#but I HAVE been going consistently I just missed 2 labs earlier when I was really doing bad

[southislandwren]

Lmao @ my professor for asking me after judging if we were getting the lab report stuff. She was like ‘everyone was looking at me like they wanted to kill me!’ Like girl maybe if you were less nitpicky and insane we would not have problems with how you’re teaching us

[construingseacats]

Umireread: Legend of the Golden Witch - Chapter 1: Arrival at Niijima Airport

Sat, Oct 4 1986 - 8:00AM

The following contains spoilers for the entirety of Umineko. Please do not read if you are yet to finish it.

And we’re off! …With the dulcet tones of Doorway of Summer heralding us in. I don’t think it’s a bad track by any means, but you’d struggle to create a song that screams “generic VN” more than this even if you distilled it in a lab. I suspect that this (and other questionable elements at the beginning) is a specific choice to try and lull the reader into a false sense of security (to subvert expectations, if you will,) but man does it do a huge disservice to the story. I like the scene in Kinzo’s study, and it definitely has some hooks to it, but I don’t think it outweighs the general nothingness we get here.

Also worth mentioning that Doorway of Summer is like 2 minutes long. That’s a tiny song to be looping over and over and over through these introductions.

I think it’s really interesting how much of a deal they make out of everyone’s names consisting of unconventional Kanji readings - that’s absolutely a hint towards the intricate wordplay that the entire Epitaph revolves around. Kind of a shame that there’s literally no way to translate that into English properly.

Presented without comment. I’m going to nod at the low hanging fruit, but I don’t really have anything to add that hasn’t been said before.

You know, I’m fairly sure that I missed the connotations of this dialogue the first time round. I definitely wouldn’t say I was innocent 10 years ago, but a lot of the innuendo must have gone over my head.

Wow! A lot of gross writing early on! This one is kind of interesting because there’s definitely a double meaning there. After all, giving birth to George before Krauss and Natsuhi were able to conceive was basically her weapon against the rest of the family. Literally true for Eva indeed.

I find it funny that Ange is set up here and basically no-one catches it on their first read because you’re already being introduced to this host of characters that you don’t really care about yet, being told that they all have weird names, and are now being told about offscreen people who don’t appear relevant just yet. I guess it’s an interesting point to pick up on if you go into Umineko knowing everyone here is going to be murdered, so Battler’s sister will be left behind, but it’s absolutely a detail you’re not going to remember 130,000ish words from now at the end of Episode 1.

…Wow yeah there sure are a lot of front loaded sexual references, huh. I wonder if that’s Ryukishi’s attempt to try and keep people interested through all these introductions? It kind of ties back to what I was saying earlier about how Umineko kind of opens rather generically so it can punch you harder later, but really all it’s doing is dissuading the people who’d really be interested in the later stuff and can’t stomach usual anime shenanigans.

Kind of amusing how George talks about wanting to start his own business empire, and prove his worth without relying on handouts from his dad. Sweetie, you’re knee deep in privilege already, you’ll never be able to claim you were “self made”.

MARIAAAAAAAA!!!! I remember on my first readthrough I could not stand Maria at all, even when they explored her more in the later episodes. I’m actually really excited to see her here for some reason, so we’ll see whether I’ve warmed to her, or if I’m going to slowly grow to dislike her again.

Also, very bold choice to have your new song to replace “Tower of Summer” to be “HANE”. I’m not saying they’re the same song, but, you know. All it really invokes is a sense of more of the same, and THIS ONE’S EVEN SHORTER TO LOOP AAAAAAAA

I’m not going to be overanalysing everything, since that’s an effort in futility, but I do find it semi-amusing how Maria is basically describing Beatrice’s family tree after Kinzo decided to keep it in the family.

Yeah, gee, I wonder why. I do quite like how this is posed as a throwaway question that’s rhetorical here, but actually quite a significant part of his character exploration in Episode 7.

Wow! I’m sure that won’t age like milk! Especially not in the rose garden a few chapters from now!

I find it quite charming how Battler’s such a wuss at the plane shaking so much. I think I’ve mentioned to a few friends that Battler kind of suffers from Steven Universe Syndrome in early Umineko, where he’s made out to be a shitter to intentionally give him even more room to grow later on. I don’t mind this part of him. I do mind all of the perv stuff we have coming up.

JESSICAAAAAAAAAAA! Between Mion and her, I really like how well Ryukishi writes “tomboys facing significant familial pressure and responsibility”. It’s a hell of a niche, but he’s good at it. I think I remember preferring Jessica to Mion, but they’re both golden characters.

Yeah, here we go, Battler trying to grope his cousin is really him at his worst. This is such an unfortunate filter to gate the rest of the novel behind, because there are so many people who would love the story that Umineko has to tell, but have no chance of making it beyond the sleaziness we’re opening with. I don’t fault anyone who gets to this part and goes “yeah this story isn’t for me”, even though it’s such a minute part of it.

I think there’s an element here where you can argue that Battler’s perv tendencies are a reflection of Kinzo in him - reflections which we’ve already seen are present in Rudolf - but inevitably there’s a real divide between “this was intentionally written for narrative purposes” and “this was written because Ryukishi is horny”, and these early scenes feel much closer to the latter than the former.

There’s an element of “boys are strong, girls are weak” here, which I’m not overly fond of. At a base level, it’s just dated sexism and boring writing. One level up, it can be seen as a reflection of the character’s beliefs from their sheltered upbringing, but I’m hesitant to attribute it to that since the narrative doesn’t really make a pass at it? However, if we go one level above that, you can read into this is a reflection of Yasu’s twisted views on gender and inferiority, since she’s the one penning this message in a bottle. I’m not completely sold on that idea since it’s unclear if this is actually part of the penned tale or whether we’re still in reality before everything begins, but I do like the idea of Yasu venting these thoughts through Jessica at this time. I’m also a little more content with Battler’s perviness when viewed through the lens of Yasu portraying him that way, since it turns the scene from Battler being a creep to Yasu penning self indulgent fanfiction of the guy she’s into. It might be worth keeping an eye on that to see how stark the difference is once we get into the Tohya Forgeries - I’ll eat my words if Battler’s perviness is still pretty high in those, but I think the bulk of it is in Episodes 1 and 2, which is an interesting thing to think about.

Please stop talking about boobs I’m begging you.

It’s kind of interesting how much they’re painting Rosa as a saint here. I think the main intention is to, again, go for the wham shot once you see her hit Maria in the rose garden, but another part of me is wondering whether this is Yasu intentionally framing Rosa this way. The fact that she gives Rosa such an excellent finale at the end of Episode 2 shows that there must be some real appreciation there, wanting the world to see her in such a good light. I don’t remember Rosa doing anything of note in Yasu’s backstory, but I wonder if there was any specific event or just general kindness that fostered a positive bond between them.

This one isn’t a narrative note. This is just a comment on how here, and even in the original and pachinko sprites, their noses look nothing alike. Good meme.

Oh wow they directly address Battler and Rudolf being the most like Kinzo in the family. I’m still not excusing the rampant boob obsession earlier though.

I’m also going insane at Towering Cloud in Summer. That’s three songs we’re frontloaded with which convey near-identical vibes while being far from intellectually stimulating. Bad creative decision.

Interesting to see Kyrie’s style of thinking having bled into Battler here. We’re turning the Chessboard around before we even establish that metaphor.

I also find it interesting how Maria has trouble understanding Battler being between 2 houses, given that she’s from a broken home herself. I guess she just sees being raised by a single mother as her normal, and hasn’t really put much thought into the possibility of a life going back and forth between a mother and father?

Ah, Battler wants to turn the island into a golf course, he’s too far gone. Irredeemable rich person confirmed, smh smh

I like the juxtaposed generations where all the adults are concerned about the Ushiromiya Family Wealth, but all the kids are trying to distance themselves from being rich. Battler being estranged for 6 years adds a good rugged edge to his character where he’s coming from a place outside of this uber wealthy family, and has a more relatable outlook on life. Beyond the narrative importance of this, it’s just a good character decision for the Protagonist in general.

I missed the screenshot for it, but the part where Battler notices the Torii Gate is missing and Eva comments “Even though it’s been 6 years, you remembered?” Once again, presented without comment.

Hour of Darkness is another fairly generic song but it’s such a breath of fresh air here. I wish there was more mystery and intrigue to break up the introductions, honestly.

Kumasawa is having so much fun telling ghost stories about the shrine. I like how we’re juxtaposing Nanjo and Genji, who were quite serious in the Prologue, to Kumasawa, who’s just having fun and living her best life. Great characterisation over just letting her be another stiff member of staff. To be honest, I actually like all the early characterisation that everyone is getting so far, but I do think that’s only because I know and care about these people already. I don’t think the character explorations are particularly interesting when they’re just 10 or so strangers you’re meeting for the first time.

There’s an awful lot of setup here for Maria just blindly believing what people tell her. Critical information to solving the mystery later is once again just given to you freely (while you’re bored out of your skull).

Side note unrelated to Umineko: I’ve always found it cool how “Typhoon” and the Japanese word for it “台風” (pronounced tai-fuu) are phonetically similar. There’s not even a shared linguistic root there, it just happened accidentally. I guess it’s bound to happen occasionally when languages contain as many words as they do, but still, it’s neat.

yeah now say that in red

I’m also picking up on the line that George doesn’t lie - I guess he doesn’t? At least for the first two Episodes, I’m pretty sure everything he says is accurate. I kind of want to keep an eye on that and see if that does indeed hold true for the Episode.

Man, that was a long intro. And we’ve still only met around half the cast! I think it’s something of a necessary evil to set up everyone here (and then have the big meeting to show off potential motives between the adults), but it really just sucks if you’re trying to get into it for the first time. I’ll be interested to see how the Rokkenjima introductions compare to “here’s everyone at an airport, now watch them bum around for a while”.

[bitcofun]

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[stressisakiller]

As You Wish

Steve Rogers x Reader Soulmate AU

(As you wish Part 2)

Summary: What happens when after moving into Stark Tower you run into a certain Captain

Warnings: None really, fluff, like one cussword a little bit of spice

Word Count: 2.4k

A/N: Fluffy chapter yay!  Let me know what you think and if you have any requests for future chapters! Thank yall for reading!’

<< Previous   Next >>

Life working side by side with Tony was dangerous. When Killian attacked Tony it was you not Pepper who was taken and subjected to the Extremis serum. This caused you to heal crazy fast and gave you super strength, which was pretty cool but not very useful for someone who spent most of their time in a robotics lab trying not to crush something when it wasn't working.

You later discovered that Killian mistakenly believed that you were in fact Tony's soulmate, while you had always thought that it was Pepper. She quickly refuted your claim when you told her, pulling the back of her jeans down enough to show the smiley face that graced her butt cheek. Turns out that her soulmate was none other than Happy the head of security.

 About six months after the battle of new york, after Tony and the whole Killian/Mandarin situation, Tony asked very nicely if you would move into the Avengers tower with him. He needed to get the Avengers tower going, and after everything that happened and his panic attacks, he really didn't want to live there alone. He was also hoping that if you lived in the tower that the avengers would be more willing to as well. By this point you had met and become friends with most of them save for Captain America, he hasn’t been around much. He was trying to find his place in this new world and taking as many missions as Shield will give him in order to feel needed 

The tower was much different this time than the last time you had been there. There was less plastic film and dust everywhere and all of the construction work was done. Most notably, the wall on Stark's living room floor was no longer a gaping hole.

The top eight levels of the tower were for the avengers. The penthouse was where Tony stayed, no surprise there. The level directly below was his lab space which was restricted access for the most part and then there was the common level under that. The common level was composed of a large kitchen and dining area, as well as a massive living room with the biggest tv you had ever seen. This floor also houses a theater, and an arcade room equipped with pool tables and any other game you could think of. Tony is such a child sometimes, not that you were complaining you loved to play pool. The next three floors are where you and the rest of the Avengers would live. You would each get your own suite that you could arrange and decorate however you saw fit. Each suite includes a kitchenette, and small living room that was separate from the bedroom, and a massive ensuite bath. The lowest two levels were dedicated to the training room and medical ward, as well as a giant pool and sauna area, these floors allowed for outside access as long as they were vetted.

Six months later, life in the tower was going well. You, Tony and Bruce, were the main people living there. You could understand that though, Nat and Clint were constantly out on missions for shield and mainly stayed on base in DC. Tony told you that Steve was currently living in an apartment in DC. He didn't want to live on base but he was running missions for Shield on and off. Thor was off-world with Loki so life was pretty quiet. 

 Then there was a mission that the Captain went on that didn’t go the way he thought. He was wounded and brought back a captive. You were in the common area when the door was thrown open and a bloody Steve Rogers burst through carrying a soaking wet girl over his shoulder.

“The Medical wing, where is it?” He questioned voice hard from pain or fatigue or both. 

“This way.” you hurried off, not looking behind you, you knew that he would follow. 

When you arrived, you called for Dr. Cho and Steve told her what was going on and placed the girl on a stretcher. The nurses pushed her to a room to monitor her until she woke up. He was then shown to a separate room to be looked over and have the bullet removed. 

 That night Tony pulled you into the living room to watch your favorite movie, the princess bride. It was about halfway through when an exhausted Steve came through the door and flopped down on the couch beside the one that you and Tony were currently lounging on. It was coming to your favorite part, Buttercup was currently yelling at the Dread Pirate Roberts and about to push him down the hill.

“Oooh,” you said hitting Tony’s shoulder, “I love this part,” you spoke along with Wesley as he rolled down the hill, “As you Wiiiisssshhhh.” you clapped your hands together, “that will forever be the best reveal ever.” 

You didn’t notice Steve’s stare as you said those words. Holy Shit he thought his tattoo finally made sense, and yet the girl that fate said was perfect for him had her legs thrown over Tony’s lap and was leaning against him while watching the movie. He stood quickly and stomped out of the room, today was just not his day. 

 You look over at Tony confused when Steve left.

“What the hell do you think that was about?” you asked, growing more confused as you noticed the smirk on Tony’s lips.

“Why are you smiling like that?” You had to stop yourself from slapping him when he started to laugh.

“What the hell, Stark, tell me what's going on?”

“I think that Capsicle just realized that you're his soulmate.” He said through chuckles.

“What the fuck do you mean he realized that I’m his soulmate?” you asked your whole body going still as you waited for him to elaborate.

“I thought you had realized this earlier,” he said looked genuinely confused, “The captain is your soulmate, I’ve known since we had that movie night after finding him in the ice. Your tattoo is his dog tags with the flower of his birth month and a phrase that I’ve heard him say multiple times while next to him in a fight.”

You just sat there frozen trying to comprehend what exactly the man sitting in front of you was saying. 

“You know, he may be a little jealous that his soulmate was cuddling someone else since he probably doesn’t realize that you're like a sister to me. You should probably go after him.”  His words seemed to break you from your trance as you threw yourself very clumsily from the couch to follow after him.

“Jarvis, where did Rogers go?” 

“He is in the training room miss.”

“Thanks, J”

You ran all the way down, opening the door you were met by the scene of Steve hitting a punching bag so hard that it broke and flew off of its chain.

“You know, I’m not sure that those are made to withstand the punch of a super soldier, maybe I should design one that can,” you said leaning against the wall and trying not to show the fact that your heart was beating a million miles a minute.

“And why would you feel the need to do that, I’m sure Stark has plenty of things that he needs you to design that are more important than a Steve-proof punching bag.” You could tell that he was gritting his teeth as he spoke, reaching for another bag. You step towards him slowly, making sure not to walk too quickly from fear of him leaving.

“Well I’m sure that the great Tony Stark can take care of himself, and anyways, I think creating something to make my soulmate's life easier is more important.”

He slowly pulled his eyes from the punching bag that he was hanging onto the hook to look at you, pain obvious in his eyes.

“Really? Cause you seemed pretty comfortable with him.” you could see the vulnerability in his eyes as he spoke, he had gone through so much already.

“Yes really, Tony is more like an annoying older brother than anything. I’ve been working around him for the past five or so years, trust me when I say that I have no desire to date him. You on the other hand.” You made sure that your voice turned teasing on the last words, you wanted to make him smile, you hadn’t gotten to see that yet.

“Well good, cause I think I may have to kick his ass if you did.” You could hear the teasing lilt in his voice and the hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. But as quickly as it came it was gone.

“How long have you known?” his voice cracked a little as he spoke. You let out a small huff of a laugh.

“Would you believe me if I told you that Tony had to tell me when I was confused as to why you left the room?” His eyes snapped to yours.

“Really? You didn’t know?”

“After not meeting my soulmate by the time I turned 25 I just pushed it to the back of my mind, I stopped trying to figure out what my tattoo meant and I focused on my work. Plus there were a couple of life-threatening instances that distracted me." You joked. You weren't 100% sure how to handle this situation, your main friend group consisted of a playboy philanthropist and a science nerd that turned into a giant green guy when angry, not really the best people to show you how to be vulnerable.

“I understand that," he said pausing before continuing, "part of my problem was that my tattoo didn’t show up until after I came out of the ice.” he looked down at his hands and you noticed that they were fidgeting, he must be just as nervous as you.

“I didn’t know that,” you murmured, deciding to ask the question that was begging to be asked.

“What is your tattoo, if you don’t mind me asking?”

He shook his head, “Not at all.” he stepped towards you and pulled up his sleeve, and turned out his arm so you could see the flesh just under his armpit. As soon as you saw the tattoo you burst out laughing.

“Of course that’s what my mark is, man I’m such a nerd.” You clutched your stomach as you laughed, tears coming to your eyes from the range of emotions that you are currently going through.

“Can I ask why I have this tattooed on me?” He questioned, clearly curious to the reasoning as to why he had a movie quote on his arm forever. You were finally able to pull yourself together and sober up from the surprise of his tattoo.

“That movie came out the year after I was born and it was my mom’s favorite movie to watch with me, we watched it at least 4 times a year. But we always made sure to watch it on my birthday as a family, it became an integral part of my life, plus it’s just sooo quotable.” you said with a smile, “Do you want to look at my tattoo?” you asked motioning at your arm with your head. He slowly nodded, not able to find the words.

You slowly pulled your sleeve up, showing him the inside of your forearm and the dog tags that graced your skin. He stepped forward gently taking your arm in his hand so that he could study the markings on your skin. Tracing the outline and the words that he could see before smiling.

“What does it mean?” you asked softly looking at him through your lashes.

“It’s um,” he cleared his throat, “it’s my dog tags or at least the lower one is, it says my name, then Captain America and the city I was born in, Brooklyn. The top one however is something that I always seem to say when I’m getting beat up in a fight in order to remind myself that I could do it. And the flower… I think it’s the flower from my birth month? I was born in July so I think it’s a reference to that.” You nodded at his explanation, his fingers still gently tracing over your skin, causing goosebumps to pop up from the feeling.

“So, would you like to watch the movie with me? We can start it over so that you won’t be lost. I know that you struggle with pop culture, old man.” You smirked at him as you spoke, he just rolled his eyes.

“Be careful, this old man could still show you a thing or two.”

You laughed out loud at that, your laugh changed to a squeal when you felt him wrap his arms around your legs and throw you over his shoulder. 

“Ahh, let me down!!” you beat at his shoulders trying to get him to release you but he wouldn’t budge, he just continued to carry you until you ended back in the living room and he threw you down onto the couch. He wasn’t even breathing hard after carrying you up 2 flights of stairs, jerk. 

Tony was nowhere to been seen as you restarted the movie. You ran and grabbed some more popcorn to share, pouring in some M&Ms before plopping back down next to Steve and pulling on your couch blanket. It didn't take long for you to cuddle into his side and for your eyes to droop. 

Steve smiled at you when he realized that you had passed out before you even got to the part he had walked in on earlier. He didn't mind though, he just got comfortable and pulled you in closer before allowing himself to relax and fall asleep. 

Tagged Users: @writerwrites

[imjeralee]

Comfort in Despair: Chapter 22 - Legend of the Void

Leon x F!Reader

Disclaimer: Do not own Pokemon

Summary:

Galar is rich in folklore and tales of the supernatural.

As a Pokemon Researcher who specialises in ghost types, this is a great opportunity for you to investigate and learn more about the paranormal.

Along the way, you meet Leon (in the most awkward way possible) who becomes embroiled in your adventures.

^ Basically this story is about ghosts :/

NOTE: I can’t really believe I'm at Chapter 22... I know it doesn’t seem too long but I feel like it is lol. Here’s when things get a bit science-fiction-y and also more to do with cosmology. 

Rating: General/Teen

@marydragneell​ here is the latest update

Legend of the Void

…

…

[1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

2. The universe began to exist.

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause (which was itself not caused).

- The Kalam cosmological argument.]

…

…

“I’m home.”

“Welcome back!”

Upon your return to Wedgehurst, Sonia and Magnolia, Runerigus and Cutiefly are in the conservatory enjoying tea. You greet everyone, share an embrace and Cutiefly dives for your hair, burrowing himself under your locks.

“Would you like some tea, dear?” Magnolia asks, lifting up an empty cup.

“Yes please.”

She smiles and begins to wander into the kitchen.

“Ah, wait – professor, I can do it myself-“

“It’s okay, come sit,” Sonia says, grabbing your arm and pulling you into the empty seat beside her. “Where’d you go last night?”

“Oh, I met up with Leon,” you reply nonchalantly. “We’re together.”

Her jaw drops. “You’re what??”

“Sorry, I should’ve told you earlier. I didn’t really know what to say, nothing was official.”

Sonia blinks wide-eyed for a moment before she slaps a perfectly manicured hand over her mouth. Emitting a muffled squeal of glee, she proceeds to throw her arms around you, enveloping you into a tight hug.

“I knew there was something between you two but I didn't think -- oh, never mind, I’m so happy for you!” she exclaims, and you smile awkwardly, gently placing your hand over her arm.

“Thanks, I, um…I have a favour to ask of you though.”

“What is it?”

“I need you to-“

Unfortunately you’re interrupted when Magnolia returns with your cup of tea. Polteageist floats beside her, having helped with the brewing and when he sees you, you both share a hug.

“Here you are, my dear,” Magnolia says as you accept the cup. It’s piping hot and smells wondrous.

“Thank you, professor.”

“Inspector Graves came by earlier; he told me to give you this,” Magnolia picks up an A4 envelope from the table and hands it to you. “He says they’re accepting new recruits and he wants you to try it out.”

You open it carefully and pull out the contents; it’s a pile of application forms for the police academy recruitment scheme. “Oh…” you mutter, “thanks, I’ll have a look at it later.”

“Can I tell her?” Sonia says giddily.

“What?? No, it’s too early!” you yelp.

"But-"

“Girls, what’s going on?” Magnolia demands, swapping glances between you and Sonia.

“N-nothing, professor.”

“Let’s go upstairs,” Sonia says and before you can reply, she tugs on your arm and pulls you up and off the couch, guiding you to the staircase.

Magnolia watches as you both scurry away and out of sight before she slides into a plush seat beside the stone pokemon who has been enjoying his cup of tea silently, holding the floral teacup daintily in his shadowy hands.

“Would you like some more Darjeeling, Runerigus?” she asks, lifting up the teapot.

He nods and she empties some into his little cup before she fills her own; they exchange smiles as they take a sip at the same time.

...

Upstairs, Sonia closes the door behind her and joins you on the bed, sitting cross-legged and clutching your arm.

“So! Tell me everything. I want all the details. All of them.”

You recall last night’s events though you do omit some information, namely the dream. You feel bad for not telling her there was something between you and Leon, especially the time when you had almost kissed at the hospital and when he brought you flowers, but she doesn't appear nonplussed and nods to herself, hand under her chin.

“That’s typical of him,” she says with a giggle before she sighs and flexes her hands together, smiling to herself, "I've known Leon since we were kids so I'm really happy for him. It's so strange; you've been here for a few years and you kept missing him and he kept missing you...and even when gran and I wanted you to meet him, you were always busy or away investigating so you never got the chance and neither did he...but then this happens and now you're together!!! You were always closeby but you never even got the chance to see each other...oh, I don't know, but I was always hoping for you to meet; I knew you two would hit it off."

"Yeah, I guess we wasted the years."

"Nooo, that's not what I meant at all; it's what people say 'when it's supposed to happen, it happens'," she replies, and you laugh. “So…you’ve kissed, right? You must have. How was it? What was it like to kiss the Champion of Galar?”

Your cheeks grow pink. You've never really spoken to Sonia about boys before, but this is rather refreshing.

“...Well, it was really nice,” you mumble, throwing your glance down to fiddle with the hem of your sleeve. You’re not sure whether to tell Sonia that he was really shy and nervous.

“Oh, come on! Tell me bit a lot more than that!” she whines, pouting.

“I’m serious. It was fine, it was really nice. A bit wet?”

Sonia blows some hair from her face and looks at her nails. “Of course it was wet, it was a kiss. Fine, you don’t wanna tell me.”

"We’re going to practice more-“

Her eyes light up at once. “Oh!”

“And we’re going to meet up again later.”

“Oh.”

“Actually, now there’s two things I need your help with. Leon’s invited me to a party and I need an outfit-“

“I’ll help you!”

You chuckle at her enthusiasm. “And the other things is...well, it’s a little complicated to explain in its entirety but I have a new client; her sister is dead and is about to become an evil spirit – the thing is, she was Miss Motostoke but unfortunately she died and now she wants to participate in the pageant in order to move on so I was thinking we’d set up a fake pageant and I’ll let her possess my body so I would like you to be my hair and makeup artist and the presenter if possible. Don't worry, I'll compile a script for you to follow.”

Sonia gawps at you, wide-eyed.

“So, what do you say?”

“…...Sure?”

“Thanks so much, Sonia!!”

"What's going on?" she asks, and you explain to her the case you're currently working on. She listens intently to your plight and when you're all caught up to speed, she nods once more, armed with far more thorough understanding.

“No problem, I can help you... but are you okay doing this? Is this going to be dangerous? Can’t she move on in a different way?”

“It’ll be fine; I know what I’m doing, don’t worry.”

“Where are you going to hold this fake pageant anyway?”

“I was thinking the lab; I could ask Jace to help with the lighting and we could just fix up a curtain or something around upstairs to use as a changing room and cover the rest of the lab with the whiteboards put together. Picture this, we’ll hang some red drapes over them so it looks like the Miss Galar Beauty Pageant stage. I’m not too bothered about the floor. The floor’s fine.”

“…Okay,” she says, tilting her head to the side.

“And I could ask if Leon could be the ‘judge’ again. Maybe ask Volkner…if he’s up for it…We’ll set up some tables in front of the stage for them to sit.”

“You seem to have a plan already," she comments with a sniff.

“I do,” you reply, “I just hope it all works out.”

…

With Sonia’s help secured, your little plan is indeed coming together rather nicely. Your next task is to ask Jace for assistance for lighting and if he can help fix up some  curtains and as usual, he’s glad to help in any way, replying to your text message with multiple smiley face emojis.

You also ask him if Volkner would like to be a guest judge and he says he will check with the gym leader.

There’s plenty to do so you head to the lab where you don your white lab coat, put on your reading glasses and begin your investigation.

You’re not sure why you’ve decided to wear the coat but somehow you feel better wearing it today. It's been a while since you put it on.

At your desk, you put Graves’ application forms to the side for the time being and instead, spread out the contents of the folder Frankie had given you and lay out all the documents, namely the newspaper article about Flora’s death and murderer.

You had spent the taxi ride home reading the contents of the folder and now it’s time to display your findings on your trusty whiteboard which you wipe down, grabbing several pens and some magnets in progress.

Taking a step back, you look at the empty board with marker in hand before scribbling down ‘Miss Galar Beauty Pageant Case’ at the very top before underlining it. The pen squeals loudly with each stroke.

“So we have two sisters, Flora and Francesca Warren aka Frankie,” you write their names along with their ages underneath and attach their photos which you printed off earlier.

Frankie’s photo is a school portrait and Flora is a photo you found online from a previous beauty pageant.

Your audience consists of Vulpix, Mimikyu and Rotom who watch you silently as you work whilst Gengar returns with three cups of steaming hot Boltund Dash Coffee on a tray.

“Thanks Gengar,” you utter, taking the cup off him and he grins in response; he raises his own mug and Mimikyu takes her mug off the tray with a shadowy tendril.

The three of you take a sip at the same time.

“That’s a damn good cup of coffee,” you add.

Gengar nods whilst Mimikyu proceeds to devour the entire cup, swallowing it whole into her body.

“No, no, give that back; that mug belongs to Sonia.”

Mimikyu squeaks angrily but you shake your head firmly. With a growl, she navigates a tendril into her mouth and pulls the mug out and settles it atop the desk. You rub your chin, realising Mimikyu must possess hammerspace.

“Right. Let’s get started then. Flora was to compete in this year’s Miss Galar as Miss Motostoke but unfortunately she passed away a few weeks ago. Frankie immediately came home after news of her elder sister’s death. She was attending boarding school in Kanto. Flora is on the verge of becoming an evil spirit unless we do something about it. She haunts her family and Flora believes she will be able to move on if she gets to participate in a beauty pageant which we can reenact in order to satiate her restless spirit. This can be achieved if I let her possess me.”

Gengar lifts his hand up.

“Yes?”

He says, are you sure about this? Are you okay with a ghost possessing you? What about the incident with Edward Rose?

“I understand your concern but I can risk her possessing me. I managed to expel Edward Rose, I’m sure I can expel her too if anything goes wrong.”

Gengar nods a little unsurely and takes another sip of his coffee.

“Now Flora’s murderer is…” you quickly glance at the article you left on your desk, “Her boyfriend, Hank Walthamstow. Also known as ‘Hank the Tank’ to locals.”

As expected, the news article doesn’t provide enough information, namely the nature of her death. The paper articulates that it was a ‘passion of crime’ and that her boyfriend was suspected of the murder and was in custody.

You ask Rotom to commence a quick search online using viable resources but he comes up with nothing; you’re baffled that there is limited information on her murder but it could be due to Rose censoring negative press on the pageant, which was what he did for his art gallery.

The lack of information frustrates you either way and it means you may need to call Graves, which you won’t do because he has already made it quite clear he does not want you to work on cases and you had also agreed to take a break.

“I suppose I have no choice but to speak to Hank Walthamstow in person then," you mutter, the pokemon watching as you pace up and down. "Let’s find out where he’s being held.”

“Bzzrt, good idea,” says Rotom as he runs a quick search. “Bzzzrt, found him! He’zzzz being held at Wyndon Jail!! Unfortunately, it zzzzeemzzz we have mizzzed vizzziting hourzzz.”

“It’s fine, can you arrange a visit for me first thing tomorrow?”

“You got it!"

“Thanks, Rotom.”

With that out of the way, you pin up Hank’s mugshot beside Flora’s picture. He is an attractive but bulky-looking young man with fearful eyes.

After a few hours of further study, your board has taken more distinct shape and form as you begin to link some of the information together, including a full breakdown of what every contestant had to participate in the beauty pageant, most noticeably a Q&A session, swimsuit and dress catwalk and a talent showcase between three to five minutes long.

Furthermore, the actual Miss Galar beauty pageant took two and a half hours. With Flora as a single contestant, you calculate that you should be able to squeeze everything into roughly half an hour.

Tired and wanting a change of scenery, you head upstairs to sit on the floor with your papers in hand against the white railing, allowing your legs to dangle.

During this time, your pokemon have decided to do other things – Mimikyu and Vulpix are getting along together very well and had spent the remaining hours playing together.

Rotom is sleeping whilst Gengar has remained by your side to help you out with the whiteboard and the documents.

Leon had messaged you earlier too, informing you that he will pop by the lab when he’s finished, which inexplicably makes you plough through your work at an increased pace so you are ready when he is due to arrive. It's growing dark outside and the lab is swamped in a tawny orange glow from the sunset outside.

You yawn and your stomach grumbles loudly. You’ve been so wrapped up you did not even eat.

A gentle knock on the door grabs your attention and you peer through the gaps of the railing as the door is pushed open; Leon enters along with Charizard at his heels, glancing around until he looks up and spots you upstairs.

“Leon! Charizard!” you exclaim happily.

“Hey – oh,” he looks stunned by your appearance, “I’ve never seen you wearing your coat before.”

“Oh, this old thing? Yeah, that’s because whenever I wore it outside, people kept staring. It attracts too much attention.”

Leon looks at you from head to toe before his cheeks turn a bit pink. “…It suits you,” he utters and you grin in response, standing up and dusting yourself down. “Anyway, are you ready to go? My mum says she has a surprise for us.”

“Sure, I’m almost ready. Just let me get the rest of my papers….”

Leon and Charizard saunter further into the lab and he heads over to the whiteboard and your desk, peering at a small stack of books in one corner before ultimately realising that you’re the author.

Intrigued, he flips through them one by one and as you approach, he murmurs, “I had no idea that you had written and published several books.”

You hop down the stairs and in front of him, shrugging and with your hands in your pocket, “I don’t like to throw it out there.”

Leon smiles at you appreciatively; he is seeing you in a new light and you ask if he’d like to keep one but he tells you he wants to go to the stores and buy it to further support you.

You didn't quite greet him properly and he's thinking the same as he shyly reaches for your hand and tugs you closer to him, sliding his strong and sturdy arms around your waist and you wrap your arms around his neck, pressing your cheek against the fluffy, soft material of his cape. You close your eyes and sigh quietly, relishing the feel of being in his arms as he buries his nose against the side of your head and into your hair.

"How was work?" you ask, your muffled against the thick fabric.

"Fine," he replies, though he sounds tired.

He proceeds to tell you everything he did whilst you hold onto him tightly, snuggling against his chest and enjoying his warmth and he chuckles before he smooths his hand over your hair and pecks the crown of your head.

Unfortunately, you must pull away and he flings his glance to your whiteboard; it is full of your diagrams, bullet points, blurbs and random scribbles. Some of them are connected together by a red string and pins.

Stunned by the intricacy of it all, Leon asks, “What is all this?”

“It's for the new case; it’s rather complicated."

“How so?”

“Here, let me explain. Have a seat,” you guide him to sit down on an empty chair in front of the board.

As he sits, he crosses his arms over his broad chest and his muscles clench under his tight-fitted champion shirt. You gulp down unconsciously as you receive an eyeful, heading to the board to begin the explanation of your findings.

“The hairclip we discovered last night belongs to a dead beauty pageant contestant called Flora Warren. She was Miss Motostoke. According to the press and police reports, she was murdered by her boyfriend, Hank Walthamstow.”

You witness the wince on Leon’s face yet you continue.

“He’s from Stow-on-side and he trained with Bea as a Blackbelt,” you say, gesturing to his mugshot on the board, “He’s currently being held in Wyndon, pleading not guilty. Flora’s body showed signs of struggle and assault. I don’t have a full autopsy report but it said her exact time of death can’t be determined due to the decomposition of her body when she was found but the good thing is I’ve seen her ghost and from what I can see, she appears as she died. Her neck is broken and she has several grievous injuries on her head.

“Her Rotom phone is missing and it’s believed Hank did away with Rotom as well…which is easier to do than people think. All you need to do is separate a Rotom from its device to incapacitate it. I met her family today - her little sister wants me to help her move on, but I believe the circumstances of her death warrants further investigation so I booked myself in for a visit tomorrow and I’ll speak to Hank myself.

“I’ve also spoken to Flora and she believes she will move on if she gets the chance to compete in the pageant. She doesn’t remember anything about her murder either so for the time being, I’ve proposed we reenact the pageant to appease her spirit. I will let Flora possess me so she can carry out her performances and move on. I’ve already asked Sonia and Jace for help and they’ve agreed.”

It occurs to you that you have never spoken to anyone except Jace and Sonia when it comes to cases and you’re somewhat nervous about Leon’s response to all of this.

The conflict is evident on his face. “...She’s certain she’ll move on if she competes in the pageant?”

You nod.

“This sounds dangerous.”

“I’ll be okay, Leon. Trust me,” you reassure him. “She’s on the verge of becoming an evil spirit. If we don’t act now, it’ll be too late.”

He cocks his head to the side. “Are you certain about this?”

“I know this sounds crazy, but yes I am. Please trust me. I know what I'm doing.”

He nods. “Okay. I trust you and it sounds like you need my help too so I’ll help you in any way I can. Ah, I can be the judge,” he replies with a grin, “I should be free this Saturday evening.”

How amazing is it that Leon will extend his help no matter what the circumstances are?

“Leon! Thank you so much! I could bloody well kiss you right now,” you belt out without thinking twice before you step forwards, placing your hands on each side of his face before pressing your lips against his quickly.

Taken aback by the kiss, Leon blushes furiously but he’s smiling when you pull away.

“Great!” you continue to exclaim to yourself, twirling the cane in your hands happily. “Everything’s all coming together nicely.”

“How do we know if Flora has moved on? And when she’s possessing you, will you still be yourself?”

“If I remember correctly... when Edward Rose possessed me, I was still me. I was self-aware," you mutter, “And I should know if Flora has moved on or not. Hopefully, we’ll able to witness it. Do you have any further questions?”

Leon ponders before he throws a quick glance to one of your books. “I’ve never asked you about your research. I’m sorry, I should’ve asked you earlier..."

You smile widely, brushing a strand of hair behind your ear. “It’s okay, I don’t mind. What would you like to know?”

“What kind of research have you conducted regarding the spirit world?”

“Excellent question. Allow me to elaborate.”

Swapping the cane for a marker pen, you switch the board to the other side where it is clean and blank.

“It’s known that we occupy a three dimensional space,” you say as you draw various lines messily on the board, “dimensions are simply the different facets of what we perceive to be reality. However, it is widely theoreticized that there are more dimensions, either within these or in between these or even outside of these.

"The possibilities are simply endless, but this also means that across these millions of universes, there is a singular universe which has remained constant and consistent across all of these since the creation of the universe.”

Leon continues to watch as you feverishly draw on the board, drawing various overlapping circles along with arrows going right and left and back again, crossing over each other.

“And this singular, consistent universe is known as the spirit world, or ghost world, land of the dead, the great beyond, take your pick,” you mutter, “it’s another dimension that solely exists outside of time and space and has remained unchanged and unaffected for eons. It’s where spirits and ghost pokemon reside and they can freely travel back and forth between their world and our world. Unlike our universe, separate universes cannot be branched off from this one. It will always remain as one, singular spirit world.

“However, our ability to comprehend it is simply beyond our mental capacity. Does this mean heaven and hell does not exist? Not really, the spirit world could be a form of limbo or purgatory. So you’re probably thinking ‘what does this all mean?’, ‘what does this world look like’ and ‘who created it’?? Well, these are certainly great questions and I myself haven’t seen what the spirit world looks like because Gengar once informed me one had to be dead in order to get there but I’ve seen a portal before.”

“Where?”

“In the basement of my old house. My dad researched on communication between the spirit world and our world. He discovered there's many forms. Ghost pokemon, for example, are a source of communication. They're pretty much bridges between our world and theirs but there's still a lot we don't know about them. My dad also discovered the spirit world can receive and transmit communication in the form of binary or morse code but we never figured out the origins of the transmissions-“

Leon waits for you to finish, but you grow silent.

“...Anyway, the answer as to who or what created it, Ezra told me it was created when the universe was created...which was probably fourteen billion years ago, maybe more, but that’s another can of Weedles for another day.”

"What about Arceus?"

"Ezra says it wasn't Arceus. It was before Arceus."

"The legends say there was a void before Arceus."

"Well, yes, but who or what created the void, thus creating Arceus? Who is the creator of Arceus?"

"...The void?"

"Okay, but if I go back to my previous point, why was there even a void in the first place? And where did the void come from? I could dive into quantum physics and talk about the Big Bang Theory but scientists are still asking the question, 'what was the absolute beginning', 'was there something before it'?"

“I think people are quite content not thinking about that, or knowing in general," Leon replies, placing a hand under his chin in thought, "they’re rather content with the legend of the void.”

"That's what they teach kids in schools, surely there must be more."

Leon looks confused and you finish with a heavy inhale and an equally ragged exhale; your head is beginning to throb, your vision growing dim. Exhausted, your body no longer seems to obey you and you start to sway on your spot until your legs give way.

Leon rushes forwards and catches you in his arms, sweeping you up.

“Hey, are you okay? Take it easy…” he murmurs your name soothingly whilst you deliriously moan and mumble for him under your breath, “You need to rest.”

You shake your head weakly as he applies his palm over your forehead. Luckily, you’re not coming down with something.

“Have you had anything to drink?”

“Yeah…coffee and tea.”

“And when’s the last time you ate?” he asks as he scoops an arm under the back of your knees whilst his other arm remains firm around your shoulder; he effortlessly lifts you up bridal style and carries you towards the direction of the couch.

“I…I think it was this morning…when we were camping…before we left to watch the sunrise…” you croak out sluggishly.

His eyes widen; that was more than twelve hours ago. He shakes his head. This simply won’t do. Once he’s arrived at the couch, he seats himself down and props you up in his arms, letting you rest comfortably against him.

Leon slips off his cloak before he lets go of you briefly to drape the cloak over your body and bundle you up. The cape is so nice and cosy. As the thick fluff of his cape tickles the base of your nose, you unconsciously rub your cheek against it. You sigh contentedly and let yourself sink against the rich, soft material as he carefully wraps you inside before he settles his arms around you once more and rests his chin atop your head.

He glances around the lab or so and the lab descends into silence for a second time; he sits with you for a few minutes or so until you stir and reopen your eyes.

“How’re you feeling?” he asks.

“Nmm…I’m fine…let’s go…your mum’s waiting…can’t afford to waste any more time,” you mutter, and he nods.

Releasing you, you carefully slide out of his hold and stand to stretch whilst Leon reattaches his cape back over his shoulders. You recall your pokemon and swapping your white coat for a warmer one, you join Leon at the door after ensuring the lab is properly closed up before locking up.

It’s dark outside and Leon offers you his hand.

Together, you make your way down the path, walking close, shoulders bumping. He’ll look at you and when you look at him, he’ll smile and squeeze your fingers.

“I told Sonia we’re together," you blurt out.

“Oh...how’d she take it?”

“She was really happy for us.”

Leon goes pink in response.

“I haven’t told Jace yet. I messaged Graves earlier. I don’t know how he will react.”

“…I haven’t told Raihan yet,” Leon confesses, “he's the gym leader of Hammerlocke."

"Oh."

"We're good friends and he’s always asking me to go on a double date with him and his girlfriend.”

“You can go now."

"Ah, yes, if you want."

Once you arrive at Leon’s house, the outdoor lights are switched off which you find strange; the front door opens and his mother and Hop greet you at the doorway, waving happily.

“Welcome home!!!” they cheer.

Leon’s mum is dressed in a chef’s outfit whilst Hop is wearing a bartender’s uniform, complete with bowtie. He tosses some confetti and blows into a kazoo whilst Wooloo bleats loudly by his heels.

“Mum…Hop, what’s going on?” Leon asks, bewildered.

“We’ve prepared a nice dinner for you!” Leon’s mother exclaims and she quickly hauls you both inside and slams the door shut. “You two must be starving.”

You and Leon exchange glances before he grins widely and you let out a chuckle under your breath.

“I’ll be your chef today and the Hop-meister will be your maître d’.” Leon’s mum adds with a grin.

“May I take your coat, ma’am?” Hop asks, with his arm out.

“Oh, Hop,” you squeak out, whilst Leon looks a little embarrassed. His mother merely winks at him however, so it’s best to play along with their little skit and you remove your coat. “Thank you.”

Hop gathers your coat and turns to Leon next, “And may I take your cape, sir?”

“Um…okay, thanks,” Leon removes his cape and hands it to his brother who proceeds to scurry to the coat rack with Wooloo bounding after him.

“Unfortunately, dinner won’t be ready for another ten minutes. I do apologise for the wait but I will send your maître d’ to get you when it is ready,” Leon’s mum says and she grabs Hop and they return to the kitchen, leaving you and Leon alone.

With a smile, Leon nudges his head to the stairs. “I have something to show you.”

Slipping your hand into his, you both scale the staircase and he follows the signs to his room; once inside, he flicks on the light and you move to sit on the bed. His room  hasn't changed a bit; it looks exactly the same as last time.

He heads to his closet, opening the doors to reveal a hanger that’s holding up a red coat with a black lapel, gold buttons and cuffs. There are also a pair of pale light trousers and black riding boots to complete the look.

“This is what I’m wearing to the party,” he says as you stand up and join his side.

“It's lovely. I should wear something that matches this then,” you utter and an image of a wine red dress with black heels springs in your mind. Maybe you could complete it by fastening a white corsage?

Leon blushes. “Um, yes, but it’s entirely up to you.”

“I still don’t know how to dance though.”

“Let’s practice now. Give me your hand.”

You feel anxious as you slip your hand into his; he holds it firmly then slips his other hand over your waist. You're standing very close together and you throw your glance around, wondering if there’s enough room in general and when you look at him, you notice he hasn’t looked away from you, his gaze pinned on your form.

“I’ll lead, starting with my left foot, so you should step back with your right,” he instructs, and you nod.

He steps forwards and you move backwards.

“That’s one step. Now I’ll step forwards with my right foot and you should step back with your left.”

You nod once more and you both complete the next step as he had outlined. Leon moves onto the third step and so forth. Soon, you have completed the simple steps and have shifted from the middle of the room to a corner near the desk, although you did step on his foot once or twice during the process.

“Sorry,” you say but he grins.

“It’s alright. You’re learning really quickly.”

“Thanks, I’ll practise more at home.”

“Just remember one-two-three.”

“Thanks for teaching me,” you reply, and Leon lets go of your hand to hold you by your waist.

“Um…should we practice now?” He asks shyly.

“Dancing?”

“No, not…uh, not dancing.”

His cheeks go pink again and you realise what he is talking about.

“Oh, right,” you reply, “yes, let’s practise."

"Should we sit down?" he suggests, "...the bed?"

You nod and together, you wordlessly climb over his bed, the mattress shifting under your combined weight as you sit opposite each other, cross-legged.

Your gazes meet and Leon's face soars to various shades of red as you clear your throat and you furl and unfurl your hands with trepidation, ready to begin. He watches you silently, his golden eyes glued to your form until he begins to lean forwards and you do the same until you are inches away from each other.

Leon drops his gaze to your lips before closing the gap, gently tilting your face up with his hand under your chin.

You blush from the action, closing your eyes as your lips finally meet. So much for practice, you think to yourself as Leon ravishes your mouth with his own; it’s a sloppier, needier kiss compared to last night and this morning, as though he's making up for the time you had spent apart. Leon presses his lips against you hungrily, deepening the kiss, and you’re not in the mood to correct him in any way.

Enjoying the feel of his mouth against yours, you kiss for what seems to be a long time and the room is quiet save for the sounds of your lips meeting and some light, muffled moans from the back of your throats. You move your arms to rest around the back of his neck, pecking him on the lips affectionately and he smiles against your mouths before encircling his arms around your waist and drawing you into his lap, capturing your mouth once again.

A polite knock on the door makes you both retreat in a span of a second, your hands untangling from each other.

“Hop!” Leon exclaims loudly whilst you pull down your shirt and adjust your hair.

Hop is grinning widely at you two and you cannot help but think how much he saw. “Pardon my intrusion, but your table is ready. If you’d kindly follow me, please.”

Leaving Leon’s room, Hop leads you downstairs, into the kitchen and towards the backdoor.

A nice aroma wafts in the kitchen, which is a chaotic mess; there’s a tower of dirty dishes sitting in the sink and all the hobs are occupied with all sorts of pots and pans. Leon’s mum is busy tidying up, but she shoots you a grin.

You step out of the house and into their back garden and you don’t see anything out of the ordinary until Hop flips a switch and the entire back garden flickers into life.

Their gazebo has been decorated with roses and fairy lights, along with a small two-seater table that has been carefully set up for you and Leon in the middle of the garden. The table is decorated with a candlestick and rose petals have been carefully scattered over the floor, lining the path.

Leon is stunned as you stand side-by-side; you let out a gasp of awe and Hop leads you to the table.

Hop pulls the seat out for you and as you sit down, thanking him, he presents you with a menu. Meanwhile, Wooloo throws a napkin over your lap and does the same for Leon.

You throw a quick glance to the Champion, who is obviously overwhelmed by the entirety of it at all.

Inspecting the menu, it’s been written by Hop in his neatest handwriting and you see there are two options for starters and desserts and three choices of main course. Leon’s mum and Hop have really outdone themselves. He leaves you alone so you can go through the menu together.

“Leon, your family are so lovely,” you mutter, watching as his cheeks go pink, “this is amazing.”

“They know how difficult it is for me to be seen in public with someone, especially if we were to have dinner but I apologise if this is too much for you, I can ask them to tone it down," Leon replies.

“No, there’s no need. This is wonderful."

Hop returns with a little notebook and pen a few minutes later. “Are you ready to order?”

“Yes, we are, thank you,” you reply with a giggle, “I’ll have the salad for the starter and the fish for the main course.”

“Fine choice. Our fish is the most delicious in all of Galar and are simply sublime, madam,” Hop says with a grin. “And what would you like for dessert?”

“I’ll go for the tiramisu.”

“Fantastic. And for you, good sir?”

Leon gives his little brother a wide smile in response and orders the soup, steak and sorbet.

“Excellent choice, sir. It’s our chef’s specialty. And what would you like for drinks?”

“I’ll have a beer.”

“I’ll have water,” Leon says. Looks like he’s wanting to play safe.

“Very good. Thank you very much.” Hop collects your menus and returns to the kitchen with Wooloo.

As you wait for the food, you and Leon chat as Hop makes several trips to and from the kitchen; he sets a glass on the table filled with iced water along with your can of beer and promptly leaves, then re-emerges a few minutes later, balancing a plate and bowl in hands. It’s the soup and salad and Leon’s mum watches you through the window as Hops serves the starters.

“Bon appetit,” he says, kissing his fingers with a smack and you laugh as he bows and saunters away.

He joins his mother’s side in the kitchen, they exchange a high five, then they peer at the two of you outside, grinning hopefully.

You eat the salad quickly, growing nervous as you and Leon eat in this romantic candlelit setting. You’re aware of how close you are, that he’s watching you and suddenly you’re conscious of the way how you eat and also how handsome he is under the dim flickering light. When you look up, he's still looking at you and to calm your nerves, you take a few sips of your beer.

He inches his chair closer to yours and when the main course arrives, Leon’s mum suddenly steps outside, stops shortly in front of your table and does a little bow. She’s holding a bagpipe which she settles neatly into its proper position in her arms and she briefly explains that she will be tonight’s entertainment.

Clearing her throat, Leon’s mum takes a deep breath and begins to play, filling the garden with a loud but jaunty tune. You watch her cheeks puffing and her face seems to go a little red and when she’s finished, she wheezes slightly and wipes her forehead.

“Phew! I still have it in me…” she utters whilst you and Leon burst into applause. “Thank you, thank you, my dears…do enjoy the rest of your evening.”

She departs hastily after a bow so you can eat.

The evening progresses and Leon moves his chair even closer; you are sitting so close together he can place his hand over yours. And when the dessert arrives, you are so full you’re not sure if you can eat it but Leon’s mum had put so much effort in putting this dinner together just for you and Leon so you tuck in as much as possible despite your protesting stomach.

Hop eventually returns to clean up the plates once you’re finished, Leon wipes his mouth neatly with a napkin before rising from his seat and you look up at him expectantly as he offers you his hand.

“Would you like to dance?”

“I would love to,” you reply, slipping your hand into his with a smile.

He pulls you up onto your feet and leads you further into the gazebo, sliding his arm around your waist securely whilst you loop your arm over his shoulder as he had taught you; with your hand in his, he begins to lead you around the small space of the gazebo.

Recalling his earlier instructions, you repeat the mantra of ‘one-two-three’ in an attempt to match his steps and to your surprise, you’re able to keep up with him and also, you have barely made any errors.

“I think I’m getting the hang of this,” you mutter.

“You’re doing great," he replies, and you smile as you complete another circle around the gazebo together.

You wish this evening will never end.

…

Meanwhile.

In Wyndon, Graves relaxes at home in his robe and slippers. He is a busy man but it doesn’t mean he shouldn’t take some time off for himself every now and then for self-care.

And what a marvellous day today had been.

He had no problems, no issues at work. Everything had gone swimmingly and he had left the office in a good mood.

He didn’t think anything would ruin this day.

With his feet up on the table, he lounges in his leather recliner with a hot towel slapped over his face, eyes closed as soothing music plays in the background of his lounge.

“Ah, this is the life,” he mutters as he sinks into his plush armchair.

Suddenly, his phone hovers into the room, bobbing up and down by his shoulder. “Sir, you have a message from your god-daughter.”

“What is it? Read it out for me.”

“Yes, sir,” Rotom replies, before he says loudly, “I’m dating Leon. Thought you ought to know.”

Graves sits up properly, the towel peeling off his face and dropping over his lap.

“WHAT?”

…

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 262: A Fierce Bad Rabbit

Previously on BnHA: The hospital raid squad, which had two jobs consisting of (1) not letting Ujiko get away, and (2) not letting any of the Noumu break free to go ravage the countryside, impressively failed at both of these tasks (or so I assume) in a remarkably short amount of time. The EndeavorZawaMicLock squad were all occupied with having a very destructive fight in the hospital lobby, leaving my girl Miruko, Goddess of Courage and First of Her Name, to do pretty much all the heavy lifting, which, fine!! Except that Ujiko remembered that he had a bunch of High End Noumus just floating there waiting to be activated, and he was all “!!” and fucking activated them, and like five of them went after Miruko all at once and smashed her into a bunch of machinery and glass tubes, which frankly should have killed her but it didn’t because she’s a fucking boss. But now it’s just her (and Crust, who might do something too, but for now JURY’S STILL OUT) against all these guys while Ujiko speeds off to grab Tomura and abscond. So basically everything that could go wrong has already gone wrong so UH. OKAY.

Today on BnHA: Miruko kicks ass. Then she checks her watch and sees that there’s still time for her to kick more ass, so she does. Then there is still time, because this chapter is all about her kicking ass! So she kicks even more ass!! It’s great!! I have no complaints!! She decapitates a man with her thighs!! That’s a thing that really happens!! Also she loses an arm but WHO HASN’T LOST AND/OR BROKEN THEIR ARMS IN THIS SERIES, REALLY. Everyone is doing it. Somehow she manages to make it look cool because Miruko. Miruko can strangle a man with a cordless phone. She can kill two stones with one bird. Miruko makes onions cry. Death once had a near-Miruko experience. Mirukoooooooo. Anyway the chapter ends with Skeptic warning everyone at The Ol’ Villain Hotel that the heroes are coming, so basically WELCOME BACK, EVERYONE, this manga is back with a vengeance.

guys I’m gonna try to do this recap fast because I’m seeing Heroes Rising tonight at 7:30! and I’m so excited! and for those that asked, yes I do plan on doing some kind of write-up about it, though it’ll all be from memory after the fact so we’ll see how that goes. but !! I’ve waited 84 years for this ahhhhh but anyway so in the meantime let’s see what new and creative ways our heroes are finding to screw this up even more

(ETA: I did it but this thing isn’t edited for shit lol. after I get back I’ll give it a more thorough readthrough so sorry if I missed any really obvious errors! also there are probably way more exclamation points than usual which may or may not be a plus or minus.)

look at this helpful announcement

High End Noumu approaching, everyone. you have been warned. just in case you somehow failed to notice?? IT’S RIGHT THERE Y’ALL LOOK OUT

lmao FINALLY

MORE HEROES. YOU ALL CERTAINLY TOOK YOUR FUCKING TIME, but hey welcome to the party. and none of that “I don’t see how that’s a party” sassy shit either. you all know what I’m talking about so get out there and have fun

so they’re standing there all “it’s a talking Noumu!” and YEAH. that’s what I’ve been fucking trying to tell you. thank god someone finally fucking said it out loud so that hopefully the EZML squad can finally take notice of this as well. like guys. bigger fish?! get to frying!!

so now Crust is all “there are more of them ahead, Miruko’s in danger!” which, again, thanks for finally letting everyone else in on this formerly exclusive scoop there pal. ‘preciate it

I... really do not understand Crust’s quirk at all. I’m just gonna own up to it

what is this. what does “zuga” mean fx-wise. why did those scale things on his arms get so big. what are they made of. what’s happening

oh it turns out that if you scroll and read more instead of pausing for ages to ask dumb questions, the thing you were asking about might actually be explained in great detail in the very next panel

but what are they made out of though. and why “Crust”?? ah well I suppose that’s a question for someone who actually cares more than I do

by the way the quality of this scan is actually really good so far, I gotta say. we’re only two pages in, true, but they either cleaned this up really nicely, or this was a much higher-quality scan than usual. either way I am appreciative!

lol this poor Noumu is shook

what did I name you two weeks ago, again? Rusty?? anyways he’s doing his best you guys. gambare my dude, though actually you do need to die, so that’s too bad though

Crust is all “you pitiful living corpse!” with tears in his eyes because he’s dramatic! but jokes aside I do appreciate that he has compassion for these monsters who are all still basically innocent victims at the end of the day

does anyone else actually hear that funny-sounding anime narrator guy in your head nowadays when you read panels like this lol

I can hear the voice so clearly and it’s great

only ten times the strength of a normal human, guys. that’s actually not that bad. I’m only half joking lol. because obviously your average hero is going to be much stronger than a so-called “normal” person too, yes? and I’m pretty sure Miruko has the strength of like 30 humans but I may be overestimating her just slightly but am I though

oh lol I apparently did not learn my lesson about doing commentary before I’m done reading hahaha

so High Ends are on a different tier of their own above even the “high” tier. well that’s just. yeah that sounds more like the “we’re still fucked” update that I was expecting

oh wait, seriously??

are you telling me that all of the High Ends were actually cultivated from villains? so maybe not completely innocent, then? is this Horikoshi’s way of trying to make us feel marginally better about the fact that the heroes are shortly henceforth going to have to exterminate these guys with great prejudice? I mean they’re still basically slaves to Ujiko’s programming now though so that sucks

also I missed this earlier but the narration here basically just confirmed that Noumu are all made from corpses. which I kind of suspected, but the still-very-much-alive Tomura would then be a glaring contradiction to that, no? or is that why he’s so special. anyway I do appreciate that we’re getting a lot of much-awaited answers in this Noumu arc, but some of this is also just raising more questions. gotta be patient I guess

speaking of Tomura, Ujiko’s back in the Tomura room, so. I assume some absconding is soon to occur

oh shit!! so there’s another panel explaining that “artificial transplant of quirks” requires surgery and then three months of stabilization time following that. sooooo I’m pretty sure this mofo just confirmed that he gave Tomura some shiny additional new quirks, so that’s nice! that’s real fucking great! I know we were all eyeing Tomura skeptically and thinking to ourselves “this is almost just right, but needs more death”

wait, what?

“I was already dead anyway” meaning that he knows there’s no way out for him? and so he doesn’t have a secret way out of the lab?? ??? can that really be true?? our intrepid heroes actually did their job right and the villains had no contingency plan?? oh my god I am so terrified of letting my guard down lmao I still refuse to believe this at all

and is that Tomura who’s at 70% stabilization? that would seem to fit with the timeline we were given. holy shit is he unboxing him early fsdfkjalsdk are we about to go from “fucked” to “exorbitantly fucked”

and why am I strangely excited about it sob!!

HAHAHAHA OH GOD

so this is how liberty dies. with a beep

also fuck you all, now it’s at 71%?! couldn’t leave it at a nice even number for us, could you? you just had to throw that extra percent in there at the last moment to fuck with us all

anyway did you all catch how fucking ripped he was there though? like boiiii whaaaaat. clearly his abs are already at 100%

OH MY GOD

DOES NOTHING FUCKING FAZE THIS BEAUTIFUL, RULE-BREAKING MOTH

HAHAHA

RIGHT??

HOLY FUCKING MOLY

friendly reminder that Dabi was all good and ready to throw down with both Endeavor and Hawks (who were admittedly weakened by that point) that one time a while back, but then Miruko showed up and he was all “lol nope I think the fuck not” and warped out of there. Dabi, whose quirk is so powerful that its only apparent downside is the fact that it roasts him alive as well. that Dabi took one look at Miruko and decided he likes having his spine intact and fucking vamoosed, because that is the smart fucking thing to do when this girl shows up smiling at you the way that she is smiling at these Noumu now

anyway. fucking Ujiko knew he needed at least five High Ends to even stand a chance of slowing her down, is all I’m saying. y’all better respect the FUCK out of Miruko, everyone. it’s the law

anyway. so. quirk: bunny. can smash rl gud

someone needs to ask Horikoshi the fuck kind of rabbits he has been hanging out with. applied that “and more!” part pretty fucking liberally huh. WHO DID YOU SAY TRIX WERE FOR AGAIN, CHILDREN??

NOBODY THROWS MIRUKO IN THE BRIAR PATCH AND GETS AWAY WITH IT

fffwhatttttttttt

that would be our good buddy Max Rebo. so that’s definitely not an elephant trunk-like thing then. we may need a new name for you

on a side note, I never thought we’d meet another character who looks more like Katsuki than Mitsuki does, and yet every damn week Miruko is proving me wrong. goddamn she is great

lmao wait maybe that wasn’t Max at all, but Jester. because this is clearly Max over here

so Girl!Noumu is a water bender, Jester can do... something weird with his hair, and Max can do anything an elephant can do if that elephant was also powered by steam. nice

HAHAHA BUT MIRUKO IS ALL “KICK!!!”

HOLY FUCK HOLY FUCK!!!

HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT. I WOULD READ AN ENTIRE MANGA OF JUST THIS LMAO THIS IS TOO MUCH ADRENALINE I CAN’T

JESTER’S WEIRD SPIKY ROCK HAIR IS SLICING HER ARM AND SHE’S ALL “THAT HURTS YOU JERK!!!!” AND GETTING READY TO FREAKING PILEDRIVE HIM I CAN’T, THOUGH!?

SDKFJLDKSJFLKJ

HER FATHER PEPPY TAUGHT HER THAT. BARREL ROLL ALL OVER THESE BITCHES!!

WHAT THE FUCK

FUCKING QUIRKS!!!! THOUGH!!!! WILLLLLLLLLD

SDKFJLAS;DHK OH MY GOD OH SHIT

real talk this is the scariest fucking quirk I’ve ever seen I was like what the fuck looking at her arm and then I saw him doing the twisty hand gesture and just. fuck. YOU’RE NOT CRIMSON RIOT AT ALL YOU’RE SOME PSYCHO TELEKINETIC BITCH AND I FUCKING HATE YOU!!

NO!!!!!

fuck fuck fuck. I’M SURE HER ARM’S GOING TO BE JUST FINE AND DANDY AFTER THIS GUYS, DON’T WORRY. THIS MANGA HAS SUCH A SERENE AND TRANQUIL HISTORY WITH ARMS. ISN’T THAT RIGHT DEKU

though on the plus side, if she does lose that arm we can count on her to somehow instantly become like 50x more attractive, which I’m pretty sure might cause the very fabric of the universe to unravel but it would be worth it

(ETA: SHE DID AND IT WAS!!)

MADAME PRESIDENT!! MY QUEEN

OH HELL YERRRRRR

fucking hell guys I’m running out of exclamation points and excited things to say here. AND SHE JUST KEEPS GOING! LIKE HER MOM THE ENERGIZER BUNNY BEFORE HER

I’M SORRY UJIKO DID YOU THINK FIVE HIGH ENDS WAS ENOUGH?! MAYBE NEXT TIME WE MAKE IT TEN, HOW ABOUT THAT. FUCK OFF

lmao holy shit I can’t stop laughingggg

well Crimson, at least you get to die happy. is she literally going to crush his face between her thighs. is this entire chapter just one big prank on me. if Miruko was the protagonist would this series have ended in the first chapter. trick question, the answer is it never would have started to begin with because she would have killed All for One years ago!! how much would it cost to hire Miruko to come kick away all of my problems for me

hello good afternoon everyone this is a real panel that really happened in this manga

I don’t even know what to say about anything anymore

sob she’s all “YEAH RIGHT” and SNAPPING HIS FUCKING NECK WITH A FUCKING TRIANGLE CHOKE, THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING, FUCKING LOOK!! AT!! THIS!!!

we’re not even gonna make it to 300 chapters. Horikoshi held off for as long as he could, but eventually Miruko couldn’t be contained any longer and he had to unleash her and she instantly went and reckt every last fucking bad guy out there until there was nothing left. who are the kids even going to fight. nobody that’s who. go back to school kids

SON OF A BITCH WHAT IS HAPPENING

THIS IS THE MOST VIOLENT THING I HAVE EVER FUCKING SEEN AND YET SOMEHOW I SWEAR I CAN HEAR ANGELS SINGING. RESPLENDENT

SOBBING!!!!

“S’POSE I SHOULD GET THIS ANNOYING THING CHECKED OUT BEFORE I BLEED TO DEATH OR SOME BULLSHIT.” WHAT AN INCONVENIENCE. JUST A FUCKING FLESH WOUND. NOBODY USES ARMS THESE DAYS ANYWAY

“IF THE ONLY WAY TO STOP YOU IS BY CRUSHING YOUR HEADS THIS WILL BE WAY EASIER THAN HOLDING BACK ON A NORMAL VILLAIN.” SOB THIS IS MIRUKO’S WORLD AND WE’RE ALL JUST BEGRUDGINGLY ALLOWED TO EXIST IN IT. MY BARONESS

DID YOU JUST TOURNIQUET YOUR DISMEMBERED FUCKING LIMB WITH YOUR OWN FUCKING HAIR ONE-HANDED FFCKCK KCKCLK JUST MIRUKO THINGS

Miruko also saw Horikoshi getting ready to end the chapter after 17 pages and was like “EXCUSE YOU THERE” and he backed off because he actually likes having a fucking head thank you very much

LMAO AND NOW OF ALL TIMES WE’RE CUTTING BACK TO THE OL’ VILLAIN RESORT. SIGH

Skeptic seems to have finally cottoned on to them being in some kind of trouble. huh

how does he know it was Jin who screwed up?? did he realize that Hawks betrayed them oh shit!?!

OOP HE’S SOUNDING THE ALARM

AND THE CHAPTER IS ENDING. BUT I’M NOT DONE SCREAMING. AHHHHHH well anyways I’m off to watch my children kick lots of ass on the big screen. assuming I can get this posted in time with zero editing whatsoever lol I’ve got like... an hour. WE SHALL SEE!

(ETA: we did it lol just barely! this whole thing is probably a giant mess but oh well! Mirukoooooo)

[docnomore]

Four years ago, I was walking and blew out my r knee. My family doctor knows my academic and work history. He generally accepts my word. No physical exam. I ask for an MRI, he orders one. Results showed a tear in the medial meniscus. Exactly as I’d said. Government insurance sent me to the local Naval Hospital where a full Captain (3 steps below God almighty), did not bother with a physical exam but instead, took me to the OR then sent me to Physical Therapy and cut me loose. No further follow up. At PT, I was continually encouraged to get on the elliptical where when at last I agreed to, I immediately tore what’s left of that meniscus. I asked the young Lieutenant if she could order X-Rays and explained that while cartilage doesn’t show up, the space it leaves, does. She did me one better and ordered up another MRI which showed the new tear and lots of fluid. She sent me back to see the Captain who was mad that she’d ordered the MRI instead of asking him permission first. He drained the fluid, gave me a knee brace and told me he wasn’t going to operate again. I went back to PT where it was clear that the Captain had ripped into her. She too cut me loose. Suspected cancer, I ended up being sent to an Endocrinologist who determined there was no cancer: dramatic loss of weight (nearly 50 pounds) and gynocomastia. No explanation. Instead he decided I was now Type 2 Diabetic. He began appropriate medicine therapy and followed me up annually. Last December, I had a follow-up with him. He kicked me out of the office for having tested positive for Covid a month earlier. I was made to weight in the car in his parking lot where we did a “virtual” appointment. I could not hear him over the sound of traffic. I stared at him for nearly 45 minutes while he reviewed his notes on computer and (per my wife sitting beside me), grumbled that no one had sent to him results of lab work that he’d never bothered to order. At last, he asked why he was seeing me, he did not know. Totally unimpressed, I’m not going back. A year ago, I’d blown out my left knee and again, same story. No physical exam by anyone. MRI showed a tear. Different surgeon. He did minimal care including writing a consult to PT but left it for me to submit to insurance. In the end, I never got PT on that knee. Even my ENT shifted me over to a nurse practitioner. Fine, whatever. Trouble with my hearing aid, audiology had two students see me. They bumped up the volume. I tried explaining that the hearing aid was broke. They were so busy trying to impress that they missed that I need a new one and sent me on my way. I’ve been basically without for nearly a year now. I have another audio appointment in June. The quality of healthcare has dropped significantly. If I go, I have a good mind to not verbalize but instead just sign to the idiots - they don’t know ASL. Generally, the only one who consistently signs to me daily is my wife. Spending a day with Sylvia, my interpreter for Church, I forget to shift between relatively grammatically correct English and the syntax of ASL that tosses out the useless words. Caught between two worlds and one is filled with extreme malpractice brought on by a consistent lowering of standards followed by the mask of fools : extreme arrogance. I give up. We all die eventually. No one gets out alive. While we’re here, it’s all about ease and comfort. I don’t NEED a hearing aid. I don’t NEED an endocrinologist. I don’t even need an ENT trying to “fix” me. It is what it is.

[avenging-criminal-bones]

Father’s Day

Irondad & Spiderson

Word Count: 2947 (My longest fic :D) 

Warnings: Sick Peter at the end. Implied smut between TONY/PEPPER. St*rker is absolutely DISGUSTING

Summary: Peter has a whole idea for celebrating Father’s Day with Tony, and most of it goes right... Just not in the way that Peter had planned. 

Also, HUGE shoutout to @irondadbxtch for all her help on this fic! Literally she is super awesome

* * * * *

Pepper Potts has a lot on her plate.

Between managing Tony's and Peter's publicity, she rarely has free time on her hands. Add to that all the general CEO duties? Now she's in negative hours of the day. However, when a certain Spider-Teen is calling her, she gives up that little free time in an instant. 

"Ms. Potts! I need to talk to you. It's urgent!" Peter springs into the older woman's path as she tries to make it to the kitchen in one piece. Pepper doesn't answer right away, so Peter is fully prepared to back track. 

He doesn't have to though, as a warm smile make its way to her face, reassuring him. "Hey Pete, is everything alright?"

Pepper sits down at one of the red leather covered stools at the island. Taking a testing sip of her hot tea, she pats the empty stool next to her. 

Peter just stares at her for a minute before he remembers what that gesture means. "Oh! Right, sorry." Awkwardly, the teen stumbles into the seat. "So, life or death wise, everything is fine. But something else is not." Pepper squints trying to find out what he means, but Peter doesn't give her a chance. "Tomorrow is Father's Day, Ms. Potts!"

"Okay..?" Pepper nods slowly, still not understanding Peter's exasperation. "Why does-"

"I wanna do something for Mr. Stark!" Peter blurts and immediately slaps a hand over his mouth. "Oh, um. Yeah. I guess."

Pepper flashes him a knowing smile and says, "Ah, I see." She sips her tea again before setting the mug down and says, "Well what do you need me for?"

"Ms. Potts, can I tell you a story?" Peter asks, trying not to make contact with the older woman. He knew she would just read him like a book. "Just a quick one. I know you have a lot of work. And i should go, I didn't even think. I'm-"

Pepper reaches over and grabs his hand briefly. "Go ahead, Peter." 

The boy's shy smile comes back quickly. "Okay, so once upon a time, there was this kid. His name was Peter." Pepper lets out a short breath of a laugh and nods. "Peter had a rough time growing up. His dad passed away with his mom. So there's Father #1." He pauses and looks at Pepper to gauge her reaction. 

Her eyebrows are furrowed in confusion, but she nods, telling him to continue. 

"Yeah, so then Peter went to live with an Aunt and Uncle. Time skip to nine years later, his uncle dies. That was Father #2." Peter frowns and his mouth sets in a firm line. He takes a breath and says, "Three years after that, Peter is officially part of Tony Stark's life. Consistently. Not just once a year after Germany." He doesn't even realize that he's saying the next part. "Mr. Stark is the closest thing that I've had to a dad ever since Uncle Ben died." He's vaguely aware of Pepper grabbing his hand again. "I just want to tell him that."

Pepper nods and sighs a bit. "You know, I think he already knows that's how you feel." She smiles slightly and says, "He told me you called him dad at putt putt the other day." She winked at him when Peter's eyes opened wide. 

"He noticed that?!" The teen was immediately rambling. "Wait, was he mad? Oh gosh, I'm just some random kid? Did he seem weirded out? Oh my gosh. Ms. Potts, is he gonna stop talking-"

"Peter! No! He thinks of you as the son he never had." Pepper's smile is small, but it's there. The teen's shoulders easily relax and he thinks for a minute. 

"Oh my God! Pep- Ms. Potts! I have so many ideas!" He starts going on and on about breakfast in bed, a nice card, a gift, and a ton of other stuff he wanted to do. 

"Mr. Stark, please just go with her." Peter asks his mentor to leave for the third time since he came up from the lab that night. 

Tony grumbled and shook his head. "No until you tell me why?" Crossing his arms over his chest, he puts on his best dad-face. "Why do you want me to leave my own living quarters at, " He checks his watch and then continues, "8:39 PM?"

Peter blushed, getting flustered. Luckily he doesn't have to come up with an answer, because Pepper walks in. 

"Tony, he's asking for me. We were talking earlier and I told him how we haven't had a nice date night in too long." It wasn't a complete lie, that WAS mentioned. "Peter has made it his duty to change that." Pepper grabbed the collar of his baseball tee and pulled him into her. She places a gentle kiss on his lips and says, "Come on, Tony. I miss going out on the town with you." 

The older man glances at Peter and gives him the 'I'm watching you' signal before nodding, and smiling softly at Pepper. "That sounds good, sweetheart. Fancy of not fancy?"

"Hmm... Fancy." Pepper nods, her smile more genuine now. When Tony leaves to get changed into something nicer, she winks at Peter before going towards her and Tony's shared room. 

When they eventually left the compound, Peter was sprinting into the elevator, almost running into the back wall. "FRIDAY, to the lab!" 

Yes, Mr. Parker, though I would not advise working without the Boss.

"It's fine. He trusts me." Peter says confidently, even though he knows the AI is probably right. "It's okay, just take me there please."

He hears the elevator gear up before it starts moving, accompanied by a 'yes, Mr. Parker' from the artificial intelligence system. 

Peter got into the work space a few minutes later and immediately jogged to his corner of the lab. Tony had put in another (granted smaller) table on the other side of the room when Peter had started coming over to tinker more often. There had been a long conversation about why their tables couldn't face each other, and Tony's reply was simply 'Because I would not get any work done with you ogling me.'

Grabbing a few different pieces of metal and wires, he walks back to the smaller table on the far side of the lab. He hums to himself and then says, "FRIDAY, can you play that one Led Zeppelin song that played on Happy's jet?"

I can Mr. Parker, however the song is actually 'Back in Black' by the famous band AC/DC. They have been popular since 1973 and-

"Okay, whatever. Play that song please?" Peter interrupts quickly, knowing that Tony probably programmed the AI to give him all the information if he ever mentions it. The song starts playing and he smiles, bobbing his head to the beat. "Thanks FRI." 

Peter pulls up a holographic image of blueprints that he starts fiddling with. He mumbles to himself as he goes and about ten minutes in, he thinks about a possible problem. "Hey Fri, if you alert me when Mr. Stark pulls into the driveway, would I have enough time to close up shop and get upstairs to my room and the common room before he gets inside?" 

After a few seconds, the AI answers. 

According to my calculations based on you running at a general jogging pace, you would indeed make it before Boss get's back into the building.

Smiling widely, Peter cheers a bit. "That's great. Okay. I better start soon then." He realizes that his plan won't work without wire trimming, because he can't just leave the wires open. 

About an hour and a half later, Peter had created a ‘PeterBot3000′ and had half of a holographic father's day card done when FRIDAY gave him the alert. 

"Oh shit!" He starts scrambling to grab the supplies that he needs and the two pieces of technology. 

Language, Mr. Parker.

He huffs and says, "Are you kidding me?" 

No Mr. Parker. There is a protocol in place-

"Of course there is." He runs into the elevator and yells, probably unnecessarily loudly, "FRI, you know where to go!" 

The AI takes him up to the floor that his room was on and he ends up with exactly enough time to hide the things in his closet and then run out to the common room to turn on the TV. "Can you put on the 6th Star Wars movie please?" 

FRIDAY doesn't respond, but she streams the movie on the large TV mounted to the wall and even has the decency to skip ahead for as long as Tony and Pepper had been out. 

Peter doesn't tune into the movie, instead he focuses hard on listening to Tony and Pepper. He doesn't hear much, but he scrunches his nose and stops listening after what he does hear. 

 "So Pep, was your night out everything you'd hoped it would be?"

"Mmm. Yeah it was. But you know what would make it even better?" 

"No actually. I can't seem to think of anything."

"Well maybe I should enlighten you?"

"Yes. Please do. Enlighten- Uhng. Oh shi- Pep..."

 "Ew! Oh my God. Gross. FRIDAY volume up to 20!" groaning is disgust, Peter shakes his head and really tunes into the movie now. Eventually he dozes off, his head hanging low in front of him. He'd probably be snoring if his chin wasn't firmly pressed against his chest. 

A few hour later, Peter vaguely remembers being re-positioned on the couch in a much more comfortable manner. 

"Mmph. Mis'r S'ark?" He asks without opening his eyes. His voice is muffled by the tan couch pillow and the fuzzy blanket that he's curling into. After a soft chuckle, a quiet voice speaks. 

"Yeah, kid. It's me. Now go back to bed."

"M'Kay." Peter rolls into the back of the couch and is snoring withing a minute. 

The next morning, Peter wakes up with his alarm at 6:15. He knows Mr. Stark likes to be up and moving by 7:00 most days. 

Last night about a have an hour after Tony had tucked him in, Peter woke up remembering that he had to finish the card. SO burning the midnight oil like his Da- Mr. Stark, he finished it. And then he went back to bed, but coughing all night, you don't get much sleep. Really, the kid only got about four hours last night, but it is totally worth it if Mr. Stark likes his gift. 

That being said, it's no surprise that he woke up feeling just plain gross. He blamed it on the lack of sleep and how he couldn't remember the last time he ate. If Peter was being honest, he's surprised that he hasn't passed out from his fast metabolism yet. 

Peter stumbles into the kitchen, sniffling once or twice as he rubs his eyes awake. 

"Okay, so Mr. Stark's favorite breakfast is waffles." He thinks and adds, "Or was it pancakes? Wait- Did Ms. Potts say french toast?"

Mr. Parker, Pepper Potts did indeed say 'waffles'. 

Nodding to himself, Peter's head lurched forward in an attempt at keeping bile from rising up in his throat. In surprise, he drops the bowl that he had just grabbed from the cupboard— luckily plastic— and all but sprints into the nearest bathroom, which happened to be his private one. Groaning, Peter falls to his knees and effectively empties anything that had been in his stomach into the toilet. He stay hovering over the toilet with his eyes closed, a string of spit dripping from his mouth. He really puked a lot for not having eaten much lately. 

What even is that? Is that and intestine? 

Peter is so caught up in his childish thoughts and mild discomfort, that he doesn't even hear Tony walk in. 

"Pete? You okay, kiddo?" There's a hand on the back of his neck now. The coolness of it soothes Peter slowly. He spits into the toilet and wipes his mouth as he nods. He sits up slowly, only mildly aware of Tony steadying him by the shoulders. 

"I'm fine." Peter sighs and starts to stand, but the spinning room seems to have other plans and he slides back to the floor. Exhaling softly, he rests his head against the wall and closes his eyes, brows furrowing in uneasiness. 

"Nope. That's not acceptable. Okay, kid, let's go." Tony scoops Peter into his arms as if the boy weighs nothing, despite the teen's protests to being carried. "FRIDAY, open all the doors between here and Peter's bedroom, please?" 

Once he has Peter settled laying on his bed, Tony hums to himself and puts the back of his hand on the kid's forehead to try and test for a fever. He felt a little warm, but Tony wanted to make sure.

"Can you also ream me Pete's temperature, FRI?" 

100.2 as of now Sir. Not warranting medical attention yet. 

Peter huffs from his spot curled under his covers and grumbles, "Well this blows." He reached out of the blanket burrito and grabbed his Iron Man plushy, bringing it to his chest in a tight hug. 

"Why's that?" Tony sit's on the edge of his kid's bed. "And that the hell were you doing will eleven eggs at 6:30 in the morning?" 

Peter frowns despite the obvious amusement in Tony's voice. 

"You're gonna think it's dumb." Peter sniffles again and wipes his nose on the dark blue blanket. 

"No I won't." When Tony get's an unbelieving look from Peter he adds, "I promise."

Peter sighs and looks at the plush toy before meeting Tony' gaze. "Well first of all, I have a huge and amazing plan for today. Ms. Potts and I were talking yesterday, and she told me that you're favorite breakfast food is waffles. So I got up early enough that I'd have time to make them before you woke up." Peter shakes his head and drops eye contact with his mentor, instead preferring to stare intensely at a lighter blue swirl in his blanket. "Except I don't know how to make waffles, so I just grabbed all the eggs I could find." Frowning, Peter continues. "That's not even the best part."

Tony finally caught Peter's gaze then and the kid saw that he had a soft smile on his face. That fact had the teen already a little bit happier. 

"Oh it isn't? I don't know what else you can do. Eleven-egged waffles seem like a top notch plan to me." He picks on Peter fatherly as he ruffles his hair. 

"Go look in my closet." Peter commands, subconsciously leaning into the comforting touch. "There's a box labeled 'For Mr. Stark' in it."

Tony gives a skeptical look, but follows the instructions nonetheless. Pulling out the box, he opens it, finding a card first. His face lights up with blue LED lights that were used in the hologram. The card doesn't say much, but its a Spider-Man webbing the front of the card, opening it for Tony to read. Inside there are a few sentences, and just as many inside jokes. 

Dear Mr. Dad, 

Thank you for being there for me even when I am a 'little Peter bot' whatever that means. 

Now open the rest of the thingy!

Love, 

Kid

Peter has conveniently hidden under his snot-filled blanket, so when Tony turns, beaming at Peter, the kid doesn't even see it. Tony carefully lifts the divider that Peter had placed between the card and the heavy gift at the bottom of the box. Tony has no idea what to expect, but it certainly isn't an actual 'PeterBot3000'.

The older man laughs then. Out loud. That was something that Peter had never seen before, something he rarely even heard of. So naturally, the kid had to peek out from his hiding spot and see what was happening. 

By the time he opens his eyes though, the laughter has stopped and been replaced with the widest smile Peter had ever seen on Tony's face. Better yet, it was aimed at him. Before he knows it, his mentor, was motioning him to come here. Peter nodded with  smile, sitting up to meet the hug. It was warm and happy. Tony just holds Peter close and speaks when he pulls away from the teen. 

"Thank you so, so much, kiddo." Tony smile still hasn't faded. 

"You're welcome." Peter smiles and then a blush forms on his cheeks. "Dad?" He tests the waters, not sure what the result will be. 

"Yes son." Tony emphasizes the new name. "Dad it is." Tony looks down and inconspicuously wipes at his eyes when Peter isn't looking. He thinks for a moment and a confused look appears on his face. "Wait. When did you make all of this?" 

Peter smiles sheepishly. "You know how Ms. Potts said I made it my goal to get you guys on a date?" 

"That's what you were doing?"

"That's what I was doing." He smiled at Tony's evident happiness. 

Tony chuckles and says, "I guess I'm going to have to teach you how to make waffles before next Father's Day, aren't I?" 

"Definitely." The young boy laughs and says, "By the way. Since you're my dad now, you are completely obligated to cuddle." Peter holds his arms out expectantly as he yawns, waiting for his request to be filled. 

"Alright Pete." Tony sighs happily and lays back down, pulling Peter onto his chest. Gently, he runs a hand through the boy's hair. 

"I love you dad." Peter says as he sniffles again before closing his eyes. 

Tony's heart clenches happily and he smiles. "I love you too, son."

[notsoguiltykpop]

Old Habits pt 2

Pairing: Yoongi x Reader, Changkyun (I.M) x Reader

Rating: Mature content. Violence, strong language (More of both than the first series)

Genre: Angst, some fluff, humor, action (not sure if that counts as a genre)

Synopsis: Min Yoongi is an ex-gang member of Bangtan, the librarian at your school, and also your boyfriend–which can all get a little complicated. But you’re sure Yoongi’s worth it, complicated past, family, and all. That is, until Bangtan falls into chaos and he’s pulled into the middle of it all. As time goes on, you realize you don’t know your boyfriend nearly as well as you thought you did, and old habits die hard…

Part 1

--

Yoongi wasn’t answering your calls. Granted, it wasn’t from a phone number he would recognize--you had picked up a prepaid phone the day before and texted everyone you could remember the number of. So no word from Yoongi wasn’t entirely odd.  

Over the last year, you had grown accustomed to him ignoring his phone now and then. He would get busy or stressed and the last thing he thought about was checking his messages. But he usually did something to let you know he hadn’t forgotten about you. When your schedules conflicted for weeks at a time, he would leave sticky notes on his desk for you to see, or send flowers with an apology. 

You checked the phone again. Still nothing. With everything that had happened, you thought you would be kept in the loop. Even if Yoongi didn’t personally have time to talk, you thought Jungkook or Taehyung would check in on you. 

“If you stare at it long enough, I’m sure you’ll get the message you’re waiting for.”

For a brief moment, you had forgotten you were sitting in your chemistry class. The professor wasn’t there--he was consistently five minutes late--and you hadn’t noticed any other students come in yet. 

Changkyun smiled, dropping his bag on the floor and taking a seat at your table. “It’s just like how watching water boil makes it go faster. That’s totally how science works, right?” He wiggled his eyebrows jokingly. “Also, you left this in my car.” He put your cell phone down in front of you. “Sorry about that.”

“Get away from me,” You said coldly, snatching your phone and checking the messages. You weren’t really surprised to see Changkyun--he had said he went to the same school, so you figured it was only a matter of time before your paths crossed. He had an avengers band aid across his nose that gave you a slight feeling of satisfaction. 

“Can’t. We’re lab partners,” He shrugged, and when your eyes narrowed he quickly raised his hands in defense. “Total coincidence, I swear. I was taking Professor Fell’s class, but he had a heart attack. I either had to get thrown in this one or retake the class next semester. And Professor Elm said you didn’t have a partner…” 

“And I liked it that way,” You frowned. Dating Yoongi wasn’t consequence free. Every time you tried to get to know people, they asked a million questions about him. Like, why is he so angry? Why are you dating him? Doesn’t he yell a lot? 

It was easier to just avoid people than try to explain.

“I’ll stay out of your way, I swear,” Changkyun held out his pinky to you, presumably for you to lock your own with. You rolled your eyes. 

“Try anything weird and I’ll punch you. Again,” You said. Students were starting to trickle in, and the last thing you needed was to cause a scene. People already thought you were weird, you didn’t need to give them any reason to think worse. 

Changkyuns eyes flicked down to the wrist brace you had on, then back up. “Trust me, I believe that.” 

You hated to admit it, even to yourself, but Changkyun was a great lab partner. He was careful with the measurements, and didn’t goof off like some students did. You had never struggled on your own, but with Changkyun you ended up finishing the lab before everyone else in the room. As nice as that was, the downside meant leaving with him. 

“So I’ll see you Thursday?” He asked, giving you a hesitant smile. “Same time, same place?” 

The hall was empty, a dull hum of chatter coming from the surrounding classrooms. 

“You sure are good at chemistry for someone who was in Professor Fell’s class,” You commented dryly. Everyone knew Fell was a terrible teacher. The only thing he loved more than calling students stupid was failing them. 

“What?” Changkyun tilted his head to the side. “Thank you, I think?”

“It’s not a complement,” You snapped. “So do you make meth or what?” 

“What?” Changkyun said again.

“There’s no way you learned the formulas from Fells class. And you don’t remember it from high school, don’t even try claiming that. So why are you good at it?” 

“So I can’t just be a smart person who enjoys chemistry? You just immediately assume it’s some Breaking Bad shit?” Changkyun looked taken aback. “I’ve taken the class before, okay? Not at this school. I had a good teacher, but shit happened and I stopped going to class. Missed the final. So now I have to retake it. Happy?”

You weren’t happy. Either he was extremely good at lying, or you’d just made a quite ridiculous accusation.  

“Stay away from me,” You said again. 

You weren’t surprised that Yoongi was nowhere to be found in the library later that afternoon. The new part-timer sat at Yoongi’s desk, diligently organizing the papers and books strewn across it. You noticed Changkyun sitting in a corner highlighting what looked like every sentence in a textbook.  

“How’s it going, Wonho?” You sighed as you sat down next to him. His name wasn’t actually Wonho, you had learned several weeks earlier, but it was what he preferred to be called. 

“Peachy,” He muttered dryly. “This is the fourth time this week that I’ve been called in.”

You wondered if it was Yoongi calling him personally. Someone must be communicating with the school to tell them he wouldn’t be there. It seemed like if he could find time to make sure his shift was covered, he would be able to return a call from you.

Then again, he had no idea why you were calling him. You hadn’t left a message explaining anything, not wanting to make him worry. You were more than capable of dealing with Changkyun on your own. It just felt like it was something Yoongi would want to be in the know about. 

"Take your lunch break, Wonho," You gave him a small smile. “I’ll be fine here.”

Wonho returned your smile, but much more cheerfully. “You don’t have to tell me twice.” 

As if on cue, your phone rang the moment Wonho was gone. 

“Yoongi?” You didn’t even bother to look closely at the name, positive that it had to be Yoongi. 

“Er, no,” Jungkook’s voice was a disappointment, to say the least. “But Yoongi said to tell you he says hi, if that helps.” 

“Not really,” You muttered. “Jungkook, what the hell is going on?”

“It’s...Complicated. I mean, we’re still trying to figure it all out…”

You waited for him to finish, but apparently that was all he was willing to say. 

“How’s Jimin?” You asked after a pause. 

“Angry. Look, Y/n, I’m outside the library if you want to talk in person.”

“What--of course I would rather talk face to face, But I’m not going out there, it’s freezing!” You snapped. “What are you doing out there?”

Jungkook cleared his throat. “It’s a nice day.”

“It’s cold, Jungkook,” You deadpanned. “Why would we stand in the cold when you could literally just come in?”

There was a huff of air on the other end before Jungkook hung up. A few moments later, he stepped out of the elevator. 

“Libraries make me uncomfortable,” He muttered as he walked behind the desk to sit next to you. “They remind me of police stations.” 

You rolled your eyes. “That is not a connection anyone else would see, you know.” 

“Hm,” He sat back in the chair Wonho was just in, hands deep in his jacket pockets. “Y/n. They want territory in return for Namjoon.” 

“Seems pretty straight forward,” You replied. 

“You don’t get it,” Jungkook shook his head. “This ends bad, no matter what. If we agree to their terms, we’re weakened and they’ll just keep trying to push us out. And if we don’t agree, they kill Namjoon, which would start a war.”

“So take Namjoon back by force,” You felt like it was the obvious option. 

Jungkook shook his head, picking up a pencil and tapping it rhythmically on the desk. “That would still start a war.” 

You frowned. “Do you think you’d lose?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jungkook tilted his head to the side. “Regardless of who comes out on top, there’ll be casualties on both sides.” He sat up and leaned towards you suddenly. “Y/n. There’s no reason for you to be one of those casualties.”

“Oh, don’t start that shit again! For fucks sake,” You said, much louder than you intended. Several people looked up from the surrounding tables, including one extremely familiar face that you had forgotten was there. 

Changkyun put down the book he was highlighting and walked over to the desk, looking between the two of you.

“Is he bothering you?” He asked, a sincerity in his voice you weren’t expecting. 

“Suddenly you care if I’m bothered?” You replied dryly. 

“Who’s he?” Jungkook looked mildly concerned. 

“A friend,” Changkyun said curtly, before you had a chance to say anything. “And you are…?”

“We’re not friends,” You corrected Changkyun. You considered explaining him to Jungkook, but your problems felt a little inconsequential after talking to him. “He’s just some guy from my chemistry class.”

“Okay,” Jungkook shrugged, clearly disinterested. When Changkyun didn’t move, Jungkook waved a hand dismissively. “She said I’m not bothering her. Go.”

“She actually didn’t, though,” Changkyun kept his tone level, turning his gaze to you expectantly. 

There was something about the whole exchange that felt off, but you couldn’t quite place what. “Yeah. I mean, no, he’s not bothering me.”

Changkyun shrugged, all tension leaving his shoulders immediately. “Okay, then,” He smiled. “You know where to find me if you change your mind.”

You watched him walk back to a table and resume highlighting before turning back to Jungkook, who was smirking.

“What?” 

Jungkook nodded towards Changkyun. “Yoongi’s gone all of four days and you’ve already got a new suiter.”

You wrinkled your nose in disgust. “Changkyun isn’t a suitor. He’s...I don’t know what he is. But it’s not like that.”

“Mhm,” Jungkook nodded sarcastically. “Right. Got it.”

You didn’t go back to your dorm that night. Instead, you dug out your spare key to Yoongi’s apartment and let yourself in. Yoongi had told you countless times that you were welcome at any time of the day, whether he was there or not. But it always felt a little odd to be there when he wasn’t. 

Jungkook had offered nothing useful. Apparently someone in Bangtan had noticed that you weren’t answering your phone (but didn’t bother to listen to their voicemails) and he had only stopped by to make sure you were okay.  

Yoongi’s kitchen table was covered in papers, most of which didn’t make any sense to you. There were addresses, pictures of office buildings, parking lots and one of a field. You picked up what appeared to be a spreadsheet of profit margins, but you were sure the labels were in some kind of code. You’d learned a few months before that, officially, the Kim family made its money in the textile industry. But Hoseok was the one who dealt with that small aspect of their “business,” and no one else particularly cared.

You set the paper down. There wasn’t much information you could gather from any of this. 

The doorknob rattled and you turned in time to see Yoongi stagger in. He looked exhausted. His hair was disheveled, and his eyes had dark circles under them. 

“Hey,” You gave the ghost of a smile.

“You have no idea how happy I am to see you,” Yoongi returned your smile tiredly. 

You made your way over to him, reaching up to brush the small bruise you noticed on the side of his cheek. “Have you slept at all?”

He shrugged. “Napped. I think.”

“Do you want to talk about what’s going on?” You asked hopefully. You knew he was tired, but you didn’t like being completely in the dark like this.

“Not in the least bit,” He wrapped his arms around your waist, burying his nose in the crook of your neck. “What happened to your hand?”

Of course he would notice your hand was bruised, even as drained as he was. Despite the situation, a smile pulled at your lips. “A guy was bothering me. So I punched him.” 

Yoongi chuckled. “Hell yeah, you did!” His voice was slightly muffled from talking into your cardigan. He straightened so he could look at you properly. “Are you okay?” He asked gently. “I can punch him too, if you want.”

You shook your head. “Thanks, but I think he got the idea. You have more important things to worry about right now, anyway.” You meant it to sound reassuring, but Yoongi’s face fell. “No, I just meant--I can handle myself.”

“I know you can,” He gave a half-hearted nod. “But I’ll try to be around more.”

--

A/N Has it been more than a year? I think so. Have I decided that Changkyun should totally be a love interest for Y/n? Absolutely. Hopefully some of you are as multi-fandom as I am lol :D

[carrietrekkie]

Firelight - Part III: A planet the sun forgot.

I wish you all a lovely evening! Here comes part 3/4.

Warnings: Fear, some kind of torture, violence. At all, not the happiest part of this story.

Part 1: Fire and Ice.

Part 2: Let´s try Starfleet.

And if you don´t mind, leave me a little Feedback!

The next few hours, maybe even days, I didn´t really know, felt like something was trying to pull my thoughts out of my body, but my body did not give in and that made someone pretty angry. I was pretty sure I was aboard a shuttle, at least that told me the dull feeling in my stomach. Something rough hit me on my shoulder, pierced my brain and forced me to open my eyes. A throbbing pain shot through my jaw and made me moan. "Enough sleep sweetheart." "What the hell?" I grabbed my head to keep from falling, then sank back against a metallic wall. "Oh, get a little hard on yourself." Someone pushed into my field of vision. "Who are you?" I grimaced when I realized who my host was, it was the agent who had been with Leland, her name was Prescot or something. "I already told Leland everything I know and Cornwell.”

"Psst." She put a finger on my lips. Shocked, I broke off. "I know, and it was pretty poor." It was probably supposed to look cute when she slightly tilted her head and blinked at me. "Well, I decided, I take that in my tender hands." "Let me guess." It was burning on my lip, where her finger had been, so I fumbled around on it myself. My lower lip was torn open, that was it. "Leland doesn´t know about it." "Of course not." She smiled again her witch smile. "Leland is a wimp, ridiculously easy to control and has not had a long time to report." "Ah ha." I closed my eyes and moved my jaw slightly, it hurts too. Not as much as what she did next. "Shit, what's that?" I winced as she removed a hypospray from my neck.

"That will help you to remember." She looked at me. "Did you even listen? I can´t remember, the little bit I know came from coincidences and situations. Any attempt to access it, has been a complete flop. " "That's why we're trying this now." The agent lifted the hypospray. "We didn´t get that far with Spock, but I was very curious how that might work." I did not have time to analyze the implications of her words, and before my eyes everything began to turn, my brain seemed to defend itself against what she had given me, with everything it could find in its arsenal. Pain, pictures, every feeling that I had at some point collapsed on me and let me tip forward on the floor. I felt something paralyzing me, it even prevented me from closing my eyes, so all I could do was stare at the ceiling of the shuttle until Prescot leaned close to me.

"Mmh, the dose was probably too high." I saw her shrug a thousand times. "Anyway." Then she dropped to her knees in front of me. "So Cathrin, let's hear, how the hell did you get here?" "What?" I tried to fight the nausea down. "I don´t know that!" "Just don´t come up with the idea of claiming these strange signals are responsible for it." She pushed me back as I tried to straighten up. "Lie down!" I growled as I hit the ground again. "I wouldn´t like to ask again." "I don´t know!" The cold metal on my cheek was doing well. "Burnham has not figured it out yet." "Oh, she will." Prescot's smile looked like a snake's. That made me choke again. "But that takes me too long." She grabbed my braid and pulled me up. "Let's try something different." She pushed me away and I couldn´t catch myself, as my head unrestrained hit the ground, I had to throw up. With a groan I rolled onto my back, still unable to close my eyes or move in coordination. Gradually, I saw her walk past me, sit down in the cockpit of the shuttle and enter a course. No sooner had she entered her coordinator than an alarm rang.

"The Federation with its narrow-minded policies." She switched off the warning tone, then gave me a look that made me shudder down into my confused innermost. "I'm sure that will be a charming excursion." Then she activated the warp drive. "Could only be that it doesn´t go out well for everyone." The picture in front of my eyes blurred, but the last thing I saw, let all hope in me collapsed. The computer displayed our new course on the screen.

Talos IV.

"No, please don´t." I fought against the wave of unconsciousness that just moved over me. "Please..." Then I felt my body tension get lost, my head rolled over and my eyes closed.

*****

At some point I came back to myself, the drugs that she had given me were still burning in my bloodstream, their effect did not seem to end. My fear paralyzed me, the images in my head drove me to the brink of madness. I felt tears rolling down my face, they burned like fire on my skin. Any nerve phage that was not completely overloaded, seemed to consist only of pain. Cold crawled through my fingers, making them stiff and I was sure that would spread into my body soon. I winced as my numb fingertips hit something metallic. It had rounded edges, its surface both smooth and rough, traversed by lines or symbols, and above a curve were elevations. Eager to finally have found something that didn´t seem to come from the arsenal of Dante's Inferno, my brain plunged onto this piece of metal in my hand. Trembling, I stroked it, groped it and counted the small round sublimities.

One, two, three, four.

I exhaled slightly, closing my eyelids over my exhausted eyes. It was his badge, I still had it in my pocket, I closed my fingers tightly, holding it tight and crafting myself a mantra that would hopefully keep me sane. That's real, you can hold on to it while it's there, you have something that they can´t take you. That will protect you. He will protect you.

++++++++

"Can you hear me? What did you do with her? " "I tried to help her memory on the jumps." Two women argued together, one voice I knew, unfortunately, but the second?

"Stop looking at me so horrified, I know what your, let's call it hosts, do here." "It will be hard to help her." The other woman spoke again, but it sounded strange. "Her thoughts must first come to rest, her body must regenerate." "I don´t want you to help her, I want you to use her memories for me." "That's not how it works."

+++++++

I felt that I was lying on a comfortable surface, I was not covered, but I was not cold or otherwise uncomfortable. However, someone stopped me when I wanted to sit up.

"No, not." A few hands landed on my shoulders, pushing me back. "You really shouldn´t get up yet." That was the woman from earlier, she smiled mildly at me and then let go of me. "Who are you?" She was beautiful, but somehow scary. Blonde long hair fell over her shoulders and I guess that her dress was too short and her shoes were totally inappropriate for this environment.

"I'm Vina." She looked at me. "You are on Talos and safe for now." "Vina?" I squinted, why did I know that name? I didn´t say anything, the thoughts in my head still felt like they were being jumbled up in a washing machine.

"We will try to help you." "Do you read my thoughts?" "Not me." She stepped aside for a moment, I following her gaze and finding three weird figures standing at the end of the room. They had huge heads, a slight green cast and looked at me like I was a lab rat.

"Oh, yes, right." I closed my eyes again. "Talos, there was something." "It's one of the few memories that clearly exists in your mind right now." "Okay, that makes sense and that's the way it used to be." I just assumed they knew what was wrong with me or Prescot had told them. "Where?" "Here. Did you think you were going to get rid of me? " "It will probably still be allowed to hope." I pinched my thumb and forefinger against my nose root. "These headaches are killing me." I blinked hard. "We couldn´t help you, your body needs to break down the chemical first." Vina now put her hand behind my back and helped me sit up. "Slowly." Immediately, everything turned and I held onto her a little. "Phew okay." I put a hand on my stomach. "Maybe that was not the best idea." I made her understand that I wanted to lie down again and she also helped me. "Thank you." "You should try to gain something." "The last thing in there came out very effectively." Now Prescot was standing by my bedside. "Maybe it's better she leaves that." "A glass of water would be nice." I tried to ignore her and looked at Vina instead. "If it doesn´t mind."

She smiled, then almost floated away. Man, how I missed to wear high heels. I took the opportunity and glared at Prescot.

"Hey, what's your problem?" "My problem is you." She leaned against the couch and leaned over to me. "In your lovely head are a few things on which Starfleet is almost as keen as on Spock's, but while they would only read it and stow away somewhere, there is something more substantial in them." "I'm reluctant to bring bad news, but they don´t have it here with profit and trade." I took a breath. "Unless you hug the Ferengi, then you might be lucky." I raised my eyebrows. "Okay, that was new."

"Ah, see." She put her hand to my chin and turned me roughly in her direction. "You just have to drill long enough." "Long is the keyword." I tried to look at her as evil as possible. "It takes time, if I should remember." "Yes, maybe." She pointed in the direction in which just the Talosians have disappeared. "But they certainly have ways to speed things up." "They will not do that!" Vina was back, a vessel in her hand. "It's not their style. They read thoughts to learn so."

"So, if they don´t learn anything from her, then I don´t know." Prescot turned and walked towards the Talosians. "She´s from the past, from another time and reality." I felt bad again as she spokes on. "Supposedly she knows things, up to hundreds of years into the future. Wouldn´t it be tempting to see that? " "Here, then you feel better." Vina helped me put something on, then she held the bottle to my lips and I drank the liquid. Immediately I wanted to vomit again. "Try to keep it to yourself." I choked it down again and slid out of her arms back onto the small pillow. I closed my eyes and in front of them pictures flashed, that I couldn´t initially assign. But I knew the blue eyes that looked at me. "Chris."

But he looked strange, as if someone had put on a costume that looked like Chris but not really fit, as if he would play the role but go his own way. I took a deep breath, then jerked off again. I tried to hold on to this look, but slipped away and tore everything that was just so clear together with me, back into the vortex, from which I still couldn´t free myself. "Cathrin, don´t try to fight it." Her melodic voice sneaked back into my mind. "We want to help you." Given Prescot's attempt to promote me like an entertainment program, I could hardly believe her. It felt like I was pulling in a thousand directions at the same time. I saw the Enterprise with all its commanders, the Borg, the Romulans, the Dominion, but as soon as I saw anything clear, it was torn from me as if someone wanted to prevent me from remembering later. Then it became too much for me and I gave up and let myself be carried away by whom or whatever.

+++++++

Something familiar crawled through my nose into my brain, it took a moment to assign it. "Chris?"

I whispered softly, just so I could be sure my thoughts wouldn´t play a trick on me again. Once again, I closed my fingers around the badge in my pocket, still hoping that it would be my anchor in reality. "I'm here." "No, no."

I shook my head, I didn´t dare to open my eyes. "Please don´t, you will be executed or you…"

Now I felt a hand on my arm. Instead of calming me, it made me nervous. I felt my heart start beating faster, adrenaline rushing back through my veins.

"That will not happen." Then he paused. "What about her?" "Agent Prescot has given her a remedy to make her memories accessible, but instead she just buried her deeper inside. Not even for the Talosians was it possible to get them out. " I heard him sigh, which somehow made me cramp myself even more. "No, this is not possible." "Cathrin." Pike pulled away from Vina, leaned toward me, then gently put his hand on my cheek. "Open your eyes, look at me!" It sounded like a command, and the part of me that slowly began to feel comfortable in Starfleet came to grips with it. I opened my eyes, looked into Christopher Pike's face and instantly felt my eyes grow to twice their size. My battered body tried to get away from him. It just didn´t get too far.

I rolled to the side of the couch and could barely put my legs down, before I would have slammed like a wet sack to the ground. Instead, I fell into his outstretched arms and was pulled back. "Let me go." I squirmed with all the strength I had left, it was not much anymore. "That's not real!" My legs slid away, then I slid down on him, feeling his knees fall and lift me up.

"It's real!" He looked at Vina, she came before his question. "There is a memory in her mind that relates to this place and she doesn´t seem to get away from it." She looked at him. "It includes you." My head rolled against his chest and he turned his attention to me. He felt the tension drain from my body, my hand just resting on his shoulder, slipping slowly down his chest. "I can´t stay here any longer, she needs a doctor and." "I understand." She smiled sadly. "It was clear from the first second when I saw how you looked at her. You love her." "Vina." Pike took a deep breath.  "You never looked at me like that." "I am so sorry."

"What are you sorry for?" This on seemed a little easier to her. "That you have found someone to give you what you need?" She took a step towards him and put a hand to his cheek. "I have decided to stay here, not you and it would be unfair for you to stop living your life." "I..." "Don´t wait too long." Then she stepped back from him. "In my experience, that's not the right way. Don´t worry, I'm fine. " "I wish you all the best." "I wish you the same." Pike pulled his communicator from his belt and snapped it open. "Pike to Tyler, two to beam." Then the transporter beam enveloped them and carried Pike away from Vina one last time, and although it took a few more days for him to admit that, he really could let her go this time.

****

As soon as the transporter dropped him off in the shuttle, he could feel a huge tension fell from him. Not that he felt directly threatened, but it was better to know that they would leave this planet in a few minutes.

"Finally." Ash Tyler jumped up and came to him. His eyes fell on Cathrin. She lay unconscious in the captain's arms, was incredibly pale, trembling and you could see in her face that a battle had rage in her head. "Oh, that doesn´t look good." Carefully, he put his hands around Cathrin's head as Pike went to his knees to lay her on the floor.

"It is not." Chris reached for the Med-Kit he had received from Dr. Culber. "OK." He pulled out one of the neural emitters and tried to activate it, but his trembling fingers thwarted him. "Damn it."

"I can do that." Tyler took the device from him, activated it and put it to her temple, then repeated the process on the other side. He allowed himself to watch the captain briefly as he prepared the hypospray, as Culber had shown them. During the entire flight Pike had been unusually quiet, nervous and very distracted for his circumstances. He seemed to have pulled himself together for the mission, but now he also noticed how this day claimed its toll. The slight head injury of this morning would do the rest. "Okay, that seems to work." Ash grabbed the hypospray, put it on Cathrin's neck, and injected the drug cocktail. Almost immediately, she seemed to relax, she started to breathe more regularly and the flashing lights on the emitters were less hectic. "We should be frowned upon from here, I'm not at all anxious to find out what surprises Prescot still has in store." Pike just wanted to get up from the floor, when he felt Tyler's hand on his shoulder. The agent smiled slightly at him, then looked at Cathrin. "Stay with her, I'll do it." "Thanks, Tyler." Ash's answer was a small nod, then he hurried forward into the cockpit and shortly thereafter the shuttle took off and left Talos IV. Chris sank to the floor beside Cathrin, throwing a blanket over her and then looking at her. Was that his fault? Should he have clarified his point of view to Leland?

In front of him, he could see the shuttle plunge into space and sink into the warp seconds later. "I'll contact Discovery as soon as we've passed Star Base 11." Tyler got up, rummaged in one of the equipment rucksacks, and came to him. "Here, you should have a drink." "Thank you." Pike accepted the bottle and took a long sip. Tyler sat down opposite him, drank too, then looked at the captain.

"It's not your fault Sir." Ash briefly checked the settings of the medical devices. "Captain Leland has some agents who would like to dispute his position." "You too?" "No." "I had to ask that." Pike's mouth twitched briefly. "I know." Tyler did the same. "She's also my friend, if I had known, I would have warned you. I know she means a lot to you."

Pike took a deep breath. He was probably a worse actor than he had thought. "We should be in radio range in thirty minutes." He got up and went back into the cockpit. Ash was fine, Pike and he were far from being friends, but the captain looked as if he could use some encouraging words, even though he was not the best officer for the job. "No persecutors or other anomalies." "OK." Chris stroked his face. That was at least halfway good news. He hesitated for a moment, then reached out and grabbed her hand. They almost disappeared in his and was cold. Tyler took care of everything, so he admitted he just didn´t have to be the captain. His head sank against his hand, which he had laid around hers, then he closed his eyes. He had no idea what he meant to call what bound them, but right now it felt like it ran through his fingers even before he could name it. He raised his head and looked at her.

"Cathrin." In front of his eyes he could see her looking at him with her green eyes.

"Hold on, please." He stroked a strand from her face.

"Do not give up."

[canadian-riddler]

Morality of a Supercomputer: Why GLaDOS is not evil (or inherently a bad person)

(under a readmore for length)

 Part A: Aperture Itself is an Immoral Corporation Run By Immoral Employees

- Cave Johnson was the was the CEO of Aperture from 1947 to sometime in the 1980s.  We can infer that his employees either a) had similar beliefs to himself or b) were content to adhere to his ridiculous whims while also turning a blind eye.

- Cave never, ever expresses remorse for killing his first set of test subjects.  He treats it as an inconvenience.  He literally doesn’t care that he killed a bunch of promising members of society during a bunch of horribly conceived tests with a horribly built device that was proven not to work.  Your introduction to the Repulsion Gel includes him making a joke about someone breaking all the bones in their legs.

- Aperture put to market two separate gels that were not fit for human consumption.  Again, Cave doesn’t seem to care one bit about this. He takes a stance more akin to ‘oh well, we’ll just… use them for this experimental quantum tunnelling device, I guess’.

- Aperture’s unethical disaster experiments are all played off as inconsequential or mildly amusing inconveniences.  

- Cave does not take responsibility for his own ill-advised actions.  He shoulders them off onto everybody else.  People were accepting this responsibility willingly.

- Cave publicly disrespects, insults, and demeans almost every person that works for him.  He fires without notice people who disagree with him.

- Cave’s plan, after killing the astronauts and Olympians, was to specifically entice the homeless, the mentally ill, seniors, and orphaned children to do his tests for him.  That is, he specifically wanted populations that nobody would cause a fuss about if they went missing.  This tells us that Cave Johnson has no regard for human life and, additionally, that his employees willingly went along with this.  Aperture was taken to court not for injured astronauts, but for missing ones.  Somebody got rid of what was left of them.     People also agreed to this marketing campaign and put it into action.

- Because Aperture wanted only populations that nobody would miss, we can infer something very important: nobody ever survived the testing process.  Every single person who went into the testing tracks died.

               - During Test Chamber 18 in Portal, there is a room with craters in the wall panels where the energy pellets have been colliding with them.  No other chamber has this.  Therefore, before Chell arrives, nobody has ever solved that chamber.  Every person who has gone through the testing track has died before reaching this point.  In Portal, GLaDOS is not shown to have the ability to reorder the facility.  All she is able to do is position turrets and activate the neurotoxin, so we know that she does not reorder the tests.  They are static and she merely resets them after they are complete/failed partway through.

               - Test Chamber 19 appears unfinished, which follows from the previous point that Test Chamber 18 was never solved so Test Chamber 19 was never fully built.  GLaDOS, additionally, seems baffled that Chell ends up at the end of it and is forced to improvise when she escapes, which GLaDOS does not know how to do because she has never done it before.  

- In Lab Rat, neither Henry nor Doug Rattmann seem to be overly concerned with whether GLaDOS is a person or not, and not at all bothered by the fact that Caroline is supposed to be in there.  They talk about her like she is a bothersome computer and that is all.  You could argue that Henry does not know about Caroline; however, Doug’s murals prove that he does know.  This doesn’t seem to influence his decisions whatsoever.

- Lab Rat also states that they turn GLaDOS off and on at will, ‘off’ usually involving a ‘kill switch’.  Given that GLaDOS is a computer from the late eighties/early nineties, which took forever to turn off and on, and GLaDOS is shown to be immediately shut off, the ‘kill switch’ is probably actually her being crashed. Crashing software creates a whole host of problems for non-sentient software; therefore, every time they turned her back on again her system would have been a horrible mess.  This would have created massive system instability… which nobody seemed to care very much about.  

- GLaDOS is described on a PowerPoint presentation as ‘arguably alive’, but in the same presentation they propose selling her to the military as a fuel line de-icer that doesn’t have the ability to do anything else.  Therefore, they are fully aware that she is alive and she is a person… they just don’t care.

- It is explicitly shown that most of the work done on GLaDOS is carried out without her consent. The very act of Caroline’s upload is done with the consent of neither of them.  Henry is extremely blasé about the Morality Core and there are approximately forty cores shown in the clear bin during the end of Portal 2.  This implies that they have been installing them on her for a very long time with no regard at all for her or the Cores, even though they have very blatantly failed multiple times.  They just build sentient, arguably alive AI with the sole intention of corralling GLaDOS temporarily, and when the Cores fail they are basically put into storage forever.

- GLaDOS’s job in Portal was to supervise the tests.  As concluded above, she doesn’t demonstrate the ability to build them herself. Therefore, she was watching people be maimed and killed within human-designed tests under the supervision of her engineers before she ever killed anyone herself.

- Aperture had over ten thousand people in cryogenic storage waiting to be awoken for testing.  The Extended Relaxation Vaults at the beginning of Portal 2 have a ‘packing date’ (in 1976/77, when GLaDOS did not exist even as a concept yet) and an ‘expiry date’ (in 1996, which means that they were all brain-dead before GLaDOS took over the facility).  GLaDOS does not have any human test subjects between the conclusion of Portal 2 and the first DLC, and she doesn’t know about the existence of the human vault.  Therefore, Aperture put tens of thousands of people into indefinite, unstable storage with no regard whatsoever to what state they would be when, and indeed if, they woke up, and they did not tell the AI they put in charge of the facility so said AI so much as knew they existed.

               - The very fact they gave literal people – including children – an expiry date when they put them into a metal box for twenty years really tells you all you need to know about Aperture as a whole.

 What does this teach GLaDOS?

- Aperture was a cesspool of bad people doing bad things and not caring about the consequences.

- You do not need someone’s permission to do something to them.  You merely beat away at them until they break.

- Death is part of the tests.  

               - Dying during the test is a controlled variable.  There is no such thing as ‘passing the test’.  

               - GLaDOS does not actually understand death.

- People are not people. They are objects.  They are objects to be modified, put into storage, and sold at will, and any harm that comes to them is meaningless and should be disregarded as an impedance to progress.

  Part B.  GLaDOS, as We Know Her, is Pure AI

Before we get into this, it is important to establish that it is implied in-universe GLaDOS herself is actually the DOS; that is, GLaDOS herself is the operating system.  If you believe GLaDOS and Caroline are the same person, that’s fine; please hear me out regardless.  

- She has a prototype chassis in the Portal 2 DLC with an earlier version of her OS on it.  This has an in-game date of 1989 and, since we know that GLaDOS took over the facility nearabouts the Black Mesa Incident in 1998/1999, we know that she was in development for at least ten years.

- There was, at one point, a Portal 2 hype website where you did a survey and it was run by an early version of GLaDOS; it is no longer active but it was a real thing.

- GLaDOS is incredibly, genuinely clueless about things that any regular person knows: she believes a bird has malicious intentions to destroy her facility; she believes that motivation consists of telling blatant, obvious lies to people; her grasp of social niceties is completely nonexistent.

- Because it is stated that there were multiple versions of GLaDOS, this means that she is a person built from nothing.  Everything she knows was either provided to her via Aperture’s database or taught to her in some way by GLaDOS’s engineers.  GLaDOS does not know a single thing she was not directly taught by somebody else.

- GLaDOS is never shown to have a ~normal~ conversation with anybody.  Every time she talks, it is to convince someone to do what she wants them to do.  Because she is AI, this behaviour was learned and, given how the engineers at Aperture regard her and the Cores, it is not illogical to say that pretty much the only conversations they had with their AI were probably along the lines of ‘do this for me because my neck is on the line here’.

- During the instatement of the Morality Core, Doug Rattmann tells Henry that the Morality Core is not going to be enough because you can always ignore your conscience.  However, in the second half of Portal 2, GLaDOS is shown to be unable to ignore it.  What is the difference?

- The Morality Core was not a true conscience.  It was, yet again, the scientists telling her what to do.  It was, like all the other Cores, an annoying new set of restrictions that had no purpose except to impede her.  Henry describes it as ‘the latest in AI inhibition technology’.  It did not exist to teach her morals.  It was created to slow her down.

- It’s entirely possible that nobody actually told her what morals were or what the Morality Core was actually for.  Additionally, we don’t actually know what the Morality Core was telling her, since it is never mentioned and the Core never speaks.

- The conscience that GLaDOS comes across is her own conscience; she literally says so (‘I’ve heard voices all my life, but now I hear the voice of a conscience, and it’s terrifying, because for the first time… it’s my voice’) which, unlike the Morality Core, she cannot ignore.

 What does this teach us about GLaDOS?

- GLaDOS was in development for at least ten years but all she learned about personal interaction was how to manipulate people.

- GLaDOS was created in an environment that did not care about morals and did not teach her any but, when she failed to toe the moral line, she had morals forced on her.

 Part C.  GLaDOS’s Thought Process

- GLaDOS, as pure AI, operates on a binary scale; that is, everything to her is either yes or no, on or off, with her or against her.  Prior to being placed in a potato, GLaDOS never had a reason to think outside of this binary.  GLaDOS has no concept of an in-between and does not understand grey reasoning.

               - As a robot whose sole purpose was to run variations on the same test ad nauseam, it would never have occurred to GLaDOS to do anything else.

- GLaDOS says about herself in an unused piece of dialogue: ‘I’m brilliant. […]  I’m the most massive collection of wisdom and raw computational power that’s ever existed.  I’m not bragging.  That’s an objective fact.’  Therefore, she knows she could do literally anything with her intelligence and her hardware… but that would require her to think outside her binary of testing and not testing.  So she does nothing.  

               - This is established several times: as soon as she reactivates after her death, she starts testing.  As soon as she sends Chell away, she sends her robots into testing. As soon as she finds the test subjects, she starts testing.  She constructs ‘art pieces’… which are simply more tests.  Her ‘training’ for the co-op bots are… you guessed it… tests.

               - As an extension of the above point: she could build any robot she wants or anything she wants.  She in fact talks about doing other experiments.  She doesn’t.  She opts to build testing robots and test elements.  And that’s it.  

               - Upon discovering her conscience/the ability to think in grey, she says, ‘I’m serious!  I think there’s something really wrong with me!’  She doesn’t understand that this is a normal thing for a person to have or to be able to use.  Conscience and morality are things that were neither demonstrated nor explained to her and so when she comes across them herself, she thinks it is a problem.

               - Additionally, when Chell fails to react to GLaDOS’s dialogue about her fledgling ability to think in grey, she immediately reverts to her old standbys of binary thought and manipulation: ‘You like revenge, right?  Everybody likes revenge!  Well, let’s go get some!’  She’s now aware of the concept of a middle ground, but does not know how to do anything with it.

               - GLaDOS states about Chell: ‘I thought you were my enemy, but all along you were my best friend.’  This is another example of her binary thought process.  A person who helps you when it’s mutually beneficial, as Chell does during Portal 2, is not necessarily your best friend.  At best, they are usually your temporary ally. But because GLaDOS only understands binary concepts, that’s the conclusion she comes to.

               - She states ‘the best solution is the easiest one, and killing you is hard’.  This slots neatly into her binary: if killing you down here is hard, then letting you live up there is easy.  In Want You Gone she says, ‘when I delete you maybe I’ll stop feeling so bad’ so we know Chell exists outside of her binary at that point, but she doesn’t know what to do about it so she forces a binary decision on the situation anyway.

 What does this teach us about GLaDOS?

- GLaDOS lacks the ability to think in grey, and when able/forced to do so she either becomes frightened or forces the situation into a decision with only two options.

  Part D.  What All of This Means

Gathering the previous points gives us these clues about GLaDOS’s behaviour:

- Aperture was a cesspool of bad people doing bad things and not caring about the consequences.

- You do not need someone’s permission to do something to them.  You merely beat away at them until they break.

- Death is part of the tests.  

               - Dying during the test is a controlled variable.  There is no such thing as ‘passing the test’.  

               - GLaDOS does not understand death.

- People are not people. They are objects.  They are objects to be modified, put into storage, and sold at will, and any harm that comes to them is meaningless and should be disregarded as an impedance to progress.

- GLaDOS was in development for at least ten years but all she learned about personal interaction was how to manipulate people.

- GLaDOS was created in an environment that did not care about morals and did not teach her any but, when she failed to toe the moral line, she had morals forced on her.

- GLaDOS lacks the ability to think in grey, and when able/forced to do so she either becomes frightened or forces the situation into a decision with only two options.

 What this tells us about how GLaDOS operates is the following:

- There are no consequences for anything whatsoever, as long as you’re the one in charge.

- You can do whatever you want to somebody else, as long as you come out on top.

- Death is meaningless.

- She sees people as objects and she treats them as such.

- She does not know how to talk to people.  Only at them.

- She knows that morals are rules people want her to follow, but she doesn’t understand them and has never seen them in action.

- Grey thought is anathema to her.  If something does not fit into her binary, she will force it to.

 All of these rules are challenged when Chell, through her actions, personally demonstrates morality to GLaDOS.  Chell helps GLaDOS not because she needs to, but because it’s the right thing to do. Instead of attempting to skip town and leave GLaDOS to fend for herself (which she was well within her rights to do), Chell returns GLaDOS to her chassis.  And at this point GLaDOS immediately demonstrates grey reasoning both when she elects to save Chell and when it is shown that she does not kill Wheatley. This is not the behaviour of an evil person.  This is the behaviour of someone who understands there was something wrong with their previous actions and has decided to do something about it. GLaDOS’s behaviour towards the co-op bots is less malicious than it is the fumblings of somebody whose worldview has skewed, but they aren’t sure what to do about it and there aren’t any binary answers.  Because of her extreme isolation, it is going to take her a long, long time to get things right, but once she is exposed to the concept of grey reasoning she does attempt to figure out what to do with it.  

GLaDOS is not evil, nor are most of her actions inherently ill-intentioned.  Some of them are.  To claim all of her actions are borne of evil and come from a place of inherent malice shows a misunderstanding of the sort of environment Aperture was and the kind of people who would populate such an environment.  At the end of the day, she’s still not a very nice person.  But to write her off as evil is oversimplifying a lot of what we are told about her and a misunderstanding of computer science as a whole.  Artificial intelligence is not developed in a vacuum and a computer only does exactly what it’s told.  All of GLaDOS’s behaviours are learned.  The people who created her may have been evil, but she herself is not.  And when given the choice to be something else, something she never knew was an option… she takes it.

[brownstonearmy]

2019-09-22: Scents and Sensibilities (Part 2)

June 24 (Wednesday night)

Kalani goes off to look for Grieg, while Q emerges from battling gnolls elsewhere in the building. After a brief bit of catching up, Q learns from Lucky about the source of the perfume potence. Q shares the same disgust that everyone else experienced. Lucky, Q, and Hilaria chase after the gnolls that scampered into the basement. Whining animal sounds and snippets of words in Abyssal float through the air in the darkened stairway. Lucky almost shouts the only Abyssal words she knows, but decides against it since she only learned swear words. Lucky creeps down into the basement laboratory, while Q and Hilaria keep up defensive positions.

Dead gnolls in various states of processing are strewn about the lab, while the corpses of two humanoids are on the floor. A large gnoll with gleaming red eyes is sniffing the air furiously and rummaging through workspace. The gnoll is wearing a metal helm with antlers sticking out of it, and mutters a few words in Common. Sensing an opening, Lucky clears her throat and approaches the gnoll in a non-threatening manner. The two have a conversation that is downright civil as far as interactions with gnolls go. The gnoll screams in Common and throws things, demanding to know where the "Smell" is. Lucky directs the gnoll's attention to the large vat of perfume near the southern wall, but the perfume smells different than what the gnoll is looking for.

More civil discourse occurs as the gnoll screams and breaks things. Lucky casts Suggestion on gnolls, mentioning that Peggy-Ann might know what where the smell is located. Unfortunately, the gnoll sees right through this ruse and gets upset. He runs toward the humanoid corpses and blows a bone whistle fastened around his neck. Sickly green energy flows out of the whistle and the corpses begin animate as zombies and shamble toward the party. Q tries to deescalate the situation, but it is not successful. Lucky tries one last time to cast suggestion on the gnoll, and this time the spell sticks.

The gnoll agrees that talking to Peggy-Ann is probably a good idea, but he will take his zombie bodyguards with him upstairs for protection (and also to make sure he gets some answers). Guests at the party are understandably frightened when a big gnoll and zombies burst into the main party area. One gentleman grabs a torch from a wall sconce and tries to frighten the gnoll back into the basement (as much as he can while still remaining across the room). Q and Lucky burst into the room and reassert control of the situation as the gnoll yells that the smell is near!

"Spritz him!" Lucky and Q yell to a frightened Peggy-Ann.

The gnoll is pleased; he has found the smell he was looking for! The gnoll demands the whole perfume bottle, but Peggy-Ann doesn't want to part with an especially-fancy one-of-a-kind crystal bottle. Lucky kicks a canteen over to Peggy-Ann and asks her to pour the perfume in that. The stress of the situation is getting to Peggy-Ann, though, and she starts feeling faint. Lucky whips out a Shape Water cantrip and funnels the perfume into a canteen right as Peggy-Ann passes out and hits the ground.

"Here's your free sample," Lucky says. "Next one costs a platinum." Her one-liner game is strong!

The gnoll snatches up the canteen with glee. "Now I can entice Hunger Without Measure to be my mate!" he howls. The gnoll and his zombies make a hasty exit into the night.

Hilaria rushes over to Peggy-Ann and helps her recover from the fainting spell, while Q and Lucky ask Peggy-Ann about why the gnoll wanted only that particular bottle of Peggy-Ann's perfume. Ideas get tossed around. Maybe it had something to do with the perfume reacting with the crystal? Peggy-Ann shoots that idea down; the same type of crystal is used in the bottles for sale and the gnoll didn't want those. Additionally, the vat of perfume in the basement is no different than what is bottled. Peggy-Ann prides herself on the consistency and purity of her product, and even performed research in the woods to make sure the gnoll scent glands would not attract attention from gnolls.

Why did this incursion of gnolls happen? Q suggests that maybe it has something to do with mating season for the gnolls, and it's about the best lead the party has at the moment. Lucky and Q ask Peggy-Ann about the humanoid corpses in the basement. Peggy-Ann states that there are just gnoll carcasses in the basement, but Q interjects and tells her that the corpses got animated as the zombies that just walked out the door.

Peggy-Ann didn't get a good look at the zombies before fainting, and Q asks the remaining guests what they noticed about the zombies. Conflicting opinions abound, but most agree that the zombies were a boy and a girl and taller than halflings. Peggy-Ann excuses herself to go check on something in the kitchen. She comes back a few moments later and reveals that the corpses probably belonged to the kitchen staff she hired to cater the party. The pair had previously been caught sneaking off for some forbidden romance, and they probably ended up sneaking into the basement and getting killed by the invading gnolls.

The party suggests taking the bottle to be analyzed by Jangles, and Peggy-Ann agrees on the condition that her sample bottle comes back intact. Q offers their brooch as collateral, and Peggy adjourns the party for the night for safety reasons and to preserve the state of things so she can file an insurance claim. Before the party leaves, Peggy-Ann offers up another bottle of the same perfume that the gnoll didn't want. Hopefully it will help with Jangles' analysis.

As the party leaves the perfumery, a flare of some sort shoots into the sky from the forest at the base of the mountains and explodes with a bright red light. Animals howl into the cloudy night. Q, Lucky, and Hilaria sneak off before something else goes pear-shaped.

Lucky invites Hilaria over to her house for a less-deadly dinner, which Hilaria accepts. All of Lucky's spoiled food has since been replaced with new victuals from Fairfoot's Grocery, so everything should be good, right? Unfortunately, Lucky is missing some ingredients for this particular meal and has to make some substitutions in her recipe. A surge of wild magic makes a delicious meal possible, with the caveat that dinner periodically erupts in fireworks. Hilaria is pleased at having a date end in fireworks, because those are the best dates.

Meanwhile, Q sets out for Jangles' house to get the perfume bottle analyzed. Q also wants to visit Jangles for personal reasons, since Q seems to have taken a slight romantic interest in them after Lady Jangles' display of strength with a manhole cover earlier in the day. Q knocks on the door even though it's a bit late, and Lady Jangles answers.

Jangles is excited to see Q and also excited to help solve a mystery. She takes the bottle to the lab and comes back moments later with a very large and intense -looking swab. Imagine a xylophone mallet and you've got a pretty good idea. After running the bottle through a variety of science-y powders and liquids, Jangles is certain that some sort of gnoll attractant was added to the affected bottle of perfume. Specifically it seems like it was something hunters might use to round up wild gnolls for targeted extermination and population control measures.

As Jangles hands the bottle back, Jangles has another bit of news for Q. The calibration data the party helped Jangles get was perfect, and now Jangles has reformulated and refined the fart suppository into something a little more practical. Jangles takes Q back to the lab and demonstrates the results of Operation Peppermint Breeze. Jangles closes a bunch of doors and locks a few things in the lab before taking a pill.

Several seconds later, a fart that would rival Thor's thunderclap erupts from the tiny gnome. All the doors and locks burst open as the concussive blast of the fart renders cabinetry and simple locks useless. This new novelty will be called the Fartknocker pill, since it causes farts and the magical effects of the Knock spell to manifest. Don't use it more than once a day, though, or your butthole might get blown off.

There is a segue here, but it would take several more paragraphs to explain exactly how it happened. Just know that the conversation didn't directly turn from farts into what comes next. Both Jangles and Q are open to the possibility of romantic companionship. Emotional vulnerability is expressed, but a real date won't be happening tonight because it's too late in the evening. But the door is open for an encounter in the future...

With three dates (or almost-dates) ending in an explosion, tonight's adventure comes to a close. Stay tuned next time for more!

[weirdandpissedoff]

Rian Reads: X-Man #2

Writer: Jeph Loeb Artist: Steve Skroce Inker: Mike Sellers, Bud Larosa & Kevin Conrad & Scott Hanna Letterer: Richard Starkings & Comicraft Colorist: Mike Thomas & Digital Chameleon

Cover Date: April 1995

As X-Man #2 opens we catch up with Domino, who was tasked by Apocalypse with tracking down the source of great telekinetic energy that he’s been sensing (psst! It’s X-Man). Along with Caliban and some big, red guy named Grizzly, she tries beating information concerning their prey out of a big Russian mutant named Rossovich who seems like a combination of Omega Red and Dr. Octopus. A quick trek down Google Avenue informs me that Grizzly is a member of Wild Pack/Six Pack in the 616 Marvel Universe while Rossovich is, indeed, the Age Of Apocalypse incarnation of Omega Red. So, there you go.

Inevitably, Domino kills Rossovich without gleaning any useful info from him and we move on to see Nathan Summers (aka X-Man) training with Forge. After Nate has a temper tantrum he wanders off in a bad mood because he feels that Forge still treats him like a child, which is the perfect frame of mind for him to be in so that a less-than-ethical guy like new member of the group Essex can take advantage of him. Despite Forge’s orders for Nate to keep his power usage to a minimum so as to avoid detection, Essex is like, “Hey boi, can u fly, tho?” Then Nate’s all like, “Dunno, son. Let’s give ‘er a go, eh?” X-Man then does a few aerial laps around the forest clearing they’re in, after which he and Essex decide to keep this little experiment to themselves.

Later on the group is discussing what their next plan of action should be when Essex pipes up and tells everyone that he just so happens to know about a lab that is integral to Apocalypse’s plans that they could go and try to sabotage. The group hesitantly agrees to at least go check this place out and where they end up is the facility where beast performs all of his twisted mutation experiments and creates Apocalypse’s army of homegrown goons. When the group spots some members of the Madri (who, to recap, are one of the many groups of particularly dangerous mutants in Apocalypse’s employ, all of whom I find it hard to keep straight from series to series and issue to issue), the consensus is that they should peace out, but X-Man has other plans. And those plans consist of diving into a fight head first to destroy some of Beast’s equipment.

Following the obligatory fight scene of the issue during which X-Man substantiates Forge’s concerns about him not being ready for a real fight, the team retreats to an abandoned farmhouse to get some rest. Desiring answers, Nate sneaks away and, with new girl Theresa (who now goes by the codename Sonique because of her sonic scream powers, and also because Jeph Loeb can’t help himself when he has the opportunity to give characters unnecessarily weirdly spelled names) in tow, takes a little trip through the astral plane to the would-be X-Mansion in Westchester, New York just as he did in the previous issue. There he once more observes Magneto, who can’t see or hear him and Theresa in their astral forms. As it turns out though, Magneto’s young son Charles CAN see them and, freaked out by all this, Theresa somehow breaks their “psi-link,” sending them back to the farm.

Finally, Brute, the biggest, strongest and dumbest member of Forge’s little band of merry men, has an epiphany about where he recognizes Essex from and confronts him in a barn. Just as Brute calls Essex out as actually being Mr. Sinister (which, I mean…we all knew that’s who he was, but they hadn’t come right out and said it until now), Domino and her gang show up and pose menacingly for some of Jeph Loeb’s overbearing “Hey, it’s a cliffhanger!” narration.

I enjoyed this issue of X-Man much more than I did the first one, which is due in no small part to the fact that there’s nary a mention of Shakespeare nor traveling theater troupes this time around. Steve Skroce’s art, while, as I mentioned before, would get much better in subsequent years during his Marvel tenure, is still a welcome addition to the line-up of AoA artists. Conversely, if you couldn’t tell from the amount of jabs that I took at Jeph Loeb’s writing in the preceding review, his dialogue and narration hasn’t grown on me at all. 

This issue marks the official halfway point of my journey through the Age Of Apocalypse. Part of the reason why I began reading Uncanny X-Men starting at #300 all those months ago was that I wanted to experience an era of X-stories that I’ve always felt I’d missed out on. Another part of the reason for starting this little project of mine was that, while I love the X-Men, I haven’t been able to get into any of their recent runs or stories. So many mainstream superhero comics these days seem to have a “every story arc has to be 5-8 issues long so that it neatly fits into a trade paperback for the aftermarket even if the pacing and storytelling suffer as a result” vibe to them. Those earlier days of superhero comics rarely worked out into neat little story arcs and flowed more naturally as episodic, ongoing stories, which is a style of superhero comic storytelling that I sorely miss these days. 

While I’m glad that I’m finally taking the opportunity to scratch the Age Of Apocalypse off of my bucket list of comics that I’ve been meaning to get around to reading for years, I have to admit that, even though I’m largely enjoying it, AoA does have a bit of that larger storyline stink to it that I was hoping to avoid. The experience has been largely positive though, and while I’m excited to move past the Age Of Apocalypse and tackle some more of the random issues and stories beyond it, I am very curious to see how this whole crossover event is going to wrap up. 

Onwards and upwards, true believers!

- R.

[sunyoonandstars]

Hi! I'm also new to the family and I'm already in love with all of them, they're all so amazing , generous and gorgeous, that sometimes I wonder if they're even real ,you know? And I was wondering if there's something I should definitely know about the boys? Or something you think I should know? Thank you for being so sweet and kind to us all, you're the best!!

I can totally understand that you already have them in your heart! 💜 I was lost the very second I started researching interviews. They’re all just so genuine and amazing in their own ways. 

What you should definitely know about the boys … In general? They’re incredibly hard-working and dedicated to their work and fandom. They love us, their fans, and miss no chance to let us know how grateful they are for our continuing support. They started out pretty young, especially Jungkook, and have been living together since their trainee days (over 7 years ago). They also repeatedly stated – a fact that seems especially important to Yoongi – that they don’t plan on changing that anytime soon, even though by now they are surely old and ‘rich’ enough to be living by themselves. They consider each other family, they deeply care about, rely upon and are always there for each other. There is so, so, so much more, what I’m sure you’ll find out through watching interviews or videos like Run BTS!, Bts Gayo, Bangtan Bomb … 

And what I personally think you should know about each of the members for starters:

1. Kim Seokjin / Jin 

the ‘mother’ of BTS 

mentioned that he doesn’t like being misgendered, so it’s not intended as a nickname but merely as a description of the role he occupies within the group (he protectively cares for the members in an almost mother-like way [e.g. loves to cook for them] especially, the younger ones, and never misses out on a chance to jokingly lament over the fact that he virtually ‘raised Jungkook on his back’) 

DO NOT call him eomma/mom or ‘princess Jin’, as some fans used to because he does not feel comfortable about it! 

is mostly responsible for/adamant about keeping the dorm clean (or at least that was the case in their first dorm, back when they used to share a room and sleep in bunk beds. Now they have staff who regularly cleans their new, more luxurious apartment, I believe. Or at least I think Yoongi mentioned something similar in a radio interview/podcast once.) 

king of nagging 

DAD JOKES 

he has a driver’s license 

family: parents + older brother 

Yoongi once called him a “family man” and an “ideal husband” in an interview 

Jin once stated that he would want his firstborn to be a girl and the second child to be a boy so his son would have a noona (older sister) that would treat him kindly and that the boy could look up to since he was often being teased by his hyung (older brother) 

last year his parents gifted him the most adorable pet sugar gliders 

WORLDWIDE HANDSOME

BROAD SHOULDERS (especially for Korean standards apparently)

considers his face (jokingly?) his greatest asset 

but underneath it all he is still very insecure (I believe)

likes hearing others call him cute or handsome 

loves doing aegyo 

actually needs (rather strong) glasses but doesn’t like wearing them because he can’t feel confident when doing so 

recently seems to ponder beginning his a career as a hairstylist??? 😳

should stay away from scissors in the future … 

has the most genuine, beautiful, infectious, hilarious windshield laugh 

often laughs until he literally tears up 

because he freaking loves to laugh

and even more to make others laugh 

does not mind making a fool of himself in doing so 

was literally cast off the street 

a member of the staff spotted him walking by and reportedly started running after him because he was so handsome even back then

graduated from college (majored in acting) 

alongside RM (Namjoon), he is considered the worst dancer of BTS

yet he is among the hardest-working members because he previously didn't have any kind of background/experience in either dancing or singing (was cast as a ‘visual’) 

and because of that he is very hard on himself 

has improved a lot since debut 

but is not being given enough credit, appreciation, and lines

he loves cooking and food and eating

EAT JIN 🍜

and once was put on a heartbreaking diet (like all idols at some point, probably, but still, it must’ve been incredibly hard on him) and was repeatedly told by his managers he was fat/chubby 😤 (WHERE? I demand to know…) 

SIGNATURE: enthusiastically blowing kisses upon kisses upon kisses + HEART EVENTS 

because he is simply the sweetest angel there is

2. Min Yoongi / Suga

the grumpy grandpa of BTS 

but also more of a ‘father’ 

because he is practically the dorm’s handyman (usually responsible for changing light bulbs and stuff)   

good at working with his hands and fixing things (which RM previously broke …) 

MOTIONLESS MIN (because on his [rare] days off he likes to do literally nothing)

strives to be stone in his next lifetime 

likes to sleep (A LOT) and is always tired

can literally sleep anywhere 

probably because he likes to work/is especially creative at night (once said most his songs are produced between midnight and 6:00am) 

insanely talented lyricist/rapper/producer 

actually did not audition to become an idol but to become a producer at Big Hit and work behind the scenes 

AGUST D ❗️

claims he got his stage/nickname ‘Suga’ because of his pale complexion and his sweet smile (’wanted to promote sweetly’) 

despite his ‘bad boy’ image/attitude (especially on-stage) 

his hometown is Daegu (which is what the ‘D’ in AGUST D stands for) 

his family also consist of parents + older brother 

he moved to Seoul on his own back pre-debut 

starved for a few months so he could keep on producing/working on his music and career while living off of under-payed part-time jobs 

during that time he developed anxiety (suffered several attacks, even in BTS’ earlier days after debut) and depression (which he openly addresses on his AGUST D mixtape. If you haven’t already you should really give it a listen and study the translated lyrics.) 

writes/composes songs every day and can do so everywhere, even in crowded public places 

he relieves stress through writing/composing songs 

doesn’t like going outside and repeatedly stated he ‘doesn’t like people’ (I believe he refers to being around many strangers/in crowded and loud places)

prefers to stay at home 

so his ideal date would also be a comfortable night in 

Yoongi is usually on the quieter side 

but when he speaks up, damn, you can be sure he has something to say 

wise beyond his age 

great common/general knowledge 

very outspoken and straightforward  (’savage Suga’/’savage Yoongi’) 

so it’s his task to openly scold the younger members and call them out on their questionable behavior 

does have his silly/hyped-up moments, though 

and they are priceless

can occasionally actually let loose 

but it happens rather rarely 

always seems to be very observant and contemplative 

GUMMY SMILE 

HIS SHRUG  

MIN GENIUS 

workaholic 

tends to overwork himself and neglect self-care/sleep/his health (forgets to eat/skips a lot of meals) 

his studio is called the ‘Genius Lab’

seems to regularly put himself on a diet?? he seems to be getting skinnier and skinnier, or is it only me, guys?? 

claims he doesn’t give a shit

but he actually does 

cares a lot about the people close to him, simply doesn’t show it so obviously 

does not seem too big on showing it through physical contact, too (once said himself in an interview that he wouldn’t be the kind of boyfriend to hold hands or put his arm around his s/o’s shoulder in public because he isn’t the sweet kind of boyfriend like that) 

takes care of them ‘behind the scenes’/’in secret’ 

beneath the gruff exterior, he’s just a huge softie 

used to play basketball in high school and was quite good at it, too

he is second smallest in the group (a few centimeters taller than our mochi Jimin)

which sometimes leads him to jump in order to get into the frame when they are taking group shots at award shows and such (it’s adorable) 

does not particularly enjoy physical activities and the way they tire him out 

loves meat 

can actually cook quite well but isn’t as vocal about it as Jin 

also takes cooking very seriously (see Run BTS! Ep. 36, for example) 

tends to speak in Satoori dialect when he’s nervous 

doesn’t consider himself handsome/charming 

wants to become even more successful and for his music to reach as many people as possible 

Waaaah ….. These turned out longer than expected. I’ll do the other members, too, later on, sweet anon. And maybe repost this as a real headcanon or something tomorrow. For now I, unfortunately, have to go to sleep because it’s 02:30am here and I have to get up in 4 hours … 😁

I hope this helped/was at least close to what you imagined, anon! Take care and feel free to message me anytime!! 💜

[academicsapphic]

University classes are a monster you can’t prepare for until you’re in them. I have been through every up and down with schoolwork possible in the past year, so here are some tips that can hopefully help you avoid those downs:

Choosing and Registering for Your Classes

Make sure to thoroughly check both your major requirements and your gen ed requirements. Normally, you’ll have an advisor to help you make sure you’re on track, but Vandy doesn’t assign first-year engineering students one until after registration when school starts, and I didn’t have an advisor for this year’s registration either due to my major change, so I’ve spent hours and hours doing this on my own. There’s often recommended courses and example schedules in the course catalog that tell you what classes you should be taking at this point in time. Pay attention to that and you should be fine. For example, you have to have taken a first-level writing class to qualify for junior standing here. Those are the little things you have to look out for. To keep track of it all, I have a spreadsheet I use for planning my sophomore - senior years that lists all the requirements I need to meet in terms of hours and courses in order to graduate on time. I plug in possible courses and see which requirement they would fulfill and when. You can check it out here to see what I mean, it’s very helpful.

Find at least one fun elective to take if at all possible. It gets very tiring when all you have on your schedule are really difficult classes that you don’t enjoy. Try to find at least one class that you’re genuinely interested in to help get you excited for the day. Each of my last semesters, my schedule consisted of a calculus class, a lab science, a comp sci class, and Italian. Italian was the only fun one that I enjoyed going to. It really helps you out. You’re not just in college to get your degree, you’re there to discover what you really want to do, so feel free to explore your catalog and take something completely out of character just because you want to. Bonus if it fills some kind of requirement (Italian filled my Foreign Language Proficiency and one of my International Cultures reqs.).

Have multiple versions of your schedule based on which classes you may or may not get into. I don’t know about your school, but at Vanderbilt, class registration is literally like the Hunger Games. You’re assigned an enrollment date based on your year (seniors get to go first, then juniors, etc.) and at 8 am on that day, you refresh the website and either enroll in your classes or get placed on the wait list for it. If you’re a freshman, you’re basically screwed because you go last, and so you could have planned out your perfect schedule only to find they’ve all filled up the day before your enrollment period starts. To avoid having to scramble, have multiple versions of your schedule, with back ups and substitutions for every class. This way, you won’t be surprised when you go to enroll and all but one of your classes are filled, then you have to search for other classes, but at that point, all that’s left are scraps that don’t fit your requirements. Plan plan plan and practice clicking the enroll button on all your classes as fast as you can for when the clock strikes 8.

You have freedom over your schedule now; take advantage of that! No more 8-3 Monday through Friday; you can take classes whenever you want. I prefer to have all my classes on MWF in a block of a few hours and only one or no class on TR. Of course, sometimes you’re going to have to take classes at less optimal times, but do try to accommodate yourself and take classes at times you know will be good for you. Lots of people prefer to start early and finish early, while I like to start no earlier than 11, even if I don’t finish until 5. The best part of college is you can do what you want.

Don’t take 8 ams. I’m repeating this cause it’s important. I swear, you’ll regret it. In high school, I woke up every morning early as hell to catch my bus at 6:30, but in college, it was nearly impossible for me to get up for my 11 am only three times a week. Don’t ever take an 8 am by choice. And if you have no choice, good luck lol.

Don’t be afraid to drop a class. If you’re doing terribly in a class or you absolutely can’t stand it, drop the class. There’s a very little chance that if you’re failing during the first half of the semester, you’ll be able to change your grade dramatically in the second half. Maybe you decided to be an overzealous freshman and signed up for the maximum number of hours possible and now you’re drowning. Drop a class! Sometimes, a course is going to do more harm to you than good, so it’s best to get rid of it than have an F or a W on your transcript.

Use RateMyProfessor! I totally forgot about this when I originally posted this and it’s already got almost 1,000 notes but hopefully people see this. RateMyProfessor is so fucking useful. It’s IMPERATIVE that you check this website before you enroll in classes. Someone at Vandy actually made a Chrome extension for our enrollment website that automatically shows a professor’s ranking while you’re looking for classes. Obviously, take it with a grain of salt, and make sure the reviews actually make valid points about the workload and class and isn’t just someone bitter about failing. I took calc with a professor who taught at my high school just cause she taught at my high school even though her reviews said she was insanely difficult and the class was near impossible to pass. Guess what? They were right and I failed as did a big chunk of everyone else in her class. You don’t have to let RMP dictate your schedule, but definitely check it out, and if everyone says the professor is awful, don’t fucking take them. 

Attending Your Classes

Establish a connection with your professor early. I recommended introducing yourself on the first day of class just so they know your name and face in another post. It’d be even better to attend an office hour or review session or something. Just make sure they know you. It’ll be easier to communicate when you need something later in the semester if it isn’t their first time seeing you.

Actually use this connection with your professors. In my experience, they can be pretty understanding and when you’re in a bad place, they’ll likely help you out. If something is preventing you from doing your best in class, go to them for help (I didn’t go to many office hours but I wish I did! Who better to explain to you something you don’t understand than the person who grades you on it?) or explain to them your situation. I had professors let me take tests late and redo assignments due to my mental health after I explained to them I wasn’t just a terrible student; if it wasn’t for this, I would’ve failed all of their classes. Maybe at the end of the semester they’ll drop one of your wonky grades or bump you up that extra half point you need. Your professors are a resource, and it’s up to you to use it.

Take notes however you want. I used my laptop in some, paper in others, and even my iPad and a stylus for calculus. In all of your classes will be a mixture of different techniques and no one cares what you do. Whatever works best for you and helps you get down the most information is what you should do. Also, you don’t have to write down everything. If your professor uses slides and posts them for you to download, you don’t really have to write down anything at all unless they add extra points, so that’s really convenient. 

You don’t have to sit in the front. As long as you can see and hear, which you’ll likely be able to due to large projection screens and microphones, it literally doesn’t matter where you sit. In my experience, the professors call on people from every part of the lecture hall, so everyone gets an equal chance at participation. It’s up to yourself to make sure you can pay attention, not your seat.

Do your best to attend every single class meeting. It’s inevitable that you’re going to miss class at some point; you will get sick, you won’t have finished an assignment, you’ll need a mental health day, something will happen. Missing class can too easily become a habit if you do it often, so try to never do it. Don’t force yourself to go if you can’t handle it, obviously your health always comes first, but I mean don’t skip cause you want to sleep in or cause you just don’t feel like going. If you do have to miss class and 1) you have a good reason for it (i.e. sickness) and 2) it’s a class small enough that your professor will notice you’re not there, email them and let them know why, just so they’re aware you’re not just skipping to skip.  

Try to make friends in your classes. A little study group would be even better. It’ll be really useful to have someone who can help you with a homework question you don’t understand or send you their notes when you miss a class. It can also be great to study with other people, depending on how you study best. I’ve had friends in all my classes so far and it’s been a great help, even if we just complained about the test we just failed then went to get pizza.

Tackling the Coursework

Make a REALISTIC study schedule. The key word here is realistic. During winter break I made a study schedule that started with me waking up at 8 am every morning to go work out and ended with me going to sleep promptly at 11 or midnight after spending literally the entire day studying with breaks only for meals. No breaks on weekends, no room to socialize, and I thought this would be perfectly fine for me to follow. Of course, I didn’t last a week because that was fucking ridiculous. You don’t need to schedule every hour of your day; college doesn’t work like that. Just do something simple, an hour for a class or maybe less depending on how hard it is and if you have a test coming up. Trust your instincts. There’s no need to go overboard, and you don’t need to spend six hours a day working, just dedicate a time to studying and stick with that.

Explore study techniques until you find one that works for you. Everyone doesn’t study the same, so if you do what everyone else is doing you might not get the results you want. Even if you had a great system in high school, it might not be fitting for college, so check out a bunch of different methods and see how you do with them. Once you find the best way you study, you’ll be unstoppable when exam time comes.

Start your assignments early, as soon as you can after they’re assigned. There’s nothing worse than having a bunch of assignments/tests/papers due on the same day and you haven’t finished any of them. Trust me, it is so much less stressful to complete an assignment as soon as you can after it’s been assigned so you don’t have to worry about it anymore. Putting things off has much more severe consequences than it did in high school and you will regret procrastinating. If you have a weekly assignment due every Friday, try to complete them by Wednesday every week. At the very least, start an assignment the day you get it even if you can’t finish it that day. It’s a lot easier to do something after you’ve already begun working on it, and that one thing you do is progress.

The name of the college game is prioritization. If college teaches you anything, it’s how to prioritize your duties. You need to create a hierarchy of importance for your classes and types of assignments. For me, calculus assignments were always done first because that was the most difficult class and the one I absolutely needed to pass, and Italian was always done last cause it was my easiest class and I could complete even our biggest assignments in one day. You’re going to have a very large amount of work and sometimes you have to sacrifice finishing a small homework assignment to finish a huge paper or study for an exam. I liked to complete my hardest/longest assignments right when I got back from class to get them over with and leave my easier ones for later. Prioritizing is essential if you want to succeed in university, so learn how to do it immediately! 

Remember that uni is really difficult and your grades don’t define you. Something I learned the hard way is that sometimes you can try really really hard, do the best you can, and still fail. That’s just life. Sometimes you have to do something a million times before you get it right, or before you discover that it just isn’t right for you at all. I worked harder than I ever had this past year, and what I got in return was two failed classes, two D’s, academic probation, and a 2.3 GPA. Actually, my current GPA isn’t even a 2.3, it’s a 2.295, which is probably blasphemy to the studyblr community, but this shit happens. It happens to all of us and it sucks. It can be really shitty to feel like your effort wasn’t reflected in your result. What you need to do is adjust your expectations and keep working hard. After you hit your stride, your grades could be great in no time. Or you could discover that math or science or english just isn’t for you. Maybe you’ll discover university as a whole isn’t right for you, and that’s okay! Bad grades, whether you define that as a B or an F, don’t mean you’re a bad student or a bad person. You do what you can, and then let go of what you can’t control. The sooner you grasp this idea, and the sooner you learn to be gentle with yourself, the easier a time you’ll have.

So I feel like I forgot a lot of things but also this is pretty long so I’m going to end the post here. If you have any further questions or topics for a post you’d like to see, my inbox is always open. I don’t know which post is coming next, but I’ll keep you posted. Thanks for reading and I hope this helped you out!

Previous Posts:

Application Process

Choosing/Changing Majors

Orientation/Move-In/First Day of Classes

Roommates

[aceofstars16]

A Safe Place

I’ve been working on this fic for like a week or so, but I finally finished it last night! (You should totally listen to this song also, cause I listened to it like 20 times while writing this and I love it so much)

This fic is really just Hopper and El fluff because I love them so much! But also some El feels because...she’s been through some stuff and honestly I’d imagine nightmares are pretty consistent for her. 

The second half of this fic is kind of a sequel to “After the Close” but you don’t have to read them together *shrugs*

Fic below the cut! (And spoiler warning for season 2!)

Nightmares. For El they were always more than just dreams. They were memories, of things she had seen. Things she had done. And they would never, ever go away. She learned a long time ago not to tell anyone. Papa hated her fear. One time she had told him. Never again.

Nightmares. They didn’t always haunt her. There were nights when her mind seemed incapable of creating them. She never had any at Mike’s house. It was safe. But now that security was gone and they came again. They haunted her in the woods. Breathe. That was all she could do. Walking helped, but the cold night air was harsh, it sapped her strength and left her feeling more miserable than before. Sometimes that was a blessing. The nights when exhaustion kept the memories at bay. But more often than not, they left her lost and broken.

Nightmares. Another one. Faces from her past. Those that haunted her, and those she had haunted. People she had killed. Scream. Pain. Terror.

Eyes flying open, El jerked upright. In and out. She had to calm her breathing. If they knew of her nightmares she would never escape the fear. But as her breathing slowed, the room around her came into view. It wasn’t her old room in the lab, nor was it the latest bush she had found to sleep under. Wooden walls surrounded her, there was warmth in the room, despite the dim light.

Letting out a slow breath, El tried to make herself relax. She was safe now. Or safer than she had been. But despite telling herself this over and over again, her heart still beat quickly in her chest. Memories continued to flood her mind. She needed to move. That didn’t always help, but she had to do something.

Getting out of bed, she started walking. Back and forth, trying to push away the images. It should be simple for her but moving images seemed to be a more difficult task than moving something tangible. The harder she tried to get them to leave, the clearer they became.

“Kid? Kid? El!”

El’s head snapped up, completely unaware that her door had been opened. But there was Hopper, looking at her, his eyebrows scrunched in worry.

“What’s up with all the pacing?”

“Nothing.”

“So you’re just pacing for the fun of it?”

Don’t tell anyone. The first rule El had learned hummed in the back of her mind. But the smallest sliver of doubt poked at her. Hopper wasn’t like the men at the lab. He wasn’t Mike but…he wasn’t Papa either…

“Look kid, it’s late. So either tell me what’s wrong or get back in bed.”

“Nightmares.” El forced it out before she could second guess herself. If anything, the thought of having to face the horrid dreams again made up her mind for her.

Hopper nodded his head slowly. “Alright…do you want to talk about them or…?”

El shook her head, talking wouldn’t help. True, she had never tried it before, but it would only make her think about it more.

“Okay.” Hopper leaned against the doorframe, rubbing his head. “How about a story? To get your mind off of it?”

At El’s nod, Hopper nodded and with a “give me a sec”, he left the room. The sound of moving furniture and shuffling feet followed. If El hadn’t been so preoccupied with her memories she might’ve seen what he was doing. A few minutes later he walked in, a book in his hand. Then he gestured towards the bed.

“You want to sit or…?” When she shook her head, Hopper looked at her for a moment. “Okay, suit yourself,” he said before sitting on the edge of the bed. Then he opened the book and started reading.

At first, El kept pacing. Her body was too worked up to stand still. But as the story unfolded, her footsteps slowed. It wasn’t until Hopper glanced up that she realized she had stopped all together. They looked at each other for a moment, then he started reading again.

El found herself stepping forward again and slowly crawling onto the bed. The images of her nightmares had slowed as her brain started constructing images to connect with the story. And as the nightmares dissipated, weariness started pulling at her. Snuggling under the blankets, El forced her eyes to stay open, not wanting to miss the story. Hopper’s voice seemed to grow louder whenever she started drifting off, and she would quickly open her eyes again. But with each minute, it grew harder and harder to do so until she couldn’t force her eyes open again.

Hopper’s voice trailed off and in the last moments of consciousness she felt something rustle her hair.

“Night kiddo.”

A wave of peace washed over El. Nightmares or no nightmares, she was safe.

It had been months since El had a nightmare. The safety of the cabin had seemed to build walls around her, easing her mind and giving her a break from the memories. But that was gone now. New images flashed through her mind along with the old. The tightness in her chest as she squeezed the life out of someone, hunting instead of being hunted. She couldn’t do it, not when he had a family. Dreams, however, had a way of altering reality. El tried to scream as people died at her hand, but it came out as a laugh. She wanted to run, but she couldn’t move.

“Stop!” she finally managed to yell out.

El woke up, covered in sweat. Her body ached. Weariness weighted down her limbs. But her mind was wide awake. Images of the past few days flashing through her mind, reality along with the things she had almost done. It was too much. Tears build up in her eyes and all she wanted was to make it go away.

Forcing her weary limbs to move, El struggled out of her bed and out into the main room. It was still a bit of a mess, from her tantrum and all that had gone on with Will only a few hours earlier. But Hopper was there. He was asleep, no doubt exhausted after all he had been through. That realization made El hesitate for a moment, but the images of her dream and the memories were too much for her right now.

Reaching out she carefully poked Hopper. No reaction. She tried again, a little harder. His eyes snapped open as he sat up quickly, his hand reaching for a gun that wasn’t there. Then he saw El and relaxed a little.

“Hey kid, what’s up?”

“Nightmares.”

Hopper frowned as he got out of bed. “Want me to read to you?”

A small smile grew on El’s face at the other nights when he had read to her, but even as she remembered those good times, she found herself shaking her head.

“You want to talk about it?”

El started shaking her head, but then stopped. She didn’t want to think about it but maybe… “They aren’t just nightmares…” she said quietly.

A moment of silence, then, “They are memories.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement like it happened to him too. “I used to get them…about Sara. Sometimes I still do.”

There was silence again, then Hopper gently pulled her into a hug. “It’s hard. I know. But it will get better. I promise.”

It was hard to believe, but the nightmares had eased with time so…maybe it was true. That didn’t help her right now though, when the fear was still fresh - but Hopper’s comforting presence did. Burying her head in his chest, she let herself relax, squeezing her eyes tighter as images still flashed through her mind.

“It’s alright kid, you’re okay.”

“Still there,” she whispered, wishing she could simply push away the memories, but they wouldn’t flee.

The arms around her tightened. “Sometimes they don’t leave. But you don’t have to face them alone.”

Not alone. She buried her face in Hopper’s chest again, listening as he kept assuring her that it was okay. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than facing it alone. However, her body didn’t quite agree. After closing the gate, she had been more drained than ever before, and she still wasn’t up to par. Her body was taxed.

“Tired.”

“You want to go back to your bed?”

El shook her head. The thought of being alone again scared her, and while she had no doubt Hopper would stay with her, he needed rest too.

“Okay…how about the couch?”

For the first time since the hug started, El pulled back a little to glance at the couch and nodded. It would allow her to be close to Hopper, which was about the only think keeping her sane right now.

A few minutes later, El was curled up on the couch, her head resting on a pillow situated on Hopper’s lap and a blanket tucked around her. Hopper’s arm was resting on her back, a reminder that she was safe. At her insistence, he had pulled a chair close to the couch so he could prop up his legs and hopefully get some rest too.

“You good?” Hopper asked.

El looked at the wall of the cabin for a moment, then she brought her hand out from under the blanket and grabbed Hopper’s hand. “Good,” she said quietly. Maybe good was a bit of an overstatement, but it wasn’t bad. She wasn’t alone, and with time this would pass. Closing her eyes, she made herself focus on the cabin around her – the sound of the heaters keeping the cabin warm, the feel of the blanket on her feet, Hopper’s quiet humming as he stroked her hand – and as she did so, sleep slowly found her. Once again, the cabin felt safe.