#coders are dogs

[whitesalmanrushdie]

it's insane how little i give a fuck about my job, 2 hour naps at home office, 15 minutes to send a single teams message, reading a book instead of working, what a fucking travesty that people get paid to live like this

[jessiesjaded]

If workplaces are going to force people to use apps for simple shit like viewing a roster I think in the very least you should hire people who will make apps that like. Bare minimum actually work. Maybe even not bare minimum. Just work easily and are simple. Idk just me though.

[lostintransist]

Tansy Tea for Four

Original thought here from @spookytragedyshark. All yellow lines are directly pulled from their original thought. If the yellow is hard to read, find the all black here. Shout out to @/steddiecameraroll-graphics for the dividers.

A/N: I ran out of work a half hour after I got there but couldn't go home soooooo.... Also shout out to you coders out there. Getting the color added to this fic made my eyes cross several times.

“Okay, I’ll go for Christmas.”

Simon felt the words slide off his tongue, unable to call them back. He wonders if he would hesitate looking back. If he knew that those five words would launch change at him like a manhole cover being launched into space. That was an accident. A lot of accidents led to what Christmas became that year.

Johnny sat upright, scrambling to mark the place in his novel as he stared at his lover.

Simon fought the urge to don his mask. Johnny stared at him, eyes searching for seams as to where the man might have been body snatched.

“Who are you and where is my Simon?” Johnny uses his interrogation voice.

Blinking once to process that he heard the tone he thought he did, Simon shifts as if to move toward the desk at the end of the bed. Instead, he pounced on the man lounging on his bed. Johnny let out a squawk that shifted into a groan as Simon’s weight landed.

“I am your Simon,” he bit the curve of Johnny’s neck. “I’m agreeing because you look sad when you think of missing another Christmas with your family.”

Johnny arched under him, a gasp falling into Simon’s ears. Fingers worked their way into his hair. Simon followed the command implicit in the tug and pressed his lips to Johnny’s.

“I already told my mum I wouldn’t be making it. Now it will be a surprise. You’re in charge of buying her some mead when we land,” he pushed the words into Simon’s mouth along with his tongue. “Can I tell her about you?”

Instead of answering, Simon dipped a hand below Johnny’s waist band.

When Johnny could walk again he found his phone and booked two seats home for the holidays.

The drive to his childhood home sees Johnny’s knee bouncing as his eyes never leave the road. Simon lays a hand on the thigh closest to him. The bouncing stops.

The front door stays firmly shut against the dark as Johnny parks the rented car.

“Leave your stuff, we can grab it if Mum has a room to spare. If not, we will pop down the road,” Johnny nearly levitated from the driver’s seat.

Simon walks silently behind his love, feeding the fears in his head to the demons that dogged his steps. He was doing this for Johnny. Wiping the sadness from his face was worth the weight in every step.

Without knocking Johnny throws open the front door, hollering for his mum. Simon speeds up when Johnny’s voice cuts off with a sob.

“Tansy?”

Stepping through the door Simon gently maneuvers Johnny further into the room to shut the door. He scans every face of the ten or so people dotted around the table. He lands on yours as you step into the room. You are the only face here that doesn’t claim familiarity due to linage. A touch of movement draws his gaze down to a boy, no more than four, staring at him with wide eyes.

Pieces click in his mind as he recalls why that name sounded familiar. Johnny had spoken of you, his first love, the one that got away. The one that literally disappeared. And that child looks like Soap, a Mohawk, and all. The demons in his shadows mauled him now, under the eyes of his lover’s lost love.

“Who?” The kid is pointing directly at him, unafraid, almost entranced by his soft skull balaclava.

You don’t remove your eyes from Johnny, who stands as if struck dumb, as you answer.

“Dad,” you point, “And Ghost,” you point to him now.

Johnny wouldn’t pick him now. Surely not him, not as broken as he is. Pain, sorrow, longing, it’s all hitting him rapid, like a pinball machine.

“Skully!” The child screams excitedly.

“Yes, Ghost. From the pictures.” You glance at him with your nose still in pressed against the kids face. “My darling little soldier, could you play with Mimi for a few?”

The brows pulling together under the mohawk stab at Ghost like a knife from a hidden enemy. He knows that look, has been bested by it time and again from Johnny. The kid lifts a small hand, pointing at him again.

“Later?”

“If they’re not busy with work.” You turn at the waist, setting the child on the floor within reach of Mama MacTavish.

It is not missed on Simon that you are giving them a way out.

Once your arms are free Johnny is there, filling them. He is sobbing. Simon has never heard him cry like this. It tears open the scabs that he had so carefully covered.

“Let’s go to the kitchen, yeah?” Your arm is still looped around Johnny’s waist. Simon can’t breathe beyond the squeeze in his chest.

No one speaks as you are trailed by death into the kitchen. Settling Johnny onto the stool by the stove you step back to the sink and shove your hands into your pockets. Your ears are at your shoulders and your mouth moves fast as you start to explain. Simon stands guard near the door. He can’t decide if his placement will make it easier to run or to keep Johnny’s family out while you and he talk.

“I was planning on talking to you privately but your mum said you weren’t coming for the holidays and I couldn’t stand the thought of him missing another holiday with relatives. You know how I feel about relatives.”

Johnny remembers all the times you said you wished for your kid to have a big extended family. How you cried, scared yours would pass before you had one.

“It was too difficult to contact you, so I called your mum. Bless her, she helped me run the DNA test, so I did not have to worry or bother you if I was wrong.”

“Of course, she helped with the paperwork, so it’s all set up. If anything happens to me, you’ll get him. If you can’t, it’s between my mom and Ghost ,” You nod to Ghost as you say it. His heart has to have stopped. No one would want their child under his care. You shift your gaze back to Johnny, eyes scared. “When you’ve regained the ability to talk, could you please tell me when we slept together, though?”

Johnny, as flabbergasted as he is, blurts out, “That’s not why you disappeared?”

He reaches for you. Simon hears weeping from somewhere in his mind.

“No,” you step between his spread knees, resting one hand on his cheek and the other running over his hair, inviting him to look at you. “I left because I had to. My sister had an incident. Based on your reaction, I’d say it was when I broke up with Jonathan and got messed up?”

Simon looks from you to Johnny like he was studying a painting. The colors are all drenched in his pain. Johnny looks ready to cry, guilt lifted from his soul. He had never mentioned he felt responsible for your absence. Ghost has no clue who Jonathan is or what transpired, but the pieces are there. This, whatever this is, Soap clearly never wanted to even think about again. He had never mentioned sleeping with you before your disappearance, only the shock of the loss, the longing for the friendship lost.

“We were beyond wasted that night. I don’t blame you. We’re adults, we knew better,” you offer absolution with the swipe of your fingers along his face. Simon has never seen a more intimate moment. He wants to vomit and cave in on himself until he is no longer intruding.

“I’d have come,” Johnny’s fingers are curled above your knees, pulling you closer until his chin rests on your baby softened belly. The body changed by his seed.

Vomit creeps up Simon’s throat.

“I thought he was Jonathan’s and he never wanted kids. So it took until Callum started to resemble you. That’s when I started to look for you.”

Johnny is looking at you like an angel, all reverence and awe and bursting with love.

“You named him Callum?” Johnny’s voice broke as tears filled his eyes again.

“‘It’s my favorite name, Tansy.’ The name stuck in my head even though we were thirteen.” Your hand trails from Johnny’s forehead through his mohawk, grounding yourself, Simon guesses.

Simon’s thoughts are derailed when you turn from Johnny, tears in your eyes, to pin him to the cabinet with your gaze.

“When you two become officially public, I’ll have him start calling you Bonus Dad. Seems more fitting and all.”

You’re addressing him, looking at him as the worlds leave your mouth. Fear seizes his system, his brain slows. You know. You know he and Johnny…Johnny would want you now, Simon can’t interfere with that. How does he fix this?

You move away, pacing through the kitchen. Johnny’s hand stay reaching for you, you skirt the widespread fingers with the practice of a mother avoiding sticky giggles.

“I’m not staying anywhere nearby. Actually, I’m moving again, so we’ll have to figure something out about visiting.” You glance at Simon and then Johnny, wincing as you continue, “I steamboated again, huh?”

Johnny nods, mute. Ghost is confused by the phrase, isn’t it steamrolling?

You catch the confusion in his gaze as you address him. “Oh, one more thing. Callum is interested in anything creepy, so be prepared. He’s probably going to have a lot to say about your mask…and try to climb you.”

“Same taste as his mum then?” Johnny must be recovering if he can prod at you.

You level him with a glare. Johnny grins, unrepentant. The interaction has a flavor only time can add. Simon fights to keep his teeth from grinding.

“What about the haircut?” Johnny questions, shifting to take your hand in his.

The hand not being held is banded across your ribs.

You blow out a breath, “He saw one picture of you and demanded a mohawk. Callum was two and I had been avoiding what I knew. He was your child through and through. Jonathan had been out of the picture for over a year at that point. I have pictures of him grinning with my smile as the stylist gelled his hair up for the first time. I’ve got a whole folder of photos for you.”

Silence engulfs the room. Johnny stands, lifting a hand to your cheek as he crowds into your space.

“I would like to me our son,” he whispers the words like a love confession.

You look up at Johnny and Simon can see all the love that resulted in your shared child surfacing in your eyes.

“Okay.” Your whisper barely reaches Simon’s ears.

The moment they reenter the room Callum does in fact try to climb Simon to get a better look at his mask. You effortlessly pick him up and away from Simon’s legs.

“Callum, pause. We don’t climb people without permission. Now, let’s ask. Repeat after me: Simon, will you hold me?”

Electric blue eyes, the same shade as the man Simon would happily walk into hell for, burrow under his bones.

“Simon, will you hold me?”

At his nod, Callum stretches, legs still held firm in your grip. Simon lets out a grunt as he catches the full weight of Johnny’s son. Kid got his fathers density alright.

Small hands slap either side of Simon’s face, forcing eye contact as Callum starts into a tale about his haunted teddy bears and how they can’t move because they don’t have bones. Simon nods when appropriate to show he is listening. His stomach falls into his ass as you and Johnny step further away to sit down on the love seat.

“Did you know I went as a solider for school one day?” Callum’s brows lift as if this is shocking information.

“Oh…uh..” Simon glances away seeing you and Johnny knee to knee with faces nearly touching as you show him something on your phone. “Why?”

“My Mimi gave me a picture of my dad and you. Mum hung it on my wall with tape. You looked so cool with your skull on the outside.” Callum’s face darkens as he continues, “Mum wouldn’t let me wear a skull to school.”

The laughter sealed the deal. Simon swore to himself he will protect this kid. He is too innocent, too perfect. He may not be Soap’s lover much longer, but he will be here.

Johnny looks up from your phone. Simon is still locked in eye contact with his son. My god, he had a son. You, his first love, his Tansy flower, had given him a son. The years between that dim, sweaty night and now pull on him, setting an ache in his chest. As much as he longs to take you in his arms but this is his L.T., his Simon. He can’t give up one love for another.

Callum wiggles, pushing against Simon’s chest. Bending at the waist Simon sets Callum down. He runs directly to Johnny, hands resting on Johnny’s knees as he starts in with the rapid fire words he had also used on Simon.

“Did you know you are my dad? Mum told me all about you, and Mimi has so many stories and pictures of you!”

“Hi bud, I learned today that I’m your dad.” Johnny pulled his son into a hug before setting him on a leg. “I’ve never been a dad before, what do you think a dad does?”

Pursing his lips Callum thought before answering definitively, “Tickles.”

Both your and Johnny’s brows lift and connect gazes.

“Really? Tickles?” Johnny starts in on the request. Callum’s peels of laughter fill the room.

For a few breaths, Ghost adores the interaction. How perfectly Soap takes to his son.

He tears his eyes away. No, this isn’t his place. Simon mutters something about a smoke and steps outside. Soap is enamored with Callum, doesn’t notice at first, but you do.

Silently, you follow. The MacTavish home is small, snug even and it doesn’t take long to find Simon through the windows. Giving him time, to mostly finish his cigarette, you watch him. You are not surprised that Johnny found someone solid in stature and personality. He always was drawn to people who would call him out on his bullshit. The spooky aspect of his mask didn’t hurt either. You had always been drawn to the macabre.

Stepping through the creaky door, you join Simon. It is just you two on the porch. He rubs the remainder of his cigarette out on the bottom of his boot. His eyes don’t leave the horizon.

“Hey,” you say softly, “I am sorry about everything. I know it was shocking, and I have a tendency to kinda take over or uh not rant but steamboat is what we call it. It is a result of my overactive mind.” You are rubbing your neck, looking nervous, “I really want everyone to get along. Soap and his mom have a high opinion of you so—”

“He’ll be with you.” Ghost cannot for the life of him understand why you are apologizing to him. It is out of his mouth before he realizes he even opened it. “If it comes to it, he’ll choose you.”

You look up at him and blink in shock.

“The fuck he will!” Anger is not something he expected when this interaction started. Your fists are shaking as your eye twitches beneath furrowed brows.

“He loves you.” It’s firm, as if stating a fact, it doesn’t hurt him any less to say out loud.

“You are not pulling back from him because of me,” snarling is not something he expected from you by the way his brows lift. Shows how much Johnny said about you.

Ghost hears his own insecurity in your voice, but he can’t help it. He pushes more, “He has loved you longer.”

“And he loves you more.”

The two of you stand, locked in a glaring contest as both hearts bleed out on the stones below.

The whistling of the wind is the only sound as your face softens. Simon has never seen anyone look at him like that before, understanding tinged in empathy. Simon tears his eyes from yours, even an inch further with the knife and his heart will explode.

“Then he will have both of us. No reason for you to go away."

What the hell? Simon is a big man, strong and well trained. He has not been so thoroughly disarmed since his first year of basic training. This is why he doesn’t talk to people. To many chances to fall into traps.

“He clearly loves you. His family loves you. Callum already loves you. I am not letting you walk away because of a choice that isn’t ours to make. Besides,” you tuck your arms close, chin tipping down as you look down and away. The posture reads of shame. “This is my fault. I was so blinded by my own insecurities that I did not think anyone could truly love me. I fell into bed with him because he gives so easily. Why not take what he is offering, even if I think it won’t last? I was bound to fuck it up sooner or later. Some people aren’t made to be loved, I guess.”

Hearing his own thoughts echoed back at him, Simon thinks back to that first night together. Johnny had followed him into his room, fingers deft and kind as he stripped Simon bare. Simon had cried after they lay under the blanket Johnny had found kicked to the end of the bed.

Johnny cooed to him, telling him how even when love is lost it is never gone. He spoke of you that night, how you disappeared and despite all the times he searched over the years you remained lost.

“That is love, Simon. I would search for you if I lost you.” He had grinned then. The darkness couldn’t keep Simon from feeling bathed in warmth when that look turned to him.

Johnny bursts through the door then. Maybe discussing him called im forth like the devil. His head swiveled. He spots you to the left of the door but doesn’t stop looking. Scanning right he finds Simon. His shoulders drop.

“Oh Si,” Johnny crossed the porch, pulling the larger man into a hug. He held on like his lungs might give out without the contact.

You find Simon’s eyes on you as he holds his lover close. The shifting of your lips pretends at a smile, the tears in your eyes ring of truth though. With a hard swallow, you nod once.

“I’m glad your taste in men is as good as mine, Johnny. Your Simon would be someone I chose, too,” you slip inside before either man can truly take in the full meaning of that statement.

Disappearing in a full house takes skills. Johnny nor Simon saw much of you the few days they celebrated. Callum, on the other hand, spent every waking moment pinned to either or both men. They adore the boy and Mama MacTavish sneakily snagged a photo of the three when Callum had fallen asleep on Simon, and Johnny decided a nap was the best order of business.

When gifts were being passed about you hid in the kitchen. Callum happily handed over a new sketchbook for Johnny, his name proudly scribbled under your handwriting proclaiming ‘Callum loves dad!”. Simon took the gift from Callum as carefully as a bomb handoff. He peels the wrapping paper away to expose a wide, soft wool scarf. A tiny white skull had been stitched into one corner of the garment.

Callum gasped before jumping from Johnny’s lap to help Simon put on the scarf.

“Mummy makes the best scarves.”

Everyone laughed at the boy’s exuberance.

Before they returned to work Johnny and you sat down at the table, working out phone numbers and holidays to spend with Callum and what life could look like. You couldn’t nail down a bunch of details yet as you were moving with the start of the new year. Connection had been made though, this time you wouldn’t disappear.

New Years Day saw an adorable photo of Callum seated in an airplane seat with the message ‘Adventure is out there!”

Johnny smiled so wide Simon worried that his face might crack. The photo was promptly downloaded and saved as one of multiple backgrounds. It fell in rotation right behind a photo of Simon’s lower face tucked into his elbow offering a middle finger to the camera.

Simon shoves down the twisted pride that no photos of you appear in the rotation. Johnny had sat down when they got back to base and loaded several of his favorite pictures of Simon and Callum and a photo of a yellow flower to rotate as his background and lock screen.

January 3rd found the men and women of the 141, all seven main teams meeting the first of the several new civilians that would be helping with a variety of things.

Price whistled once and all his people circled up. Simon watched as Johnny’s mouth popped open and his eyes bugged. Confused, he looked towards Price as well.

There you stood. Eyes wide and mouth open a touch, as if you had lost the battle to keep it closed, you stare at them.

“Let me introduce you to new civilian specialized gear mechanic—”

“Tansy!” You cut Price off, “You can call me Tansy.”

Price, confused but known to be one who rolls with it, finished his sentence.

“Tansy. Tansy this is the team. You’ll learn all their names in time, but if any of them give you a hard time," he glared at Johnny and a few others pointedly, "you come to me.”

Price patted you on the back as he spoke again, “Dismissed muppets.”

You send Johnny and Simon a shrug as Price starts walking, telling you about the base and where you will be set up for jobs.

Masterlist | Taglist

A/N: I used the hex code #f3a900, which is called Albany Paint Tansy. It's the little things, ya know?

[taylorklosscomeout138]

I just made a discovery connecting all of the surprise song choices tonight !!! 🚨🚨🚨

I need to first point out the Kaylor reference of pairing Last Kiss with Maroon in the same night because in the past every time she played I Can See You, she played Maroon !

Well in the I Can See You MV the date and time in the intro is July 9th 1:58 because it is a Last Kiss reference...

But everyone knows if you were there for the original release of the Music Video, the time was not 1:58. It was actually 1:38 !! 138 is the Kaylor ship number combining both Taylor and Karlie's birthdays (13 and 8/3)

Now what else happens at the beginning of the I Can See You MV? We see a female coder !! And she represents Karlie because Karlie is a coder who as we know has her coding camp called Kode with Klossy.

That should souns familiar because what other surprise song lyrics did we get tonight?

We not so coincidentally got "Who else decodes you?" and "I want to speak in code"

In other words, I Can See You is the key that links every surprise song choice tonight and I think she's pointing back to the MV because what's to come next has everything to do with freeing the longings that she has kept locked in lowercase inside a vault 👀

She also refers to this again in The Black Dog, another song repeated multiple times, with "My longings stay unspoken" as in if they were freed, she'd be Speaking Now . . . And notice how many Speak Now surprise songs she's been playing lately... I definitely think that this is what her intention was !!!

[spade-riddles]

Every time Taylor played I Can See You, she also played Maroon the same night. I heard she's no longer playing either anymore because she has officially played Maroon 8 times, and I Can See You 3 times. 👀

The 3 times that she paired both songs together were all dates in relation to the birthdays of Kaylor. 2 times were Karlie's birthday anniversaries, and the other 1 was the 13th of Pride Month.

8/3 - I Can See You and Maroon

6/13 - I Can See You/Mine and Maroon/Cornelia Street

8/2 (365 days later due to leap year) - I Can See You/I Can Fix Him and Maroon/Red

Yesterday when we got the Going Anon for seemingly Maroon, it was the 138th show. 138 is the official Kaylor number as it represents the combination of both their birthdays 13 and 8/3 meeting in the middle by the 3.

When did 138 truly become noticed by the masses? No other than the I Can See You MV of course.

When the music video premiered, the time was set at 1:38am July 9th. Naturally, many fans outside the know were confused by this choice since "1:58" from Last Kiss made more sense given the date July 9th.

Taylor later changed the time from 1:38 to 1:58, but we know she does not make any mistakes. It was not lost on us that a main feature of the MV was a blonde coder that ultimately breaks her free, played by Presley Cash. The birthday of Presley Cash you ask? The 13th of Pride Month.

Given this string of connecting evidence, I believe we did not get the Going Anon message wrong.

(Spade, still going, going, going? 👩🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏼🍷)

While this may be Maroon, it was not a surprise song. In actuality, this message called attention to the date of a super collision. Where all 3 times that I Can See You being played with Maroon had some form of an 8/3 or 13 time gap between the dates they were played and Nov 1st.

8/3 - I Can See You and Maroon (313 Business Days, 130 Weekend Days, or 13 Holidays after Nov 1st)

6/13 - I Can See You/Mine and Maroon/Cornelia Street (38 shows after Nov 1st)

8/2 - I Can See You/I Can Fix Him and Maroon/Red (13 shows prior to Nov 1st)

Not only did she interconnect all of the above, but additionally when we got the going anon for Maroon yesterday on the 138th show... with doing some calculations it proves that every time she played Maroon links back to Nov 1st through either an 8/3 [8/2] or 13 time gap.

Here are the other 5 occurences besides the 3 listed above:

5/26 - Maroon and Getaway Car (113 shows before Nov 1st)

8/27 - Maroon and Afterglow (82 shows before Nov 1st)

2/26 - Maroon/Forever and Always (8 months and 3 days before Nov 1st)

6/21 - Maroon/The Black Dog/Come Back...Be Here (38 Weekend Days or 133 Days before Nov 1st)

5/11 - Maroon and Hey Stephen (13 Weeks and 83 days before Nov 1st)

In other words from Nov 1st when we got the Going anon Maroon submission, there were 8 connected dates to locate that included 8 Maroons and 3 I Can See Yous that were meant to be uncovered by using 8/3 and 13 coded time gaps that all occured simultaneously with Nov 1st as the overarching starting point.

Oh and does it help that Maroon's track duration in general is 3:38?

I think it is more than safe to say we got this one right. ✔✔✔

🤯

[sleepn0tfound]

𝐼𝓃𝓉𝓇𝑜𝒹𝓊𝒸𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒩𝑒𝓌 𝒜𝓊! 𝒩𝑒𝑔𝓁𝑒𝒸𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝐹𝓊𝓀𝓊𝓏𝒶𝓌𝒶 𝑅𝑒𝒶𝒹𝑒𝓇 [𝐹𝑒𝓂]

“Growing up I was quite… lonely. I looked a lot like my mother, so Fukuzawa didn’t look at me. Or rather… he couldn't bear himself to look at me. He always preferred Ranpo and now that I’ve grown up, I understand why. But just because I understand doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, I just got used to it."

"I think back on the child I was and wonder how I turned out like this. Was there anything I could’ve done to change how I am now or was there really nothing I could do because it wasn’t my fault I turned out like this?”

"Hmm? Why do I call my father by his last name? Why not take a guess?"

“Every and all information is available at the right price.”

"Would you like to gamble with fate? How much are you willing to wager?"

"You'll lose your mind trying to understand mine."

"You've gotten weak."

"What's the prob? Dog."

"Morals? What's that?"

Character info:

Birth certificate name: Y/n Fukuzawa

Current legal name: Y/n L/n

Gender: Female

Age: 21

Ability: Cyberpunk

Vigilante name: Himitsu

Famously known names: The Damselette, The Fallen Angel, The Gambling Queen, The Queen of the Underground, The Smiling Shadow

Signature characteristics: Glowing purple eyes, Purple and Black Kitsune mask, Mechanical wings that are white on the left and black on the right, Purple and black gambling cards she leaves at her victims bodies

Backstory: Became a vigilante at 12, instantly gaining fame and support for assassinating men with pedophile and rape charges who are roaming freely, thus earning the name The Damselette. Is later seen at night clubs selling and gambling information, essentially becoming an information broker, thus being the Queen of the Underground as she is able to provide any information at all, even well known figures in the underground go to her for information. No one has ever seen Himitsu's real face completely as she is always seen wearing her signature purple and black kitsune mask, the most people have seen is her lower face. Also gained the name, The Gambling Queen, as she has never lost a gamble. The name, The Smiling Shadow, came from how her purple and black kitsune mask has a unique design in which it seems as though the mask is smiling widely.

Current life: Being the hacker/coder for the ADA. While also being Himitsu as her secret second life.

[versionloop]

heyyy howdy it's erika (s/h, 21+) this time with girlboss coder extraordinaire (debatable) miss shinohara reiko, filling in for the the disaster prodigy label. although as you'll see below, tipping much more into disaster than prodigy atm. you know how it goes — give this a like if you'd like to plot and i’ll make my way into your dms ♡

QUICK FACTS

shinohara reiko, 22, 3rd year ui/ux design + compsci minor, staying at nuri hall. running on iced americanos, delusion, and 32 open tabs

from shizuoka → seoul on a scholarship that said "high potential". she took that personally.

only child to a couple of illustrators! enjoyed the aesthetics side of things (it’s in the bloodline, after all) but stumbled upon scratch one day and never looked back. started with animations, by middle school she was automating her homework and rewriting her school’s club website "for fun"

won a hackathon in her first year with seniors who now work for samsung/hyundai/lg/naver with unlimited pto and crazy signing bonuses. meanwhile she’s still here in yeonhwa… trying to fix a matchmaking algorithm that never meant to matchmake.

fullstack prodigy but she's a girlypop who ultimately chose frontend bc what are apps if they're not fun and pleasant to look at ✨ (we are shallow creatures after all…)

will hoard a sweet corn booth for 6 hours. will fight you if you unplug her charger. if you see her crying over figma, no you didn’t.

TALKTALK / 톡톡

yes, it’s a pun. talk talk meets knock knock meets 똑똑 (smart). she’s insufferable and she knows it

concept: connect local + intl students via language exchange. reality: launched like tinder, not duolingo. status: sunsetted. still cited in girls in tech korea panels.

said app that made her team win a hackathon during her first year, read more about the app here

campus backed them to prototype. they soft launched. people started using it in all ways but intended. catfishing, flirting, fake profiles... you name it

currently rebuilding it quietly as a v2.0 (safer, smarter, cuter!) while pretending it’s not a soft spot. doesn’t want to be a one-hit wonder. but also doesn’t want people to forget it was her.

(sidenote: also has a notes app full of new app ideas she’ll probably never build. it’s fine. she’s fine)

PERSONALITY & MANNERISMS

bc obvi u can read someone based on their birthchart.. scorpio sun, aquarius moon, capri rising (read: crashouts at least once a week)

heavy on the mbti!!!! intj architect queen 😎 altho on the cusp of t/f.. stoic until someone compliments her ui then it's OVER

once said "this button feels emotionally dishonest" in a team meeting and meant it. very matter of fact when speaking, until the brain finally registers and overthinks the repercussions of what she had said

swears she’s logical and pragmatic but panic buys multiple shades of fwee pudding pots when stressed

still gets drained by people but loves humans enough to build for them. makes excuses to leave the room, but also wants you to chase her down the hallway for advice

score oriented. gamifies everything. wears an oura ring to track her sleep schedule and gets pissy when her sleep score drops from 90 to 63 over two days (she insisted on finishing a design.. one more page.. it’s 4am.)

overcommits like it’s a sport. signs up for everything, helps everyone, picks up side projects she never finishes — not because she has time, but because it’s easier to be busy than to admit she’s stuck. gets praised for being productive. dog on fire meme in the inside

terrible posture. insists on using her osoi tote bag to carry her laptop + charger + headphones (still among other things...)

plotting-wise, i'm a huge brainstormer so more than happy to talk through whatever suits our muses best!! to get us started, i have a non-exhaustive potential plots page here — but feel free to share any and all ideas you have outside of these bc i'm all ears ♡

[mariacallous]

On paper, the first candidate looked perfect. Thomas was from rural Tennessee and had studied computer science at the University of Missouri. His résumé said he’d been a professional programmer for eight years, and he’d breezed through a preliminary coding test. All of this was excellent news for Thomas’ prospective boss, Simon Wijckmans, founder of the web security startup C.Side. The 27-year-old Belgian was based in London but was looking for ambitious, fully remote coders.

Thomas had an Anglo-Saxon surname, so Wijckmans was surprised when he clicked into his Google Meet and found himself speaking with a heavily accented young man of Asian origin. Thomas had set a generic image of an office as his background. His internet connection was laggy—odd for a professional coder—and his end of the call was noisy. To Wijckmans, Thomas sounded like he was sitting in a large, crowded space, maybe a dorm or a call center.

Wijckmans fired off his interview questions, and Thomas’ responses were solid enough. But Wijckmans noticed that Thomas seemed most interested in asking about his salary. He didn’t come across as curious about the actual work or about how the company operated or even about benefits like startup stock or health coverage. Odd, thought Wijckmans. The conversation came to a close, and he got ready for the next interview in his queue.

Once again, the applicant said they were based in the US, had an Anglo name, and appeared to be a young Asian man with a thick, non-American accent. He used a basic virtual background, was on a terrible internet connection, and had a single-minded focus on salary. This candidate, though, was wearing glasses. In the lenses, Wijckmans spotted the reflection of multiple screens, and he could make out a white chatbox with messages scrolling by. “He was clearly either chatting with somebody or on some AI tool,” Wijckmans remembers.

On high alert, Wijckmans grabbed screenshots and took notes. After the call ended, he went back over the job applications. He found that his company’s listings were being flooded with applicants just like these: an opening for a full-stack developer got more than 500 applications in a day, far more than usual. And when he looked more deeply into the applicants’ coding tests, he saw that many candidates appeared to have used a virtual private network, or VPN, which allows you to mask your computer’s true location.

Wijckmans didn’t know it yet, but he’d stumbled onto the edges of an audacious, global cybercrime operation. He’d unwittingly made contact with an army of seemingly unassuming IT workers, deployed to work remotely for American and European companies under false identities, all to bankroll the government of North Korea.

With a little help from some friends on the ground, of course.

christina chapman was living in a trailer in Brook Park, Minnesota, a hamlet north of Minneapolis, when she got a note from a recruiter that changed her life. A bubbly 44-year-old with curly red hair and glasses, she loved her dogs and her mom and posting social justice content on TikTok. In her spare time she listened to K-pop, enjoyed Renaissance fairs, and got into cosplay. Chapman was also, according to her sparse online résumé, learning to code online.

It was March 2020 when she clicked on the message in her LinkedIn account. A foreign company was looking for somebody to “be the US face” of the business. The company needed help finding remote employment for overseas workers. Chapman signed on. It’s unclear how fast her workload grew, but by October 2022 she could afford a move from chilly Minnesota to a low-slung, four-bedroom house in Litchfield Park, Arizona. It wasn’t fancy—a suburban corner lot with a few thin trees—but it was a big upgrade over the trailer.

Chapman then started documenting more of her life on TikTok and YouTube, mostly talking about her diet, fitness, or mental health. In one chatty video, shared in June 2023, she described grabbing breakfast on the go—an açaí bowl and a smoothie— because work was so busy. “My clients are going crazy!” she complained. In the background, the camera caught a glimpse of metal racks holding at least a dozen open laptops covered in sticky notes. A few months later, federal investigators raided Chapman’s home, seized the laptops, and eventually filed charges alleging that she had spent three years aiding the “illicit revenue generation efforts” of the government of North Korea.

For maybe a decade, North Korean intelligence services have been training young IT workers and sending them abroad in teams, often to China or Russia. From these bases, they scour the web for job listings all over, usually in software engineering, and usually with Western companies. They favor roles that are fully remote, with solid wages, good access to data and systems, and few responsibilities. Over time they began applying for these jobs using stolen or fake identities and relying on members of their criminal teams to provide fictional references; some have even started using AI to pass coding tests, video interviews, and background checks.

But if an applicant lands a job offer, the syndicate needs somebody on the ground in the country the applicant claims to live in. A fake employee, after all, can’t use the addresses or bank accounts linked to their stolen IDs, and they can’t dial in to a company’s networks from overseas without instantly triggering suspicion. That’s where someone like Christina Chapman comes in.

As the “facilitator” for hundreds of North Korea–linked jobs, Chapman signed fraudulent documents and handled some of the fake workers’ salaries. She would often receive their paychecks in one of her bank accounts, take a cut, and wire the rest overseas: Federal prosecutors say Chapman was promised as much as 30 percent of the money that passed through her hands.

Her most important job, though, was tending the “laptop farm.” After being hired, a fake worker will typically ask for their company computer to be sent to a different address than the one on record—usually with some tale about a last-minute move or needing to stay with a sick relative. The new address, of course, belongs to the facilitator, in this case Chapman. Sometimes the facilitator forwards the laptop to an address overseas, but more commonly that person holds onto it and installs software that allows it to be controlled remotely. Then the fake employee can connect to their machine from anywhere in the world while appearing to be in the US. (“You know how to install Anydesk?” one North Korean operative asked Chapman in 2022. “I do it practically EVERYDAY!” she replied.)

In messages with her handlers, Chapman discussed sending government forms like the I-9, which attests that a person is legally able to work in the US. (“I did my best to copy your signature,” she wrote. “Haha. Thank you,” came the response.) She also did basic tech troubleshooting and dialed into meetings on a worker’s behalf, sometimes on short notice, as in this conversation from November 2023:

Worker: We are going to have laptop setup meeting in 20 mins. Can you join Teams meeting and follow what IT guy say? Because it will require to restart laptop multiple times and I can not handle that. You can mute and just follow what they say ...

Chapman: Who do I say I am?

Worker: You don’t have to say, I will be joining there too.

Chapman: I just typed in the name Daniel. If they ask WHY you are using two devices, just say the microphone on your laptop doesn’t work right ... Most IT people are fine with that explanation.

Sometimes, she got jumpy. “I hope you guys can find other people to do your physical I9s,” she wrote to her bosses in 2023, according to court documents. “I will SEND them for you, but have someone else do the paperwork. I can go to FEDERAL PRISON for falsifying federal documents.” Michael Barnhart, an investigator at cybersecurity company DTEX and a leading expert on the North Korean IT worker threat, says Chapman’s involvement followed a standard pattern—from an innocuous initial contact on LinkedIn to escalating requests. “Little by little, the asks get bigger and bigger,” he says. “Then by the end of the day, you’re asking the facilitator to go to a government facility to pick up an actual government ID.”

By the time investigators raided Chapman’s home, she was housing several dozen laptops, each with a sticky note indicating the fake worker’s identity and employer. Some of the North Korean operatives worked multiple jobs; some had been toiling quietly for years. Prosecutors said at least 300 employers had been pulled into this single scheme, including “a top-five national television network and media company, a premier Silicon Valley technology company, an aerospace and defense manufacturer, an iconic American car manufacturer, a high-end retail store, and one of the most recognizable media and entertainment companies in the world.” Chapman, they alleged, had helped pass along at least $17 million. She pleaded guilty in February 2025 to charges relating to wire fraud, identity theft, and money laundering and is awaiting sentencing.

Chapman’s case is just one of several North Korean fake-worker prosecutions making their way through US courts. A Ukrainian named Oleksandr Didenko has been accused of setting up a freelancing website to connect fake IT workers with stolen identities. Prosecutors say at least one worker was linked to Chapman’s laptop farm and that Didenko also has ties to operations in San Diego and Virginia. Didenko was arrested in Poland last year and was extradited to the United States. In Tennessee, 38-year-old Matthew Knoot is due to stand trial for his alleged role in a scheme that investigators say sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to accounts linked to North Korea via his laptop farm in Nashville. (Knoot has pleaded not guilty.) And in January 2025, Florida prosecutors filed charges against two American citizens, Erick Ntekereze Prince and Emanuel Ashtor, as well as a Mexican accomplice and two North Koreans. (None of the defendants’ lawyers in these cases responded to requests for comment.) The indictments claim that Prince and Ashtor had spent six years running a string of fake staffing companies that placed North Koreans in at least 64 businesses.

before the hermit kingdom had its laptop farms, it had a single confirmed internet connection, at least as far as the outside world could tell. As recently as 2010, that one link to the web was reserved for use by high-ranking officials. Then, in 2011, 27-year-old Kim Jong Un succeeded his father as the country’s dictator. Secretly educated in Switzerland and said to be an avid gamer, the younger Kim made IT a national priority. In 2012, he urged some schools to “pay special attention to intensifying their computer education” to create new possibilities for the government and military. Computer science is now on some high school curricula, while college students can take courses on information security, robotics, and engineering.

The most promising students are taught hacking techniques and foreign languages that can make them more effective operatives. Staff from government agencies including the Reconnaissance General Bureau— the nation’s clandestine intelligence service—recruit the highest-scoring graduates of top schools like Kim Chaek University of Technology (described by many as “the MIT of North Korea”) or the prestigious University of Sciences in Pyongsong. They are promised good wages and unfettered access to the internet—the real internet, not the intranet available to well-off North Koreans, which consists of a mere handful of heavily censored North Korean websites.

The earliest cyberattacks launched by Pyongyang were simple affairs: defacing websites with political messages or launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down US websites. They soon grew more audacious. In 2014, North Korean hackers famously stole and leaked confidential information from Sony’s film studio. Then they targeted financial institutions: Fraudulent trades pulled more than $81 million from the Bank of Bangladesh’s accounts at the New York Federal Reserve. After that, North Korean hackers moved into ransomware—the WannaCry attack in 2017 locked hundreds of thousands of Windows computers in 150 countries and demanded payments in bitcoin. While the amount of revenue the attack generated is up for debate—some say it earned just $140,000 in payouts—it wreaked much wider damage as companies worked to upgrade their systems and security, costing as much as $4 billion, according to one estimate.

Governments responded with more sanctions and stronger security measures, and the regime pivoted, dialing back on ransomware in favor of quieter schemes. It turns out these are also more lucrative: Today, the most valuable tool in North Korea’s cybercrime armory is cryptocurrency theft. In 2022, hackers stole more than $600 million worth of the cryptocurrency ether by attacking the blockchain game Axie Infinity; in February of this year, they robbed the Dubai-based crypto exchange Bybit of $1.5 billion worth of digital currency. The IT pretender scam, meanwhile, seems to have been growing slowly until the pandemic dramatically expanded the number of remote jobs, and Pyongyang saw the perfect opportunity.

In 2024, according to a recent report from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, the number of people working in North Korea’s cyber divisions—which includes pretenders, crypto thieves, and military hackers—stood at 8,400, up from 6,800 two years earlier. Some of these workers are based in the country, but many are stationed overseas in China, Russia, Pakistan, or elsewhere. They are relatively well compensated, but their posting is hardly cushy.

Teams of 10 to 20 young men live and work out of a single apartment, sleeping four or five to a room and grinding up to 14 hours a day at weird hours to correspond with their remote job’s time zone. They have quotas of illicit earnings they are expected to meet. Their movements are tightly controlled, as are those of their relatives, who are effectively held hostage to prevent defections. “You don’t have any freedom,” says Hyun-Seung Lee, a North Korean defector who lives in Washington, DC, and says some of his old friends were part of such operations. “You’re not allowed to leave the apartment unless you need to purchase something, like grocery shopping, and that is arranged by the team leader. Two or three people must go together so there’s no opportunity for them to explore.”

The US government estimates that a typical team of pretenders can earn up to $3 million each year for Pyongyang. Experts say the money is pumped into everything from Kim Jong Un’s personal slush fund to the country’s nuclear weapons program. A few million dollars may seem small next to the flashy crypto heists— but with so many teams operating in obscurity, the fraud is effective precisely because it is so mundane.

in the summer of 2022, a major multinational company hired a remote engineer to work on website development. “He would dial in to meetings, he would participate in discussions,” an executive at the company told me on condition of anonymity. “His manager said he was considered the most productive member of the team.”

One day, his coworkers organized a surprise to celebrate his birthday. Colleagues gathered on a video call to congratulate him, only to be startled by his response—but it’s not my birthday. After nearly a year at the company, the worker had apparently forgotten the birth date listed in his records. It was enough to spark suspicion, and soon afterward the security team discovered that he was running remote access tools on his work computer, and he was let go. It was only later, when federal investigators discovered one of his pay stubs at Christina Chapman’s laptop farm in Arizona, that the company connected the dots and realized it had employed a foreign agent for nearly a year.

For many pretenders, the goal is simply to earn a good salary to send back to Pyongyang, not so much to steal money or data. “We’ve seen long-tail operations where they were going 10, 12, 18 months working in some of these organizations,” says Adam Meyers, a senior vice president for counter adversary operations at the security company CrowdStrike. Sometimes, though, North Korean operatives last just a few days— enough time to download huge amounts of company data or plant malicious software in a company’s systems before abruptly quitting. That code could alter financial data or manipulate security information. Or these seeds could lay dormant for months, even years.

“The potential risk from even one minute of access to systems is almost unlimited for an individual company,” says Declan Cummings, the head of engineering at software company Cinder. Experts say that attacks are ramping up not just in the US but also in Germany, France, Britain, Japan and other countries. They urge companies to do rigorous due diligence: speak directly to references, watch for candidates making sudden changes of address, use reputable online screening tools, and conduct a physical interview or in-person ID verification.

But none of these methods are foolproof, and AI tools are constantly weakening them. ChatGPT and the like give almost anyone the capacity to answer esoteric questions in real time with unearned confidence, and their fluency with coding threatens to make programming tests irrelevant. AI video filters and deepfakes can also add to the subterfuge.

At an onboarding call, for instance, many HR representatives now ask new employees to hold their ID up to the camera for closer inspection. “But the fraudsters have a neat trick there,” says Donal Greene, a biometrics expert at the online background check provider Certn. They take a green-colored card the exact shape and size of an identity card—a mini green screen—and, using deepfake technology, project the image of an ID onto it. “They can actually move it and show the reflection,” says Greene. “It’s very sophisticated.” North Korean agents have even been known to send look-alikes to pick up a physical ID card from an office or to take a drug test required by prospective employers.

Even security experts can be fooled. In July 2024, Knowbe4, a Florida-based company that offers security training, discovered that a new hire known as “Kyle” was actually a foreign agent. “He interviewed great,” says Brian Jack, KnowBe4’s chief information security officer. “He was on camera, his résumé was right, his background check cleared, his ID cleared verification. We didn’t have any reason to suspect this wasn’t a valid candidate.” But when his facilitator—the US-based individual giving him cover—tried to install malware on Kyle’s company computer, the security team caught on and shut him out.

Back in london, Simon Wijckmans couldn’t let go of the idea that somebody had tried to fool him. He’d just read about the Knowbe4 case, which deepened his suspicions. He conducted background checks and discovered that some of his candidates were definitely using stolen identities. And, he found, some of them were linked to known North Korean operations. So Wijckmans decided to wage a little counter exercise of his own, and he invited me to observe.

I dial in to Google Meet at 3 am Pacific time, tired and bleary. We deliberately picked this offensively early hour because it’s 6 am in Miami, where the candidate, “Harry,” claims to be.

Harry joins the call, looking pretty fresh-faced. He’s maybe in his late twenties, with short, straight, black hair. Everything about him seems deliberately nonspecific: He wears a plain black crewneck sweater and speaks into an off-brand headset. “I just woke up early today for this interview, no problem,” he says. “I know that working with UK hours is kind of a requirement, so I can get my working hours to yours, so no problem with it.”

So far, everything matches the hallmarks of a fake worker. Harry’s virtual background is one of the default options provided by Google Meet, and his connection is a touch slow. His English is good but heavily accented, even though he tells us he was born in New York and grew up in Brooklyn. Wijckmans starts with some typical interview questions, and Harry keeps glancing off to his right as he responds. He talks about various coding languages and name-drops the frameworks he’s familiar with. Wijckmans starts asking some deeper technical questions. Harry pauses. He looks confused. “Can I rejoin the meeting?” he asks. “I have a problem with my microphone.” Wijckman nods, and Harry disappears.

A couple of minutes pass, and I start to fret that we’ve scared him away, but then he pops back into the meeting. His connection isn’t much better, but his answers are clearer. Maybe he restarted his chatbot, or got a coworker to coach him. The call runs a few more minutes and we say goodbye.

Our next applicant calls himself “Nic.” On his résumé he’s got a link to a personal website, but this guy doesn’t look much like the profile photo on the site. This is his second interview with Wijckmans, and we are certain that he’s faking it: He’s one of the applicants who failed the background check after his first call, although he doesn’t know that.

Nic’s English is worse than Harry’s: When he’s asked what time it is, he tells us it’s “six and past” before correcting himself and saying “quarter to seven.” Where does he live? “I’m in Ohio for now,” he beams, like a kid who got something right in a pop quiz.

Several minutes in, though, his answers become nonsensical. Simon asks him a question about web security. “Political leaders ... government officials or the agencies responsible for border security,” Nic says. “They’re responsible for monitoring and also securing the borders, so we can employ the personnel to patrol the borders and also check the documents and enforce the immigration laws.”

I’m swapping messages with Wijckmans on the back channel we’ve set up when it dawns on us: Whatever AI bot Nic seems to be using must have misinterpreted a mention of “Border Gateway Protocol”—a system for sending traffic across the internet—with national borders, and started spewing verbiage about immigration enforcement. “What a waste of time,” Wijckmans messages me. We wrap up the conversation abruptly.

I try to put myself in the seat of a hiring manager or screener who’s under pressure. The fraudsters’ words may not have always made sense, but their test scores and résumés looked solid, and their technical-sounding guff might be enough to fool an uninformed recruiter. I suspect at least one of them could have made it to the next step in some unsuspecting company’s hiring process.

Wijckmans tells me he has a plan if he comes across another pretender. He has created a web page that looks like a standard coding assessment, which he’ll send to fake candidates. As soon as they hit the button to start the test, their browser will spawn dozens of pop-up pages that bounce around the screen, all of them featuring information on how to defect from North Korea. Then loud music plays—a rickroll, “The Star-Spangled Banner”—before the computer starts downloading random files and emits an ear-splitting beep. “Just a little payback,” he says.

Wijckman’s stunt is not going to stop the pretenders, of course. But maybe it will irritate them for a moment. Then they’ll get back to work, signing on from some hacking sweatshop in China or through a laptop farm in the US, and join the next team meeting—a quiet, camera-off chat with coworkers just like me or you.

[terraliensvent]

think its unfair to say buying a surprise gacha for 50 is "dickridng staff." these arent even the bad staff members anymore and its for the site, not personal use. why not take it up with the people who bought the designs rather than the people making them?

post related

first of all i want to say, next time dont flood my inbox with 5 separate asks. put it all in one message so i can digest it

second, to me its staff dickriding because they can just slap together designs of whatever quality they want and itll get bought either way, but really nicely designed terras get posted again and again in vouchers you dont HAVE to agree with me, its my opinion that people in terras love to dickride staff

third, i have separate issues with them needing a whopping $1050 to add to a site with so little functionality. you can get coders in the lorekeeper discord for SO MUCH CHEAPER that will get your shit done in a much shorter timeframe, hell they even have people in the server offering to volunteer if it would mean adding the most basic of functionality

but according to decaf, tycho doesnt wanna hire anyone to code except kea's boyfriend who is absolutely milking them dry

lastly, im not gonna dog on regular people because if they wanna buy a slot its their prerogative. i will however scrutinize moderators of the species/creators of the designs because its their obligation to provide a quality product to the customer, just as is with any business.

[whitesalmanrushdie]

i fucking HATE Power BI, I HATE programming, i HATE the fucking computer

[goat-yells-at-everything]

Don't know if I ever posted about maybe doing this?

So I'm not currently coding because "fuck entry level we have ai now" but I really need to keep on top of coding changes and stay in practice.

So I'm thinking of making an ask blog about coding? NOT ADVICE. Just, like, send me random shit you think of and I'll find the code for it? Like, my dad sends me random shit because "no way there is a code for this" but there usually is. Like, there is a very specific set of codes for treating a bite on the left ass cheek by a dog with rabies while riding a roller coaster in a thunderstorm at a military institution.

No. I-im not joking. There is a specific bit of code for ALL of that info.

And ya. Some insurance will not pay if it ain't all there.

Anyway.

Would anyone be mildly entertained by this concept?

Again, NOT MEDICAL OR LEGAL ADVICE.

Just basically, try to stump the coder kind of thing. The most ridiculously shit you can think of because, I assure you, there's a code for that.

I dun know. I'm high on 2 hours sleep and cough medicine that makes me hallucinate. Tell me your thoughts.

[lostintransist]

Tansy Tea for Four

Original thought here from @spookytragedyshark. All yellow lines are directly pulled from their original thought. Find yellow version here. Shout out to @/steddiecameraroll-graphics for the dividers.

A/N: I ran out of work a half hour after I got there but couldn't go home soooooo.... Also shout out to you coders out there. Getting the color added to this fic made my eyes cross several times.

“Okay, I’ll go for Christmas.”

Simon felt the words slide off his tongue, unable to call them back. He wonders if he would hesitate looking back. If he knew that those five words would launch change at him like a manhole cover being launched into space. That was an accident. A lot of accidents led to what Christmas became that year.

Johnny sat upright, scrambling to mark the place in his novel as he stared at his lover.

Simon fought the urge to don his mask. Johnny stared at him, eyes searching for seams as to where the man might have been body snatched.

“Who are you and where is my Simon?” Johnny uses his interrogation voice.

Blinking once to process that he heard the tone he thought he did, Simon shifts as if to move toward the desk at the end of the bed. Instead, he pounced on the man lounging on his bed. Johnny let out a squawk that shifted into a groan as Simon’s weight landed.

“I am your Simon,” he bit the curve of Johnny’s neck. “I’m agreeing because you look sad when you think of missing another Christmas with your family.”

Johnny arched under him, a gasp falling into Simon’s ears. Fingers worked their way into his hair. Simon followed the command implicit in the tug and pressed his lips to Johnny’s.

“I already told my mum I wouldn’t be making it. Now it will be a surprise. You’re in charge of buying her some mead when we land,” he pushed the words into Simon’s mouth along with his tongue. “Can I tell her about you?”

Instead of answering, Simon dipped a hand below Johnny’s waist band.

When Johnny could walk again he found his phone and booked two seats home for the holidays.

The drive to his childhood home sees Johnny’s knee bouncing as his eyes never leave the road. Simon lays a hand on the thigh closest to him. The bouncing stops.

The front door stays firmly shut against the dark as Johnny parks the rented car.

“Leave your stuff, we can grab it if Mum has a room to spare. If not, we will pop down the road,” Johnny nearly levitated from the driver’s seat.

Simon walks silently behind his love, feeding the fears in his head to the demons that dogged his steps. He was doing this for Johnny. Wiping the sadness from his face was worth the weight in every step.

Without knocking Johnny throws open the front door, hollering for his mum. Simon speeds up when Johnny’s voice cuts off with a sob.

“Tansy?”

Stepping through the door Simon gently maneuvers Johnny further into the room to shut the door. He scans every face of the ten or so people dotted around the table. He lands on yours as you step into the room. You are the only face here that doesn’t claim familiarity due to linage. A touch of movement draws his gaze down to a boy, no more than four, staring at him with wide eyes.

Pieces click in his mind as he recalls why that name sounded familiar. Johnny had spoken of you, his first love, the one that got away. The one that literally disappeared. And that child looks like Soap, a Mohawk, and all. The demons in his shadows mauled him now, under the eyes of his lover’s lost love.

“Who?” The kid is pointing directly at him, unafraid, almost entranced by his soft skull balaclava.

You don’t remove your eyes from Johnny, who stands as if struck dumb, as you answer.

“Dad,” you point, “And Ghost,” you point to him now.

Johnny wouldn’t pick him now. Surely not him, not as broken as he is. Pain, sorrow, longing, it’s all hitting him rapid, like a pinball machine.

“Skully!” The child screams excitedly.

“Yes, Ghost. From the pictures.” You glance at him with your nose still in pressed against the kids face. “My darling little soldier, could you play with Mimi for a few?”

The brows pulling together under the mohawk stab at Ghost like a knife from a hidden enemy. He knows that look, has been bested by it time and again from Johnny. The kid lifts a small hand, pointing at him again.

“Later?”

“If they’re not busy with work.” You turn at the waist, setting the child on the floor within reach of Mama MacTavish.

It is not missed on Simon that you are giving them a way out.

Once your arms are free Johnny is there, filling them. He is sobbing. Simon has never heard him cry like this. It tears open the scabs that he had so carefully covered.

“Let’s go to the kitchen, yeah?” Your arm is still looped around Johnny’s waist. Simon can’t breathe beyond the squeeze in his chest.

No one speaks as you are trailed by death into the kitchen. Settling Johnny onto the stool by the stove you step back to the sink and shove your hands into your pockets. Your ears are at your shoulders and your mouth moves fast as you start to explain. Simon stands guard near the door. He can’t decide if his placement will make it easier to run or to keep Johnny’s family out while you and he talk.

“I was planning on talking to you privately but your mum said you weren’t coming for the holidays and I couldn’t stand the thought of him missing another holiday with relatives. You know how I feel about relatives.”

Johnny remembers all the times you said you wished for your kid to have a big extended family. How you cried, scared yours would pass before you had one.

“It was too difficult to contact you, so I called your mum. Bless her, she helped me run the DNA test, so I did not have to worry or bother you if I was wrong.”

“Of course, she helped with the paperwork, so it’s all set up. If anything happens to me, you’ll get him. If you can’t, it’s between my mom and Ghost ,” You nod to Ghost as you say it. His heart has to have stopped. No one would want their child under his care. You shift your gaze back to Johnny, eyes scared. “When you’ve regained the ability to talk, could you please tell me when we slept together, though?”

Johnny, as flabbergasted as he is, blurts out, “That’s not why you disappeared?”

He reaches for you. Simon hears weeping from somewhere in his mind.

“No,” you step between his spread knees, resting one hand on his cheek and the other running over his hair, inviting him to look at you. “I left because I had to. My sister had an incident. Based on your reaction, I’d say it was when I broke up with Jonathan and got messed up?”

Simon looks from you to Johnny like he was studying a painting. The colors are all drenched in his pain. Johnny looks ready to cry, guilt lifted from his soul. He had never mentioned he felt responsible for your absence. Ghost has no clue who Jonathan is or what transpired, but the pieces are there. This, whatever this is, Soap clearly never wanted to even think about again. He had never mentioned sleeping with you before your disappearance, only the shock of the loss, the longing for the friendship lost.

“We were beyond wasted that night. I don’t blame you. We’re adults, we knew better,” you offer absolution with the swipe of your fingers along his face. Simon has never seen a more intimate moment. He wants to vomit and cave in on himself until he is no longer intruding.

“I’d have come,” Johnny’s fingers are curled above your knees, pulling you closer until his chin rests on your baby softened belly. The body changed by his seed.

Vomit creeps up Simon’s throat.

“I thought he was Jonathan’s and he never wanted kids. So it took until Callum started to resemble you. That’s when I started to look for you.”

Johnny is looking at you like an angel, all reverence and awe and bursting with love.

“You named him Callum?” Johnny’s voice broke as tears filled his eyes again.

“‘It’s my favorite name, Tansy.’ The name stuck in my head even though we were thirteen.” Your hand trails from Johnny’s forehead through his mohawk, grounding yourself, Simon guesses.

Simon’s thoughts are derailed when you turn from Johnny, tears in your eyes, to pin him to the cabinet with your gaze.

“When you two become officially public, I’ll have him start calling you Bonus Dad. Seems more fitting and all.”

You’re addressing him, looking at him as the worlds leave your mouth. Fear seizes his system, his brain slows. You know. You know he and Johnny…Johnny would want you now, Simon can’t interfere with that. How does he fix this?

You move away, pacing through the kitchen. Johnny’s hand stay reaching for you, you skirt the widespread fingers with the practice of a mother avoiding sticky giggles.

“I’m not staying anywhere nearby. Actually, I’m moving again, so we’ll have to figure something out about visiting.” You glance at Simon and then Johnny, wincing as you continue, “I steamboated again, huh?”

Johnny nods, mute. Ghost is confused by the phrase, isn’t it steamrolling?

You catch the confusion in his gaze as you address him. “Oh, one more thing. Callum is interested in anything creepy, so be prepared. He’s probably going to have a lot to say about your mask…and try to climb you.”

“Same taste as his mum then?” Johnny must be recovering if he can prod at you.

You level him with a glare. Johnny grins, unrepentant. The interaction has a flavor only time can add. Simon fights to keep his teeth from grinding.

“What about the haircut?” Johnny questions, shifting to take your hand in his.

The hand not being held is banded across your ribs.

You blow out a breath, “He saw one picture of you and demanded a mohawk. Callum was two and I had been avoiding what I knew. He was your child through and through. Jonathan had been out of the picture for over a year at that point. I have pictures of him grinning with my smile as the stylist gelled his hair up for the first time. I’ve got a whole folder of photos for you.”

Silence engulfs the room. Johnny stands, lifting a hand to your cheek as he crowds into your space.

“I would like to me our son,” he whispers the words like a love confession.

You look up at Johnny and Simon can see all the love that resulted in your shared child surfacing in your eyes.

“Okay.” Your whisper barely reaches Simon’s ears.

The moment they reenter the room Callum does in fact try to climb Simon to get a better look at his mask. You effortlessly pick him up and away from Simon’s legs.

“Callum, pause. We don’t climb people without permission. Now, let’s ask. Repeat after me: Simon, will you hold me?”

Electric blue eyes, the same shade as the man Simon would happily walk into hell for, burrow under his bones.

“Simon, will you hold me?”

At his nod, Callum stretches, legs still held firm in your grip. Simon lets out a grunt as he catches the full weight of Johnny’s son. Kid got his fathers density alright.

Small hands slap either side of Simon’s face, forcing eye contact as Callum starts into a tale about his haunted teddy bears and how they can’t move because they don’t have bones. Simon nods when appropriate to show he is listening. His stomach falls into his ass as you and Johnny step further away to sit down on the love seat.

“Did you know I went as a solider for school one day?” Callum’s brows lift as if this is shocking information.

“Oh…uh..” Simon glances away seeing you and Johnny knee to knee with faces nearly touching as you show him something on your phone. “Why?”

“My Mimi gave me a picture of my dad and you. Mum hung it on my wall with tape. You looked so cool with your skull on the outside.” Callum’s face darkens as he continues, “Mum wouldn’t let me wear a skull to school.”

The laughter sealed the deal. Simon swore to himself he will protect this kid. He is too innocent, too perfect. He may not be Soap’s lover much longer, but he will be here.

Johnny looks up from your phone. Simon is still locked in eye contact with his son. My god, he had a son. You, his first love, his Tansy flower, had given him a son. The years between that dim, sweaty night and now pull on him, setting an ache in his chest. As much as he longs to take you in his arms but this is his L.T., his Simon. He can’t give up one love for another.

Callum wiggles, pushing against Simon’s chest. Bending at the waist Simon sets Callum down. He runs directly to Johnny, hands resting on Johnny’s knees as he starts in with the rapid fire words he had also used on Simon.

“Did you know you are my dad? Mum told me all about you, and Mimi has so many stories and pictures of you!”

“Hi bud, I learned today that I’m your dad.” Johnny pulled his son into a hug before setting him on a leg. “I’ve never been a dad before, what do you think a dad does?”

Pursing his lips Callum thought before answering definitively, “Tickles.”

Both your and Johnny’s brows lift and connect gazes.

“Really? Tickles?” Johnny starts in on the request. Callum’s peels of laughter fill the room.

For a few breaths, Ghost adores the interaction. How perfectly Soap takes to his son.

He tears his eyes away. No, this isn’t his place. Simon mutters something about a smoke and steps outside. Soap is enamored with Callum, doesn’t notice at first, but you do.

Silently, you follow. The MacTavish home is small, snug even and it doesn’t take long to find Simon through the windows. Giving him time, to mostly finish his cigarette, you watch him. You are not surprised that Johnny found someone solid in stature and personality. He always was drawn to people who would call him out on his bullshit. The spooky aspect of his mask didn’t hurt either. You had always been drawn to the macabre.

Stepping through the creaky door, you join Simon. It is just you two on the porch. He rubs the remainder of his cigarette out on the bottom of his boot. His eyes don’t leave the horizon.

“Hey,” you say softly, “I am sorry about everything. I know it was shocking, and I have a tendency to kinda take over or uh not rant but steamboat is what we call it. It is a result of my overactive mind.” You are rubbing your neck, looking nervous, “I really want everyone to get along. Soap and his mom have a high opinion of you so—”

“He’ll be with you.” Ghost cannot for the life of him understand why you are apologizing to him. It is out of his mouth before he realizes he even opened it. “If it comes to it, he’ll choose you.”

You look up at him and blink in shock.

“The fuck he will!” Anger is not something he expected when this interaction started. Your fists are shaking as your eye twitches beneath furrowed brows.

“He loves you.” It’s firm, as if stating a fact, it doesn’t hurt him any less to say out loud.

“You are not pulling back from him because of me,” snarling is not something he expected from you by the way his brows lift. Shows how much Johnny said about you.

Ghost hears his own insecurity in your voice, but he can’t help it. He pushes more, “He has loved you longer.”

“And he loves you more.”

The two of you stand, locked in a glaring contest as both hearts bleed out on the stones below.

The whistling of the wind is the only sound as your face softens. Simon has never seen anyone look at him like that before, understanding tinged in empathy. Simon tears his eyes from yours, even an inch further with the knife and his heart will explode.

“Then he will have both of us. No reason for you to go away."

What the hell? Simon is a big man, strong and well trained. He has not been so thoroughly disarmed since his first year of basic training. This is why he doesn’t talk to people. To many chances to fall into traps.

“He clearly loves you. His family loves you. Callum already loves you. I am not letting you walk away because of a choice that isn’t ours to make. Besides,” you tuck your arms close, chin tipping down as you look down and away. The posture reads of shame. “This is my fault. I was so blinded by my own insecurities that I did not think anyone could truly love me. I fell into bed with him because he gives so easily. Why not take what he is offering, even if I think it won’t last? I was bound to fuck it up sooner or later. Some people aren’t made to be loved, I guess.”

Hearing his own thoughts echoed back at him, Simon thinks back to that first night together. Johnny had followed him into his room, fingers deft and kind as he stripped Simon bare. Simon had cried after they lay under the blanket Johnny had found kicked to the end of the bed.

Johnny cooed to him, telling him how even when love is lost it is never gone. He spoke of you that night, how you disappeared and despite all the times he searched over the years you remained lost.

“That is love, Simon. I would search for you if I lost you.” He had grinned then. The darkness couldn’t keep Simon from feeling bathed in warmth when that look turned to him.

Johnny bursts through the door then. Maybe discussing him called im forth like the devil. His head swiveled. He spots you to the left of the door but doesn’t stop looking. Scanning right he finds Simon. His shoulders drop.

“Oh Si,” Johnny crossed the porch, pulling the larger man into a hug. He held on like his lungs might give out without the contact.

You find Simon’s eyes on you as he holds his lover close. The shifting of your lips pretends at a smile, the tears in your eyes ring of truth though. With a hard swallow, you nod once.

“I’m glad your taste in men is as good as mine, Johnny. Your Simon would be someone I chose, too,” you slip inside before either man can truly take in the full meaning of that statement.

Disappearing in a full house takes skills. Johnny nor Simon saw much of you the few days they celebrated. Callum, on the other hand, spent every waking moment pinned to either or both men. They adore the boy and Mama MacTavish sneakily snagged a photo of the three when Callum had fallen asleep on Simon, and Johnny decided a nap was the best order of business.

When gifts were being passed about you hid in the kitchen. Callum happily handed over a new sketchbook for Johnny, his name proudly scribbled under your handwriting proclaiming ‘Callum loves dad!”. Simon took the gift from Callum as carefully as a bomb handoff. He peels the wrapping paper away to expose a wide, soft wool scarf. A tiny white skull had been stitched into one corner of the garment.

Callum gasped before jumping from Johnny’s lap to help Simon put on the scarf.

“Mummy makes the best scarves.”

Everyone laughed at the boy’s exuberance.

Before they returned to work Johnny and you sat down at the table, working out phone numbers and holidays to spend with Callum and what life could look like. You couldn’t nail down a bunch of details yet as you were moving with the start of the new year. Connection had been made though, this time you wouldn’t disappear.

New Years Day saw an adorable photo of Callum seated in an airplane seat with the message ‘Adventure is out there!”

Johnny smiled so wide Simon worried that his face might crack. The photo was promptly downloaded and saved as one of multiple backgrounds. It fell in rotation right behind a photo of Simon’s lower face tucked into his elbow offering a middle finger to the camera.

Simon shoves down the twisted pride that no photos of you appear in the rotation. Johnny had sat down when they got back to base and loaded several of his favorite pictures of Simon and Callum and a photo of a yellow flower to rotate as his background and lock screen.

January 3rd found the men and women of the 141, all seven main teams meeting the first of the several new civilians that would be helping with a variety of things.

Price whistled once and all his people circled up. Simon watched as Johnny’s mouth popped open and his eyes bugged. Confused, he looked towards Price as well.

There you stood. Eyes wide and mouth open a touch, as if you had lost the battle to keep it closed, you stare at them.

“Let me introduce you to new civilian specialized gear mechanic—”

“Tansy!” You cut Price off, “You can call me Tansy.”

Price, confused but known to be one who rolls with it, finished his sentence.

“Tansy. Tansy this is the team. You’ll learn all their names in time, but if any of them give you a hard time," he glared at Johnny and a few others pointedly, "you come to me.”

Price patted you on the back as he spoke again, “Dismissed muppets.”

You send Johnny and Simon a shrug as Price starts walking, telling you about the base and where you will be set up for jobs.

Masterlist | Taglist

A/N: I used the hex code #f3a900 for the yellow version, which is called Albany Paint Tansy. It's the little things, ya know?

[astralcities]

i'm literally like the parody of a nerdy coder i just bought multiple energy drinks to stay up all night and punch into my job and create some project nobody but me gaf about but will be the backbone of the operation...and also as soon as i went to test it i went "whoa. testing. just like glados and chell in portal" i need to be put down like a dog

[reillyissof]

I wanna say especially based on the most recent episode rin should be filthy and I mean absolutkey gob stinking rich.

Mat firet when they gave us her character bio and were like “oh yea she created you pi and named him after her childhood dog but doesn’t want him to find out”

I was like “oh that’s so funny what a good idea” and then we find out that you pi is incredibly mads produced and extrmley advanced and I’m like, your telling me just rin made him??? And she’s casually working at skip with no indication of higher role pay or priority and then in the latest episode she’s able to code so effcient she can make an a.i system (which I will admit is in the line of one of the coding skills she would need to create you pi so that’s pretty believable) but that can handle this now sentient a.I with its Uber powerful diffrence and layout along with being able to make a display for them to be able to visualize implanting code in a 3d action space that was able to handle arc???

We’ll arc might just have been his own thing but it sucked him in instead of him entering so there is something SUPER fishy with that for basic A.I

ALL IN UNDER AN HOUR???? HELLO

THIS IS THE BEST CODER/ WNGINIER /MECHANIC TO EVER EXSIST IM PRETTY SURE OTHER ULTRAMN SHOWS HAVENT GONE UP TO THIS SCALE THAT IVE SEEN (although close)

SHE SHOULD BE MAKING BANK AND WAY HIGHER UP

WHATTTTTTT?!?!!?!!!!

Nuts so wild to me

Also next episode she is testifying in a sexual harrasment scandle <<(precived over exaggeration) and it says goodbye rin like in goodbye forever????

Save our girl please

Also I hope they address runs contribution to arcs solid armor a bit more I felt it was a bit underdeveloped but I think it’s sick

Ishido was trying to hangout with Yuma 😏😏😏😏😏😏😏😏😏😏😏

Goodbye

[lycanstheorum22]

The HallowedVerse Pt.2

I guess since my Furis post got a lot of traction, I'll start on his kids now. He has 5, the triplets (Riley, Zion and Cole), Zach and Sasha. The other two will have their own posts.

(TW: SA mentions, SH mentions and hints at psychotic breaks involving death)

Riley first: He's the "oldest" of all the kids, taking on almost a second fatherly role. He was and is very mature for his age and runs a bakery/cafe with a few of his friends. Kind, levelheaded, but still very aggressive, he's almost an achor point for his siblings whilst their dad is in and out of the hospital during bad attacks. He appears the most like Furis, with long red hair that's usually up and crooked horns that run towards the back of his head before curving up. His tail is long and thin, tipped with a heart shape, and he has several tattoos detailing parts of his life. He can change forms, moving from his typical form to that of a large wolf-dog or to a massive wolf-like humanoid with an acidic bite. He's the usual hunter of the family.

Now, Zion: The middle triplet with a rebellious side and that cool older sibling vibe about them. Genderfluid and pansexual with a lot of deep sexual trauma, they run a band named Brimstone & Barbwire that tours all over Canada and the US and soon, internationally. He's a perfect mix of Furis and Justin, dark brown hair bleached into sunset colors and matching wolf-like ears planted behind tall, slightly curved horns. A long fluffy tail betrays their cat-like secondary forms and they have several tattoos, including a matching Aquarius constellation all three of the triplets have.

And lastly, Cole: The youngest of the triplets with a plethora of issues. You name it, he's probably got it. But they don't deter him from being a brilliant game coder and a money-making man of their own accord. At the age of 13, they built their own pc and coded an entire 8 hour long platforming phone game with recognition software and all sorts of tech that was never put in a game before. Now at 21, they have 4 games out, with a 5th on the way. Unfortunately, they look the most loke Justin, just with foxlike features. Orangey-red ears and tail contrast the dark purple and white their hair is dyed, large black feathered wings and cream-colored horns linking them back to Furis in sweet little ways. His schizophrenic episodes have done some serious damage though, one even resulting in 38 deaths.

[evaristo-velez]

Genre isn't so bad

Especially if used with (what I presume to be) its original intent: helping find similar stuff.

So here are my current projects and what they're similar to. I'll list it in probable publishing order, as best as I can guesstimate. These will be the working titles, for now. (Mostly because I suck at titling)

Savage Planet

Gritty Post-apocalypse, military sci-fi, pulp; Similar to A Boy and His Dog, Gears of War, Mad Max.

Following the destruction of the surface, humanity scavenges underground to survive. We follow a squad from Outpost 230 in their fight for tomorrow.

L in Space

Space Opera and Sci-fi Pulp; Similar to Battlestar Galactica (1978), Space 1999, Star Trek (1966).

In a galaxy similar to our own, an ordinary professor longs for the stars. When she gets her wish, she discovers the spacefaring crew is fleeing their homeworld after synths (emulated intellect or emullect) declare war against their masters.

A Romance Novel(?)

Slice of Life, Contemporary Romance, LGBTQ; I wrote the outline for the story as a K-drama style show but adapted it for a novel. This project keeps falling to the wayside, especially as a genre I'm not as intimate with. There's a passion to finish this and I hope I do.

West Coast Coder moves to the Midwest following his most notable break-up to date. He hopes to discover himself and start anew.

Ballads

Fantasy-Western; Been working on this for over five years and there's a lot more time before this sees the light. Ambitious but I think that the follow through on this series will be immense. If I had to boil it down, Lord of the Rings meets Westworld or Deadwood meets The Witcher.

The series will consist of four books. The first three are a combination of short stories and a novel in the western/fantasy environment. Book four is being kept close to the chest as it can still change drastically.

A goblin balladeer chronicles the rapidly growing frontier. We meet wizards and bounty hunters as they help shape the new world.

And so...

Those are the big ones. I have some early outlines for more projects but I'm focusing my efforts on these (mostly in this order).

I have some short form that I want to post here, depending on how publishing elsewhere goes.

Follow and share. I'll continue my small ramblings between updates.

Keep writing!