped countless times just for being Abhi's wife, losing a sister in the middle of this, having to re-develop feelings in Abhi's heart when he lost his memory and she was politely "kicked out" of the house, being doubted upon her intentions during many phases in the marriage...and yet she stuck by him rock solid. And yet after everything, she was still kicked out by Abhi in less than one minute and was never searched for for seven years. Can you imagine her going through that pregnancy alone? Where did she go after leaving his house? How did she manage to find shelter? When did she find out she was pregnant? Was her delivery normal or did she deliver early out of stress? 

Do you see what I mean? She's gone through A LOT of struggles because of him but when she needed him most...he wasn't there. So for him to be possessive after seven years of not being there for her and wanting to have every right for the night when he thinks King took good care of her (and Im guessing he did for Pragz and Kiara to admire him so much)...its like, do you really have any right to be possessive? Yes, sure because I'm a hardcore Abhigya shipper, yes you do. But really, does a guy who kicked out his EXTREMELY understanding wife seven years ago and married her biggest enemy get to have any rights on her seven years later? Um...you can answer that for me. 

When Aliyah and King show up on screen together:

Okay I get it, she's evil and he's pretty much a saint right now, why ship them and make his life miserable? But GUYS. Hear me out. At the end of the day, I think Aliyah is redeemable versus Tanu. Yes she hates Pragya, but there have been many moments in the show where you realize she cares about the Mehra family, in particular Abhi. She does get hurt when she sees them physically hurt. She has blasted Tanu in the past for dangerous tricks shes had up her sleeve. And it does kinda make me sad that seven years later, Aalu is still hung up on PURAB FOR WHO KNOWS WHAT REASON? Let him go babe, even the face has changed now (Arjit to Vin). Like come on writers, why can't we have Aalu move on when it comes to Purab and bring in a love angle for her? Because the Aalu-Purab-Disha-Bulbul triangle is static as it can be! 

And here's why King would be great for her. Meet Aliyah, a girl who loves Abhi her bhai but dislikes Pragya. Meet King, a guy who admires Pragya fully but isn't a particular fan of Abhi. He's like the Raghav from Mina's fics He's the PERFECT balance for her! See, I dont want to see Aalu die at the end. I hope she does get redeemed and can be shown accepting Abhigya, because I don't want Abhi to lose another family member in the process of Abhigya uniting. Which for all of you who ship King and Pragya, I get it BUT IT AIN'T HAPPENING. And I would much rather see King as a supportive best friend 'til the end then a psychotic lover who now also hates Pragz. Because I really love the King-Pragz dosti so lets not ruin it. Lets find Aalu someone who give the wittiest replies to her sarcastic dialogues, who will not tolerate her cunning plans, who can put up with her negativity and someone who admires Pragya so that Aalu can start seeing the other edge of the sword. 

Plus, Shikha and Mishal might look smoking on screen  I'm ALL FOR THIS SHIP. 

What Purab has been doing this fall season: 

Not sure if its because Vin has been busy personally? But someones gotta give him something to do. He's becoming another wax statue in the back like Tau-ji and I'm already upset Raj became one, lets not let Purab become the third in line. Theres so much potential for him. Lets show him a different story line? Lets show how him and Disha are not getting along about something. Lets show him wanting to catch up on seven years with Pragya di. Lets show him trying to show Abhi what a TERRIBLE decision it is to keep Tanu in the house, regardless of whether he gets Pragz in the end or not. Writer-ji? Please kuch karein.

When kicking out Tanu from the house and his life is not the first option: 

Maaf kiya Abhi threw Pragz out. Maaf kiya he didn't try finding her for seven years. Maaf kiya he pretended he didn't love her in front of his family all these years. My problem forever and always with Abhi has been, and this is more of a writer issue, that he can never be shown single. If he doesn't have Pragz with him, in some way or another he has Tanu by him. 

Now disclaimer: I have no real issues with Leena being on the show all these four years. At some point in time I realized Tanu would be part of this show til the end and I'm not saying remove her from the show. I get from Tanu's point of view, that she's a desperate soul-less creature who doesn't see that there is no chance she's ending up with Abhi. For her, she's gonna keep trying in one way or another regardless of how many times she fails. But wait..why would she stop trying when Abhi does give her a chance every single time? Not that I'm Tanu, but if I wanna keep trying for the impossible and it does become possible for short periods of time MANY TIMES, um yes I'm going to keep trying! Problem isn't with Tanu? Problem is with Abhi. He GIVES her a chance. He knows she purposely created misunderstandings between him and Pragya constantly throughout the past, he knows shes capable of hurting people in order to obtain him, he knows she's tried failing the brakes and murdering Pragz in order to get our out of her way, he knows she's evil. And yet, when Pragz was kicked out, for some reason or another, he had "NO CHOICE" but to marry Tanu. Are you even serious. 

The choice is not to marry anyone. Marry a turtle but don't marry her. Marry a poster of Madhuri Dixit but don't marry her. Marry your first cousin but don't marry her. Marry your clingy Meethu but don't marry her. Marry PURAB BUT DONT MARRY HER. 

Or you know. Dont marry at all. That IS AN OPTION, Abhi. Staying single is a solid option, you know. And lets say Pragz is happily married with King for the past seven years and theres no chance of getting back together with her at least in this janam. 

You'll just passively live your life with Tanu because Pragz isn't available? And how are you going to win her back with a horrible wife at the side? KICK HER OUT!! THAT IS ALWAYS THE WAY TO GO!

When Pragz shows sass and attitude post-leap:

I have full on been enjoying the Abhigya scenes. Every single one of them!! And while i do have some complaints with Abhi post-leap (okay many complaints), you do get to see the happiness that lights within him when she's around. In filmy terms, Abhi has everything- glam, lifestyle, respect, paisa, gaari, ghar, maal waal , ghar baar....but he doesn't have anyone who loves him for Abhishek Mehra. She's the girl in all these years that didn't give a fudge that he was Abhi the Rockstar, looked past every single flaw that he presented to her, and loved him for the child-like Abhishek Mehra thats buried within him. And for him, getting that kind of love...is rare. She wasn't in it for the money, she was in it for him. And you can see that even amongst the whole family, when she's not around, he's lonely. So I definitely feel for him and like that he's finally getting his Fuggi doses...he just need to make a few obvious decisions and then I'm sold on him. 

But Pragz has been FIRE! She's not the same Pragz from seven years ago. This Pragz gives sassy replies. This Pragz shows anger and is not afraid to vocalize it. This Pragz isn't afraid to remind Abhi of the biggest mistake of throwing her out. This Pragz is no longer interested in EXPRESSING her love for him! Yes, of course, we know she's still totally latoo-fied by him. And sighhh. What can I say? The heart wants what it wants. But she's almost accepted that they're not going to end up together, for their own sakes and Kiara's sakes. And she's almost content with whatever little they have now. THIS IS DIFFERENT PRAGZ!! She's no longer running behind Abhi trying to gain his love. Its almost the other way around! She's the "girl that got away" and he's trying to win back anything he can with her! HOW FREAKING AWESOME. I love this dynamic where she's no longer running after him and its him trying to win her back. 

The only complaint I have with Pragz-is not telling King who Abhi and Kiara are. Would make her life simpler. I do not advocate telling Abhi about Kiara though. Not when we all know he's capable of making the worst decisions and allows creatures like Tanu to swarm around him and create dangerous settings at all points in time. Yes, no thank you please. I would also prioritize my kid over telling the passive father just for the sakes of him knowing. 

Okay lastly, can we take a minute to appreciate this: 

THIS GIRL IS GETTING YOUNGER AND YOUNGER BY THE DAY!!!! DREAM GIRL IN EVERY ESSENCE! I know we like to point out days when the outfits are not par excellence. But then lets also appreciate the days when Tripti has gone beyond expectations!  Everything about this is love!!! Also love how Srit's been incorporating some "raised eyebrows" and "suppressed smiles" and "biting lips" as new flirty connotations. LOVE LOVE. 

Until next time, Cheers! -Naina

[oliverm-fmp]

Thinking about how I'll present my work

Now that my project is coming to an end, I wanted to start thinking about how I want to show off what I've created in the best way possible.

Screenshots

Screenshots are a nice and easy way to present work as they can easily be downloaded/accessed unlike a video which can take longer to access.

Above is a few screenshots that I started to put together to try and showcase my work. I realized something that was quite a problem though - my work is heavily physics and animation based, which is very hard to display through a static image. The bullets looked quite nice however, as you can see they are in motion despite it being a single screenshot due to the blur, but the same doesn't apply for my actual animations. I can't exactly show off my work in a single frame, and so I don't think it's a very appropriate choice.

GIFs

As I've concluded that a series of screenshots won't be good, I looked into making some sort of animated alternative - GIFs. GIFs, like screenshots, are easy to download and access. An ideal GIF would be nice and short, while showcasing in an interesting way. I think this would work well with my work as I could have things like the walking robot animation loop in a gif.

I put together some GIFs of my shooting robot navigating around a level, and also an example of how the robot's feet can adapt to uneven/moving surfaces. I think these two GIFs are very good at showcasing some of my work because they are looping and showing, what I believe to be, the best parts of my overall outcome.

However, I feel like GIFs aren't necessarily long and informative enough. Therefore I think it would be a good idea to also make something like a video with captions/explanations to go with the gifs.

Both GIFS below. (Were too big to upload to Tumblr). Video mp4 imported into Adobe Premiere Pro and exported as an animated GIF.

Video

I feel like a video would be a great way to showcase my work because I can edit it with text to explain the process behind the development of my assets. Also, being able to do things as simple as fade between different clips has a much better overall feel in my opinion.

Something else I could include in a video is some split-screen clips. In Unreal engine, you can enable a debug filter which allows you to see how your code is running in real time. I feel like pairing a debug clip with some actual footage of the asset would make it much easier for the person watching to understand how it works.

.exe file

Another way I could present my work is by actually letting people interact with the robot/physics assets themselves. This would be done by packaging my project as a downloadable .exe and uploading it.

There's a pretty big issue with this though. I've still been unable to fix the issue where my robot's walking animation only works some of the time. This issue seems completely random and doesn't make sense to me, and I wouldn't really want people to download my .exe just to see a failed animation. I would rather just have videos/gifs of it actually working than risk people seeing something bad.

The broken walking movement - legs are stretched an unrealistic amount. ^

Conclusion

Screenshots and .exe files are a definite no-go for showcasing my work. But videos and GIFs on the other hand are something I will continue to develop. I now plan to spend some time editing a 1-2 minute video summarizing all my assets with explanations and debugs to go with them. I will also be keeping the GIFs as I think they would go well with the video.

[globebusinesscenter]

How to make a GIF on an Android phone

Did you realize you can make GIFs on an Android telephone? You can transform your #1 shows and motion pictures into moving response pictures or make some fun GIFs from recordings of your companions, family, or pets! You can even add moving components to your photos to make novel GIFs. 

Make a GIF on an Android phone

Making GIFs on your Android telephone is a pleasant method of making moving pictures in a hurry so you generally have the ideal response GIF while messaging your companions. Making them is simple, and we clarify how by utilizing the free GIPHY application. Peruse on!

What is a GIF?

Short for Graphics Interchange Format, GIF is a bitmap picture design made by PC researcher Steve Wilhite in the last part of the 1980s. It was at first planned as a picture design that could without much of a stretch be downloaded from the now-ancient CompuServe ISP. Nonetheless, the GIF didn't acquire its unmistakable capacity to grandstand liveliness until a couple of years and a couple of amendments after its underlying delivery. 

Today, GIFs are a typical picture design utilized on the web to feature short liveliness without any problem. Because of the arrangement's similarly little document size when contrasted with full goal recordings, GIFs have become a simple method to share minutes on the web. Networks on Reddit, like r/GIFs, are committed to sharing the absolute best GIFs accessible on the web and exhibiting the capacities of the arrangement. 

It is imperative to take note that GIFs are without a doubt a picture configuration, and along these lines can't imitate sound — they are quiet..

Use GIPHY

GIPHY is our present top choice for making GIFs. Dispatched in 2013, GIPHY is one of the web's most well-known GIF data sets, yet the Android application likewise incorporates the alternative to make your own. Subsequent to downloading and introducing the application, you'll promptly see GIPHY's exhibition, from which you can peruse and look for changed GIFs. In the event that you are new to the configuration, this is an extraordinary spot to investigate and begin.

Step 1: Tap the Create button in the top-right corner. The symbol shifts from a “+” to a camera. Alternatively, you can tap the Profile tab in the bottom-right corner, followed by the big Plus/Camera button on your account page.

Step 2: Tap the Allow Camera Access button.

Step 3: Tap Allow on the two prompts.

Step 4: Tap the ( I Agree ) button.

Note: You’ll only perform steps 2 to 4 the first time you create a GIF.

Step 5: The app uses the front-facing camera by default. Tap the Camera icon in the bottom-right corner to switch cameras if needed.

Step 6: Under the live feed, swipe left or right on the toolbar to select a filter or effect. There are 11 in all, including animated hands feeding you popcorn (shown above), VHS static, a red/blue filter for old-school 3D glasses, and so on.

Step 7: Press the Filter or Effect button to take a static shot or press and hold the Filter or Effect button to create an animated GIF. There’s also an option not to use a filter or effect — it’s simply a big white button.

If you’re creating animations, the app will gradually form a line around the entire screen. This serves as a visual “timer.” After the line perfectly attaches to the outer edges of the screen, the app will end the recording.

Step 8: Once you capture your desired scene, you can add it to the picture or video. Click one of the four buttons to insert additional elements:

1-Text: Type the text you want using nine different colors. 2-Effects: Add eight different effects ranging from a rainbow overlay to a weird crystal effect to black-and-white film grain. 3-Stickers: Giphy provides a huge assortment of animated stickers too long to list here. Want kissy lips? -You got it. Need some bling? There is plenty to dazzle up your image. 4-Trim (animation only): — Cut off the part you don’t need by moving the left and right markers.

Step 9: Select the Crop tool located in the top-right corner of your screen. This will help you resize your GIF. These are the available size options:

1:1 3:2 16:9 4:5 9:16

Step 10: When you’re finished, click the purple Right Arrow button.

Step 11: Type in the tags you want to associate with your GIF (if you’re uploading one).

Step 12: Click Share GIF to share it via text message, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, and Instagram. You can also click Save Video to store the initial captured video to your device. Hit Save GIF to save your creation locally as well.

Step 13: To post the GIF online, tap the box beside the Terms of Service agreement. After that, tap the blue Upload to GIPHY icon.

An Alternative to GIPHY: GIF Me!

GIF Me is a more direct option in contrast to GIPHY. It allows you to record recordings by utilizing its cameras. With this application, you can undoubtedly transfer photographs, video documents, and beforehand saved GIFs through its incorporated Album highlight. 

After you quit recording your video, you can choose from 11 standard photograph channels. The application additionally gives you exceptional apparatuses that permit you to add or eliminate outlines from activities, increment or diminishing the liveliness, and add lines of text. You will likewise approach fun and engaging highlights like cool stickers and fascinating-looking boundaries to add some visual appeal to your showcase. Whenever you've completed your venture, you can save it as a GIF or an MP4 record.

Editorial Selection:

How to make a GIF on your iPhone

How to make a GIF on an Android phone Gif, GIF on an Android phone, How to make a GIF on an Android phone, howitmade, HOWTO, howtodothat, make a gif, make a GIF on an Android phone via exercisesfatburnig.blogspot.com https://ift.tt/2NKYZyH

[because-its-important]

transitions & transformations

i. the rest of my batch at RC

I spent the first six weeks of my batch at Recurse Center in an out-and-out sprint. I learned Python, built and released projects, and wrote blog posts every week. I wasn’t sure where my limits were, but I was determined to find out - preferably by overshooting them, then adjusting after the fact.

A curious thing happened. I kept finding that I was more than capable of starting and finishing projects, especially when I had a firm mental image of the end goal. There were at least as many unexpected good-turns as there were setbacks, and I certainly didn’t come up against any inscrutable barriers. Mostly the challenge was in overcoming the distance between a thing that doesn’t exist and a thing that does, which I was able to sort out pretty handily through a consistent application of effort across time.

Who’d have thought?

A selfie taken on my birthday, which also happened in the last few months and was really great!

The second half of my batch was not so visibly productive - with the exception of The Question Game. The Question Game is a simple game designed to help groups of people get to know each other better IRL. I designed it with my friend Brittany a few years ago as an icebreaker when we found ourselves in a group of folks who knew us but didn’t really know each other. The game only really needs a method of generating random numbers for a small but arbitrary group size, but building it out as a toy webapp was a good excuse to get practice working with a JS-only stack. I learned React, got a lil more familiar with node, and even went as far as to attach an otherwise completely unnecessary PG database and Sequelize ORM. You can see the code for it here. Outside of this project, however, I didn’t publish any code. I didn’t publish any writing, either.

So I’d like to take a moment and shine a bit of light on the work that I did during the rest of my batch.

🌒 🌓 🌔 🌕 🌖 🌗 🌘

First, I made the decision to leave community.lawyer, the social impact startup I co-founded in 2016 following the Blue Ridge Labs Fellowship.

I’m happy to report that I left on the come up, which seems a rare and privileged thing for a founder to be able to say. Gaining traction in a hyper-specialized industry like legal tech takes a gargantuan amount of sustained forward momentum, and I departed just as we began to reap the fruits of our labor. In the last few months community.lawyer has reached final approval on partnerships a year in the making, won federal grants we’d submitted to in 2016, and every day our software is being used to help connect people who have legal needs with credible lawyers. Our first two partners were exactly the types of legal organizations at the heart of our mission: the Justice Entrepreneurs Project and the DC Reduced Fee Lawyer & Mediator Referral Service.1 Based in Chicago and Washington DC respectively, these orgs are specifically chartered to deliver quality services at rates that more Americans can afford. I am so proud. ⚖️

Second, I started my first ever job hunt as a software engineer. Wowee, this was scary! I knew that I had to prepare for interviewing, which meant a) getting my career change narrative straight, b) studying Data Structures & Algorithms 101, and c) learning how to perform my handle on both of these in a live, semi-adversarial environment.

At one point during my batch my laptop broke. I read through this wonderful illustrated book during the two days it was being fixed.

In order to direct my search I also had to craft a set of selection criteria of my own. Foremost: “What good will my work do for the world?”2 Additionally, “What degree of access will I have to supportive mentors?”

Getting started with interview prep was a challenge, at least partly because I had so many options for where to start. But I did get started! I read Cracking the Coding Interview, I did the free trial and weekly free problems on Interview Cake. I attended a few group mock interviews at Recurse Center and signed up for a 1-1 mock interview with an RC alum. Her name is Leah, and she’s amazing - the superbly friendly and encouraging Comp Sci TA I wish I’d had years ago. 💚Brittany also set up mock technical screens for me with her pals, Leaf and Ian. They were the vanguard against my outsized anxiety about programming for an audience and they each took the time to give me solid feedback.

Third, I extended my batch at Recurse Center by another 6 weeks. I had decided early on I wouldn’t extend (for no real reason) and stuck with this decision up until two days before my batch ending. A small group of folks - Lily, Connor, Alicja and I - went to NYX in Union Square to try out lipsticks. We played with different colors and finishes (satin! matte! shimmer!) for half an hour or so. There came a point when I looked up, glanced across the narrow makeup store at my beautiful friends’ beautiful faces and thought, “You know, you don’t have to leave yet, right? What’s the rush?” I’d already accomplished my primary goal, to forcibly rework my identity as an engineer, but it sure seemed that I could stand to reach for a second one. That night I decided to extend my batch, with the intention of sampling a more open method of self-directed learning, i.e. with a little more chill and a lot less panic. Specifically, I wanted to practice connecting meaningfully with my limited supply of social energy.

In my bonus six weeks, I: gave three talks (2 planned, 1 impromptu) under encouragement from Ayla and Lily, learned to juggle thanks to instruction from a fellow RCer, Edward, who also loaned me a book about learning, made it into weekly Feelings Check-in (read as: opt-in support group) fairly regularly, picked my first ever lock, saw a live-coding show and then later attended two live-coding workshops (one on TidalCycles, another on Super Collider), sat in a dark room and played howling wolf clips while Microsoft Sam read grimoires aloud, got my hair braided for the first time in a decade, made dumplings and DJ’d for a dinner party, connected with folks about queer-poly relationships, gave fiery advice, and received compliments so earnest and rational and persistent that it was difficult to refute them.

Zine fair plus Lightning Bolt concert inside a movie theater in Times Square??

I also put my interview prep to use and interviewed with a handful of Recurse Center partner companies. Job searching meant squaring off against impostor syndrome and a ton of related anxieties in rapid succession. I successfully choked most of that down when it mattered, though, and it was only a couple short weeks before I received my first offer.

To that end, I’m super happy to say that I’ll be joining Blink Health as a Fullstack Product Engineer! Blink Health is a healthcare startup in SoHo. They make it easier for people to afford prescription drugs, especially for those with limited insurance plans or none at all. These savings aren’t trivial either: an extra $50 can spare someone from choosing between groceries or medicine that week, and for some folks Blink saves many times that. I’ll be starting at the end of this month. ✌️🤓

The last two years have been a wild ride: participating in a social impact fellowship and accelerator, busting my product chops and learning web dev to get a public benefit company off the ground, then diving into four months of self-directed learning at Recurse Center. I’m really looking forward to having some externally imposed structure again. Real health insurance, too.

ii. some hard truths

I made a few radical life changes in 2016, like getting involved in activist spaces, dating more, biking everywhere, building strong friendships, going capital-B Boogying, programming full-time. As I carried those changes forward through 2017, I began to notice a lot of mental and emotional reconfiguration happening to me.

Did you know that along its way to becoming a butterfly, a caterpillar nearly completely liquifies inside its cocoon?

Psychological growth is confusing, full of false starts, and generally painful. You’ve got the static pain of stretching beyond your limits, the pleasure-pain of feeling an old knot finally release, the frustrating pain of stubbing your toe because some helpful asshole has been rearranging your psychic furniture when you weren’t looking. There’s the more dramatic knife-in-the-gut pain of realizing that just because you’re growing doesn’t mean the people closest to you are, and that now in certain cases what you previoulsy regarded as friendship actually looks a whole lot like run-of-the-mill exploitation or even emotional abuse, if you're being honest, and it's a realization that only hurts more because it’s so irredeemably cliche and boring. And despite all that pain you gotta go ahead and grow anyway, claw your way out of the relative comfort of ignorance. Transcendence may not be the only show in town but afaik it’s the one most worth watching.

Prior to attending Recurse Center I’d spent lots of time exploring my surroundings and cataloguing people and places worth coming back to. My view of myself did change (and positively!) as a consequence. But sooner or later, ya get tired of the taste of low-hanging fruit.

So, armed with the bookshelf of a philosophy grad and a burgeoning psychoanalytic vocabulary begging to be let off leash, I decided to use my time at RC to try confronting a few of my Hard To See truths in addition to becoming a better programmer.

Here’s what I’ve found so far.

Truth #1: People like me a lot. This causes me problems.

I’ve been metabolizing this one for some time. I remember having a conversation with Brittany in January of 2016. I don’t remember what social anxiety I’d been vocalizing, but I must have been worrying that someone “hated me.” Brittany cut me off, exasperated in the way that only a friend can be in the face of utter delusion: “No one hates you Nicole! You’re always worried that people don’t like you and it’s never true!”

I carried that admonishment with me through two years of voracious friendship-building. On the whole, seeing that people do in fact enjoy and seek out my company has curbed the most egregious overreaches of my social anxiety. But reckoning with my anxiety honestly has also meant acknowledging that my compulsive instinct to withdraw from social situations is also a protective (if suboptimal) response to a few very real dangers.

Most acutely: being friendly, generous, and intensely empathetic makes me a ready target for users. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt for as long as I can, which makes me proportionally susceptible to being taken advantage of and then gaslighted about it. A lifetime of socialization as a petite woman don’t help, neither. This leads to a pattern where, semi-regularly, I look up and take stock of how someone has been treating me and realize that the answer is Very Badly, For Quite A While. This in turn leads to rough periods of cutting ties and moving on. Ideally I’d like to be be able to filter bad actors out sooner, but I also want to stay open, giving, and hopeful beyond reason. Those desires are fundamentally at odds with each other - raising vs. lowering one’s defenses - but it’s clear that I need to come up with a strategy that balances both.

More broadly, though, I operate under an ever-present dread of inevitably disappointing everyone who knows me. Whether people project onto me because they already like me or like me more because they project positively onto me, I am extremely sensitive to the fact that when people meet me the conception they form has waaay more to do with what they want to find than what’s actually there. My body is a surface readily projected upon: young, female-shaped, ethnically ambiguous, small, smiling. These well-intended projections cause me the most trouble when people see me interacting socially; they’ll witness fifteen minutes of seemingly effortless extroversion on my part and extrapolate out massively. As far as they’re concerned I’ve got plenty of social energy to spare, and if I don’t spend it hanging out with them, it must be because either my friendliness is fake or I don’t like them.

Pretty much none of this is conducted consciously, of course, but it still creates a lot of unnecessary pressure that I can’t pretend not to feel and resent. I know there are people who dream about attaining this kind of “popularity” - to be assumed Cooler than one truly is - but getting buffeted around by folks’ totally unexamined, unarticulated psychological desires mostly sucks.

Truth #2: I’m non-binary.

I’ve also spent a very long time resisting this one. Two decades on the rack, easy. As such, the story of getting here is long. Perhaps one day I’ll tell it. 😛

The short of it, though, is this: I’m probably at least as much of a boy3 as I am a girl. Outside of where my life has been mutated by the chronic background radiation of sexism, “benevolent” and otherwise, I don’t strongly identify as a woman. Furthermore, I find the two-gender system to be infinitely more alienating than comforting. Gender is a social construction designed to impose order on the natural messiness of sexual experience, and as far as I’m cool with that, I am decidedly Not Cool with the “normal” state of affairs, i.e. aggressively shoving whole human beings into an absurdly reductive false dichotomy.

Between its either-or-ism and its forced assignment, the traditional approach to gender reveals itself to be obviously bullshit to anyone who spends more than a few minutes thinking about it. Its boundaries are arbitrary, inconsistent, and generally ill-fitting at the level of individual experience, which why they require such an outrageous amount of coercion and bodily violence to enforce. As much as other folks want to participate in a system of ritualized violence I guess they are free to? Personally, I’d prefer to see it actively dismantled.

If gender is to be saved it’ll be by subverting it, taking it apart, remaking it into something life-affirming. Not the dehumanizing garbage we’ve got now.

As of yet I don’t have any plans to change my presentation because I don’t fuckin’ gotta!

I do have a preference towards They / Them pronouns, but She / Her is still fine. For most of my friends this isn’t going to be at all surprising nor will it in any way negatively impact our relationship. Anyone who needs me to just-be-a-girl, however, can expect turbulence.

Truth #3: My righteous anger is justified and I am good at using it to help others.

I have felt conflicted about my anger for a long time. Since a very vocal childhood I have been regularly frustrated by prejudices and injustices, and I was frequently the first voice of dissent against them, whether that meant challenging adults or my peers. Unsurprisingly, I became well acquainted with the standard strokes of the backlash.

When you are confronting bigotry in a mixed environment, the voice of the status quo will generally manifest in one of two ways:

Gaslighting, e.g. “you are wrong to have said this at all, obviously I am a Good Person, you are just imagining that what I said sounded like XYZ, honestly how could you even think this, as a matter of fact it is I who is offended!”

Tone policing, e.g. “you’re too upset about this! after all, I, the person who did Fucked Up Thing, am perfectly calm about Fucked Up Thing, so any amount of anger makes you irrational by contrast, and I get a raincheck on whatever this is about!”

I know these responses are repulsive. I know they are merely the signs of a weak and imperiled ego acting out of fear. And yet I still spend an inordinate amount of time second-guessing my own anger. Gaslighting and tone policing are a favored weapon of the status quo because they work, and they work in direct proportion to how agreeable their target wants to be.

content warning: the following segment talks about sexual harassment and assault

About couple weeks ago I had the misfortune of being sexually harassed at a club in Bushwick. After numerous rejections and explicitly telling a creep bothering me, my friends, and other women in the club to get lost, I finally went to get a bouncer to eject him. The bouncer got the creep to leave. When I went to thank him, the bouncer told me a whole story about how the creep was “a harmless guy.” Then he reached down and grabbed my ass. Presumably he felt entitled to do this after helping me get rid of a person I asked him to remove... for unwanted touching.

It Really Sucked.

At every turn during the whole ordeal (and its aftermath) I had to hold onto my anger, convince myself that I wasn’t overreacting, remind myself that anyone who thought this was acceptable to do to me is almost certainly doing worse to more vulnerable people. I kept picturing myself the way this guy, this man in a position of power, must have seen me in order to feel okay doing what he did. That I was young, small, female, too friendly to say No, already indebted anyway; that he was one of the Good Guys, that his behavior was also “harmless” because he had decided it was. I conjured up as much anger as I could, pushed down the nausea of envisioning my own degradation from an attacker’s POV, and got to work. I reached out to the club and was quickly put in contact with the owner. The venue now has a publicly posted zero tolerance sexual harassment policy. The entire staff is going through training with a local org dedicated to creating safer nightlife spaces. And that motherfucker has been fired.

I demonstrably made the world better. I wasn’t alone, but all that happened because of my actions. Me and my anger, we did that.

I wish more people were this fucking angry. 💢

~ end of content warning ~

iii. an opinion

My Saturn return is upon me, y’all. As Frank Ocean serenades, we’ll never be those kids again. I have lived a few of these here nine lives and it seems only prudent to be moving forward with some sort of opinion on the matter.

My opinion is this: us folks with financial and physical security should be spending more time fixing shit around here. Figuring out what needs fixing and how you might help are the first steps.

If you’re operating on a similar scale of privilege as I am, maybe that means changing jobs to do more mission-oriented work. If you can’t swing a change of that magnitude, maybe it means showing up to community events and engaging with, caring for, supporting people you otherwise wouldn’t talk to. Churches, libraries, volunteering, supporting local artists, participating in local politics - this all counts. If you’re already doing this sorta thing, that is awesome! Maybe you also have a friend worth inviting who you sense is just itching for a chance to exercise compassion?

I’m using “fixing” pretty loosely here, too. Fixing, to my mind, means making the world brighter, safer, and sweeter for your fellows, human and otherwise. We’ve all got different ideas about what that looks like, and there are definitely folks - myopic or malevolent or both - who will swear up and down that their fear- and hate-driven behaviors will bring about better world. Ultimately, though, I believe that many hands reaching towards their personal vision of Better will in fact make things Better, especially when that vision is informed by meaningful interaction with the real world and its real sorrows and its real triumphs.

But ya gotta reach. Ya gotta try.

I am so tired of hearing my well-fed, well-homed friends piss and moan about late capitalism4 without lifting a damn finger in service of the communities bearing the brunt of material hardship. Unfettered capitalism sure does have a marked tendency to wreak havoc on organic life! But capitalism is not a monolith, and lamenting the abuses perpetuated by its principle benefactors as unchanging or inevitable only normalizes them. Any investigation into the history of capitalism (or the broader phenomena of how a Few come to subjugate the Many) will very quickly disabuse you of the notion that this shit is going to stop without a great deal of active resistance.5

So unless you are personally doing work to put our current strand of democracy-withering corporatism six-feet-under, seriously, just STFU instead. Your nihilism is boring! You don’t sound woke! Save it for your local DSA working group!

Which isn’t to say that I’m not convinced of the wickedness6 of the problems we’re facing: skyrocketing wealth disparity with no relief in sight; the destruction of most of Earth’s biodiversity via mass extinction; a pernicious climate of racism and xenophobia that scapegoats black and brown folks and then visits misery upon them; the weight of an aging population bearing down on the shittiest healthcare system of any nation in its class; a widely disenfranchised electorate further fragmented and fatigued by hyper-polarization; the gendered terrorism that is inflicted daily on women, trans and non-binary folks, and queer people at large; a rising wave of depressive anxiety as people become more aware of these problems and how thoroughly they’ve been disempowered from changing things for the better.

So yeah, I get it. These are hard problems. I just don’t see any better option than trying anyway. I want to spend my time fixing things around here and encouraging others to try their hand too. You already know the bad news: real change is hard and it can take a very long time. You might work your whole life sowing seeds whose fruit you never get to taste.

The good news, however, is that you can get started whenever and wherever you are. The good news is that a sense of purpose is its own reward.

iv. how to get started

When you’ve got hard work ahead of you, your best bet is to use your beautiful human brain and create some leverage. Ask Archimedes about it.7

Lever systems got two parts:

The lever, which is the tool you use to amplify your effort. The longer your lever is, the easier your job will be.

The fulcrum, which is the wedge the lever rests on. The nearer your fulcrum is to the thing you want to move, the easier your job will be.

If you’re starting from zero - “I want to do more for the world but I don’t know how!” - my advice is to forget about the lever arm for now. A lever ain’t shit without a fulcrum, anyway. Your time is better spent exploring the world, keeping an eye out for problems you’d like to solve, and identifying nearby points of leverage. If you want to get into activism, a fulcrum might be volunteering to fold pamphlets for an organization with a mission you believe in. If want to see more self-expression in the world, it might be might be inviting your friends to a zine-making class or hosting your own arts and craft night.

The best fulcrum is one that makes you Feel Good when you apply any amount of effort against it. Too many people get caught up in a self-defeating belief that if they can’t give 110% of their creative energy to something they might as well not try. I can confidently say that trying is itself a virtue. Every time you try even a little bit you make it easier for yourself to try again later, and more importantly, you make trying easier for others. A bunch of people altering their behavior a smidge in the same direction doesn’t add up to nothing; on the contrary, it’s a sea change.

If you’ve got a decent idea of the types of problems you want to solve, though, and you’ve tested your fulcrums, and you are thinking, “Okay, but is this all I’m capable of giving?” then it’s probably time to work on your lever. Given your own interests and inclinations, what skills can you develop that will increase the good you’re doing 10x, 100x over? This is the long game, but it scales a whole lot better than “keep doing what I’m already doing, but more.”

For me right now this means deepening my technical knowledge, building a resilient support network, and sharing what I’m learning. Helping others has been a powerful motivator for self-improvement, not the least of which because it’s a convenient shortcut through the snarl of self-confidence issues.

I am so grateful that Recurse Center was a stop on lengthening my lever! What a concentrated cluster of helpful, considerate beings.

I’ve spent the last two years wandering around New York City in wide-eyed wonder, asking myself the most ambitious question I could think of: how do you save the world?

Getting older comes with a lot of downsides, but asking yourself big questions and living your life as the answer is the primary pleasure of adulthood. It took a ton of courage to get started and I am still frequently awed to find myself moving in the right direction. I’m humbled by the grace and fortitude of the folks who’ve been at this for way longer.

I’m also a hell of a lot happier. This summer’s gonna be rad. ☀️

There are lots of extraordinarily sexy company names like this in the legal world. ↩︎

Having the choice to direct my energies in this way is a privilege. Working in tech gives me this freedom of motion and I have been drawn to software engineering in part because it is the freest of the free (if you still gotta labor for your living). ↩︎

😱😫😖😬😬😬... 😏 ↩︎

Substitute with whatever modifier is en vogue. As a point of fact, “late capitalism” is a term that’s been floating around for literally over a hundred years. ↩︎

Thankfully, history also clearly demonstrates that the tide can be turned. ↩︎

“The use of the term ‘wicked’ here has come to denote resistance to resolution.” Wikipedia page. ↩︎

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world,” etc etc. ↩︎