#error in office setup

[bleulikedaylight]

Ms. Delinquent, Natasha

pairing: delinquent basketball captain! natasha romanoff x student council president! reader

synopsis: Y/N L/N, perfect student council president, gets paired with the school’s worst nightmare—rebel basketball captain natasha romanoff—for a major project. she’s late, annoying, and impossible to work with. but one unexpected moment makes Y/N wonder… is there more to natasha than the chaos she brings?

warnings: mild cursing + tell me if i missed anything !! | wc: 3.8k | genre: wlw (as always <3), romance, fluff, high school au !! ;p

note: hii !! thank you so much for reading my work. just a quick heads-up—english isn’t my first language, so i’m really sorry in advance for any grammatical errors !! T^T

also, feel free to send messages, asks, requests, or literally whatever—i love hearing from people, and i swear i don’t bite (unless you want me to? jk, i'm so cringe 😔☝️)

anyway, i just noticed i accidentally made a second blog instead of a whole new account… so if you follow me and an account with the username @definitelynotbleu followed you—that's me. that’s my main blog, because apparently, tumblr said “you can’t follow people using your side blog.” like okay. thanks, i guess? ☹️💔💔

i’m lowkey considering just making a whole new account and moving all my fics there because this setup is slowly driving me insane. BUT I’M ALSO KINDA LAZY SO. WE’LL SEE. also i haven’t even made a masterlist yet. i’m cooked. actually beyond cooked. overcooked. burnt. ashes. 🥀🥀🥀

(ALSO I’M SO SORRY FOR VERY LONG AUTHOR NOTES I’M JUST A YAPPER OKAY T^T)

part one ♡‧₊˚ part two ‎♡‧₊˚

The next day, you show up to school with a venti coffee, three hours of sleep, and a list of tasks color-coded in pastel highlighters. You’re not thinking about her. You’re not. You have work to do. You have plans. You are a woman of discipline. You are the student council president.

And then she walks into the classroom like she didn’t just emotionally destabilize you twelve hours ago.

She’s in her varsity jacket, gym bag slung over one shoulder, earbuds in. One of them falls out as she moves, and you catch the faint sound of Arctic Monkeys. Of course she listens to Arctic Monkeys. You hate that it suits her.

She sees you. She nods. Calm. Collected. Like last night’s heart-attack-inducing flirtation didn’t happen.

You scowl.

She smirks.

Wanda leans over to whisper, “You’re glaring like she stole your planner.”

“She might as well have,” you mutter.

—

You meet after school again, this time in the student council office. She shows up ten minutes early and eats all the jelly beans in your organizer tray. You tell her off. She just shrugs and asks for more.

Somehow, it becomes a thing.

Every day for a week, Natasha Romanoff shows up. Sometimes with food. Sometimes with new bruises. Once, with a notebook full of genuinely helpful project notes, written in messy, slanted handwriting. She has surprisingly good insights, you have to admit.

But it’s not just the work. It’s the way she listens. The way she leans back in the chair, arms crossed, watching you with something between curiosity and amusement, like you’re a puzzle she’s enjoying solving.

It’s unsettling.

It’s distracting.

It’s maddening.

Especially when she starts casually touching you. Nothing scandalous—just light taps on the shoulder when you make a joke, her knee brushing yours under the table, taking the pen out of your hand when you’re overthinking the sentence structure.

"Relax, President. You’re not writing the Constitution."

You swat her hand. “I am setting a standard.”

She grins. “Yeah. A very adorable, very high-strung one.”

You want to scream.

And then—she starts drawing on your notes.

Like, full-on doodling hearts on the margins when you’re focused on your laptop.

“You’re vandalizing school property,” you say, eyeing the tiny cartoon of a girl with your hairstyle next to one with her haircut.

“Correction,” she replies without looking up. “I’m customizing history.”

You blink. “Is that supposed to be me?”

“Depends. Are you flattered?”

You throw a highlighter at her face. She catches it with one hand. You hate how cool that was.

—

It gets worse when she starts appearing outside of project hours. One morning, she joins you in line at the school caf. Orders black coffee and a muffin. Pays for your iced coffee without asking. When you try to protest, she tilts her head.

“What, you don’t like muffins?”

“That’s not the point.”

“What is the point, then?”

You don’t answer.

Next time you go to your locker, there’s a sticky note on the inside door.

You stare at it for an absurd amount of time.

Wanda finds you still holding it twenty minutes later.

—

And then there’s the basketball practice.

You don’t normally attend. But your vice president is managing the halftime event and drags you into helping.

So you’re there, clipboard in hand, head spinning with logistics—until the buzzer sounds and Natasha Romanoff is suddenly there, sweat-soaked, breathing hard, hair in a messy ponytail, grinning like she just won the world.

She finds you in the crowd. She winks.

You look away so fast you almost pull a muscle.

Wanda catches the whole thing. “Do not make me be the one to say it.”

“Say what?”

“You’re falling for her.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Absolutely yes.”

“I can’t stand her.”

“You stood outside for three hours watching her throw a ball into a net.”

“It was for the halftime event.”

“You made the flyer.”

You have no comeback.

—

Then comes Friday.

Project submission day.

You meet in the library to print the final version. Natasha shows up with two drinks—your usual order and something new for you to try. You hate how thoughtful it is.

“So, we’re done,” you say, double-checking the pages.

“We are.”

“No more late-night messages.”

“No more weekly meetings.”

“No more walks home.”

She says nothing.

You look up. Her face is unreadable.

“We’ll go back to being classmates,” you offer, almost as a question.

She nods slowly. “Right. Classmates.”

Why does that feel like a loss?

Before you can say anything else, someone calls her name.

A girl you vaguely recognize—varsity, volleyball, always surrounded by people. She walks over, all smiles and confidence, and hands Natasha a note.

“From me,” she says, touching her arm.

You freeze.

Natasha takes it, unreadable again. “Thanks.”

The girl walks away, not even sparing you a glance.

You stare at the paper. Then at her. You’re not sure what expression you’re making, but Natasha blinks.

“What?”

“Nothing,” you say, too fast.

“You look mad.”

“I’m not mad.”

“Jealous?”

“What?! No!”

She leans in, a flicker of amusement in her eyes. “Relax, president. It’s just a love letter. Happens all the time.”

You bite your tongue. You’re not jealous. You’re not.

But you go home annoyed.

And when she doesn’t text you that night, you keep checking your phone anyway.

—

—

The next week is chaos.

Event week. Schedules, permissions, venue requests. You bury yourself in work. You avoid the gym wing. You skip the caf. You go out of your way to not see her.

And somehow, that makes it worse.

Because Natasha doesn’t chase you. She doesn’t text. Doesn’t show up. Doesn’t ask what’s wrong.

You don’t want her to. Except you do.

You hate her.

Except you don’t.

And then it’s Thursday.

You’re reviewing final logistics with your committee when the door opens.

Natasha walks in.

Everyone freezes.

You blink. “Can I help you?”

She walks up and hands you a folded paper.

“Coach needed this signed.”

You take it. “Okay.”

She doesn’t leave.

You glance up. “Anything else?”

She shrugs. “Just wanted to see you.”

You almost drop the pen.

Wanda chokes on her drink.

Natasha leaves before you can reply.

—

Later, your phone buzzes.

You stare at the screen.

You don’t.

That night, you can’t sleep.

Because maybe you miss working with her too.

Maybe you were wrong about her. Maybe she’s not a complete walking red flag. Maybe she’s just... complicated. Rough around the edges. Mysterious in a way that makes you want to keep learning more.

Maybe you’re in trouble.

And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

—

You tell yourself it’s not a big deal.

Just a message. Just a moment. Just Natasha being… Natasha.

And yet, three days later, you're still re-reading that "i miss working with you" text like it’s a published poem.

It’s embarrassing.

Wanda calls you out during lunch. “You’re staring at your phone like it owes you tuition money.”

“It’s none of your business,” you reply, stabbing your salad with unnecessary force.

Yelena snorts. “She still hasn’t asked you out, huh?”

“I am not waiting for her to ask me out.”

Kate raises an eyebrow. “Would you say yes?”

You don’t answer.

Because you don’t know.

Because maybe you would.

—

The rain starts mid-afternoon.

Hard. Fast. The kind that floods the quad and knocks down your color-coded event posters. Not metaphorical, poetic rain. Actual, annoying, soak-your-socks rain. You’re standing under the broken awning outside the school gym, binder clutched to your chest, watching your hard work dissolve into paper mush.

You’re in the school grounds, fuming, clipboard soaked, when she finds you.

“Event prep not going well?” she asks, casually offering her umbrella.

You don’t take it.

She holds it over both of you anyway.

“I worked so hard on those signs,” you mutter. “And now they’re dead. Murdered. By the sky.”

Natasha looks at the puddles like she can beat them up for you. “Wanna make new ones?”

You blink at her. “Why would you help me?”

She shrugs. “Because I like you.”

Your brain short-circuits.

“You what?”

“I like helping you,” she clarifies, emphasis deliberate. “You’re cute when you’re stressed.���

You sputter. She smirks.

“Also, I brought snacks,” she adds, pulling a plastic bag out of her varsity jacket. “Thought you might forget lunch again.”

You hate how well she knows you. You hate how that makes your heart do a thing.

“Thank you,” you mumble.

She hands you a rice ball. “So, what’s the plan, boss?”

You look up at her. Rain falling, your shoes soaked, everything a mess—and suddenly it doesn’t feel so bad.

“Plan is… save the event. Rewrite everything. Get glitter glue. Hope for divine intervention.”

Natasha grins. “Finally. A mission worthy of my talents.”

—

That night, you work together again. Just like before.

But it’s not just like before.

Now there’s this thing between you. A current, a tension, an almost.

She sits closer. Laughs more easily. Steals your pen, your snacks, your attention.

You tell her to focus.

She tells you to loosen up.

And at one point—when your hand accidentally brushes hers and you both freeze for half a second too long—you think: this might actually be something.

—

By Friday, everyone notices.

Wanda keeps sending you suspicious side-eyes. Yelena openly teases Natasha in front of you. Even the teachers are acting weird, like they’re expecting a plot twist.

You try to ignore it.

But it’s hard when Natasha keeps finding excuses to be near you.

“Forgot my book. Oh look, we have the same one.”

“Need help carrying that? You clearly skipped arm day.”

“You busy later? I found this new café. They have your favorite coffee.”

It’s maddening. It’s sweet. It’s maddeningly sweet.

You are losing your mind.

—

Then comes the night before the event.

You’re in the auditorium, double-checking lights and stage cues. Natasha shows up, of course. She’s holding a flashlight in her mouth and balancing a roll of tape on her head.

“You’re not on the logistics team,” you tell her.

She drops the tape. “Nope. Just here for moral support. And also to see your cute boss voice again.”

You try not to blush. Fail miserably.

“You’re annoying,” you say.

“I know.”

A pause.

“You’re… kind of important to me,” you say suddenly. Quiet. Unexpected even to yourself.

Natasha looks up. Serious now. “Yeah?”

You nod. “Just… thought you should know.”

She crosses the stage, stops in front of you, eyes soft in the dim lighting.

“You’re important to me too,” she says. “And not just for school projects.”

Your heart flips. Or malfunctions. Or possibly explodes.

She leans in. You panic.

You shove a clipboard between you. “I-I still have to check the mic system!”

Natasha blinks. Then laughs. “You’re lucky you’re cute, Pres."

—

Later that night:

—

And then, the day of the event arrives.

Everything runs perfectly.

The crowd cheers. The booths look amazing. Your team is killing it.

And in the middle of it all—between speeches, music, and chaos—you feel her watching you.

She’s not trying to hide it.

You glance at her.

She grins.

You grin back.

—

The event ends with a bang. A literal bang.

Someone in the STEM booth miscalculates the chemical reaction for their demo volcano. You hear the fizz, you smell the vinegar, and then—

Boom.

Foam everywhere. It explodes so violently it hits half the hallway. Your shoes are soaked. Your socks are crying. Your bangs are sticking to your forehead. And right next to you, Natasha Romanoff looks like she just walked out of a shampoo commercial—except her face is covered in pink foam, and she’s wheezing.

“You’re laughing?! This is your fault—”

“How is it my fault that the Science Club can’t count?!”

“You egged them on!”

“I told them to go big or go home!” she says, wiping foam from her jaw. “They just… went nuclear.”

You glare. She grins. And then she reaches out—

Flick.

Right on the center of your forehead.

“Relax, Miss President. You look like a very angry bubble tea.”

“I swear, Romanoff—”

She brushes foam from your nose. “Still the cutest bubble tea on campus, though.”

You stare at her.

You forget how to speak.

You nearly combust on the spot.

—

Later that night, the chaos finally dies down. You’re still buzzing from the noise, the laughter, the adrenaline of pulling off an entire school event without anyone setting the curtains on fire (the foam doesn't count, okay). You sneak off behind the gym—because it’s quiet there, and because you know she’ll follow.

She does.

Varsity jacket slung over her shoulder. Tired eyes. Twisted smirk. That lazy, confident swagger like she didn’t just help you keep the student body from collapsing into absolute anarchy.

“Hey,” she says softly.

You look up from your clipboard. “You survived the foam-pocalypse.”

“Barely.”

She walks over, sees you shiver, and wordlessly drops her jacket onto your shoulders.

You go still.

“…Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

She leans against the wall beside you. You're seated on the bench, curled under her jacket like a burrito. She watches you. Quiet. Soft.

“You did good today, Pres.”

You glance at her. “I had help.”

She shrugs. “I just followed orders.”

You roll your eyes. “You literally yelled at a sophomore to stop lighting incense indoors.”

“He was summoning good vibes.”

“He was summoning a fire hazard.”

She laughs. You bite your lip to hide your smile.

“…Can I tell you something?” she asks, voice suddenly quieter.

You nod slowly.

She shifts. Leans down slightly, just enough that you can see the way her eyes flicker nervously before she brushes your hair behind your ear, fingertips grazing your cheek.

“I like you,” she says. “Not just for school. Not just for events. I like you, Y/N. Like, like-like you.”

Your heart stops. Your entire body goes still.

You stare.

Then—“Took you long enough.”

Natasha blinks. “Wait—what?”

You laugh—light and breathless. “You think I didn’t notice the forehead flicks? The snacks? The weirdly specific coffee orders? The way you walk me home and then pretend it’s not a big deal?”

Natasha looks faintly betrayed. “I was being subtle!”

“You’re literally six-foot-two and smirk at me like a YA love interest. Nothing about you is subtle.”

She gasps. “Are you comparing me to a Wattpad boy?”

“I shouldn’t, but yes.”

Natasha groans into her hands. “This is the worst confession ever—”

You reach up, grab her hands, and pull them down gently.

“I like you too, Delinquent.”

She goes silent.

Then she flicks your forehead again. “I knew it.”

“Ow?!”

“Deserved.”

You grab her collar before she can pull back and lean your forehead against hers, still giggling.

“You’re infuriating.”

“You’re dramatic.”

“You’re obsessed with me.”

“Who wouldn’t be?”

You kiss her cheek. She actually short-circuits.

—

—

You barely sleep that night.

Too giddy. Too electrified. Too busy replaying every second of her smile, her laugh, the way she short-circuited when you kissed her cheek.

The group chat keeps blowing up—Wanda’s in full meltdown mode, Yelena’s already planning the wedding, and you… you’re floating.

But the world doesn’t stop just because your crush finally confessed.

The next day arrives fast. Loud. Demanding.

And before you know it—

The interschool basketball match begins.

You shouldn’t even be in the gym.

You’ve got student council paperwork spilling out of your arms, a working list of urgent tasks highlighted in pastel chaos, and three missed calls from your VP asking where the sign-up forms are. Your planner is a warzone, your phone is blowing up, and you haven’t eaten since breakfast.

But you’re here.

Sitting beside Wanda, Yelena, and Kate in the front row of bleachers, legs crossed, hands clenched in your lap, trying very hard not to watch the court.

You tell yourself it’s just for school spirit. You're here to support the school. Support the team.

It’s not about her.

It’s never about her.

Except it’s absolutely about her.

Because Natasha Romanoff is on the court, and for the first time ever, she’s… off.

Her passes are sloppy. She misses two layups in a row. Her defense is late. Her rhythm? Gone. There’s a visible crack in her composure—she’s snapping at teammates, cursing under her breath, yanking at the hem of her jersey like she can pull herself together through sheer will.

“She’s spiraling,” Kate says quietly.

Yelena’s brows furrow. “She doesn’t play like this. Ever.”

“She looks—nervous?” Wanda says, watching closely. “She keeps glancing at the bleachers.”

You force yourself not to move.

Not to flinch.

Not to let the burn in your chest show.

Because she is glancing. Over and over again. Her eyes are scanning the stands, sharp and desperate, like she's looking for something—or someone—and not finding them. Each time she doesn’t find what she’s looking for, her face hardens. Her jaw tightens.

“She’s looking for you,” Yelena murmurs, like she’s just realized.

You press your lips into a thin line.

“She thought you wouldn’t come,” Wanda whispers.

And for a moment, you almost don’t.

But then—

Then she misses another shot. The crowd groans. She slaps her hands against her thighs, furious.

And suddenly, you can’t take it anymore.

“God,” you mutter, already standing, “if I get suspended for this—”

You cup your hands around your mouth and yell across the court before your brain can catch up.

“ROMANOFF! PLAY LIKE YOU MEAN IT!”

The whole gym stops.

Like, actually stops.

Every head turns. The air shifts. Even the referee pauses.

And Natasha?

She freezes.

Her eyes snap to you instantly—like she’d been waiting for that voice all game.

And when she finds you?

Her whole expression changes. Like she can breathe again.

The corner of her mouth twitches. A breathless laugh escapes her. Her shoulders roll back. Then—

She moves.

Sharp. Precise. Lethal.

The Natasha everyone knows is back.

She steals the ball from the opposing point guard like it’s nothing, darts down the court, and scores with a clean, perfect shot that wipes out the tension from the past ten minutes.

From that moment on, the game shifts. Momentum tilts.

Natasha becomes unstoppable.

You don’t even realize you’re holding your breath until the final buzzer sounds—Natasha’s team winning by two points. The crowd explodes into cheers.

You clap automatically. Just once. Then grab your things, ready to disappear before anyone processes what just happened—

But she doesn’t go to her team.

She doesn’t wait for the trophy, or the coach’s speech, or the photos.

She runs.

Straight. To. You.

Through her teammates, through the crowd, ignoring her coach yelling her name and the players trying to high-five her.

You blink as she stops in front of you—sweaty, panting, eyes burning with something so raw it makes your chest ache.

“Hi,” she breathes, like the world’s been holding its breath without you.

You stare. “Hi?”

“You came,” she says, her voice hoarse. “I thought—” she shakes her head, words failing. “You weren’t there. I looked and you weren’t—”

“I was late,” you admit softly. “I had council stuff—”

“I thought I ruined everything,” she whispers.

You frown. “Romanoff—”

“I couldn’t see you,” she continues, like it’s been sitting in her throat the whole game. “I kept looking and you weren’t—God, I thought I lost you.”

You blink fast, something thick in your throat. “You didn’t.”

A pause.

And then—

“Can I kiss you?” she asks, not a tease this time. Just desperate. Just honest. “I—I need to know this is real.”

Your heart is pounding.

“Yeah,” you whisper. “You can.”

She kisses you.

Right there. In the middle of the gym. In front of literally everyone.

It’s messy. Breathless. Charged with too much feeling and not enough time. Her hands slide into your hair, holding on like she’s still scared you’ll vanish.

Gasps ripple through the crowd. Wanda screams. Kate chokes. Yelena straight-up punches the air.

And when Natasha finally pulls back, she leans her forehead against yours and breathes, “Don’t do that again.”

“Do what?” you ask, dazed.

“Disappear,” she says. “Make me play like a rookie. Make me lose my mind.”

You grin despite yourself. “You were that bad?”

She scoffs. “I nearly fouled out looking for you.”

You try to look smug. “Guess you need me around, huh?”

Natasha leans in, brushing her nose against yours.

“Guess I do, President.”

The crowd is still roaring. Someone’s taking photos. The coach is yelling in the distance.

But all you feel is her.

And for the first time in weeks, everything finally makes sense again.

You sigh, dramatic and hopeless. “I’m so doomed.”

She kisses you again, softer this time.

“Yeah,” she murmurs against your lips. “But at least now you’re doomed with me.”

—

The next morning, Natasha walks up to you in the middle of the hallway.

She’s in her varsity jacket.

You’re in her hoodie from last night.

Everyone sees.

She stops in front of you. Smirks.

You squint. “Why do you look like you’re about to say something embarrassing?”

“Because I am.” She flicks your forehead again. “Hi, baby.”

Your entire soul leaves your body.

Wanda SCREAMS from across the hallway.

Yelena fist-pumps.

Natasha leans in, lips near your ear.

“Now everyone knows you’re mine, Pres.”

You elbow her. Lightly.

She catches your hand.

Doesn’t let go.

Then threads her fingers through yours like it’s always been that easy.

And maybe it is.

Because from the way your heart leaps, the way her thumb brushes yours—

You realize you’ve been hers all along.

[nicarnelian]

₊˚⊹ featuring: academic achiever! narumi gen x student council president! fem! reader

₊˚⊹ word count: 1.2k

₊˚⊹ warning: curse words, narumi being a menace, grammar errors ;-;

₊˚⊹ author’s note: literally a dump w all my thoughts. head empty, only academic achiever narumi . again, this is not beta read (i type n post lmao im gnna die w this setup) but i might make a fic w this prompt… im just lazy to edit…

it's insane how much i think about academic achiever! narumi gen and how he would always rank first in every semestral rankings. however, his life soon crumbles when he sees his name a row lower than usual: second rank.

he thinks it was a mistake, perhaps a mistype of the school administration. however, he looks at the name above him just to see one of the few names he despises. he rubs his eyes, thinking that maybe, he was hallucinating — because there was no fucking way that student council president! reader dethroned him from his position as top of his batch.

what would gen first do in this situation? ah, yes! he would absolutely storm into the council office and make a scandal, shouting and demanding how the hell did you manage to steal that spot from him! you and your other executive officers stared at him. is he fucking delusional or plain insane? who in their right mind would storm into the council office while a meeting was in progress?

and, that was when gen declared he would snatch away his title from your hands and return it to its respective owner — him.

and, from here, you deduced that indeed, he was both fucking delusional and insane.

the both of you despise working with one another, it was like cat and dog seeing your combination with him from afar. in one class with gen, you argued to disseminate tasks as soon as the project was given, but he tended to cram that paper a week before submission, which he emphasized would take up only a meager 5% of your final grade, or simply, just because he does not care.

the conclusion to your quarrel with him? both of you end up submitting individual papers.

the professor scolded you both and asked to redo the task. gen hates it, he truly detests working with you. so dignified, so strict with time as if you were to run out of it. while he, on the other hand, preferred to be lax about it. he absolutely despises how poised you acted — as if nothing was wrong with your life.

but, then again, gen doesn't know what happens behind these curtains of your composed façade. he came to your dorm since you had to redo the project with him. you and him decided to make own respective outlines and brainstorm on the final one. gen stayed in what seemed like a small living room divided by a sliding door from your bedroom, where you stayed.

however, he peeked through your sliding door when it's time for the final brainstorming session, because you aren't answering his calls from the other side. you were asleep. on your desk. you were asleep, slumped over your desk surrounded by mountains of council paperwork and reviewers.

initially, gen was annoyed. you had the audacity to sleep, while he was researching his ass off at the other side? yup, he's annoyed, alright. however, he caught a glimpse of not only an outline, but a draft to the project the both of you were working on. he swiftly took it and analyzed it. with all honesty, it was good and he couldn’t deny that. he looked back at your sleeping figure and, mysteriously, for some sort of reason, gen carried your body onto the soft cushions of your bed. gen sat on the floor, resting his back against your bed, and began drafting your collaborative paper with your draft.

you wake up at three in the morning to find a head resting on your bed edge. gen narumi, that absolute menace who declared you a rival, was sleeping in your room, beside him was a finished project with both of your names printed on a paper. you stood up and woke him up, "hey, idiot."

he stirred awake, his left hand rubbing his eyes while his laptop rested on his right arm. "hey, miss president." he smiled. a toothy grin, with his sharp, cuspid teeth – almost like a cat.

"sleep here," you offered, patting your bed.

"are you asking me to sleep beside you? want to hook up with me that badly?" his tired eyes smiled, as he adjusted himself and settled with his laptop on your bed. gen was too tired to even engage in banter with your antics.

wow, he’s surprisingly… compliant. you thought.

however, you lit up your study desk once more and gen was easily disturbed by how you were working again. he thought you needed sleep, needed rest. it was three in the morning and he doesn't deny that you still have paperwork to do. but, if you continued working like that, it would obviously have some adverse effects on your body. you were hurting yourself with your routine.

but, it's not like he's worried, of course! he just doesn't want to snatch back his title from someone who didn't put all of their effort. he doesn't care!

but, fuck those thoughts. the thunderous beating of his heart betrayed him. his mind was cloudy as hell and he was sure to be deranged the moment he asked you, "hey, princess. what time are ya sleeping?"

then, he slapped his mouth closed. princess. he just called you princess. he's dead. he was hoping that you didn’t hear him, but your head quickly whipped towards his direction, "princess?"

crap. "hah! no! it was a slip of tongue! miss president is close to princess, right? president and princess starts with the letter p!" gen knew he was screwed, wondering what the hell he was even spouting about.

there was an awkward silence that filled the room. but, you stood up your chair, and walked towards him, bending a little bit as you closed the distance between your face and his — you saw him flinch. "if you wanted to hook up with me that badly, just say so."

gen couldn't process what you've said. he didn’t expect you to use his own words against him. and, it was three in the morning, maybe the both of you were high, maybe this was all just a dream, he thought. but, he snapped back into reality when he felt a blanket shoved in his face. he tried to remove it, but felt your hands keeping it in place. “h-hey!"

"j-just go to sleep! i'm fine! i'll sleep later!" you stammered and stuttered over your words. gen stopped struggling and kept the blanket over his entire body. the reason? because his flushed face would be exposed to you and he knew that you would tease the hell out of him.

little did he know, on the other side of the room, you were heaving heavy sighs. your face turned beet red because, what the hell did you just do?

both of you lingered in each other’s silence, neither eager to speak up about what had just happened. but gen supposed that being in this situation wasn't really that bad. if he could get the stoic and poised miss president of the council stuttering like that, then maybe he's one step closer to reclaiming that title of his.

[atinyniki]

when the love fades.

group: seventeen !

pairing: idol!minghao x gn!reader

genre: angst with a hopeful ending, kinda fluffy if you squint

warnings + additional info: reader is referred to as y/n, minghao is referred to as hao sometimes, petnames, drowning (no one dies), mentions of choking and the feeling of it, kissing, crying (lots...), reader is pretty sensitive, themes related to the sea, communication + the fear that comes along with it, hugs, literally so much pain and regret, shua is mentioned once, reader loves seashells :3

authors note: um... hey. im back. its been a while </3 idk i kind of wrote this bc im trying to get my spark back so it's still kind of shit but i hope you all enjoy it anyways :))) pls lmk if i didn't use gn terms !!! i tried to make sure i did but then again i'm not quite used to it </3 this is also not proofread. english is not my first language, so please excuse any grammatical or spelling errors. happy reading :)

wc: 1878

when the love fades, it’s not always noticeable.

maybe you start getting less text messages from them, or maybe you two go on fewer dates. 

maybe your contact name changes to something more generic for them, or maybe you don’t kiss as much as you used to. 

but with minghao? that’s not the case. 

it seemed to hit you like a brick, something had just changed. it wasn’t gradual, and everything just stopped at the same time. 

barely texting, kissing, going on dates, there was nothing there anymore. you found yourself living with a stranger, occasional hi’s and hello’s but nothing else. the two of you were barely able to keep a conversation anymore. 

a couple months ago, you and minghao couldn’t ever stay silent in a room. there was always something to talk about with you two, whether it was about your new office drama, or maybe just a little dream you had. 

but now, the silence was suffocating. as if it had a grip so tight on your throat that it bruised, but still let a bit of air out so you could breathe. not enough to kill you, but just enough to make you suffer. 

you feel like you’re drowning. like the water is rushing into your lungs and you can’t find your way back up to the surface. 

that is, until you feel it. the pain in your chest. but it’s not a heartbroken type of pain. 

the water fills up your lungs before you know it. you can’t breathe. you’re drowning, and you can’t swim. 

there’s something in you that wants to accept your fate, and you let yourself relax. that is, until you feel someone pulling you out of the water. 

you cough the water out of your lungs, your eyes burning from the salt. “baby? y/n, are you okay?”

slowly, your eyes adjust to your surroundings. to be honest, you can’t even remember what you were trying to do before you felt yourself sinking. 

“y-yeah—cough—i’m okay…“

“fuck, please be careful. i can’t lose you.”

in theory, it seems to be a normal thing you’d say to your lover. but small phrases like this have been so rare between the two of you recently. your heart pounds against your chest at the sudden confession. 

there’s a silence that washes over the two of you, and you try to swallow the lump in your throat as he helps you up. 

it doesn’t go away. 

it feels like that simple touch was the most you've felt from him in months, and you can’t even remember the last time minghao has said something like that to you. 

the sun is already setting, you realize. you’ve been so out of it that you haven’t really noticed the time.

you grab the bucket of seashells you left by the shore and walk back with him towards your small setup that you made earlier, following just slightly behind him. for some reason, you feel awkward being face to face with him nowadays. 

but something changes your mind. 

you rummage through the bucket to find a pretty shell. one that suits minghao, but one that’s still small enough for him to hold in one hand. you’re still not quite sure what you’re planning on doing, but you’re certain your heart has a mind of its own. 

and you trust it, fully. 

“hao?”

he stops in his tracks, turning around slowly. there’s no smile evident on his face, but he’s not sad either. you can’t quite place how he’s feeling just from his face anymore, it’s like that skill has faded as your love did. 

“are you okay?”, you don’t answer. not verbally, at least. 

you set the bucket down and take a couple steps towards him, grabbing one of his hands and placing the shell there. 

you watch as his confusion shifts to amusement. “you didn’t have to be so dramatic about it”, he jokes. 

but then you look up at him.

and his whole world shatters. 

you stand there in the dark, teary eyed and unsure if your relationship is even salvageable at this point. “i’m sorry… it was just a joke. thank you, it’s very pretty”

you reach your hands up to cup his face, leaving a bit of distance between you two in case he felt uncomfortable. it’s odd that you even think about that possibility now. you’re reminded of the times when you two were inseparable, always attached to eachother one way or another. 

that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. 

tilting your head, you lean a little closer towards him, but you’re scared. you haven’t kissed him in weeks, and you’re terrified that it’s unnatural to him now. 

what if it doesn’t feel the same?

suddenly, you change your mind. you let your hands fall slowly, and you back away from him, clearing your throat awkwardly in the process. 

“sorry, i don’t know what i was trying to do there.”, you sigh. 

but he looks at you with a foreign expression that you can’t quite place. it’s like a cross between adoration and heartbreak. 

you want to let the tears fall, to tell him how you truly feel about your relationship. but before you can, he pulls you into his chest, tilting your chin up and kissing you ever so softly. 

his featherlight touches burn into your skin. touches that are so foreign to you now, but ones that you took for granted all those months ago. you pull away from him slowly, suddenly conscious of how your tears have escaped your eyes. 

you quickly wipe them away, praying that minghao won’t question you. 

your heart is beating wildly in your chest, you can’t remember the last time you’ve felt like this. hell, you can’t remember if you’ve ever felt like this. 

“look at me.”, he whispers. slowly, you tilt your head up to face him. “i’m sorry. i don’t know what happened to us, but i want it all back.”

you sigh deeply. “i’m not sure what happened to us either. i miss you, minghao.”

there’s another long pause, but it’s not as uncomfortable as it normally is. you can tell he’s thinking, there’s something important on his mind. 

“hao, what’s wrong?”

the nickname catches him off guard, and he shoots his head up to look into your eyes once again. he inhales deeply, it seems like he can’t find the words to express his thoughts either. “do you think we can fix us? it might not be exactly what we had before but… i just really don’t want you to go.”

there’s a slight shift in the mood after his confession, you’ve never seen him so torn before. you wonder how long he’s been living with the idea that you’re going to leave eventually, because it’s far from the truth. 

“i’m not going anywhere, minghao. i was never planning on it”

you hear him sniffle once, and your heart cracks. you know what type of man minghao is, and only the worst pain could ever cause him to cry. 

“are you crying?”

no response. you’re not sure why you asked, seeming as the answer is fairly obvious by the way his head is tilted down.

he tentatively brings a hand out to your arm, almost like he’s reaching for you, but he doesn’t know where you’ll take him. “can i hug you?”

the sudden question shocks you. minghao never really had to ask for physical affection. he would always hug you, sometimes not even letting go for a long while. 

had it really been that long? it’s terrifying how much can change in such a short amount of time. 

you feel that it’s better not to respond, and you wrap your arms around his torso again, kissing his jawline once for good measure. 

he clings onto you tightly, his nails digging into your shoulders. “fuck, i’m so sorry”

you can feel his heart beating out of his chest, and it terrifies you for a moment. you’re certain now, that this is a pain minghao has never felt in his entire life. 

your suspicions are truly confirmed, though, when minghao slowly loses control in his legs, bringing you down onto the sand with him. sobs violently rack his body, and they rack you along with him. 

“i’m sorry too. i never told you about how i felt. you can’t read my mind, and i know that. plus, work has been stressful for you, and you know it. you work so hard, i don’t want you to blame yourself so much all the time. it’s not all your fault, hao, it’s okay.”

“i had to find out through… fuck— how did shua notice but i didn’t? you don’t have to stay with me anymore i promise. it’s not fair to you at a—“, you shut him up with a peck. 

“y/n—“

another one. 

“why are you—“

another one. you smile. 

he understands your intentions now, slightly smiling and leaning in for yet another kiss. he forgot how magical your kisses felt, and now he never wants to go without them. 

“there’s no one else i’d rather be with than you, hao. so if that means we have to start fresh, then so be it, but i’m not ready to let you go, okay?”

he nods lightly, a little taken aback by your words. maybe it’s time for a change in your relationship. 

“baby, look at me.”

you cup his face in your hands to have him face you, wiping the drying tears from his cheeks lovingly. 

“i love you. so much. and i know we hit a bump in the road, but we’ll get through all of it, i promise. so don’t worry too much…”

he breathes a sigh of relief, kissing your lips passionately one more time. 

“thank you… so much, y/n”, he whispers. it’s so quiet that you’re certain you would’ve missed it if you were paying attention to anything else.

a small smile tugs at the corner of your lips, your heart fluttering in your chest. there’s a different feeling in your heart, something that you haven’t felt in a very long time, but still something you didn’t realize you needed so much until now.

“let’s go home, okay? we can talk there…”, you whisper softly to him. he’s so incredibly close to you that you can almost feel your lips touching, the heat radiating off him. 

you can feel yourself blushing a little, and it makes minghao smile. he picks you up, dusting the sand off your legs and grabbing your bucket of pretty seashells. 

the two of you start walking back slowly towards your little setup on the shore, prickly small seashells poking the bottom of your feet along the way. 

you see minghao turn towards you in your peripheral, and you stop in your tracks, wondering what he could be thinking about. 

he confidently grabs your hands this time, interlacing your fingers together and gently rubbing along your knuckles with his thumb. 

there’s a smile on his face now, and a new look that you can recognize this time.

determination. 

he’s still not sure where you’ll take him, but none of that matters anymore. you’ll be okay. 

as long as you’re by his side.

<3

[twig-tea]

GL odds and ends 29 December 2024

The end of the year kicked my ass, but I wanted to get one last one of these out for 2024! The last one before this was 10 November. If you're interested in GL older than that, check out my GL rec list through Feb 2024 and my #gl recs tag for the other odds and ends posts. New series marked with an asterisk*.

Currently airing (with thoughts up to 29 Dec):

The Fragrance You inherit 5/8 (Japanese, Friday/Saturday-ish, no official distribution but fansub on @isaksbestpillow's blog [thank you Siiri!] I have been really enjoying this show and have been writing when I have time (last post was for ep4). At its core this is a gentle show about kind people who love each other doing their best, which is always my favourite thing. Subs are on pause for the moment so you have time to catch up before the finale!

Pluto ep 11/12 (Thai, Saturdays 9:30 AM ET, YouTube) This plot continues to be absolutely wild. There's a lot of discourse around Oom this week, to which I'll just say: Setting a test to see if the people you love will hurt themselves in order to make you feel better is not loving or healthy behaviour, even if your motivations are understandable and sympathetic. Namtan is doing a great job making these twins feel like different people, and she and Film are still gorgeous together. And I have no idea what's up with the messy lesbian sides, but I'm on the side of all of them need a time out! I've been pretty dialed out of this show because it's not my thing, so I'm not that invested in any of the relationships going into the finale, but it's been a wild ride and it seems to be holding together for those who enjoy the high drama of this plot.

*Petrichor ep 5/10 (Thai, Saturdays, 10:00 AM ET, iQIYI) The procedural aspects of this show are unfortunately not well executed, but Engfa and Charlotte have fantastic chemistry. I'm also really loving seeing Na and Max again even though I am very worried about getting too attached to their characters. It's always hard for me when a show is about a police officer trying to do good work in a corrupt system because the only takeaway I can accept is that that is not possible lol but I'm enjoying seeing these two on my screen every week (except this week, because we sadly did not get a new episode today).

*Mate, 6/12 (Thai, Tuesdays, WeTV (uncut version)) This one is hard to describe. It seems to be trying to do for trauma in a GL what Love in the Air and Bed Friend did in BL--show a realistic depiction of trauma in one of their characters and have them fall in love, and be taken care of and healed that way. But that also makes it extremely hard to watch. The trauma flashbacks and trauma responses is rough. The main character is not very likeable but that's kinda the point, I'm not minding that part of it so much. There are a lot of things I like about this show, so I don't want to discourage views. Just go into this one informed, and make the decision that's right for you.

*INTP 1/? (Korean, Fridays (?), YouTube) This is the latest short series from RedQ, who produced some of my favourite GL short series including More than or equal to 75 degrees C, and To the Ex who Hated Me. No info on how long it will be or if it will be weekly, so that Fridays release schedule is a total guess. The setup of this one reminded me of Semantic Error if SangWoo realized he was attracted to JaeYoung at their first group assignment meeting.

Recently Completed:

Apple My Love 6.5 50-min eps (Thai, Oct 12-Nov 16, GagaOOLala and YouTube) I ended up feeling like this one bit off a bit more than it could chew, as much fun as I had with it, it was a wobbly landing. I was ok with the ending at the end but I spent a lot of time watching the finale uncertain about how I felt about all of it. There's a 30 min "episode 5.1" that is an important bridge between episodes 5 and 6 (and also includes a 10-min fingering scene, thank you show) that I think resulted from either poor pacing or realizing they needed to set up the episode better? It was odd but something to make sure not to skip. The show does a lot of what I love about Kongthup's latest BLs: it avoids the worst drama pitfalls and calls them out in the show itself when it uses them, and it is largely about being kind to its characters who are figuring themselves out. Warning for extremely hard to watch secondhand embarrassment in the first couple of episodes lol Kris is such a cringefail lesbian I love her. With the caveats above, if you don't mind secondhand embarrassment and want a comedy GL and are willing to be a little patient with the ending, give this one a try!

The Loyal Pin 16 65-min eps (Thai, Aug 4-Dec 1, YouTube) Anin was the bravest right through to the end. I really liked a lot of this show, but I found the pacing a bit uneven and the finale a little rough. It's hard, because I actually am happy with the way the show ended--it makes perfect sense and was where I was hoping they would get to the entire show. What I didn't like was how we got there. It seemed wild that Pin and Anin didn't at least talk about this possibility before we got there; and didn't feel like we ever resolved the disparity between the two leads, though the show was aware of it the whole time which I did like. And you may have seen the shouting about the prank in the finale, it was in really poor taste. In the end, this show was beautiful, gave a platform for promoting Thai culture (food, clothing, history), and had excellent intimacy. I really enjoyed the slow burn between Anin and Pin, and I loved that every character had and used the agency they had, but that the show was realistic about what was in and outside of their control. If you want a slow-burn and high-heat romance and are willing to be a little frustrated for the sake of the drama, and/or you really like a pigtail-pulling romantic dynamic, you should watch this show.

Red Whisper 8 10-min eps (Korea, Oct 2-Nov 11, YouTube) Honestly this show never got better after what I wrote about it a month ago about how its portrayal of bisexuality and nonmonogamy was upsetting. For the record one last time: Not all bisexuals are nonmonogamous, and entering a monogamous relationship under false pretenses and then acting like your partner is being unreasonable by not wanting an open relationship is shitty behaviour. This one is sadly not recommended.

The Nipple Talk 10 30-min eps (Taiwanese, Nov 8-22, GagaOOLala) I highly recommended the first half, and so I am so sad to say that I can't say the same for the second half of the show. I was really enjoying how much the show seemed to support a mix of monogamy and nonmonogamy, but the second half of the show leaned heavily into 'everyone wants a monogamous relationship when they meet the right person', which disappointed me. The show also tried to introduce some themes that felt very dated in terms of how they handled them (e.g. HIV) and I ended up just not really liking the Pony character as a person by the end. The lesbian relationship was super messy in a way that I did not find fun too. Mama was the best part of this show, and I hope we get more characters like them in future (better) shows!

*Soul Sisters 24 12-min eps (Chinese, iQIYI) This entire show dropped this week so I binged it in one go. The basic setup is a GL version of Meet You At the Blossom, except the gender fuckery lasts for most of the series and they don't actually ever get to kiss. I loved this little show; it is a frenetic, very silly and censored comedy, so calibrate your expectations accordingly. But it walks the line in a way that is palatable (or was for me, anyway). Without giving too much away, it is an open happy ending. The caveats for this one are that there is no wasted tape, so the pacing is rollercoaster fast, and the cuts are sometimes jarring. But it's a surprisingly beautiful show for the budget, and I really appreciated all of the ways they came up with to give these women shippy moments. Also, good lord this main character is so competent, which is a major weakness of mine. I had a great time!

*Whisper Me a Love Song 12 25-min eps (Japanese anime, Apr-27 Dec, HiDive) This started airing in April but there was a delay and the last episode didn't air until yesterday. High school lesbians in a band having embarrassing confused and misunderstood feelings all over the place (with good endings including a kiss for at least one of our couples). I appreciate that this anime is not playing with the 'are they friends who joke about wanting to touch each other's boobs or are they more' line, they outright say they want to be more than friends and then kiss. The music is good too! Recommended if you are feeling like a high school dramedy with good tunes that stays pretty light and is in the 'bubble'.

Recent One-offs, Side Couples, etc.:

My Hot Butch Roommate (actually a 2-parter) aired on bilibili 1, 2) and was subtitled by @douqi7s on YouTube (1, 2) These two are very cute, and this little short does a ton with the very tiny 5 minutes of total runtime it uses. Give the original bilibili uploads a stream so they get views, even if you watch the YT subbed version!

Fufuknows put out a new lesbian short titled The Choices of Two Lesbian Couples in Love on YouTube This was a great short (11 min) film featuring the story of two couples at different stages in their relationship, and the different choices they make about their futures. I really enjoy Fufuknows as queer short filmmakers, and I appreciate that they regularly include lesbian and wlw content in their bi-weekly (as in, every other week) fictional shorts that they produce and release. This one is recommended!

Aim's Lesbian plotline in the new Love Sick 2024 remake concluded (this was not a plotline in the 2014 version and it's one of the changes I really like and that I think works really well) Spoiler: she doesn't get a romance happy ending but her story ends with acceptance from her friends about who she is, which was lovely to watch

There was a brief of-the-week lesbian couple who wanted to marry in Spare Me Your Mercy Spoiler: their story is tragic, which is par for the course in a murder mystery

I am suspecting wlw sides in See Your Love I may end up eating these words but I was getting vibes, and so I'm putting this out in the universe now in hopes I'm right lol

There is a new Korean shorts production company on YouTube called Lovememory (Their first BL ep is out and the GL, First Love, has a trailer)

Mom Ped Sawan started airing but I don't have a source so I can't give any info or links unfortunately. If anyone knows of a subtitled source for this show, please let me know!

My Ex's Wedding came out in Thai theatres waiting for an international source for this too

Korean short film What's In my Bag was uploaded to Matchbox I haven't seen it yet but the trailer is on YouTube if anyone is curious! The film is available now for a small fee on Vimeo (runtime 12 mins).

Sastra film app YouTube channel has several short Cambodian GL series that come out weekly Honestly they are not to my taste but I don't like gatekeeping GL especially from smaller markets. I check in on these time to time and if there are any that I think are great I'll give them a shout-out

Ditto above with JPC media YouTube channel for Thai GL shorts if there are any that stand out to me I'll say so; that being said I haven't had time recently so if I've missed anything good let me know!

Starting soon:

Us the series, Thai, 18 January 2025, most likely YouTube (as this is a GMMTV show) Caveat that this date is a rumour, see comments

Fragrance of the First Flower s2, Taiwanese, 18 February 2025, GagaOOLala ok this isn't that soon but I'm just so excited we're getting this second season after all!

It is so, so nice that we have this much GL to keep track of, I can't complain! This covers a whole month of content and it was a month I was very distracted from my QL consumption so while I always welcome anyone pointing out stuff I missed, I would particularly appreciate it this round.

[imaginarylungfish]

the ba timeline and s1/2 timeline are different

so i originally thought bridon arc was the prequel to the s1/2 timeline. as in, what we're seeing now is leading up to the s1/2 timeline where CXS, QL, and officer XL are alive and CXS and LG are fine after coming back from the hospital.

buuuut, after re-watching s1ep10, during the painting-the-studio flashback scene (which is also shown in bridon arc ep 1), LG's shoes are black:

in bridon arc ep 1, LG's shoes are white:

now, this could be an animation error, an inconsistency for dramatic effect, or it could be that QL's flashback/memory from s1ep10 was off. but let's assume everything being shown to us is truly what happened. that means that the s1/2 timeline and bridon arc are not the same. these are, in fact, two separate timelines.

this whole time, i thought we were currently seeing the setup to the s1/2 timeline. but the details are off. we must be seeing a failed timeline.

i wonder if we will ever see the prequel to the current s1/2 timeline. only time will tell.

[doctorgirlsblog]

Ghost From The Past (MV x OC!)

Chapter 9: It'a A New Dawn

BREAKING NEWS: Horner resigns, Beatrice Pierce Named New Red Bull Racing CEO

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MILTON KEYNES, UK - In a stunning development that sent shockwaves through the Formula 1 world, Red Bull Racing announced today the immediate resignation of its long-serving CEO and Team Principal, Christian Horner. The decision, effective immediately, comes alongside the naming of Beatrice Pierce as the new CEO of Red Bull Technology and Red Bull Racing.

Pierce, formerly known for her significant financial backing of the team and her high-profile relationship with ex-Red Bull driver Max Verstappen post his accident, steps into a role of immense responsibility. This marks a radical shift in leadership, raising immediate questions about the team's future direction, strategic partnerships and internal dynamics.

''We thank Christian for his invaluable contributions over many years,'' read a terse statement from Red Bull, providing no further details on the sudden departure.

Is the new era coming?

The news spread like wildfire, phones buzzed, news channels flashed and socials exploded. Beatrice however, sat in what was now her office, Christian's old seat already replaced. The large, polished desk was bare, save for her laptop and a single, steaming cup of coffee. The chaos outside her walls was precisely the one she had orchestrated.

She hadn't just secured a strategist role for Max; she'd positioned him directly under her thumb, in a team now entirely under her command.

A soft knock interuppted her thoughts. It was Charles. He entered, a triumphant, almost predatory gleam in his green eyes, a mirror to her own.

''Hello, boss. May I come in?'' he asked, a hint of playfulness in his voice as he closed the door behind him. ''You never fail to amaze me, Beatrice.''

''I try my best of course, Charles,'' slow, lazy smile spreading on her lips.

Charles stepped further into the room, taking a good look at the office. ''You moved faster than I thought. Horner barely had time to clear his desk.'' He chuckled. ''So, the first piece has fallen. What's next on your agenda, now that you're sitting on the throne?''

Beatrice's smile sharpened. ''It's just a seat, Charles. The real power is in what you do from it.'' She paused, her eyes narrowing slightly. ''Max is back. As a strategist. I had Christian offer him the role, to keep him close. In my sight.''

''And that's where I come in, I pressume?''

''Precisely,'' Beatrice purred. ''He thinks he's getting a second chance, a way back into the inner circle. What he doesn't realise is that he's walking straight into the spider's web. And you, Charles, are going to be the spider that catches him.''

She held his gaze as he stepped around the table, leaning in until their faces were inches apart. ''What's the plan, boss?''

''Slowly, Charles. Very, very slowly. We'll start with subtle misdirections, whispers in the right ears. We'll sow seeds of doubt, create friction. Make his strategies seem..less than efective. Place it to his jealousy of you. And you, my champion, will be the one to expose every flaw, every misstep, every single error. I want him to lose everything he has left.''

''Consider it done. And what you promised to me..''

''Oh, Charles. I assure you, by the time it's over, you'll have everything you could possibly desire.''

Forceful knocking snapped them away from each other. Charles pulled away, straightened up, stepping back from the desk just as the door swung open.

It was Max. He stood in the doorway, his jaw tight, eyes cold and narrowed as they swept over Beatrice, then Charles. ''I was told you're the new CEO. So here I am. What do you want?''

Beatrice smiled at him creepily. ''Welcome, Max. See you had no problem walking inside on your own. Charles was just leaving. We were discussing some initial thoughts on the car setup for pre-season testing.''

Charles just gave Max a brief, almost dismissive nod. ''I'll leave you to it, boss. Looking forward to our next breefing.''

Max watched Charles leave, his jaw working, before turning his hostile gaze back to her. He sat across the table, forearm leaning on his knees. ''What the fuck are you playing at now, Beatrice?''

Her smile didn't falter. ''Playing, Max? I'm not playing. I'm doing my job. And you, just like all the others who work for me, will leave your personal grudges at home. Given your new position, you'll be reporting directly to Pierre Dubois for all day-to-day strategic directives. My time, as you can imagine, is now incredibly valuable. I have a company to run, team to manage. And frankly, I'm done playing your little housewife. So if you don't have any important questions, you're free to leave.''

He stood up, leaning over the table, trying to stay calm.

''Housewife? Wife doesn't leave a man in a wheelchair and go out to party with other men. I thought, what we had, was real. I pushed myself behind every limit I knew and had, to walk again. To be the man you deserve, again. To stop being a burden. Again. But you just don't think it's enough, do you? You always want more. Now him? Leclerc? Is he your new shiny toy, new fuck buddy? Huh? Someone you're going to fix, to make better?''

''A burden?'' she scoffed, not being able to hide the tremor in her voice. ''You called yourself a burden Max, not I. You suffocated yourself in it, in that chair, in that defeat. While I was out there, fighting your battles, you were spiraling into self-pity, pushing me away. I didn't leave a man in a wheelchair, Max. I left a man who accused me of being a whore and cheating on him, man trying to choke me. I left because there was nothing left for me to fix, nor to save. And I don't waste my time on lost causes.''

Her eyes, blazing now, swept over him. ''As for Charles? Yes, he's ambitious. He's relentless. He knows how to take what he wants. And unlike you, Max, he doesn't need to be fixed. He needs to be unleashed. And I intend to do just that.''

She took a deep breath as she leaned back in her chair. ''Our past, Max, is exactly that. Past. And it means nothing now. You are an employee. I tried, I gave you 5 years of my life, again. You crushed it in your hands. So, we're back to bussiness I guess.''

''You think I'll work for you? I said yes to Christian, not to a cold-hearted bitch. Good luck on finding yourself a new puppet, because I'm leaving.''

He stood up, not waiting for her reply and strode out of the office, slamming the door shut behind him with enough force to rattle the glass.

As he walked out, she silently gave him right about one thing: it was personal.

●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

Max kept true to his word and left that day. Short statement was made, citing ''personal reasons'' and ''mutual agreement''. No one dared to bring him up in conversation with Beatrice. Charles, meanwhile, found himself increasingly sidelined. Beatrice dissmissed him not once, but three times in one week, denying him the direct conversations they'd once shared. Charles knew he was played.

There was no kingdom waiting for him, not from Beatrice Pierce. He was just another puppet in her show, one that wasn't needed anymore the moment Max left, refusing to play her game. It was always about her and Max, after all.

Charles realised his mistake tragically too late. His exit clause, so carefully negotiated, couldn't be activated. No way to escape. He was bound to Red Bull, bound to Beatrice. And worst of it all?

He'd fallen in love with her.

Taglist: @r0nnsblog

[brettanomycroft]

Signals from Somewhere Else

After episode 22 of Protocol, there’s one thing (okay, maybe two things) that everyone is going to be talking about. But I don’t want to talk about that thing (yet. Okay, I lied, it might come up). Instead, I want to dive into some of the implications of this week’s case and how they might relate FR3-D1 [Error], and even Isaac Newton.

Spoilers for TMAGP episodes 21 and 22 below the cut. CW: we’re gonna talk about the brain stuff; probably overuse of the words “fleshy” and “wet” by I blame AJN for that.

Our case in this episode, graciously recounted by Peepaw Augustus, focuses on real-life German psychiatrist and neurologist Hans Berger, whose work led to the invention of the EEG and furthered our understanding of how brainwaves work. The experiment described in the case mirrors actual experiments that Berger completed while working at the University of Jena, including experimentation on a subject with a deformity that allowed easy access to the brain and the placement of silver wires under the scalp to measure electrical activity. Even Berger’s disappointing initial results seem to be in line with history.

Like in real life, the cosmic horrors of this case begin when Berger takes a little depression nap.

The description of “an ocean, deep and unforgiving… full of dark secrets” creates a striking image to be sure, but what’s more interesting to me here is what he recalls next: the “radio signals, invisible and unknowable.” Berger laments that it’s a “shame these two things would never meet,” and then proceeds to enable such a thing to happen, whether he realizes it or not.

He wakes up and is immediately “inspired” to alter the setup he is using to record Herr Schmidt’s brain activity. While Berger is unable to explain how he came up with the idea (we could tell him: it was The Horrors, bud), he transforms his recording device (an early version of an EEG) into a two-way wireless telegraph, using poor Herr Schmidt’s brain as the receiver for the very radio waves that, perhaps, were never meant to make contact with the world below. Berger sent a politely phrased request into the void, and the void screamed back.

Who or what was on the other side can only be guessed at. Was it John/Martin/Jonah, individually or Frankensteined into some horrid chimerical conscience (please read this great post and have your heart broken like me)? Was it The Fears of the Archives-verse, recombined and tossed about like naughty pears in a pear wiggler? Or was it something or someone else entirely? I’m leaning towards JMJ, in parts or as a whole, specifically because I suspect that Hans Berger’s strange (and wetly explosive, thanks Alexander J. Newell) discovery provides a clue to how [Error] and possibly FR3-D1 operate.

Let’s start with [Error]. Here’s what we know about them so far:

They were locked up in tunnels or a basement space under the Archivist’s office at the Manchester Magnus Institute

Something about them causes people, dead and alive, to recount their fears or horrible things that have happened to them (I am not using the word compel here, even though it is used in the transcript for episode 21, and that is on purpose)

They seem very invested in getting the entire story out (this is, admittedly, speculation, as it’s unclear as to whether “THERE IS MORE” is in reference to more victims or more of Gwen’s story)

They have some really weird dogs

I’ve seen a lot of folks speculate that [Error] is or was the Head Archivist in the Protocol universe, and I’ve also seen a lot of folks speculate that [Error] is or was John (and therefore also The Archivist). I think either of these could be true, but more than anything, I think [Error] is a high-powered antenna with the ability to turn the people around them into speakers. Or maybe Speakers? I do love a good capitalization.

What if the “esteemed brethren” of The Magnus Institute were all too aware of the unusual results of Berger’s experimentation, and hoped to tap into the unusual consciousness(es) floating around in the radio waves and ether of the universe by creating their own version? Perhaps they thought they could create a direct conduit (think almost like a psychic medium) through a person, someone who might be able to communicate with whatever is out there and be able to relay its/their esoteric knowledge to help further the Institute’s goals of “Universal Transmutation.” We know already that the Institute was interested in doppelgangers and perhaps alternate universes and that they had a lot of irons in the fire (the Millenium Dome, the gifted child programme, Welling’s Mutare Materia research program, the various outreach centres), so it would hardly be surprising if they were also experimenting in communicating with “the beyond” to try and gain more knowledge.

And maybe it worked. Maybe they were able to create or transmute someone into an antenna, capable of receiving these strange signals, except these mixed signals were too powerful and ultimately took over. Perhaps [Error] is the natural consequence of who or whatever was speaking to Berger finally getting “OUT.” And if who or whatever was speaking to Berger happened to include the fractured consciousness of a hungry Archivist, well then, we have an interesting case for [Error]. [Error], whether or not they were an/The Archivist in this universe, could now be directed by the desires of The Archivist, channeling The Archivist’s thoughts and abilities but with a power greater than that we ever saw in John (or, perhaps, the same power but completely unrestrained by his remaining humanity). Or [Error] could be channeling The Fears themselves, bringing parts of them through not unlike they were brought through in The Magnus Archives.

Either way, I doubt that creating a connection between whatever was out there and the physical world led to the results the Institute was hoping for.

[Error] is receiving the signal to feed, but the signal coming through is so loud and so powerful that instead of politely asking to snack on some horror stories, coming into contact with them instead allows them to pick up on a person’s horrible experience and forces them to broadcast it to the world. It’s possible that, upon creating [Error] or losing control of [Error], those at The Magnus Institute locked them up and cut them off from the dangerous signal they were receiving… Sam accidentally poking a big hole in the floor (and the alchemical signals inscribed in it) could have reestablished the connection between [Error] and the force guiding them.

Now let’s talk about FR3-D1. We know that FR3-D1so far is that it

Is a “bespoke” internet software developed sometime in the mid-90s, apparently designed to search the internet for spooky stuff

Has German source code

Crashes, constantly, much to Colin’s dismay (? Or maybe he’s helping those crashes along to stop it from listening in… but that’s a theory for another time)

Has, within the last year or so of Sam joining the O.I.A.R., started running a text-to-speech program that reads certain cases out in one of three voices, two of which are familiar to anyone who has listened to The Magnus Archives

Occasionally has some unusual .JMJ errors

Seems to be “targeting” Sam with specific cases related to The Magnus Institute

Is believed to be “listening in” by Colin, Alice, and Sam (which is supported by what we know as the audience)

Has been working “better” since Colin has been on mandatory mental health leave

May have some connection to the Stasi, the secret police force of Communist East Germany before the fall of the USSR

Is assumed (by us as the audience) to have some kind of sentience

There are some other items (notably the spreadsheets found in the ARG that appear to be from or connected to FR3-D1and the emails Sam and Gwen have received) that could be connected to FR3-D1 but have not yet been confirmed. Yet aspects of FR3-D1 do seem to share some commonality with [Error], namely a level of sentience and the ability to locate the stories of people who have had horrifying supernatural encounters.

My speculation here is that FR3-D1 and [Error] were both constructed using the same premise or with the same goal in mind: to receive and channel the signals of entities or consciousnesses existing in or coming from “Somewhere Else”: FR3-D1 through a supernaturally or alchemically conceived software program, and [Error] through a supernaturally or alchemically conceived transmutation on a living human.

If this proves to be the case, then the results seem… distinct, albeit with the potential to be equally dangerous. FR3-D1 is more “controllable” and could potentially be better able to separate out the signals being received, manifesting as “Augustus,” “Chester,” and “Norris.” Now these “three” could still be part of homunculus-esque JohnMartinJonah consciousness, but perhaps the computer program is a little more stable and delineated than the fleshy wet mess of the human brain, and therefore what remains of each individual consciousness is able to act more distinctly and independently. In contrast, [Error] (and their fleshy wet mess of human brain) is receiving the signals all mixed and jumbled together, with no failsafes to keep them from “overloading” or being entirely taken over by The Horrors or JMJ or The JMJ Horrors. Given their spectral descriptions, it’s possible that fleshy human brain and body couldn’t take it anymore and, pun intended, gave up the ghost.  

[Error] could be, in some ways, a bodiless, mindless soul acting on a confused mess of instinct and hunger; FR3-D1 is then, perhaps, the elevated mind, in (more) control but disconnected from a body and perhaps from a soul. Given the heavy influence of alchemy in The Magnus Protocol and the importance in alchemy of the number three, the Tria Prima, and the balance of mind, body, and soul, there may be a third entity we have yet to meet who, like FR3-D1 and [Error], are tuned into these signals from beyond and is eager to reunite with the rest… or perhaps FR3-D1 and [Error] are looking for a body of their own to inhabit and find balance (Sam, anyone?).

I feel like I myself am beginning to mix the signals I started with, but before I attempt to wrap this up, I do briefly want to throw one more piece of spaghetti on the wall, because I think it’ll wind up being something: the mention, specifically, of the silver wire the Berger used in his experiment.

It was Dr. Caton who recommended that Berger use the silver wire, as silver is known for being an effective conductor of electricity. Silver also holds importance as one of the seven metals of alchemy and as a possible base metal in the creation of a Philosopher’s Stone. Perhaps equally important here is that the Diana’s Tree, also known as the Arbor Philosophorum, is created using a solution including silver (or more accurately, silver nitrate) and mercury (one of the elements in the Tria Prima)… yep, the (sort of) same spooky tree created by Newton in TMAGP 19, where Newton gave his dog an existential crisis and Robert Hooke was like “burn it all down.” The conclusion we could draw here is that silver is used in both TMAGP 19 and TMAGP 22 to connect organic life to the unseeable Knowledge of some other plane… with potentially disastrous effects.

Whether it ends up being the case that FR3-D1 and [Error] are big antennas wirelessly receiving The Horrors or I’m totally off base, it seems pretty clear that Hans Berger “tuned in” to an unusual—and dangerous—signal, and what’s more, enabled that signal to connect with the Protocol world in a way that likely never should have happened.

[luzial]

i think parchment deserves a cone of shame

So mean, Parchment is perfect, why would she ever deserve a cone of shame?

Here's some more pre-Overgrown Solas & Parchment. Also on AO3.

It was finally the last day of the semester. Solas sat on his bed with Parchment resting against his hip, and contemplated whether he could get away with not leaving his house for the entire winter break.

He'd made the mistake of attempting to go on a date. The endeavor was all but doomed even before they met. He should have canceled when he realized it was going to be the same week that Parchment was scheduled for her spay. But with end of semester duties taking up all the available space in his mind, Solas didn’t realize his error until it was practically upon him.

The woman who owned Lydes' used record shop had insisted that he should meet her daughter. Solas had practically nothing in the way of expendable income, but some of the only luxuries he'd allowed himself over the past few months were albums he'd purchased from the store - often ones the owner set aside for him once she learned his taste. And while the idea of a setup was terribly awkward to him, he had foolishly allowed himself to believe that an understanding of his preferences in music might somehow translate to an understanding of his preferences in people.

Solas had arrived at the bar a few minutes early and claimed the last unoccupied table. The place was surprisingly full. His colleagues were all just as busy as he was - he couldn’t imagine so many people had this much free time when grades were due in less than 48 hours.

It was at that moment Solas realized the bar wasn’t full of faculty. Or staff. Or even adults.

It was the student bar.

Of course he was well aware that every university town had at least one, if not more. But he’d spent little time outside his house this semester and hadn’t bothered to learn anything about the town’s nightlife. When he’d needed to pick a location for the date, he’d simply chosen the bar most convenient to his office on campus - which, in hindsight, was an obvious reason students would frequent it as well.

Solas stared down at the table, certain he wasn't imagining the weight of many eyes on him. He should have canceled, he thought again. The entire idea was ill-advised, and all he could think of was Parchment, who he’d left sleeping on his bed, wearing an awful plastic collar around her neck to prevent her from licking at her stitches. But his date was only in town for the weekend and there would be no chance to reschedule.

Maybe it wasn’t too late to leave, he thought, and offer some inadequate excuse.

He finally made up his mind to do so at the precise moment she appeared in front of his table, framed by the eyes of numerous students who had spotted him. Solas had to grip the seat of his chair to stop himself from standing up and walking out.

He managed completely banal small talk, punctuated by several extended silences, for all of twenty minutes. Then, he looked down at his watch - which he belatedly realized was probably the rudest thing he could do under the circumstances. But his watch and the scuffed tabletop were the only two safe places for him to direct his gaze. Looking up meant risking locking eyes with a student when their head whipped in his direction.

The writing was on the wall and his date made her excuses a few minutes later.

Solas had no idea what he'd been thinking, he realized as he half-jogged his way back to his house. However quiet his holidays might be, an alternative would not be found in a blind date. 

When he arrived back home, Solas was relieved to find Parchment exactly where he'd left her. He slipped off his shoes, grabbed a book from his nightstand, and then curled up beside her on the bed.

Over the next few days as Parchment recovered, Solas had only limited success following the vet's instructions to keep her calm. She quickly regained her energy and was skidding across the wood floors to chase after scraps of paper - both real and imagined. He had to extract her from several places she managed to get herself trapped with her cone stuck between some piece of furniture and a wall.

Solas realized that he enjoyed the peace that descended on Lydes when students made their way home for the holidays. Whatever concerns he had about boredom or stagnation without a class schedule to keep him on task quickly faded, and the embarrassment from his failed date morphed into relief. He enjoyed the freedom of his solitude: time to clear more debris from the garden, to work on the secondhand bike he'd saved all semester to buy, and to sit in front of his fireplace (now that it was finally safe to use) and read.

Now that he had a place that truly belonged to him, that he could shape into the sort of sanctuary he'd always wanted, it was difficult to dream of wanting to share it with anyone else.

Except Parchment, of course.

[mariacallous]

For weeks now, egged on by his South African-born mega-billionaire advisor Elon Musk, U.S. President Donald Trump has been ratcheting up a campaign to inflict damage on South Africa, a country already beset with grave economic, racial, and historic problems.

Even before his inauguration, Trump threatened South Africa and other members of the BRICS international grouping with 100 percent tariffs if they pursued the creation of a new currency that would serve as an alternative to the dollar. (South Africa denied any such plans.)

Then, in one of its early moves, the Trump administration cut off aid to Pretoria in February on the pretext that it was committing “massive human rights violations” against members of its white minority population. This came in direct response to South Africa’s new land law, which allows the government to expropriate property in limited circumstances to address apartheid-era land inequality. No land has been seized under the law.

The following month, the U.S. State Department declared South Africa’s ambassador to the United States persona non grata and expelled him on short notice, accusing him of being a “race-baiting politician” who hates Trump.

But this was mere prelude to Trump’s outrageous treatment of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House on Wednesday, which was reminiscent of Trump’s confrontation in February with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In the elaborate setup that unfolded, Trump dimmed the lights of the Oval Office to project footage purporting to show mass graves of white farmers in South Africa who, he claimed, were victims of an ongoing genocide.

This was false. The press quickly debunked the supposed evidence that Trump offered, from inaccurate footage of a burial site to a photo that was not, in fact, from South Africa, but rather the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

For his part, Ramaphosa gently rebutted Trump and brought prominent Afrikaners, the descendants of mostly Dutch migrants, to lend their testimonials in rejection of the genocide claims and plea for better relations with Washington. They spoke about South Africa’s crime problem—it has one of the world’s highest murder rates—and asked Washington for help.

Trump, who admitted no error, was not chastened and made no offers of assistance. His unacceptable behavior at the meeting can only be described as racist.

A quick look back helps explain how South Africa got to its present situation. Long past are the optimistic days that followed the end of apartheid, a system of formal white supremacist rule, in 1994. Apartheid formally endured for 46 years, but it was preceded by a far longer period of white domination over both Indigenous groups and an economy that produced enormous wealth through gold and diamond mining and other forms of extraction.

In what much of the world applauded as a kind of miracle, South Africa emerged from apartheid under the wise and generous leadership of Nelson Mandela. He had spent 27 years of a life sentence in prison—nearly six of them in solitary confinement—for his opposition to South Africa’s legally enforced racial separatism and inequality. Despite the many cruelties imposed on him, his family, and those he had struggled with to achieve justice, Mandela governed as an advocate of national unification across racial lines.

Unfortunately, what ensued was not quite miraculous. Mandela’s deep humanity, soft touch, and warmth were not enough to solve South Africa’s problems. He had shortcomings as a leader, too, with no effective strategy for boosting the economic development of a country that was the richest in Africa but among the most unequal in the world.

As a journalist who briefly covered South Africa during the Mandela years, I have long believed that its best chance at economic transformation back then was leading the economic integration of the entire southern half of the African continent, which had poor infrastructure but immense hydroelectric potential and mineral wealth. This would have given big opportunities to South Africa and its enterprises in sectors such as communications and mining while also helping the region break with a long era of Western domination that yielded little development.

Mandela, however, showed uneasiness about adopting any kind of regional leadership mantle and favored a more humble approach in engaging his neighbors, which had given decades of support to South Africa in its struggle against apartheid. His inaction squandered his country’s unique opportunity and the economic gains that might have come from it. It also helped create the vacuum that China stepped into, becoming the dominant builder and trading partner in Africa since the late 1990s.

Since then, South Africa has fallen prey to stalled economic growth, high unemployment, a decline in governance, and even worse inequality. It is also a victim of great structural imbalances in the global economy that have made rapid and sustained economic advancement rare in the so-called global south. All these factors have fueled a more quotidian crisis—a plague of violent crime—that has made South Africa into one of the most dangerous countries in the world. My own brother, who lived there for years, was robbed at gunpoint three times, including a home invasion in which he narrowly avoided being shot. The reality is that Black South Africans are overwhelmingly the victims.

Of the 26,232 murders committed last year in South Africa, a country of approximately 60 million people, only 44 were linked to farming communities, and just eight of the victims were farmers. (Trump’s baseless claims of white genocide in the country have centered on farmers.)

Nearly all of Trump’s comments during his encounter with Ramaphosa showed his deep ignorance of South Africa, but none more than his readiness to believe in white victimhood at the hands of Black people.

Why this fixation on race? Genocide is not a word that should be thrown around lightly—especially not in a world that abounds in situations of mass violence and persecution that are orders of magnitude greater than any suffering faced by white South Africans, who generally lead lives of comfort.

It helps to look beyond South Africa to make sense of this. Trump has repeatedly deplored the loss of life among Russian and Ukrainian soldiers as “horrible,” while staying silent about large-scale wartime killing in, say, Sudan.

This is a president who has sought to criminalize dissent against the Israeli military’s killing of more than 53,000 Palestinians in Gaza—a number that rises above 60,000 when the missing are added—which human rights groups and well-qualified Jewish critics have called a genocide. Trump has shown crass indifference to the destruction of virtually all of Gaza and impassiveness in the face of ever stronger indications that Israel intends to seize the territory and banish as many Palestinians as possible. All the while, he has clung to a grotesque fantasy of turning Gaza into an exclusive real estate development for the wealthy.

Somehow, though, fabricated stories of white South Africans facing property seizures and violence are the moral outrage of the moment. It is hard to understand this except by facing the fact that Trump is an individual with a history of anti-Black racism and bias.

Trump was likely influenced by Musk, who bears deep and unresolved personal grievances about the society he grew up in amid great privilege. (Just a day before Ramaphosa visited the White House, Musk berated an interviewer at a conference in Qatar for not acknowledging South Africa’s supposedly “racist” laws.)

As Trump said during his meeting with Ramaphosa, “this is what Elon wanted.” Trump has a habit of deflecting responsibility. But in the way he received Ramaphosa and spoke about South Africa, his disregard for truth, moral numbness, and capacity for indecency rose to a level best described as obscenity. He cannot be let off so easily.

Trump’s calumnies against South Africa are of a piece with his treatment of Africa in general, a continent he has said is full of “shithole countries.” These, in turn, seem related to the president’s domestic campaign against diversity in the military, government, academia, and elsewhere. He and Musk seem to share an abiding unwillingness to understand why overcoming systems of discrimination that lasted centuries, both formal and informal, might require intentional government policies, or even why this effort might be worthwhile.

Trump, meanwhile, has openly longed for immigration from places such as Norway, all while deploring people from nonwhite countries—not just African ones—as a threat to the United States, just as Musk has inveighed against immigration to Europe from other continents.

I have used the word grotesque already here, and I am running out of adjectives to describe what is transpiring in the United States today. It is a reversion to the open racism of presidents long past—leaders such as Woodrow Wilson and Andrew Johnson, who sought to roll back the clock on recognizing the virtues and rights of people of non-European descent. This is happening in America, but it is profoundly un-American. It makes a mockery of the words in the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims that all people are created equal.

Trump’s behavior should not be lightly dismissed as boorishness. It must be recognized for what it really is: a menace to the integrity of the society that gave him the world’s most powerful platform.

[petervintonjr]

April 2025: As an unasked-for service to the U.S. Department Of Defense (for whom I used to work, briefly, back in the very late 1980s, and so am therefore obligated to help out where I can); I am hereby supplying the next month's worth of military #blackhistory biographies, that seem to have been inexplicably misplaced on a handful of public-facing DoD websites. Having been both an HTML instructor and a web developer, I totally get how these kinds of errors can happen --certainly it's nothing sinister or deliberate. But until such time as the DoD can get its ducks back in a row, I humbly offer this space as a substitute repository of such information.

Accordingly we begin with the life of Henry Ossian Flipper, the first Black man to be commissioned in the U.S. Army and also the first Black cadet to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, in 1877.

Born enslaved in 1856 Georgia, Flipper's earliest years were working in a wood shop with his father, himself a skilled shoemaker and carriage-trimmer. After the Civil War he pursued his education, first at Missionary Schools and then at Atlanta University (today known as Clark Atlanta University) in 1869. His dream, however, was to attend West Point. Determined to make every conceivable effort, he wrote to his state Congressman, James C. Freeman, asking for an appointment. After some back-and-forth exchange of correspondence with Rep. Freeman, to his great surprise, he secured his appointment and was inducted in 1873, along with four other African Americans. He was the first to graduate as a member of the Class of 1877, though his time at West Point was of near-total social isolation due to his race. One of his first posts as a newly-commissioned second lieutenant was with the 10th Cavalry (the famed "Buffalo Soldiers") at Fort Sill, Oklahoma --this was also significant as Flipper was the first-ever Black officer to command regular troops. (Previously the all-black regiments such as the Buffalo Soldiers had been commanded by white officers.) The unit later served with distinction (if one may call it that!) in 1880, against Chief Victorio and his Apache warriors.

Unfortunately Flipper's career later took a downward turn in 1881, while he served as quartermaster in Fort Conchon, Texas: a nearly $2,000 discrepancy was discovered in disbursed commissary funds, and Flipper attempted to pay the shortfall out of his own pocket. Despite this ill-advised effort (and even with his fellow troops contributing their own funds to what smelled like a setup), the discrepancy was still discovered by his superiors and Flipper was court-martialed, receiving a Dishonorable Discharge in 1882. He remained in the region and established himself as an Indian translator and also as a surveyor, working for the Department of Justice's Court of Private Land Claims, even providing expert testimony in several land grant court cases. He later became special assistant to the Secretary of the Interior, from 1921 to 1923. He pursued a brief mining career in Venezuela, but returned to the U.S. in 1930. Over the course of his life he published two memoirs, "The Colored Cadet at West Point (1878)" and "Negro Frontiersman: The Western Memoirs of Henry O. Flipper" (published posthumously in 1963). Both publications are regarded as definitive, indispensable accounts of life on the frontier from the vantage point of a Black man.

The U.S. Army reviewed and corrected Flipper's case to an Honorable Discharge in 1976, concluding that his 1882 discharge was unnecessarily harsh. President Bill Clinton formally pardoned Flipper in 1999.

[arbitrarygreay]

The foundation of genre is that you get some level of "gimmes" to your world-building to allow the story to happen at all. It can be a purely world-building gimme (e.g. "magic exists"), but in the way that all stories smuggle in ideals, so it often turns out that a story's "culture" is as much a foundational gimme as the setting details (e.g. "protagonists have the firepower of 50+ villain mooks despite absolutely nothing about their training saying they should").

This is, of course, a MFS post. Have a look at the rambling thought thread that ultimately lead to the paragraph above. (As always, it'll end up on some of my hobbyhorses for this fandom which conflict with certain popular fanons, so be warned of that.)

One of the things that doesn't make sense to me are the fertility logistics of the American witch military, where men go to weapons-building and caretaker roles while women go to the frontlines. The magic-imposed matrilineal inheritance is not enough to justify it. The instinct to split the population into "vanguard meatshields (deploy)" and "women and children (protect)" when it comes to inter-group large scale violence is not something that appeared out of the patriarchal ether, it's a dynamic borne out of which groups had better rates of survival for doing so. Women and children are the future of any particular group, whereas a group can usually afford to sacrifice more of their men.

So when MFS establishes that witch men have equal levels of magic firepower, the matrilineal inheritance would seem to only deepen the "protect the means of reproduction" incentive. MFS canon itself seems to recognize this, as the US's approach is not universal. Japan and Russia's witch militaries have men as their head generals, and we see more men than women soldiers in both the Liberian rebels and the officer group that met Alder in Ghana.

Which means that the US witch military's gendered setup and culture was never inevitable, but a deliberate choice imposed by and enforced from the top down, against material incentives. The central protagonists themselves talk about said incentives multiple times during the show, how they don't believe in procreating while they are either in their prime frontline years, or during periods/environments of intense conflict. And that's from characters who were in War College! If the much smaller fraction of soldiers who have way more leeway to have kids during their training/education period are having such reservations, what chances do the majority who go straight from Basic to deployment have? Just when are any witches in the military supposed to have kids at all without compromising their combat readiness? By a lot of analyses, the military is making a major unforced error by sending the critical required vehicle of population replenishment, who will also spend months at lesser capability capacity doing so (during later pregnancy and during post-birth recovery), straight into the meat grinder. As opposed to, you know, using the 50% of the population without that problem?

The original first thought that eventually evolved into this post was perhaps soldiers deploying pregnant (or having to deal with the logistics of maternity leave) wasn't actually that much of a thing in the past, which is why Alder didn't have an issue setting it up that way. The concept of the teenager in our world wasn't really a thing until the mid-1900s (after WW2!), as a result of huge jumps in productivity making it possible for parents to even consider discarding child labor from their calculus.

So, in the 1700s, a conscription age at 18 is already several years into people's working years. (In our world, some military recruitments went as low as age 15.) And that makes me wonder if perhaps for the first two and a half centuries, witches mostly had their first two (replacement rate minimum) children before they were conscripted. This would much better fit with that "men stay behind as caretakers" model, as the frontline soldiers would already have kids to leave behind to their care by the time they enter Basic, and it drastically reduces the need for them to spend time during their prime fighting years in maternity leave.

Still, the core issue remains that the US witch military is taking on major logistical burdens that it does not need to by centering women as their vanguard. Which, again, means that this is all about founder effects. This culture was something that Alder decided that she wanted, despite any of the inconveniences it would cause. And that kind of reasoning extends to everything else about the Accords.

So yeah, welcome back (again again again) to AG's MFS Hobbyhorse: Alder does the opposite of regret the Accords.

There are soooooo many different paths that Alder could have taken, even setting aside the whole "tear down the veil of secrecy that stood for millenia" thing. Based on older stories, witches that were relatively accepted by their villages were mostly about intra-community services. Providing medical remedies, charms and blessings on agriculture, and even on the negative side (curses, storms, blights, and plagues!), it was still about grudges within a society. When we have cases on the inter-community side, in the political and military realms, it's more in the context of overt religion. Prophets, oracles, and priests acting as liaisons to gods. And then you have the cases of a witch/sorceress as the local queen, a wholly independent political entity.

(Further thinking about this therefore comes up with the cultural "gimme" MFS has rather than just world-building. If magic is so OP, such that witch militaries can so thoroughly dominate things the moment they become a thing, how on earth did the veil of secrecy ever come to exist? The material incentives obviously swung towards usage of it, see aforementioned prophets/oracles/mediums/priests all operating fully publicly. In our world, such things died out simply because magic is not real, so it never had true utility beyond placebo, and could be replaced with monotheism. But in MFS, at some point people decide to suppress insanely useful superpowers rather than exploit them, for Reasons. The answer is that it has to happen at some point in order for MFS as a story to happen. So, foundational genre gimme.)

What Alder does in the description of her offer to Massachusetts in 1x1 breaks from any of those setups. Instead, Alder has gone for the role of court wizard, except not only is it a whole department of wizards, she's still gone further in limiting her applications. Any Massachusetts leader worth their salt would have seen the huge benefits in allowing witches to address far more applications than just military. Again, providing medical remedies, charms and blessings on all aspects of daily life but especially agricultural production, and more. In fact, if they are still so scared of witches, it would be much more soothing to their fears and egos to restrict witches to non-violent usages.

So for the Accords to be so restricted to only military deployment means that either Alder overrode requests to expand beyond that purview, or Alder deliberately controlled the perception of what powers witches had such that civilian leadership didn't ask for other things.

The characterization of Alder that emerges from this is truly one of an older warrior model, one who eagerly sought glory through battle. Which, given her situation before then, paints a picture of pre-gallows Alder feeling far more restricted by her own people's norms of fleeing and hiding at the expense of their own defense over and over (as we saw with the Tarim initially accepting their impending extinction). At no point does the kind of person who decides "uh yeah, fuck that", so thoroughly break with millenia of tradition, and snark in the present day "I never needed The Hague's approval for my actions. I simply extend the invitation to accept my rulings" also go "uwu civilian men in charge told me to do things guess I hafta u_u".

Alder: luv the fighting Witch culture: no you can't. and shouldn't. Alder: I resent this so much that now that I'm in charge, I'm flipping the valence. You should. You must.

[touchlikethesun]

coffee or tea?? (pt.2) ((actually it has v little to do with their drink orders i just had thoughts))

both ushijima and kita were instructed in how to traditionally prepare tea, and to this day, when they make tea, all of the steps are religiously followed and the tea is always japanese and very high quality - not really pretentiously so, they were both just taught the importance of quality when it comes to tea. they both have different brands that they are loyal to that they drank growing up, but when they get together for tea they will exceptionally drink the others' preferred brand. kita will also drink commercial tea if that's all that's available, like at a restaurant or at someone else's house, he's not such a stickler. however, if ushi doesn't have his tea setup, he also quite likes drinking fruit juice. i don’t know why he does, but this came to me in a vision~

iwaizumi is a green tea loyalist, hot or cold day or night, and oikawa tends to drink green tea as well, but he’ll get elaborate sugary coffee drinks when he’s out that iwa will pretend to be disgusted by (tooru offers him sips without saying anything and iwa accepts every time) (they both wrinkle their noses at super sweet matcha lattes tho)

kuroo drinks black coffee, no sugar - hot in the mornings, but any other time of day he prefers an iced americano. when he started drinking coffee during high school in cafes with friends he ordered black coffee just for the pun with his name and he hated it at first but didn’t want to admit that he only ordered it for a lame pun so he stuck with it and now he’s addicted and he can’t tell if he actually likes black coffee or if he’s tricked himself into not minding the bitterness

akaashi takes his coffee with a very sensible 2 creams and 2 sugars. for some reason everyone in the office thinks akaashi takes his coffee black, and always bring that back for him, so he stared keeping cream and sugar at his desk.

both kuroo and akaashi are the kind of people that need a cup of coffee (or several) before they’re functioning in the morning. they’ll both sit silently hunched over at the table cradling their mugs, and it kinda freaks bokuto out because they’re like zombie versions of his boyfriends. through trial and error he’s figured out kuroo will accept pre-coffee kisses with only minor grumbling but it’s best to give akaashi his space in the morning

without adults monitoring him, bokuto drinks hot chocolate every morning, even tho he's lactose intolerant. akaashi had been trying in vain to convince him to at the very least replace the milk with water, but when that didn't work he just started buying oat milk without saying anything, and that seems to have resolved the issue

kenma obviously has an energy drink addiction, mostly the original redbull, but kuroo bought him the watermelon flavour once because of the colour, and he didn’t hate it as much as he thought he would so now he’ll have one of those from time to time. the bin in his room is somehow always overflowing with empty cans, and more than a few people have expressed their concern but kenma can't for the life of him understand why they're so worried

[commodorez]

Hi! I'm so sorry if this has been asked before, but I'm completely clueless on computers, but I want to learn about them. Any places you'd recommend starting for bare bones beginners? I'm also interested in early-mid 90's tech particularly too. I'm guessing I have to figure out the basics before I can move onto specific tech though, right?

You're really knowledgeable and nice so I figured I'd just ask. Any help at all would be appreciated. Thank you! :]

That's an excellent question, I don't think I've been asked it before in such a general sense. I was raised with the benefit of being immersed in computers regularly, so providing a solid answer may be a bit difficult since for the basics, I never had to think about it.

I had computer classes of various types throughout my school years. We learned how to use a mouse, typing, word processing, programming -- and that was all before middle school. We got proper typing, html, and general purpose computer science courses in middle and high school, and you can bet I took those too. I also have the benefit of a bachelors of science in computer science, so you'll forgive me if my answer sounds incredibly skewed with 30+ years of bias.

The biggest suggestion I can give you is simply to find a device and play with it. Whatever you can get your hands on, even if its not that old, as long as it's considered past its prime, and nobody will get upset of you accidentally break something (physically or in software). Learning about things with computers in general tends to have some degree of trial and error, be it programming, administrating, or whatever -- try, learn, and start over if things don't work out as expected the first time. Professionals do it all the time (I know I do, and nobody's fired me for it yet).

Some cast-off 90s or early 00's surplus office desktop computer running Windows would be a good start, just explore it and its settings. Start digging into folders, see what's installed, see what works and more importantly what doesn't work right. Try to find comparable software, and install it. Even the basics like old copies of Microsoft Office, or whatever.

I recommend looking through the available software on winworld as it's an excellent treasure trove of operating systems, applications, games, and other useful software of the time period. I'd link it directly, but tumblr hates links to external sites and will bury this post if I do. If you're a mac fan, and you can find an old G3 or Performa, there is the Macintosh Garden's repository of software, but I'm not the right person to ask about that.

Some of you might be like "oh, oh! Raspberry Pi! say Raspberry Pi!" but I can't really recommend those as a starting point, even if they are cheap for an older model. Those require a bit of setup, and even the most common linux can be obtuse as hell for newcomers if you don't have someone to guide you.

If you don't have real hardware to muck about with, emulation is also your friend. DOSBox was my weapon of choice for a long time, but I think other things like 86Box have supplanted it. I have the luxury of the real hardware in most cases, so I haven't emulated much in the past decade. Tech Tangents on youtube has a new video explaining the subject well, I highly recommend it. There are plenty of other methods too, but most are far more sophisticated to get started with, if you ask me.

For getting a glimpse into the world of the 90s tech, if you haven't already discovered LGR on youtube, I've been watching his content for well over a decade now. He covers both the common and esoteric, both hardware and software, and is pretty honest about the whole thing, rather than caricaturish in his presentation style. It might be a good jumping off point to find proverbial rabbits to chase.

I guess the trick is to a find a specific thing you're really interested in, and then start following that thread, researching on wikipedia and finding old enthusiast websites to read through. I'm sure there are a few good books on more general history of 90s computing and the coming internet, but I'm not an avid reader of the genre. Flipping through tech magazines of the era (PC Magazine comes to mind, check archive dot org for that) can provide a good historical perspective. Watching old episodes of the Computer Chronicles (youtube or archive dot org) can provide this too, but it also had demonstrations and explanations of the emerging technologies as they happened.

There are so many approaches here, I'm sure I've missed some good suggestions though. I also realized I waffle a bit between the modern and vintage, but I find many computing troubleshooting skillsets transcend eras. What works now can apply to 10, 20, 30, or sometimes even 40+ years ago, because it's all about mindset of "this computer/program is dumb, and only follows the instructions its given" . Sometimes those instructions are poorly thought out on the part of the folks who designed them. And those failures are not necessarily your fault, so you gotta push through until you figure out how to do the thing you're trying to do. Reading the documentation you can find will only take you so far, sometimes things are just dumb, and experimentation (and failures) will teach you so much more about the hard and fast rules of computers than anything else. I'm rambling at this point...

So, let's throw the question to the crowd, and ask a few other folks in the Retrotech Crew.

@ms-dos5 @virescent-phosphor @teckheck @jhavard @techav @regretsretrotech @airconditionedcomputingnightmare @aperture-in-the-multiverse -- anything big I missed?

[quietbluejay]

on the topic of impossible demands, I just remembered my extremely AU version of the Heresy

where things were completely different from what the records said

the primarchs weren't the Emperor's sons, they were a variety of different things

I may have posted this before but I'm reposting because I'm very attached especially to alt-Corvus also I need to figure out Vulkan and Lorgar

i think it'd actually be interested if you increased the level of moral ambiguity on both sides of the heresy by making both of them less evil and having the whole setup be a more historically typical kind of civil war like as I've mentioned before I'm a byzantinophile lol and if there's anything they're known for it's stupid civil wars

I'm debating what Chaos is up to -uninvolved at all until the end -playing both sides -gets pulled in later in the war due to desperation

since we're going full AU here let's add some more stuff from bluejay's horus heresy wishlist -the primarchs are not in fact the finely crafted sons of the Emperor, they're just dudes. and not 12 feet tall. that was stupid -also some of them don't actually exist and were made up by history, not sure who. possibly multiple people were combined to create a single "primarch" in memory i mean not literally

i am thinking one of them (Horus) does have a pseudo-familial relationship with the emperor though I'm workshopping how it could happen some kind of page program at the imperial palace for the children of highly placed officers?

if anyone should be a MoG, honestly, it should be Guilliman of the Primarchs I mean hm also noodling around having one of the primarchs be Secretly A Daemon The Whole Time but have it be someone you wouldn't expect

magnus is probably the easiest to retool as Some Dude psyker leader of a psyker society who joins the imperium in exchange for position of power

actually, hm if i wanted one of the loyalists to be a daemon the whole time i'd go with russ or corvus what if Corvus was always a sentient cloud of ravens except sometimes he wore a trenchcoat the emperor kept giving them shiny things and thus they attempted to repay him this was not actually a well thought out plan by the emperor, it just sort of snowballed also explains Corvus' name the flock was curious and investigated, the emperor got to meet his first warp spirit

Ferrus' story is actually a mix of three separate dudes - an army officer, a guy who fought a duel with Fulgrim, and Perturabo this chimeric creation was later named "Ferrus Manus" after the Iron Hands

primarchs: Lion: never actually existed, was invented post-Heresy. Actual primarch of the 1st was Luther II: the 2nd legion was actually retired very fast and never had a primarch, they kept the numbering scheme because everything was already set up Fulgrim: regular dude, rags to riches story, possibly thought he'd be a Justin (Justinian's uncle) Perturabo: Man of Gold Jaghatai: really not sure what to do about him Russ: just some dude, i think that would make him actually interesting Dorn: not sure but leaning towards either regular dude or a dynasty of multiple regular dude Dorns that lead the 7th Curze: never existed, is slenderman Sanguinius: actually a woman, also the combo of multiple figures Ferrus: see above 11: clerical error Angron: MoG that deteriorated over the course of the Crusade, sadly everyone only remembers his end Guilliman: MoG who was more of a peer with the emperor but agreed to join his empire to the Emperor's for the greater good

Mortarion: combo of multiple people, all of whom were regular dudes - woman who lead a resistance movement (supported by imperium) on her planet against their ruler, a rando man from that planet a few generations later that wasn't even related to her who pulled a Basil I except instead of ending up Emperor he was a sector governor, and a military guy with a similar name who had absolutely no relation to either of the other two and wasn't even from the same Segmentum Magnus: name isn't actually Magnus, Magnus was his title, leader of a society of psykers, ended up summoning a big red daemon which is why he is remembered as being that way. Also was not actually involved with the military, it was actually Arvida running the 15th legion, Magnus was only ever a civilian leader

hm wait thinking about modifying Magnus what if Prospero wasn't a human planet

ok i'm getting rid of the "summoning a daemon", they all look like magnus' portrayal the oldhammer cyclops figure i saw one time

Council of Nikaea was about general education of and treatment of psykers noodling around the idea of more and more "Incidents" happening The Magnus and the Prospereans claimed that they'd historically had that right wait idea Navigators are human-Prosperean hybrids

that's why the forehead eye

the "navigator gene" is actually nonhuman dna navigator is what happens when human pyskers have kids with prospereans

[masllp]

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