#fiddle around with the acronyms a little bit

[firstdegreefangirl]

GM, 10:02 a.m.: You like researching things. See if you can find a way to get ahold of [the owner of this laptop turned into the lost and found]. He wasn't ever listed as a guest here. Me, 10:08 a.m.: Next time you want to take advantage of my investigative skills, could I at least have a CHALLENGE? GM: Well now you have to get ahold of him. Me: I'm looking at his phone number online right now. Me, 10:10 a.m.: Alright, so he'll be by tonight to pick it up.

[nvvermore]

Entr’acte

For the second time, Amaryllis drops everything and steps away from their comfort zone when Beatrice needs a teacher, this time with a very different group of students [@juliandev0rak]

words: 2108

cw: none

—

“What do you think about maybe visiting the school? Maybe… teaching some music lessons?”

“You want me to teach your kids?”

“Well, I’m not asking for you to come to teach full time or anything, but,”

“I’m not very good with children.”

“If you managed to teach me, you’ll have no problem with them!”

“Beatrice.”

“I’m joking! They’re really wonderfully behaved children, I promise. Besides, how bad can you really be if you’re friends with Lucio?”

“You’ve made a good point,” Amaryllis laughs. “What exactly would I teach them? I doubt they need professional-level vocal instruction.”

“You know music! You can sing and play the piano, and probably other instruments too-“

“Guitar. And violin, but only a little.”

“See! You could teach them all about notes, how to play nursery rhymes. It’s mostly about giving them something fun to do, like art class or recess.”

“So you do want me to come in on a regular basis?”

“Well, if you’re a good fit I wouldn’t mind it…”

“Alright then. I’ll come teach.”

“Really?” In her excitement, Beatrice throws her arms around Amaryllis’s neck in a crushing hug. “Oh thank you, Amie!” They return it after a moment, arms wrapping around her middle. When they part, there’s the loveliest pink flush to her cheeks, their faces only inches apart. Reluctantly, Amaryllis breaks away from her embrace.

“I am a little busy with the masquerade approaching, but I can make time.”

“Tomorrow?” Beatrice suggests quickly.

“Tomorrow, hm? You don’t already have lesson plans for the day?”

“Ah, well-“

“You knew I’d say yes.”

“I was right.”

- - -

And that was how Amaryllis ended at the old coliseum turned schoolhouse, with carefully crafted lesson plans in hand. They had even gone out of their way to dress in the most modest and brightest dress they had in their wardrobe, along with simple pumps and opaque tights.

Once Amaryllis was standing before the doors, dressed in spring green, the gravity of how fully head-over-heels they had fallen for Beatrice dawned on them. In their right, not lovesick mind, they would never willingly venture out in such a manner. They’d even completely forgone their veil for the afternoon— it was hardly necessary to do so, but Amaryllis was dead set on being a good example.

On the other side of the doors, it seemed Beatrice had been waiting for them. Seated on a nearby bench with her nose in a book, it was the same way she’d often wait for them before their lessons together. There was nothing out of the ordinary or new about the sight of her, but Amaryllis still found themself stopping to take her in. Leaning against the wall, they watched the way her lips moved as she read, how focused she was as her eyes flit across the pages.

Soon enough, the moment passes when Beatrice finally takes note of them.“Amie!” she jumps into her feet, and Amaryllis notices the way her expression drops into surprise for a split-second. Then, she proceeds to unabashedly look them up and down, grin returning to her lips when her eyes meet theirs. “You have perfect timing! The children should be just getting back from recess. Come, I’ll show you around.”

Without warning, Beatrice takes their hand, and Amaryllis has to stop themself from giving into the urge to intertwine their fingers with hers.

Beatrice leads them through the halls, enthusiastically pointing out various classrooms and other school facilities. She tells them all about what she’s already been able to do with the school and her goals for the future. Amaryllis drinks up every word, and the passion she has for her students makes them fall a little bit more in love with her.

They make a mental note to see to it that a little bit more of their salary is directed to the school— discreetly through Nadia, lumped in with what she already uses to fund Vesuvia’s public education.

“And this is my classroom!” Beatrice pulls them into a room with rows of little desks decorated in little messes of papers and books. Amaryllis looks around the modest room, in awe at all the carefully-crafted decor she had put up all over the walls. Posters and signs that must have taken her hours and hours to make.

There was the common alphabet drawn out all the way across the front wall above the chalkboard. Large and colorful drawings acting as helpful reminders of numbers, shapes, days of the week, and months of the year. Not all of it was purely educational; messages of inspiration were all over, encouragement just a glance away for any child who needed it. Even each desk had a carefully handwritten tag spelling out each child's first and last name.

Amaryllis realizes they must have looked around the room a little too long, because when they glance back to Beatrice, she’s fiddling with her the clasp of her cloak. The instinct to assure her overcomes them, and they reach out and place their hands over hers

“Beatrice, this is lovely. I can tell you truly love your work.”

She looks hesitant for a moment, as though she might brush the complement off, but smiles after a moment. “Thank you, Amie. I really do love it.”

Amaryllis quickly squeezes her hands before taking them back. “I hope I can meet your high standards.”

“If I had any doubts, I wouldn’t have asked you,” she opens her mouth like she has more to say, but then tiny voices and giggles sound from the hallway. Something in her composure shifts then, and in a second she goes from their Beatrice to the student’s Beatrice.

Greeting each child with a warm smile as they file into the room, not an ounce of hesitance or nervousness. Amaryllis can’t take their eyes off of her, wants to take in all of her radiance that comes with her moments of total confidence. That beautiful smile of hers is then turned on them, and class is ready to begin.

“Settle in everyone! This afternoon we have a very special guest!” Beatrice addresses the class animatedly. She steps back, gesturing for Amaryllis to step up. It almost feels like they’ve somehow switched places with each other; Beatrice has all of the certainty and Amaryllis is full of worry. But they would do this, and do it well, for her, and for these children.

“Hello, you can call me Amie,” they introduce themself with the nickname instead, as their name could be difficult to pronounce for ones so young. “Together, we’re going to learn all about music!” Amaryllis glances to Beatrice, who watches them with a soft expression, and in turn she gives an encouraging nod. “For today’s lesson, I’m going to show you how to write your very own song!”

- - -

The lesson had run wonderfully, much to Amaryllis’s surprise. The class was a modestly-sized one, and all in attendance were very eager to learn. They’d begun with the very basics of treble clef, explaining the lettering and telling them the silly acronyms to assist in remembering. As the children demonstrated they were catching on to their teachings, Amaryllis shed their hesitance.

In the end, they were able to assist each student in writing out their own little two-measure song. None of them really knew they were writing, but Amaryllis could hear each little song as they went over it with Beatrice’s students. Some of them put the same note down eight times, some of them followed the alphabet, some of them randomly placed notes on the staff. It was sweet, to see each child’s method of creating.

Amaryllis’s plan was for Beatrice to hold on to what they’d written, because next time they would teach them how to sing their songs. Each child was already so proud of what they’d accomplished, and Amaryllis was truly looking forward to showing them how it sounded.

Once their lesson was concluded, it was time to wrap up for the day. Amaryllis stood back once again to let Beatrice take back over, and meanwhile they made themself at home in her desk chair. When the students finally were dismissed, Amaryllis did not expect for several of them to flock around them.

One little girl told them how pretty their hair was; another told them that he thought their scar was so cool. A little boy explained very thoroughly that he’d been taking piano lessons since he was very little. It took a few more minutes of questioning and stories and several promises that they would return next week for everyone to clear out.

Beatrice saw the last little straggler out of the door and closed it behind her. “‘Bad with children’, hm?” She was beaming again, surely pleased to have something to call them on.

“I may have lied,” Amaryllis admits. Beatrice raises a brow in questioning, settling down onto her desk in front of them. “It’s just, I don’t tend to be the best influence.”

“Amie, that’s not true,” she reaches forward to take their hand, “you were just actively being a positive influence for the past two hours.”

“I tried my very best, abeille.” ‘I tried my very best for you’, goes unsaid.

“I think you did wonderful! Even I learned things I didn’t know before.”

“Then I must not be doing enough in our private lessons.”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“I know, I’m simply teasing you.” Amaryllis rests their clasped hands against Beatrice’s knee. She isn’t sitting as ‘lady-like’ as she typically tends to, her legs remain uncrossed and knees apart. Her long skirts cover her all the way down to the ankle, perfectly decent, though Amaryllis’s thoughts about their current positions are anything but. Slipping their hands under said skirts, the feel of her skin under their fingers as they push the fabric up and— now was not the time or place to fantasize about her.

“You know, I meant to say,” she glances away when Amaryllis’s eyes meet hers, cheeks rosy. “You look, different.”

“I know, it’s atrocious, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely not!” Beatrice bites her lip, before continuing. “I think you look just as lovely like this,” she rushes to add, “and it’s nice to see your face. Outside of the rehearsal room. In public. That probably sounds a little odd-“

Amaryllis’s breath falters. “It doesn’t.”

“Oh, good, then.” Beatrice’s free hand picks at the surface of the desk. “Then is there a reason you didn’t wear your veil today? I’ve noticed you don’t usually go anywhere outside the palace without it.”

“It’s part of my effort to not be a poor influence,” they explain. “Little ones are so impressionable, it wouldn’t do to cover up like I’m ashamed.”

“Are you?” she blurts out, looking instantly regretful. Amaryllis doesn’t talk about these things, they never do. But with Beatrice, they feel safe enough to forgo many of their masks.

“Rationally, I know there isn’t anything to be ashamed about. But it’s,” they take a deep breath, “difficult when someone once put in a lot of effort into making you think that way. You never know who else will treat you that same way. So, I prefer to have a shield.”

“You’ve never worn it when it was just us.”

“Because I know you’d never make me feel ashamed.”

“Amie, I—“ Beatrice is cut off by a knock on the door that makes them both jump. She releases their hand, sliding off of the desk to let the interloper in. Simply a concerned parent who’s come to speak with his child’s teacher. Amaryllis takes it as their cue to excuse themself.

“I’m quite busy with preparations, so I’m afraid I might not see you again until the masquerade.”

“It’s only a few days away, and I’ll be sure to practice extra hard in place of our missed lesson.”

“Not too hard. We don’t want a repeat of the last time you strained yourself.” Though truthfully, Amaryllis wouldn’t mind bringing her tea again, or taking care of her, settling on her comfy little couch to snuggle up.

Beatrice throws her hands up dramatically. “I won’t practice that much, I promise!”

“Good girl,” they take her hand, relishing in her flustered face, “until we meet again.” Amaryllis places a kiss on the back of her hand, leaving behind a deep red stain. With a respectful nod to the waiting father, they step back out into the hall.

Normally, Amaryllis loved work. It kept them busy, kept them distracted. But they were already distracted by something other than work, and they had a feeling the next few days would be agonizing without a moment of Beatrice’s company.

[angelsswirl]

Been Through

Chapter 8: Burn Baby Burn

Because when I see you, my heart gets hot.

You had a horrible history with decision making. That was just a known fact really.

Your mom knew that. Your sisters knew that. Hell, you're pretty sure Lily knew that at this point.

Decisions and you just didn't get along.

And maybe that's what made you hesitate.

It was her. It was always her. And you knew that.

If?

And?

But?

That's what you had been reduced to.

You were in love. Had been since you met her, and yet.

What were you really afraid of?

Well, for one, you didn't want anyone's broken heart on your hands.

But that couldn't be avoided no matter what you did.

Your biggest obstacle of all?

Yourself.

And the sub-header under that read: Change.

And the sub-sub-header: Loss of Control.

That's what this all came down to more or less.

Would you have control over yourself? Or better yet, could you control yourself?

The answer to that question was 'No'. Plain and simple. But you're slowly coming to the conclusion that may not be nearly as bad of a thing as your making it seem.

See, you had learned something over the last four years. You had an interesting definition of love. One you had never really reached with Jennie. Which is not to say you weren't in love with her, because you were. It's to say, you didn't know what love was. But now you do.

You knew, at the time, you and Lisa were in lust. You're reluctant to admit that maybe you had been emotionally cheating on Jennie with Lisa. You think you might have been in love with both of them at one point, in some sort of confusing roundabout way that, honestly, probably doesn't even make any sense.

But that was then.

This is now.

Now, you know what love is.

Now, you know what being in love is.

You owe all of your learning to your daughter.

She taught you so much and she didn't even know it.

You're not sure how you even thought you knew what love was before she came into your life.

Lily was the embodiment of unconditional, constant, and everything good in this world.

Lily was your perfect thing. The one thing you could never mess up, simply because you wouldn't let yourself.

She's a symbol of love between two people who didn't even understand the concept.

Lily was your heart. Through and through.

You're going to give up a peice of your heart. Meaning, you're going to have to give up a peice of her too.

She had been all yours. Your heart had been all yours. For four damn years. Maybe you never had the right to hoard that all for yourself in the first place.

You never had the right to deprive your heart of a family. Lily deserved everything she could possibly want, and you were simply too stubborn to give it to her.

You now know what love is.

Lily taught you that love is not about complacency. Lily taught you that love is not about settling or being comfortable or serenity. At least not all of the time and definitely not at first.

Lily taught you that love isn't pretty 24/7. Sometimes that precious love cries at 2 am for no other reason than it missed you. Sometimes that precious love goes through the terrible twos at ages one, two, three, and four.

And other times? That precious love jumped into your arms when you picked it up from school. That precious love smiled up at you softly simply because you were there.

Lily taught you that love isn't luxurious, but it's definitely worth it.

There were some things that you had taught yourself.

You had never quite unlocked the full extent of things without outside help, but you had gotten close.

Your observations drove you crazy.

You had to teach yourself through acronyms. Your teaching was bass ackwards.

You learned that the opposite of love wasn't hate. It was loss. It was pain. It was confusion. All of those things? Acronyms. They were all acronyms but you could call them synonyms just as well.

You learned that every single thought you had ever had was confusing.

You needed someone to lighten the load.

You needed someone who will listen when you're feeling overwhelmed (and oh boy will that be often).

You needed someone who will play with Lily when you've had it up to here with toddler shenanigans.

You needed someone who will be your other half. Pick things up when you drop them. Tell you things are okay with they most definitely aren't.

You needed someone who will help you lose control.

You needed who you want.

And who you want is...

~~~

"Hey, can we meet up for coffee or something?" You're on the phone, but staring down at Lily, who is staring back up to you in return.

She suddenly threw her arms into the air, indicating she wanted to be picked up. You rolled your eyes but placed the phone inbetween your ear and your shoulder to complete the task.

"Um, yeah. I guess. I'll try to sneak away from here within the hour." She sounded more confused than anything else. You expected that. This was kind of out of the blue. But you had to make sure you did it before you lost the nerve.

"Thank you." You're not sure why you said that and you feel terribly awkward after you do, but whatever.

"I get coffee too?" Lily asked while she fiddled with one of the many necklaces around your neck.

You kiss her on the cheek, "I have a sneaking suspicion that you wouldn't like it. You're going to stay here with Kiara, while mommy does grownup stuff."

Lily pouted for a second before ultimately shrugging and gesturing for you to place her back on the ground.

"Bye bye." She said before scurrying back to the playroom where Kiara was.

You took a deep breath before opening the front door, "Now or never."

~~~

You were sitting in front of each other. Silently.

You were staring at her wide-eyed while she sipped on her coffee. You had been too nervous to order any.

"So, what's up?" She finally asked. She had never been one for inconvenient silence and you're sort of thankful for the push.

"I'm sorry." You blurted out.

She blinked, "About what?"

You sighed heavily, your hand coming up to rub the stress off of your face, "Leading you on."

It must be sinking in for her now, if her frown deepening is anything to go by.

"I think I was in denial for a while there. In denial that we could ever be more than we already have been."

"Is it her?"

"It always was."

Her eyes squinted a little at the implications of your words, but she relaxed a few milliseconds later.

"Thank God."

"Huh? You're not upset?" Your eyebrows furrowed.

"Oh, I absolutely am. I loved you. I just rather it be her than some complete stranger. I'd have to pay someone to kill them or something."

"I'm not even going to pretend that made any sense to me. I don't want this to come between you."

She shrugged, indifference playing across her face, "The girls and I made a pact a long time ago that we wouldn't ever let a significant other come between us. We'll be fine. Eventually."

You squinted at that revelation. That sounded a bit objectifying but you'll let it slide for now.

"Oh, stop making that face. She loves you."

You eyed her heavily, taking in every possible inflection in her face as you possibly could, "And you?"

Half of her face was covered by the Starbucks cup cleverly positioned in front of it, but you could tell that she found the question a bit amusing.

"Me? I'll get over it. I'm resilient. A great personality trait you're missing out on if you ask me."

You can't tell if she's joking or not. You're leaning towards not.

"I still want us to be friends." You mumbled, staring at your hands on the wood table.

"And we can be. I'm just going to need some time."

You nodded in a minute gesture, "I get it. Just don't take four years like I did."

She only glanced at you out of the corner of her eye. And didn't speak further. You took that as your queue to leave.

You grabbed your belongings and headed for the door.

One down, one to go.

[aahsoka]

So having been on tiktok for a bit I wanna talk a little about it.

What I like

It’s actually rather entertaining to scroll through up to 30 second videos one after the other. Sometimes the humor falls flat or it’s not your taste, but the algorithim is quite good at recommending the kind of content you will like.

I joined right when there was a big trend going around about sharing your culture, and soon after a Blackout trend where non-Black creators stopped posting for a day & spread/supported videos by Black creators. So I ended up with a fairly diverse fyp or “for you page”. It also quickly gathered that I am bisexual, so I get plenty of lgbt+ content. There’s some art mixed in there, some cosplay, some historical costuming/seamstresses, lots of avatar jokes lately, musical theatre content, fashion, girls in bikinis on rollerskates (in outer space), commentary on political issues, body positivity, all the kinds of stuff I like. To get a feed that caters to your interests you just have to watch & like videos you’re interested in & eventually it gets a feel for what you’ll watch and what you won’t.

Theres a trend where people say which ‘side’ of tiktok they’re on and I get ‘science side of tumblr’ flashbacks but I’ve mostly avoided the “straight” and conservative sides of tiktok. I would be considered a part of “woke”, “alt” (as in alternative) and lgbt+ tiktok (there are separate ones for each letter of the acronym). Possibly also “theatre” and “cosplay” tiktok. These categories are nebulous and you’re usually part of multiple communities; its just as arbitray as ‘science side of tumblr’ was.

The format reminds me of snapchat a little, and I love to talk to myself on video & post dumb thirst traps for my friends (none of which I’m attracted to so idk what my goal is there) and make stupid jokes. So this app is kinda perfect for my attention seeking side & hyperactive tendencies. Its very easy to consume on a short attention span, though not as easy as vine was.

Being in quarantine, its a way for a lot of people to engage in hobbies that involve community. Cosplay is pretty popular, as its a fun way to show off a costume & dress up & have fun without having to attend a convention. I enjoy the way lip synced audios can be used to emulate the character someone is dressed as; that’s something you couldn’t really do unless you were really good at impressions. Its a nice succinct way to show the process of creating a cosplay as well.

Those who enjoy theatre, but cannot perform in shows at this time, are able to create mini-monologues & sketches as well as sing parts of their favorite songs. Its an avenue through which to perform without putting anyone at risk of the virus. It’s also an easy way to show off your talents without having to go through the audition process & actually get cast in a show as a prominent enough role that someone will notice it.

It’s a convenient format for discourse and educational videos. Nice, short, easily digestible tidbits that stay in your mind. This extremely catchy song, for example: “Black neighborhoods are overpoliced, so of course they have higher rates of crime, and white perpetrators are undercharged, so of course they have lower rates of crime. And all of those stupid stats you keep using are operating off a small sample size. So, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up”.

As well as other videos where people take the time to explain historical events, satirize racist arguments to demonstrate why they are wrong, talk about prevalent tropes in movies, teach a few signs in ASL, share facts about their culture, etc, etc. I have found there are quite a lot of people there from unique and fairly unknown cultures and backgrounds- and this is a place where they’re able to share their culture & existence with people all over the world. There are a thousand different viewpoints. Their videos are doing far more for diverse representation than any other platform, I’d argue, as everyone is extremely visible on the app. (‘Their’ as in the creators, not the app itself).

I also have enjoyed coming across new artists on the app. It’s really fun to watch the process they go through, as most art videos deal with the whole creation of a piece. It’s inspiring. I have also come across a painter who’s work I’m in love with, and a woman who makes and sells the CUTEST ceramic mugs, and I need to purchase some stuff from them both.

Now onto the bad:

Unfortunately, the app doesn’t have much in the way of a filtering or warning system. I talked about that tiktok of the kids coming across human remains? That was just on people’s fyp. Just popped up. No warning. No reason for it to still be up. Traumatizing.

You can click on a video and say ‘not interested’ (I do this to literally every video I get where some girl is thirsting after kylo ren 🤮..... like I want the star wars videos just not THOSE videos). However, it doesn’t seem to know exactly why you weren’t interested, because I still get those videos from time to time. There’s no content filter where I can blacklist the kylo ren or any other hashtag.

There’s some very shitty content. There are racist conservatives. Misogynistic teen white boys. Really weird thirst traps. Videos where people lip sync to something with a straight face and tag it with #acting. Harmful body image trends. I thankfully stay very clear of this, but this kind of content makes me worry for the minors on the app. The one’s who don’t have enough of a concept of self yet to realize they don’t need to be able to do the newest pointless beauty trend to be beautiful, to realize it’s ok for them to be gay, to realize how predatory some adults can be, etc etc.

It is extremely easy to come across minors on the app who don’t look like teens. One time I went to a girl’s page and it said she was FIFTEEN. I’m usually good at guessing ages but something about this app messes that up. I wish there was a way to separate people under 18 and adults. Where I don’t have minor’s thirst traps popping up on my fyp. Where pedophiles don’t get a chance to curate that fyp intentionally. If anyone reading this has kids, I highly recommend they make their tiktok private or only viewable to friends.

Just like any site, there are plenty of bigots. Lots of racist comments. Plenty of transphobia. Any hatred you’ve seen elsewhere, of course it exists on tiktok. I have actually zero clue if you can report people & if it works. Most people seem to send a video commentary to their haters or duet a video of a racist pointing out their racism. I’ve heard of creators blocking people, however. I remember a tiktok of a Black woman who’s video somehow went fairly viral in Poland and now she gets a lot of racist comments from this large group of random racisf Polish followers she has and its extremely time consuming to block them all, as there’s no mass block feature.

The rumors about what works with the algorithm and doesn’t abound. I’ve heard well lit videos get more views. Many people suspect they have been shadowbanned for speaking out about current events. TikTok will remove the audio from videos sometimes if they deem it controversial enough. Most of us know they were criticized recently for intentionally keeping Black creator’s videos from being seen (a catalyst for the Blackout, actually). Or you may also recall when it was criticized for widely removing lgbt+ content. Those creators are fighting to be seen the same amount as straight cis white creators are allowed to be seen with no effort.

The effects some trends could have on teen girls. So many of them are already so uncomfortable in their own skin simply because of societal standards, but the absolutely meaningless challenges people come up with on tiktok make it so much worse. One trend was based around whether your finger touched your lips when you put it in your nose. Or if you could get your clasped hands around the back of your legs and over your butt (if they get passed, you have a flat ass, if they get stuck, its big). These completely arbitrary signifiers of the things you need to have in order to be pretty, are far more ridiculous that anything I have seen yet in my life. I worry about little girls taking these ideas to heart. There is a very kind body positive community on the app & I hope more people can find that.

There’s also that thing where they steal your data. Like most apps. But apparently they got a lot more invasive than usual, so I would look into it before making an account; if you want to do that.

I think the apps users can be great & its a pretty intuitive set up. It certainly deserves its popularity solely as a creative form of social media. That being said, its owners are so so insidious & do the worst things. Just like all other social media, its controlled by the worst kind of people. Who can never figure out how to effectively get rid of nazis or keep kids safe from adult content.

These are my less serious gripes with the app:

1) Lip syncing

When people lip sync and don’t do any kind of skit, joke, etc, just look as if they’re saying what someone else said; I hate that. I have to go back and find the original tiktok so I can like it instead. You literally did nothing interesting by ripping off someones audio and moving your lips along to it. So many people on this app are creative and so many others lack any semblance of creativity.

Also people are too easily impressed by lip syncing to kinda-fast songs. I lip synced to like....10 seconds of the devil went down to georgia and two people praised my lip syncing abilities. Like, I can also sing and talk fast, out loud, isn’t that more impressive? more skillful? The fiddle playing in that song is impressive, not the fact I can lip sync ‘the devil went down to georgia, he was lookin for a soul to steal, he was in a bind, cause he was way behind.’ Have you ever seen someone play Johnny’s fiddle solo????? It’s insane!!!

Rather than see someone lip sync to the verse in Stressed Out 2x faster than normal (which is, extremely simple and the song was overplayed and ingrained into our collective consciousness) and go WOW what about someone.....doing the verse out loud. You can litterally just mouth random words and look like you’re saying the right ones. It’s driving me crazy lmao. I’m set to become a God of tiktok because I have a repertoire of fast songs and rap verses memorized. It’s not even an uncommon skill to speak or sing quickly, people literally make rap music for a living! Listen to it maybe.

2) “Acting”

I am begging you to stop making me sit through those horrible POVs. I cannot take another girl not quite fake crying towards the camera as she lip syncs the words from a song that apply to the random situation she decided she was in. I cannot take another boy who thinks its sexy to stare into a camera and smirk in every single situation he creates.

Back to lip syncing, making facial expressions along to words isn’t really acting. Try saying the words out loud perhaps? The inflection you use with your lines is a pretty big part of acting. Like you can lip sync all you want, just stop tagging it with #acting.

3) Comedic timing, or lack thereof

You don’t need the entire intro to sit there looking at the camera waiting until the first line starts and you can lip sync to the part that’s the joke. You could cut off at least 15 seconds. Brevity is the soul of wit.

When your joke involves both reading text on screen and listening to the song for the punchline, if it isn’t done prefectly, its so difficult to follow. I can’t read a paragraph in 5 seconds. Paraphrase.

4) self deprecating artist audio

the audio thats like ‘this wont get views’ ‘I suck’ ‘you probably won’t see this anyway’ LOVE YOURSELF

It sucks when people dont enagage with your art but it sucks worse when your value in yourself and you art is based solely on receiving that validation. Please find a healthy medium.

Also you’re asking for pity, and you don’t want that. You want people who genuinely love your art for what it is.

5) editing videos is really hard how do you make such cool & smooth transitions????

please help me I don’t understand

Finally

here’s my account if you’re interested

[existing-on-cloral]

In case you didn't know this, I'm also on Archiveofourown under the same username! On there, you will find the fanfiction that I will begin posting here today. Therefore, without further ado,

Brooklyn's Night Terrors

A Steve Rogers X Reader fanfiction

The pretty scientist working to eradicate a vigilante villain catches the eye of the former Captain America. He jumps back into the time machine, becoming young again in order to live out a new life with his best friends, and perhaps her.

Paradise has a price, however.

The tracked vigilante kidnaps Sam Wilson and leaves the shield for Steve to take up one last time. Reluctantly, Steve takes on the mantle of Captain America once more as he teams up with his old pal Bucky Barnes and the beautiful and deadly smart scientist.

"Lust can cloud the mind, but love makes it clear as day."

Chapter One: Night Calls

He was tired.

So very tired of having to throw around a stupid Frisbee just to save the world, only for it to be attacked again.

Steve just wanted a little peace and quiet for once in his life.

He didn't regret the choices he made. But now, Bucky could barely look at him. Maybe there was a little regret there, just for his best friend.

Still, the life he had chosen didn't prevent him from wanting to still know what was going on. Sam took him down to a new office a few months after Steve returned to look at what new and interesting villains might be threatening the city.

"Serious Predicaments Evolving Citywide and In All Locations," Sam read, pushing Steve's wheelchair up the accessible ramp. "The officers call it S.P.E.C.I.A.L."

Steve smiled. "At least the world isn't done with insane acronyms."

Sam laughed. "You got that right. Did you hear what happened with that kid Tony brought to the battles?" His tone turned serious, even as they went through the spinning door. Sam loved spinning doors. "Tony left an AI for Peter, E.D.I.T.H. Even Dead I'm The Hero."

"Heard something like that, but I just remember what happened in London." Steve shivered. "Almost makes me want to take the shield back."

"Almost?" Sam teased. "You're not getting this back, man."

Steve chuckled as they headed further inside, towards what Sam described as "smart women central". "A lot of the scientists here are actually women. Turns out they are a bit smarter than us," Sam explained, stopping the wheelchair outside of the lab.

"That they are," Steve said, leaning forward, even though that didn't help his back, and watching the scene inside. All of the people inside except one were staring up at the board, where a woman stood, giving a presentation.

Sam whistled. "That's the top scientist. She's won two Nobel Prizes, one for Physics and one for Peace. Eradicated a lot of threats that could have destroyed a lot more than a couple of cities."

"Oh, so when she does it, she's 'internationally recognized' and 'a hero'," Steve joked. "But when we do it, we're 'dangerous' and 'need to be put in check'."

"The difference," Sam snickered as he headed for the door, "is that she didn't save a city by destroying it."

He opened the door, and the scientist's voice drifted out. "...we believe that this vigilante may have obtained the time machine used to send the Avengers back in time to collect the six Infinity Stones. Our theory is that she will use it to bring back the Winter Soldier and perhaps Agent Romanoff, before Romanoff was taken in by S.H.I.E.L.D."

Graciously, Sam propped the door open so Steve could still listen, then went inside, leaning down to tell a scientist a joke. "Doctor!" he greeted her, taking an empty chair in the second row.

"Thanks for coming, Captain," she returned with a wink. "Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to present Sam Wilson, who, as usual, is fashionably late to the party." She grinned, stepping aside and offering the floor to Sam.

Sam, with his usual theatrics, stood and strutted to the front of the room. "This vigilante is dangerous. We are absolutely sure of that, but we believe that we can and will beat her. The only time machine she has is the van used by Scott Lang, so the Avengers still have their own time machine. What we are hoping for is that we can pinpoint the moment she plans to capture the Winter Soldier and intercept her there. This is, of course, a last-ditch resort in case we don't take her down while we are in this time."

Steve watched, impressed. Sam had always been confident, but he hadn't really spoken in front of people a lot. This was new for Sam, and he was doing an excellent job at it. His eyes flicked to the scientist, who was watching Sam with interest. He smiled to himself, turning his attention back to Sam, who was saying something about how the heroes would win and he was confident in their success.

When they left the building after Sam's pep talk, Steve instructed Sam to take him to the old Avengers facility upstate. "I'd like to see if Bruce can make some adjustments to the time machine. They can be reversed and we'll still have the machine if we need it."

Sam relented after more pleading. Even the grit of Sam Wilson was no match for Old Man Steve's puppy dog eyes.

"You sure this is safe, Bruce?" Bucky asked, keeping an eye on Steve as he hobbled over to the time machine.

"67% sure," Bruce said, fiddling with the controls. "Should be adjusted correctly." He pressed a button and Steve was sucked into the machine.

Bucky rubbed his face. "Bruce, any second now I'd like my best friend back."

Bruce pressed another button and Steve flew back out. He looked young again, but-

Steve began to cough violently, clearly struggling to stay on his feet.

"Send him back in! That's teenage Steve!" Bucky yelled, running over and grabbing Bruce's arm.

"Okay, okay!" Bruce said. He pressed another button and Steve went back in. A few seconds later, Bruce pressed another button and he came back out, this time appearing to be the Steve from seconds before he returned the Infinity Stones.

Steve took off the helmet and shook out his hair. "Am I blond again?" he asked.

Bucky laughed. "Always have been on the inside."

"Was that a dumb blonde joke?" a voice asked from the door. Sharon Carter strode inside, leading the scientist from the presentation with her. "Just wanted to bring up my favorite doctor to see the time machine and what we've got to work with."

Bucky gave the agent a playful smile. "All in good fun, Agent Carter."

"I see our old hero is young again," you said, walking up to Steve. "The world is grateful for everything you've done for it, Captain."

Steve offered you his hand, and you took it. "Thank you for your kind words, but I think I've had enough avenging for one lifetime."

"More than one, from what I gather just took place," you joked.

Bucky cleared his throat. "We've got business to take care of, Doctor. Thanks for stopping by."

You turned away from Steve. "Right. Thank you, Mr. Barnes." You gave him a warm smile and Bucky smiled back.

Steve sighed. It was back to the 40's all over again. Bucky flirted with a girl and Steve had to sit there and watch. Still, he didn't even know your name.

"Oh! Where are my manners?" You spun back to Steve and told him your name, a smile crossing your face at the end of it, as if your own name was the greatest delight in the world. He tested it out, and found that saying your name gave him joy too, but no more joy than when you gave him a wink, a nod, said, "Steve," and then left, dragging Sharon with her.

Bucky strolled over to Steve, giving his friend a smirk. "Someone's got the hots for a scientist," he sang, ruffling Steve's hair.

Steve swatted his hand away.

"Just think!" Bucky joked, "if she'd walked in a few minutes ago, your life could have become Grumpy Old Men!"

"I understood that reference, and I wish I didn't understand that reference," Steve groaned. "Stop, Buck."

Bucky laughed. "Sorry, Steve, I couldn't help myself."

Bruce cleared his throat. "Who wants to help me fix the time machine in case S.P.E.C.I.A.L. needs it?"

Steve sighed and headed over to help Bruce. With Bucky's sense of humor, it was going to be a long day.

Sharon gave you a poke once you two were in the hallway. "You never wear makeup to work."

"I'm not wearing makeup," you shot back.

She rolled her eyes and grabbed your arm, stopping you in your tracks. Before you could react, she had smudged her thumb across your eyelid and it came away brown. "Makeup. You knew Sam was coming in to talk today, didn't you?"

You shook your head and started walking, forcing her to catch up. "I always wear makeup for presentation days. You've seen me at my worst, Sharon."

Sharon smiled. "I have, and need I remind you that I have some pictures from those days?"

This stopped you in your tracks. "You wouldn't dare."

"I have Wilson's contact information. You've gotta ask that boy out, or I'll send him the pictures." She grinned, knowing she had you.

You gritted your teeth. Sharon always knew how to get you to do what she wanted. "Fine. I'll ask him out tomorrow. But not a word of this is spoken outside of our conversations, or I'll send that agent you're talking to the footage from your apartment hallway when you lived across from Steve."

Her eyes widened comically. "You wouldn't dare," she threatened.

"Send the pictures to anyone, and they find out exactly how much Sharon Carter had the hots for Steven Grant Rogers." You scrunched up your nose, giving Sharon the cutest face you could.

"I never told you his full name," Sharon teased.

You blushed. "I do my research like any decent scientist."

The two of you made your way back to headquarters, still poking fun at each other for supposed and not-supposed crushes. Sharon was a good friend of yours, but she could be such a tease, especially when it came to your crush on Sam Wilson. Your resolve was strong, though. Tomorrow, when Sam came to check your progress on the time machine, you'd ask him out for coffee. You'd need a good night's sleep first, though. It was getting pretty late.

[imaginetonyandbucky]

Worst Case

Read it on AO3

Chapter 2

The next day Bucky found himself in the same room in the hospital again. He didn't have much hope concerning the test results today and he still had an inkling that this was all a joke because Tony was already late. Not exactly a promising sign, nevertheless he made himself comfortable on the chair, as comfortable as possible at least, and put on his music.

Bucky was already halfway through the current playlist when suddenly the door burst open and Tony wheeled in a contraption.

'Contraption' was really a too nice of a word for the thing that Tony had created, Bucky hoped he had created it, otherwise, it might have spawned directly from an alien dimension. It looked nothing like the sleek white machine with the STARK logo on the front from yesterday. (It hadn't really looked like that anymore when Tony had been done with it at the end of the day.)

"How's my favorite guinea pig doing today?" Tony greeted him while already going to town on the cables and electrodes. Despite his cheery demeanor, he looked exhausted and extremely disheveled with stains all over his shirt, which looked suspiciously like yesterday's shirt.

"The guinea pig is extremely scared about what you are going to do to him with that monstrosity."

Tony laughed wholeheartedly and it was an addicting sound, something Bucky wanted to hear more of.

"Nothing that I didn't already do yesterday, this is the new and improved neuromuscular nav-channel analyzer, I call him NEWMAN, doesn't quite fit with the acronym yet, I'm working on it. He's going to get us the results we need today. Aren't you, Newman? You're going to be a good boy."

Strangely enough, the machine started beeping as if answering Tony, Bucky was even more scared now. The machine was clearly sentient. He was still staring at it with wide eyes when he pulled off his shirt and Tony started applying the electrodes.

It took all of 30 seconds after Tony fired up the machine before it started beeping again. "There we go!" Tony fist-pumped, grinning from ear to ear, he was still fiddling with the buttons.

"What does that mean?" Bucky asked, a little bit concerned that he might get electrocuted any second now.

"That, my friend, is the sound of your nerves doing a little happy dance, a very tiny happy dance, a hardly noticeable dance, but it's there." Tony swiveled around in his chair, rubbing his hands together. "Technically it's an auditory output of the minuscule amount of voltage being detected in the sodium channel of your neurons, but let's go with happy dance."

(More after the break!)

Bucky blinked at him slowly, he hardly understood a word but what he had gathered from that torrent of technical expressions was that there were results.

"Are you saying what I think you are saying?"

"We have results, Mr. Barnes!"

Bucky almost broke down then and there, it had come so unexpectedly, he couldn't believe it. Tony had done it, he had really done it like he said he would. This man was amazing.

"If I wasn't hooked up to this devil's machine you've created here, I would hug you, I don't care if that would violate doctor-patient relationship ethics."

Tony chuckled. "You can hug me when I get you a second arm. This is just the beginning, you'll need a whole different system for a prosthesis than the other participants, it's going to take a while. I basically need to condense this whole thing -" He gestured to the monstrosity. "- into something that you can comfortably wear. Preferably something arm-shaped."

"You alone?" Bucky was still grinning, he was over the moon right now, he had never expected to get any results. He had hoped, Tony's enthusiasm was contagious, but he had never really believed.

"The R&D department, I mean, it's a team effort."

----

James (10:37 am) "The bastard did it." "He fucking did it."

James (10:39 am) "He says it's still going to take several weeks until they have a prototype ready, but daaaaaamn!" "Can't stop grinning!"

Nat (10:40 am) "I'm so happy for you, дорогой!"

----

The next couple of weeks Bucky was at the clinic almost every day, from morning until late into the night. It was fun working with Tony, they quipped and bantered almost non-stop. Often while the tests were running they had time to discuss topics other than the prosthesis work. They discovered they were both fans of various science fiction and would get stuck in a Star Wars vs Star Trek debate only to be interrupted by the machine that had finished calculating.

But the work was also very taxing on Bucky. Often times he didn't bring enough food to last him through the day and he went hungry for long periods of time until Tony finally let him out. He never dared to say anything, he didn't want to interrupt the tests. It was extremely exhausting not only physically but also for Bucky's fragile mental state and on a particularly bad day he was close to canceling.

In the end, he didn't call. Tony was working so hard to give him a prosthesis that would work with his fucked up nerves. Bucky didn't want to jeopardize that and so he dragged himself to the appointment.

Of course, that day had to be one of the longest so far. He was at his breaking point and unable to concentrate anymore. Tony was asking him to move his left arm and he just couldn't do it anymore. Occasionally reaching for something with his missing arm when he was blissfully unaware of his disability for a moment was one thing but moving his missing arm on purpose was another and on a bad day, it was horror.

Tony was putting a constant stream of words forward that Bucky had long ceased to understand. The air in the room was stifling and he hadn't eaten anything in hours. He was falling into a breakdown. Fast. His head was already spinning.

Bucky's savior came in form of a fierce woman bursting through the door and stalking right up to Tony. With her tight pony-tail and pressed suit she looked like she came straight out of a business meeting and was out of place in the hospital.

"You're still at it, Tony? It's been 13 hours, almost 14. I told you 8 is the maximum with breaks, that was the condition that I let you do this. Release this poor man." She sounded so angry Bucky ducked away from her even though the words weren't directed at him. If looks could kill Tony would have been dead three times over already. He shied away from the woman, avoiding her eyes and glancing at his tablet.

"I forgot the time."

"And the 15 messages from me that I know you saw. Did you even think about him once?"

Tony visibly flinched.

"Look at him!"

Bucky, at this point, didn't care, he was exhausted beyond belief, even if they let him out now there was no way he would make it home on his own. He must have looked as bad as he felt because Tony's face drained all color when he looked up, he stumbled to his feet and started to remove the electrodes on Bucky's shoulder.

"Fuck, Bucky, I got completely lost in the tests. I almost have everything now."

"Mr. Barnes." The woman turned to Bucky and her anger was gone in an instance instead her eyes were full of kindness and she smiled sympathetically. "My driver will escort you home tonight and ensure you are properly fed. There will be no appointment tomorrow or the day after. We from  STARK Industry care deeply for the participants in our programs and I apologize on behalf of all involved that the duration for a test session has been stretched beyond all regulations. It will not happen again. I am sure Tony will agree."

"Yes, of course." Tony was quick to say while he handed Bucky his clothes, he didn't meet Bucky's eyes.

Bucky didn't feel much of anything as he was guided out of the hospital and into an expensive car, except numb. He was too exhausted to think about anything and barely registered when the car stopped at some point and a pizza box appeared next to him then continued to his place. The driver, a middle-aged man in a suit made sure he arrived at his apartment and put the pizza box onto his table before excusing himself.

The whole situation was surreal and Bucky couldn't wrap his head around anything that had just happened, he wouldn't have believed that he was just driven home by what must have been some CEO-level business woman's driver if it wasn't for the pizza he was shoveling into his mouth.

He couldn't remember actually getting up and walking to bed when he woke up sometime in the afternoon of the next day.

------

Nat (11:43 am) <5 unread messages>

James (5:12 pm) "m fine"

-----

Bucky didn't blame Tony. Not in the least. He blamed himself for not being able to keep up with the genius doctor who only wanted his best. Doubts were circling his mind when he went back to the hospital after two days of rest. Rest he desperately had needed but wouldn't admit to it. What if his inability to keep up with the tests made him inadmissible to the program? He half expected to be escorted out of the clinic as soon as he set a foot into it but the lady at the reception greeted him with a friendly smile as always and nobody looked at him twice when he took the elevator up to his usual room.

Tony was already in the room to Bucky's surprise. He was working on the machine again and had several tablets scattered around him. Pen in mouth, he mumbled to himself and didn't notice when Bucky walked in.

"Am I late?"

Tony twirled around and his whole face lit up. "Bucky! No, not late at all. I was here early, got everything ready for the last round of tests." He gestured to the familiar mess around him. "Good to see you."

So Tony wasn't mad at him, yet Bucky still felt the need to apologize. He sat down and pulled off his shirt, something that came to him quite easily now. "I'm sorry."

"You what?" Tony didn't look up from placing the electrodes onto Bucky's shoulder.

"For the other day. For not being able to keep up. You work so hard on this and all I do is sit here and do nothing and yet I couldn't even do that properly."

"Hold on....you're really apologizing to me?" Tony looked flabbergasted, a look that wasn't quite at home on his face.

Bucky blinked, thinking he misheard, then frowned. "Yes. I'm sorry."

"Listen, Buckeroo, if anybody has to apologize, it's me." Tony reached for Bucky's hand and clasped it between his own. "I fucked up, Pepper was right, I got so engrossed into my work I forgot there was a human being at the end of these electrodes. A very nice human being, that I like a lot. I should have never put you through so many tests, there was no need to rush how I did. I'm sorry."  

Bucky stared at their combined hands. Buckeroo...

When Bucky didn't say anything Tony let go of his hand and turned back to the machine. "I can understand if you only came back because you want the prosthesis and don't want to put up with me. I promise I am going to be nothing but professional. We're going to have a break at noon, there's going to be food -"

Bucky snatched Tony's hands back, one of them at least, and stopped Tony from rambling. "I thought I was going to be thrown out of the program."

"What?" Tony's eyes went wide. "No. No no no no no. Never. I promise! What made you think that?" With his other hand, Tony lifted Bucky's chin up to look him in the eyes and at first Bucky wanted to avoid looking into those deep brown eyes. He feared he would get lost in them if he looked too long and suddenly his biggest fear was not being able to see these eyes anymore, the eyes that crinkled so lovely when Tony smiled. And that smile...

"Bucky?" Tony's worried brought Bucky out of his thoughts and he avoided his eyes again.

"I couldn't do the tests, what if the results are false because I was so out of it?"

Tony laughed softly, not malicious but relieved. "Tests can be repeated and to be honest myself, we have to repeat some of them. But don't you dare blame yourself for that." He added when Bucky hunched in on himself.

"We're going to do this together, alright?" Tony properly clasped their hands together and squeezed lightly before letting go and turning to the machine, the moment finally ending. Bucky immediately missed the contact and the warmth, he started to shiver slightly when the cold breeze of the AC flowed over him, making him acutely aware that he was shirtless.

Tony looked back at him after powering up the machine, the familiar smirk spreading over his face. "Besides, you still owe me that hug.”

[unplacedpodcast]

Chapter Five: Miscue (Script)

Script below! Spoilers, obvs. 

Every time I think that this can’t get any weirder or more confusing, it does. It’s like puberty, except without having to figure out bras.

(sighs)

Okay, let’s recap:

A month or two ago, I woke up to find out that nobody can see, hear, or feel me. There’s some kind of distortion field that just completely masks me (and everything I do).

Wackiness ensues, including finding out I can’t reach out to anyone I know and everyone I know seems to have forgotten entirely about me. Including Facebook, somehow.

I’m living out of hotels while trying to figure out what’s going on. Free housecleaning is pretty much the biggest upside of this whole mess.

A few weeks ago, I saw a horrifying giant leech-thing…eating a guy’s brain? I’m not entirely sure what it was doing. But, with the great luck that I have, the giant leech can see me when my own damn mother can’t.

I tried to figure out more about what the hell that thing was. During my little mini-stakeout, I saw another one, followed the host lady into a psychic shop, where the seemingly-scammer psychic gave the lady with the freeloading brain-gobbler a necklace that hurt it somehow.

Turns out the scammer might not have been as full of it as I thought, because she could somehow sense me. She couldn’t see or hear me, but she still knew I was there, and proceeded to get real cranky about it. So I headed out to find her customer and learn more about why this necklace was hurting the leech.

But I couldn’t find the woman again, and when I went back to the shop, the psychic was gone, the shop was closed. And…here we are.

Anyways. I tried to find the psychic, and I can’t. She seems to be just - in the wind. I’ve been all over the city and I haven’t seen her. I even went to some other psychics to see if I could get a repeat experience, but no such luck. Nobody else can tell I’m there. I have seen more of the leeches, though.

I did notice something new while I was trying to find the psychic. You know those symbols you see painted on buildings and signs sometimes, or scratched into the paint on walls? The ones that supposedly mean “safe to sleep here,” or whatever. I’ve been seeing more of them, or something like them - they were everywhere when I went looking for the the mystery psychic.

It’s weird, actually, because they look really old, but they aren’t. There’s an alley between a convenience store and a nail salon that I walked down a few days ago, but when I went back yesterday, there were new marks. One of them was at least two feet by three feet - there was no way I could have missed it before. The problem is, this thing was aged - it had been painted on, but bits of brick were showing through the paint by now, and there was dirt and lichen over some of it.

I guess I can add that to the list of “Things I Have No Earthly Clue About,” which is several items long at this point. I’m not sure if it should also go in the evidence pile for “I’m hallucinating all of this.”

During all of this wandering around, I also hit up the library to see if I could learn more about hematite and why it affected the leech. There wasn’t a whole lot of useful information - hematite is iron ore, it leaves blood-red streaks when scratched on slate, it was used for pigment because of that, it’s magnetic.

But then I was like, wait a minute. I’m in the geology section, which makes sense for learning about stones, but I’m also dealing with some truly unexplainable phenomena here, and so far the only person who I’ve seen who can deal with these things in any way was a self-proclaimed psychic.

So I went over to the section of the library that deals with ESP and UFOs and other useless three-letter-acronyms. I spent the next hour learning everything there is to know about Russian experiments during the Cold War and indigo children, but fuck-all about why hematite would bother invisible brain leeches.

All in all, the library was kind of a bust. I don’t know what I was hoping to find, but I definitely thought it’d be more useful than that.

The hematite did hurt the leech, though, even if it was only injured. And that was with a small necklace - I’m wondering what would happen if there was more of the hematite…

You know how you can cut butter with a thread, or with wire? Or cake - my grandma used to always do that to make sure the lines were straight…no imperfect pieces.

That’s kind of what it looked like when the woman put the necklace on. There was this thin little slice through the leech, and it recoiled. I don’t know if it was enough to cause permanent damage, since I lost her and couldn’t keep watching, but it definitely did some kind of damage. I bet if you had a lot more hematite it would do a lot more damage.

Given that semi-reasonable conclusion, after I left the library, I hit up one of those new-agey stone shops and grabbed a few strings of hematite. It took a little fiddling and some wires, but I now have…sort of a hematite half glove?

My hand is covered in strings of hematite beads, except for the fingers, and they’re all held in place with a few tiny wires tying them to hematite rings that I have on each finger. Basically, it’s like brass knuckles and a fingerless glove had a mutated magnetic baby. It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world, but we’ll see if it gets the job done.

Which, of course, brings us to the fact that all of this storytelling is meant to help me get up the courage to test it. I guess now that you’re all up to speed, I can’t put it off any more. (sighs)

I’ll head out to my reliable ol’ hunting grounds (by which I mean, the most crowded sidewalk I can find) and I’ll let you know when I’m there.

(ding of audio recording stopping & then starting again, when it starts up again there’s background noise like a busy city sidewalk)

NARRATOR: Okay. Here we are. It’s really busy - I caught the lunch rush. I’m standing on some stairs to get a good view of all the people walking by. Hopefully it won’t be too long before I find someone - ahhh. Yep. I think this might actually be the guy I saw with that first leech encounter. James and the Giant Leech over here. I can’t believe it took me that long to make that joke…

Anyways, I’ve got some headphones in and I’m gonna stick you in a pocket but keep recording. Evidence for posterity and all that.

(muffled movement of phone being put in pocket and her running down some stairs)

I’m coming up behind him, do I…should I try to grab it or punch it first? Punch first, right? My whole goal is to do damage… (a few deep breaths) ahhhh!

(sound of running, sound of a wet “smack,” then the “AHHH” yell turns into a scream, there’s noise like the phone or mic has been dropped/she’s fallen onto the ground, we hear her breathing slowly/heavily and fade out on the sound of that mixing with the background noise of people on the street)

[deck16]

Guild Wars 2 Retrospective

I've played a number of MMOs over the years. Guild Wars 2 is my favourite, and it occupies a place in my memories like a favourite book or movie. And so, I want to write down my thoughts about it.

I don't think I'm finished with the game yet. As I write, the Icebrood Saga is soon to be launched. Even ignoring future content there's so much current content I want to do.

That said, now's a good time to write down my thoughts. I finished Living World Season 4 not too long ago and it had a certain finality that made me want to pause and reflect.

This is going to be long. And it's going to be a lot of opinion. There's going to be a lot of praise, but if I praise Guild Wars 2 for something don't take that to imply that only GW2 does that thing, or that GW2 does it best.

Soundtrack

Have a listen while you read this.

The earlier stuff by Jeremy Soule is different to what came later, in expansions and such, but not incongruous. It's all good.

Music is one of those strange and strong memory triggers, like smell. There are some refrains from the soundtrack that bring back memories. I remember listening to the soundtrack when the game was released to help get through a particularly un-fun and short-lived job. Some tracks bring back memories of playing with friends. Or just exploring Tyria on my own.

Money

Ars Gratia Artis

How does one make money off a product, like a game?

Make it worth buying.

(Other.)

Option 2 includes things like psychological tricks, and planned obsolescence with yearly releases.

I can't say GW2 never indulges in Option 2. But I feel it mostly goes for Option 1.

Pictured: ArenaNet offices after releasing the black wings cosmetic.

Subscription Model

Guild Wars 2, like its predecessor, never demanded a subscription.

This earns a massive amount of respect from me. Many MMOs charge subscriptions while they're new, raking in some easy money while they've got hype. I think GW2 could've done that. That ArenaNet chose not to is laudable.

Money Store

GW2 does, I'm sure, rake in extra money from expansion packs and cosmetics. The former is very understandable. The latter can be dangerous in greedy hands.

You can buy a lot of tat with real money in GW2, it's true. It's even had a version of loot boxes from day one.

Thankfully the real-money stuff is largely cosmetic or convenience. I have bought a few items, but I do not feel a second-class citizen for not buying more. Indeed, I roll my eyes at the bizarre characters decked out in effulgent tat. If they want to support the game I enjoy to look like rejects from a bad anime, more power to them. I rather more a normal appearance, and there's plenty of options to get that by playing, not paying.

Exhibits A through D: Effulgent Tat

Maybe I'm a sentimental idiot, but GW2's soft-sell approach has made me sympathetic. When GW2 developers were laid off due to a "financial squeeze" I went and bought some gems. I feel they deserve it. Not like other companies who lay off staff when money abounds, just so they can cut costs.

You will see adverts for money-store items here and there, such as the login screen. But, crucially, it never interrupts your game with teasing messages along the lines of "if you buy XYZ, you can skip this".

There's also the daily log-in rewards and the character birthday rewards. These give a nice mix of the cheaper money-store conveniences and also grant access to things you can't even buy.

Explorable

Something that struck me very early about GW2 was the extent you can just wander around to level.

Progress by Wanderlust

See an interesting land-mark? Go wander over, you'll probably run into some quests. Cross paths with an event? Join right on in and help out. Harvest resources as you go. Kill monsters off the beaten track for extra experience.

There are other things to find to reward exploration. Mini-dungeons, mini-bosses, chests of loot, and even just really pretty locations. It feels really good when you say "what's over there?" and you actually discover something that's totally supplemental but also totally interesting.

One of the earlier off-the-beaten-track finds I made. A bandit's cabbage farm. Handy if you're into cooking.

Early on, I loved wandering to level. It made the grind of levelling feel more like exploration, like I was playing Morrowind or Skyrim, rather than an MMO.

Even now, years on, there are zones I haven't explored. I took the direct path through Living World Season 4's zones, and now I'm contently going back and exploring them top to tail. Nowadays I don't wander quite so randomly. I use the map markers to guide me, but I still have plenty of "what's that?" or "what's over there?" moments. I'm still finding stuff.

NPC Chatter

NPCs across Tyria talk to each other. A lot. It's all fully voice-acted and often interesting or funny as well.

I am still surprised when I stop somewhere quite isolated to clean out my inventory or fiddle with my traits and some NPCs strike up a conversation. It must be very tempting to cut costs by not having the random Inquest NPC in corridor A chat about his research with the other Inquest NPC.

A small thing, but it does make exploring that little bit more rewarding.

Not a great example for funny-factor, but a good example for isolation. To see these two hostile Inquest NPCs you'd first have to opt to do the Living World chapter their zone is in, then decide to explore beyond the story there, then happen down this particular corridor, and finally not kill them before they had a chance to talk.

Events and Meta Events

Events and meta events impressed me greatly as I discovered GW2.

Little Adventures

Early on, I was exploring Harathi Hinterlands, and I come across an event where Seraph NPCs (good guys) are defending against Centaur NPCs (bad guys). I help, the Seraph win. And then one of them announces they're moving on to their next objective.

I follow. Things escalate. About an hour later, we (NPCs, other players, and myself) have pushed into the Centaur base and are taking down their leader.

It made the world feel alive. Here was this war that was happening whether I was there or not. If I chose to pitch in rather than walk by, I would be treated to a little adventure: combat, loot, and a little story.

A limited-time event had players pursuing and then killing ley-energy people. I felt bad for the poor bastards, being chased by dozens of loot-crazed players. Not bad enough to not join in, though...

Putting the First M in MMO

Events are a reason for players to work together, in scales big and small.

On the small scale, it's always a relief to see some new players jump in and help you with a Champion when you're tackling it alone or in a small party. The shoe feels good on the other foot: it's fun to play the hero and jump in to help some scrappy players beat a champion they were struggling with.

On the big scale, maps like The Silverwastes and Dragon's Stand are dedicated to meta events. Groups of players must spontaneously split down multiple paths to achieve objectives in limited time. I've seen these fail often enough to know success isn't guaranteed.

Play with Friends

Despite the acronym, it's not easy to play with friends in every MMO. Here's a hypothetical exchange:

"Hey, you want to play that MMO?"

"Sure! It's more fun to play with friends."

"Okay! I'm on the Black Mountains server."

"Oh. I'm on the Dusty Gorge server."

"That's alright. I'll make a character on Dusty Gorge."

"Great! Where shall we meet?"

"Well I'm only level 1 on this server, so it will have to be a starter zone."

"Oh. The lowest character I have is level 20. So... I'll just one-shot everything, and I'll get no XP and useless loot."

"Ah. Well... I guess I'll get to level 20 and let you know? So, we can probably play in a week or so?"

"...Okay."

These problems do not happen in GW2 with the megaserver system and dynamic level adjustment.

When the game came out a group of friends and I quested through several zones together. This is us in the charr starting area.

(I don't want to pretend dynamic level adjustment is perfect. Because if you take your Ascended-item max-level elite-specialised hero to a starter PvE zone you are going to be more powerful than a new level 1 character. Not quite to the point of absurdness, but not far from it either.)

Any barrier that makes it hard to play with friends in an MMO is idiotic. I am very glad GW2 started with low barriers, and only made them lower over time.

A Better Grind

There's grinding in GW2. How could there not be, in a modern MMO?

I have seen people in GW2 doing what I consider painful, repetitive grinding. Armies running laps in the Edge of the Mists. Heroes repeatedly doing Fractals. Massive groups teleporting from one world boss to another on a clockwork schedule.

If people want to do that, more power to them. None of that is necessary, though. It's for bragging rights or as a faster alternative to levelling.

Look at the relative stats for item rarity. For a fresh level 80 character Rare equipment is trivial to get, and Exotic is very doable. This equipment is not that far behind the very best. Certainly the gap is much, much less than most other MMOs. And it doesn't go obsolete over time as new content is added... mostly.

Mounts are more than just a "go faster" convenience in GW2. They complement the exploration side of the game, with each able to run, jump, or glide differently. They have weight and inertia and are fun to drive. The optional, later-game mounts require some grinding to get; thankfully they are account-wide unlocks.

Is there any grinding required to just experience the game? The answer is "yes", but I think GW2 has taken the harsh edges off it.

If you enjoy grinding, is it really grinding? GW2 lets you enjoy grinding in two ways:

No Repetition

Get something once, and you don't have to do it again. That's good, because something only becomes repetitive if you have to do it more than once!

Very many things are account-bound. Progress can be made on any character. And once you unlock it, you have it on all characters.

Even something like levelling, which is not account-bound, doesn't have to be repeated. Level-boosting items are handed out as you play or as birthday gifts. All free; not paid-for. And handed out generously: I have enough to get about a half-dozen characters to maximum level. Even if you don't have quite as many as I do they will still speed up the levelling process.

Grinding by Playing

Many things you grind for can be earned doing a variety of things in a variety of places. This has the happy side-effect of making grinding goals come with just playing.

Suppose a friend newly joins GW2, and I'm tempted to join them in the low-level non-expansion zone. I won't be "wasting time" as I'll be earning masteries, gold and other currencies and crafting materials.

Photo-bombed by a hunter pet. Look at that smug expression on its face...

Combat Mechanics

GW2 combat feels pretty satisfying and fluid to me. I don't want to hold GW2's combat up as exemplary, because it isn't. Other MMOs do similar things; in many cases better.

But I like GW2 combat well enough. Here's why:

Movement. Many attacks can be avoided by moving away. In any half-way hectic combat you're constantly on the move, either to avoid enemy attacks or to better position your own. Having a dedicated dodge move adds to the experience.

Action Camera. Not everyone likes the action camera, but I love it. I can control the game like a shooter, not like some modded real-time strategy game.

Elegant Rules. Over time, MMO rules systems often turn into incomprehensible messses that no-one understands. Or they start out that way. GW2's rules are pretty complicated but it keeps things mostly comprehensible with a kind-of status-effect middleware that relies on common effects like boons and conditions. The programmer in me finds it quite genius and, frankly, elegant.

Weak Holy Trinity

In GW2 the healer, DPS, tank divide is de-emphasised. Every class does a little of each.

Yes, you can emphasise one over another, and if you're doing difficult content you probably should. But no class is defined by their trinity-role. You want to be a tanky thief? Do it!

Healing is especially unique. In old-school MMOs, healing is just "reverse damage". You hit me for 20 damage? I'll heal me for 20 damage. In GW2 it's a bit more nuanced, usually revolving around regeneration or other slower effects. Someone chucking out healing skills is a life-saver (literally) not because they're un-doing chunks of damage but because they're increasing survivability.

Amateur Theorycrafting

When I was levelling up my thief I found she struggled with survivability. I paused to re-consider my tactics. I decided on a condition damage approach, and picked weapons and skills that would make my enemies bleed. Caltrops, shrapnel bombs, and double daggers!

It worked! The thief was still fragile, but she could stack enough bleeds to kill most things, even many things at once. The caltrops helped: tougher bad-guys would limp in pursuit, bleeding to death.

My post-hoc re-enactment of that bleed build.

Apparently it wasn't an optimal choice: theorycrafters would pick other configurations. That's unavoidable. There is always a meta in any game made by mortals.

Yet I was pleased I had "figured it out" on my own, just by playing and experimenting. I didn't need an internet guide to survive. And even if it wasn't the best choice, it still worked well enough.

Having done the same on a few classes since then I feel GW2 is a game where you can tinker and customise and come up with things that work.

My current warrior setup tries to be tanky in a few ways; one of which is by combining For Great Justice with Might Makes Right. I doubt it's a "top meta" build but it seems to work well enough.

Rotationless

I hate rotations in MMOs. I get they're inevitable to some extent, but I loathe MMOs that embrace and build upon it as if it's a positive thing.

Well, let me back away from that a mote. I hate it when they do that and it's not opt-in. If people want to do it for some unique style or to get a few extra percentage points of damage, I don't mind.

I don't want to think about internal timers and priorities when I play. Those things are artificial. I want to think about the actual goings-on in combat. I want use Hundred Blades because I've moved into a position where I can strike mulitiple foes; not because a I've randomly proced a buff that enables or enhances it.

This is why Berserker Warrior is my favourite class in GW2. I can play it in a brain-dead way. The "auto attack" skill, plus one or two others, is all I need in a stand-up slugfest. Everything else is to respond to a situation: to move, to heal, to break, to push.

There are classes and specialisations in GW2 that do require something of a rotation. That's fine. I won't play 'em but I've no problem if others want to!

PvP and End-Game

I've not done much PvP stuff or fractals or raids. So I can't talk much about that. I wish I had tried these things, but such are the laments of a casual player with limited time.

I really love GW2's approach to remove gear and level restrictions in all PvP. It's great you can buy the game, log in, and play PvP or WvW on a mostly level playing field.

I also love the concept of World vs World. Both as a mode of competition and the way it allows for a variety of activities like soldiering, skirmishing, scouting, siege-engining and supply-hauling. You can even just potter around the WvW zone doing vistas or harvesting resources if you want to.

Some people will complain GW2 doesn't have enough end-game. They're probably right, in a sense: there are better MMOs out there for their needs. As a casual player, I'm largely happy with the balance GW2 had decided to strike.

A World to Escape To

Tyria is a welcoming fantasy world. Like a digital Narnia or Neverland it is a place to escape to. It's comforting to be there.

Of course escapism is part of many works of fiction. On the other hand, it's not something every work of fiction ought do.

If you're going to do escapism, do it well. GW2, I think, does it well.

Scenic

Tyria is a beautiful place. It was in Guild Wars 1. It still is.

The designers have a real knack for displaying awesome, yet realistic, environments. There are stunning settings in all manner of environments. Just look at the screenshots I’ve peppered about.

They especially do nature well. Some of the forests, with dappled lighting and weather effects, are gorgeous.

This isn't just a matter of graphics, or even art. It's a sense of moderation: it's knowing that if everything is epic, nothing is.

They know they rock the scenery. Why else would they make pretty views a big part of the game?

Race Realism

MMOs often have a problem where non-human races are... well... quite human. Sometimes in very silly ways.

Not so GW2. I love the charr. A "cat people" race that aren't humans with cat-ears and a tail. The charr are inhuman yet have animal traits that are familiar, from the loping all-fours run to the always-sniffing nose. They're well designed.

Charr posture though... All that weight bearing down on feet that don't have the benefit of heels? An awkwardly forward centre of gravity? They've got to be sore by the end of the day.

Pretty much all the races are done well, including monster bad-guy ones. There's a lot of detail put into GW2 creatures and it's a shame in a way that the nature of the game means we rarely get to see them up close and detailed.

Arguably GW2's weakest race, aesthetically, may be the humans, who all look like stock photography models.

After doing so well with the charr, I don't know what possessed them to give Rox ridiculously huge kitty-cat eyes.

Empowering

Thinking logically, Tyria really isn't a nice place. There are all sorts of problems, from local bandits to world-ending dragons.

Throw that logic out the window. What matters more than how many problems there are is how empowered you, I, or anyone is to solve these problems.

There's no problem in GW2 that can't be fixed. Bandits can be beaten up. Dragons can be defeated. Even racism can be fixed. (Yes, often violence is the only option, but that's action RPGs for you.)

There's a spirit of co-operation and capability that runs through GW2. You are not so much the mighty hero coming to save the helpless peasants. Rather you're mucking in with people already hard at work trying to fix things, be they grub-squashing farmers or dragon-killing soldiers. You just happen to be the tipping point they needed. Even in the story, when you're promoted to grand poobah, you're a pretty collaborative boss, tending to work with your comrades.

In GW2 hope trumps hopelessness. It's escapism. It's nice.

Story

GW2 has a number of stories you can embark on.

I have mixed feelings about GW2's story. Like most MMO stories, it isn't that great. I wouldn't suggest you get a bag of popcorn and watch all the cutscenes on YouTube.

But as far as MMO stories go, it's probably better than most. It certainly has its ups and downs. Yet in those better moments it can be quite enthralling. Living World Season 4 -- the most recent story section at the time of writing -- kept me interested and even tugged a little at my heart-strings.

Like a soap opera, the GW2 story makes up in quantity what it lacks in quality. Over time -- years and years, remember -- you get to know and love the world and the characters. And it's doubly engaging because you are one of the characters.

Characters

The best thing about GW2's story are the characters, especially in later content. Characters who are essentially RPG tropes are given personality by competent writing and voice acting. Canach's dry sense of humour always amused me, as did Taimi's energetic voice acting.

This is a well-calculated expenditure of effort. Good characters can make talking heads engaging. Bad characters can't be saved even by multi-million dollar effects budgets.

A cool little scene at the end of the Personal Story has your character striding alongside the members of Destiny's Edge.

War and Isolation

Many people don't like Orr, the final zone in the base game. I do.

As per the story, it's a warzone. And you can see it. It's like the D-Day landings over there. Scouts, transports, war machines; everywhere you go the Pact are battling the undead. There are no heart quests there, just dynamic events; and I think that reflects the epic goings-on quite well.

Likewise, a zone like Mount Maelstrom is meant to be a wild place far from civilisation. And it feels like it. There are people (someone's got to give quests) but they're either explorers, exiles, or strange native creatures.

These may seem like rather pedestrian observations. I bring them up because many MMOs get this stuff wrong. Epic war zones have maybe a few dozen NPCs battling but otherwise seem unaffected. Far-flung regions have just as many towns as the heart of civilisation.

Getting this stuff right provides a sense of place, and of progress (level-wise and story-wise).

Living World

I enjoy GW2's Living World episodic content. From a story and setting perspective it gives the world a sense of history and progression.

From a gameplay perspective it adds new content... and often a lot of content. Whole new zones are added. I have especially enjoyed Season 4's zones, which feel as richly developed as the normal zones.

Style and Polish

People often talk about Blizzard games in terms of polish (even Blizzard do). I feel GW2 has a certain level of similar polish. (Whether that's still true for Blizzard games is another matter.)

The art style is gorgeous and consistently applied from the grand stuff like character creation screens and loading art, right down to little touches on the UI. This consistency isn't exactly a key selling point but it does speak to a certain craftsmanship.

When you jump in the water, the lower part of your HUD gets "splashed" with drops in GW2's signature "inkbrush style". It's part of the transition animation from land to water skills. A tiny touch that is illustrative of GW2's attention to detail and consistency in style.

Wiki

Similar quality can be seen in the official GW2 Wiki which is informative, tidy and (as far as I've seen) complete. It's good to be able to look with confidence at a definitive source rather than look over a handful of fan MMOs trying to sort fact from speculation.

Conclusion

So... I like Guild Wars 2.

It's been the perfect MMO for a casual player like me. It respects my wallet. It respects my time. It offers variety, solid gameplay, and a comforting world to visit. It seems to have been made with real love.

Thank you to the people who made it. You should take pride in the countless hours of entertainment and joy you've given to me and so many other players across the world.

If you've stumbled across this and are thinking of playing, know that GW2 can be played for free. Why not give it a go?

[naivelocus]

Windows Subsystem for Linux elevates humdrum release, SAC-T sacked, and crypto-jacking apps found in Microsoft Store

Roundup Yet more Linux love seeped into Windows 10 over the past week, while admins buffed their rings in readiness for servicing changes and miscreants crept around the Microsoft Store.

Linux files in Windows Explorer? What wizardry is this?

As if to further demonstrate that Mr Elbow was having difficulty talking to a more sensitive part of the anatomy, an announcement of 2020's Windows 10 got a tweak that turned a bit of a "meh" skip-ahead build into something altogether more interesting.

If you're a fan of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), that is.

Windows 10 Linux Distribution Overload? We have just the thing

READ MORE

The update, which is very much preview quality right now, deals with one of the major irritants reported by users of the tool – getting files in and out. Fiddling with files in WSL from Windows carries a risk of corruption and data loss, so Windows-based penguinistas have had to resort to some occasionally convoluted means.

It's something the team behind the OpsView monitor tool for WSL told us they were considering back in 2018.

Instead, the functionality has now turned up in Windows 10 (or the Skip-Ahead 18836 build, at least). After firing up one's distro of choice and entering explorer.exe into the command line, a standard Windows File Explorer window appears, with the distro looking for all the world like a network share.

And – while not mentioned in the announcement and hidden from view in the screenshots – Tux is now present and correct in File Explorer, alongside This PC or Network.

While the code is currently part of the skip-ahead 20H1 branch, Microsoft Program Manager for the thing Craig Loewen assured excited WSL fans that it will crop up in 19H1, due for release in April, if past performance is anything to go by.

Please note as of right now these features are available in the insider build 18836, which is a 20H1 branch. They will become available in a 19H1 branch build very soon! Since the features are already available to some users we decided to post the blog content early. :)

— Craig Loewen (@craigaloewen) February 15, 2019

Quaintly, he still referred to the next release as 1903, doubtless attracting the ire of Microsoft's version numbering trolls.

Windows Update for Business gets a bit simpler. No, really

Also referring to the upcoming Windows 10 19H1 release as "1903" was Microsoft's John Wilcox in a blog post explaining that the Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted) – aka SAC-T – of Windows 10 was for the high jump.

It's a refreshing step back from acronym proliferation and a simplification for admins tasked with tracking updates of the OS.

Microsoft has been fiddling with its terminology for the business release process over the years, starting with the Current Branch (CB) and Current Branch for Business (CBB) arrangement back in 2015, which were often interpreted as two separate releases (rather than a statement in time).

The software giant tried to deal with this by creating the Semi-Annual Channel (SAC) and Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) with the "Targeted" tag aimed at allowing enterprises to specify devices for validation of a new release before rolling it out more widely.

So far, so confusing.

With the next release of Windows 10, things are getting tidied up, and SAC-T is going away. There will be one SAC to rule them all and admins will simply need to decide how long to defer the release for various devices in the enterprise.

From an end user perspective, things won't change much. Devices that were originally on SAC-T (which was the original release date) will be offered the update once whatever the admin has configured as the deferral period has passed. As a one-time special for 1903/19H1/whatever-they-are-calling-it-today, Microsoft is also slapping on an additional 60 days on top of whatever the deferral was configured as to simulate the delay before the SAC milestone was declared.

In the post-1903 world, admins will need to set up a range of deployment deferral values if they wish to recreate the deployment rings of SAC and SAC-T.

This, of course, only applies to users of Windows Update for Business. Home users are unaffected and will receive updates as and when they are emitted from Redmond. However, from the next version of Windows 10, home users will be given the opportunity to set their own deferral value to up to seven days.

Since the Windows 10 October 2018 Update was pulled less than a week after release, that could turn out to be a lifesaver for some.

Cryptomining in the Microsoft Store

It would seem that obscurity is no defence, as even the little-used Microsoft Store has found itself the subject of attention from miscreants.

Security app vendor Symantec found eight cryptojacking apps in the Microsoft Store that mine the Monero cryptocurrency in the background while users wonder why their CPU usage is mysteriously high.

The free apps, which feature diverse functionality such as downloading YouTube videos or tutorials on efficient use of batteries, run on Windows 10 and the supposedly super-locked-down Windows 10 S Mode.

Of course, the apps don't actually contain the naughty mining code. Instead they grab a coin-mining JavaScript library on launch and get to munching the users' CPU cycles to mine that lovely Monero. The JavaScript itself is injected into the app via Google Tag Manager (GTM) – a legitimate tool, but sadly open to abuse.

And yes, the script itself was a variant of our old friend CoinHive.

Naturally, none of the Progressive Web Applications (PWA) list "Coin Mining" in their descriptions.

Microsoft has yanked the apps from its Store, and Google has pulled the mining JavaScript from GTM. It is unclear how many users were affected since Microsoft doesn't publish installation figures. While there were almost 1,900 ratings for the apps, those can easily be inflated to send the titles up the charts.

Symantec naturally recommended a suitable security app to detect and destroy the nasties, although users would have been swiftly alerted to their presence since a lack of throttling meant they consumed "the majority of the computer's CPU cycles". ®

— The Register

[gymnasticcrazy-blog]

Each New Year I post here for those of you taking up swimming for improvement, exercise or weight management. This year I am sharing swimming secrets of long time swimmers like myself that you never see written elsewhere and no-one explains http://bit.ly/2CMN1fJ

Hi all,

I am mod of /r/swimming and an experienced marathon swimmer (over thirty open water swims greater than 10k).

Swimming is a sport that when done consistently will allow you to pursue it for an entire lifetime and reward you for doing do.

/r/swimming is a great resource, especially if you use the search bar, as there is almost no question that hasn't been asked and gotten an answer previously.

Here's last year advice.

I've said previously that there are no tricks or secrets in learning to swim. But it’s not entirely accurate about other aspects of swimming. These are secrets in that experienced swimmers know them, but it can take a long time for others to learn. These are the nuggets of knowledge that get passed in changing rooms and on decks, and are part of what we might call swim culture.

This should help collect some of the “soft” knowledge that experienced swimmers gain over time and so many new and improving swimmers haven’t yet learned, especially if they are not part of a swim group.

Lane Etiquette

By far the most annoying thing for swimmers are people joining the lane who have no understanding of lane etiquette used around the world by experienced swimmers. Actually this often includes the lifeguards on duty many of whom (most in my experience) don’t understand either.

Below are four simple rules. Yes, I know as a beginner you think this is too much, but people don’t play golf with a hockey stick, so I don’t know why non-swimmers think swimming is different. Here is a comprehensive explanation of lane swimming etiquette if you are inclined. * Ask or let the swimmer already in the lane know you are joining. * Don’t start swimming or turn in front of a faster swimmer. * The fastest swimmer has the right of way. * Stay aware of what everyone is doing to avoid collisions and frustration for all.

Goggles

Because every swimmer in the world has an opinion and will happily entertain long discussions about goggs.

No anti-fog will last on goggles longer than a couple of months

Spit into googles for a simple reasonably effective anti-fog. Never touch the inside of the goggles.

Use a 2/3 water, 1/3 baby shampoo mix, swirl it around and rinse it out for a more effective anti-fog

Most “high visibility open water goggles” aren’t high visibility and are seriously over-priced. The google design offering the most visibility are clear Swedish goggles (aka Swedes). Which are also the cheapest.

More expensive goggles does not in any way mean better. Blame triathletes for the escalation of costs. The best goggles I’ve bought in years were €4 in Lidl the summer before last.

There is no such thing as a generic “best google” answer. Competitive swimmers/online swimmers most often respond Vanquishers or Swedish Goggles. Vanquishers are not available in Europe anymore & Swedes (Which I wear myself in the pool and I show you how to fit here) aren’t a good idea for beginner swimmers. I also wrote this article about understanding the different kinds of goggles so you can choose based on your own requirements rather than other’s opinions, because I had never once seen anything like this by any of the goggle manufacturers, or anyone else.

Silicon straps don’t last long. Bungee straps are a great replacement.

Two thirds of my swimming time is spent with my face underwater exhaling. I can see everything including guys jerking off, teenagers and older couples fiddling with each other and numerous erections.

Technique (Front crawl)

The name of the stroke is front crawl. Freestyle means that in competition you can swim any stroke, and since crawl is the fastest, it (mostly) gets used, so a lot of swimmers think crawl is freestyle and visa versa. Someone will probably even say in the comments here that no-one calls it front crawl. Front crawl is extensively used outside the US and is the accurate term.

BLABT is the acronym for the process most swim experienced teachers use to evaluate stroke and teach front crawl. It stands for:

Body position

Get horizontal in the water. Not being horizontal is the most common reason for swimming slow.

Push your chest forward and down into the water. Try to swim downhill!

Keep your head low and steady, don’t allow it to swing to the side. Imagine you are an a rotisserie spit that enters through your forehead, your whole body rotates around the centre point. If you raise your head, it’ll cause the rest of your body to sink.

Clench your butt cheeks. (Core muscles are used for position and rotation, doing this helps engage them).

Legs

In an elite swimmer, the maximum propulsion that comes from kicking is only 15% of overall speed. But to do that requires the body’s largest muscles and disproportionate amount of energy. (Long distance swimmers like myself do very little or no kicking).

Fixing the kick is important for beginners so the legs don’t slow you down or cause you to sink. Kicking wildly (especially common in runners or triathletes) is more likely to cause you to slow. This is also part of the horizontal body position above. From what I have seen most triathlete swim coaches get this completely wrong and spend far too much time focusing on a better kick.

You are not riding a bicycle. Kick from the hips, with only a little movement in the knees. New swimmers often have a big wide kick or their legs sinks, or both. This slows them down.

While reading this, see if you can point your toes like a ballet dancer. If you can’t, start stretching your ankle while watching TV or while sitting at a desk. Not being able to point your toes while swimming is like pulling a weight behind you.

Try swimming with your toes clenched into a fist. Yes, just like Die Hard. This will stop you kicking from the knees. You won’t be able to do it all the time, but it will help you understand what your position and kick should feel like.

Arms

Reach forward. No, further.

Pull back underwater. But only when your palm is facing backwards behind you, not when they are facing the bottom. This called the Catch, when your hand starts effectively pulling.

Keep pulling, then pushing backwards until your thumb scrapes your thigh.

Try to always keep your elbow above your hand, at every point in the stroke. * This is not easy, and take a long time to get right.

Breathing

Exhale underwater

Hum a little to get used to controlling your breath and exhalation

Try sinking to the bottom of the pool with no arm or leg movement. This will help you learn breath control. Only do this when there is a lifeguard present.

Rotate your head out of the water, don’t lift it. Don’t look forward or around. There is no forward visibility as part of standard front crawl, and learning this is a separate activity.

Timing

Both arms and legs alternate and all actions are smooth and continuous.

Breathing is to the side.

Rotate your hips to drive your arms to reach forward.

Swimwear

Buy your swim suits one size smaller than the size you think you should wear based on your street clothes because water causes fabric to expand. You can’t see it but others can.

Wear your swimsuit in the shower after your pool swim, it’s easiest way to wash out the chlorinated water. Suits will last up to four times longer. * Polyester suits lasts longer than chlorine tolerant fabric, and feels largely the same.

Swimsuits are currently in a “shrinking phase”, that is, getting smaller. Male briefs are becoming more thong like with very narrow side panels, female racing suits are getting cut much higher at the rear. You can find different cuts, but it can sometimes take a bit of work.

Never wring the water out of your swimsuit, it will weaken the fibres and seriously reduce its longevity. Simply squeeze it or use a suit spinner if there is one available.

Baggy board shorts should not be used. Beginner and many intermediate swimmers have problems with drag. Board shorts add even more drag and make improving your stroke even more difficult.

If you insist on using baggy shorts, please wear something tight underneath, because I have seen too many scrotums and assholes and I’m not even a paid professional.

How you look or feel in a swimsuit does not correlate with how well you swim.

There are three materials for swim caps: cloth, latex and silicone. Cloth is comfortable but otherwise useless, usually used by hotels to keep patrons from getting hair in filters. Latex lasts moderately well but snags hairs more. Silicone which is most expensive lasts longest but is also thickest and may be too warm for some people. No swim cap lasts for ever though. I never get more than a year from a cap.

Swim caps will last longer if your dry them between uses, and better yet sprinkle with talcum powder.

If you have a problem with the swim cap coming off your head while swimming, look for ones which have parallel ridges running around the inside edge.

Pool Hygiene

Pool swimming took a leap forward in the 1960s once reliable swim googles became widely available and training sessions for Olympic swimmers were able to last for 3000 metres or even a whole hour!

Goggles are essential for pool swimming because most pools use chemicals to make the water safe. I have a longer post explaining the interactions of pool chemicals and people in more detail here.

Pools that have a strong chlorine or chemical smell are LESS clean than pools that have little or no odour. The less the chemical smell, the cleaner the pool water.

Pool-water colour has little relationship to pool water quality. Most pools use pool tiles to make the water look blue. Some even add small amounts of copper into the water for the same reason.

Just because you’ve read that swimmers pee in the pool doesn’t mean you have to. But if you do want to stay being a swimmer, you should probably reconcile yourself to the fact that you are absolutely swimming in dilute urine. If this is really troubling you, best of luck with your sex life.

It may not be chlorine that’s making your eyes burn. The pool may have the wrong water acidity (high or low). Soda-ash is added to pool water to control this.

Of course, if there are too many organics (sweat, urine etc) in the pool, then more chlorine must also be added to balance the pool.

Food & drink & peeing

Cold air in the pool deck or changing rooms, cold showers etc, evaporation of water from skin all cause the skin temperature to drop. This raises blood pressure as less blood flows and the hormone that suppresses urination is reduced. All this causes you to need to pee more. It’s completely normal.

Therefore swimmers need to be more careful about hydration. Experienced swimmers will always drink during training.

Yer Mammy was wrong. You can swim after eating. All marathon distance swimmers like myself have to eat/take nutrition during swims for example. However, your body will be using air to digest food and use energy for exercise at the same time, so you will feel sluggish at best.

Effort & Diet

It is extremely common that new swimmers, regardless of or more likely due to prior experience in other sports, underestimate the overall difficulty of swimming and overestimate how much energy they are expending. If you haven’t mastered breathing and are desperately out of breath this does not mean you expending significant energy.

Calorie consumption rates in swimming given by website, apps or wearable fitness trackers or watches cannot be trusted because the variables are too varied. Weight, water temperature, stroke, experience, rests, set and session duration all play a part. I could say it’s almost certainly less than what any of those are telling you for an hour swimming.

Pools are lower than body temperature and conduct heat away. So your body does start using energy to retain heat. The effect lasts after the swim is over. This makes swimming an appetite enhancer. Swimmers notoriously eat a lot. For beginner swimmers, you need to learn to control this.

Most people with a good but average diet will have sufficient energy in blood and liver stores to sustain two hours of high intensity exercise. So it is not essential to “pre-load” in advance of daily swimming

How much should you swim?

How much you should swim depends obviously on your goals. However since swimming is technically difficult skill, it is safe to say than more swimming is better.

But how much? As a general guideline I recommend four times a week, 2000 metres at a time is a good aim. Beginners won’t be able to swim anywhere near this distance, so let’s say 40 minutes a session.

Injury & other physical problems

“Swimming is low impact sport, with little chance of causing injury“. This is a widely repeated misconception. Apart from the obvious, front crawl injuries to the shoulders do occur, caused by overuse and poor technique. You can get injured with only a small amount of swimming.

The best ways to reduce the risk are to improve your technique and ALWAYS do a little backstroke each session. Backstroke is a stabilising exercise for front crawl. It helps strengthen the opposing muscles in the shoulder muscles to assist in keeping your shoulders balanced. It does not have to be a good technique to be effective.

Does sleeping on your side cause discomfort? The cause is almost certainly tendonitis. This will not get better by itself, or with rest or by reducing swimming. I recommend some deep tissue massage, direct icing and physiotherapy, in that order as required, with massage & ice fixing ninety percent of problems.

Water in your ear is easiest dislodged by bouncing on the heel of the leg on the same side as the water. If this doesn’t work, have a shower and stand with your ear up under the water. If this doesn’t work, try a drop of rubbing alcohol (surgical spirit). Wear ear plugs if this is a repeat problem.

Asthma prevalence is correlated to regular swimming. The simplest and most effective treatment is to use your Daily Preventer, that you may not want to use daily.

Chlorine sensitivity causes very runny nose, sneezing, sore, red or streaming eyes. The simplest and most effective treatment is to use a nose clip. They take about one day to get used to, and are 100% effective.

Okay folks, I'm off to the pool My log resest itself from last year's million metres and I'm once again back to the start.

Remember the best swimmer in the one having the most fun!

submitted by /u/TheGreatCthulhu [link] [comments] January 03, 2019 at 12:36AM

[imagines-dreams]

List for the Future - Newton Geiszler

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: violence, war, death, angst a lot of angst

Summary: You and Newt had been together for years. When you get recruited on a mission last minute, it changed both of your lives forever.

Word Count:3725

Newt and you were inseparable.

“I swear, I will die of sweetness,” Gottlieb had told the both of you several times.

You rolled your eyes. “What? You want kisses, too, Herman?”

Newt pulled you into his side. “Why are you offering that?”

You shrugged. “Just cause.” You kissed his nose. “Don’t worry, you’re the only one for me.” You pulled him by his tie and planted your lips right on his.

Newt blushed before closing his eyes and kissing you back. He sighed and kissed you again. He pulled you in by the waist and moaned against your lips.

Dr. Gottlieb threw his calculator on his desk. “I’m done with this nonsense!”

You laughed and pulled away from your boyfriend. Newt gazed at you, trying to form words, but it just came out as stutters. He gave up and tried to focus on his work. That tingling on his lips was distracting, though.

You patted Dr. Gottlieb on the back. “Don’t worry. I’m off. Reports are calling me.” You kissed Newt on the cheek and skipped off. Once you exited the lab, you leaned against the closed doors and smiled. Yes, there was a war. Yes, you have witnessed death before. Yes, you weren’t satisfied, but you had Newt. He made up for everything with his goofy smile and genius plans and predictions. And he was yours. And you were his.

It was more than you could ask for.

The room grew hotter, and you covered your cheeks and mouth to hide the blushing and smiling. If it was like this during the war, how would it be after?

You and Newt had talked about it of course.

You had been sitting on Newt’s cot. Newt had been lying down with his head in your lap as the two of you watched the news.

Newt groaned and turned off the tv. “No more of that.” He gazed up at you. “Have I ever told you how much you mean to me?”

You giggled. You leaned down to kiss his nose. “Many times, genius.”

He averted his gaze as a blush dusted his cheeks and fiddled with his tie.

“Have you ever thought of life after the war?” you asked absentmindedly.

Newt stiffened. “Uh...I mean, maybe. I mean I, of course, had thought about it. I would like to have you in my future.” He paused. Then, he shot up to sit next to you. “I mean, if that doesn’t sound creepy or anything. I mean, I know-”

You laughed and brushed his wild locks out of his eyes.

Newt froze. Then, he sighed and placed his hand over yours.

You gave him a short kiss and rested your forehead against his. “I’ve thought about it.” Blood rushed to your face, and you weren’t sure if Newt was looking at you or a strawberry. “I’ve thought about life after the war. WIth you.” You giggled. You didn’t want to say marriage. That scared people off. But, you have thought about it.

Newt beamed. “I would like that, too. Very much. Yeah, very much, and a small wedding or big.” His eyes widened. “Or none at all. I mean, I don’t mind.” He laughed a little. “I actually have a list of what I want in the future.”

You smiled. “Really? I should do that some time. What’s on your list, Newt?”

He took a deep breath and kissed you. “You.” He kissed you again. “As long as I’m with you, I’ll like life after the war.”

You giggled, and Newt leaned in to kiss you again.

You didn’t notice. What if… What if that wasn’t possible? Life after war and Newt’s list of the future. You stared at your thumbs and gulped.

“(Y/n)?” Newt placed his hand on yours.

“Sorry,” you muttered, “I just… what if one of us-”

He pursed his lips stroked stroked cheek.

“(Y/n),” he whispered, “we can’t-”

“No, no, we do need to talk about this,” you insisted.

Newt’s eyes shimmered with tears, and it made you regret what you said. But, you had to talk about this. You had been with Newt for years, and the war had been going on for more than that. Your friends were either away or dead. You couldn’t help but wonder if that could happen to one of you.

Newt stared at his arm and took off one of the many leather bracelets. “A promise that we'll be together.” He wrapped it around your wrist with shaking hands. When it was finally secure, he smiled.

Even when his smile was small, it still made you feel better. The thoughts of death and war and separation disappeared. You giggled. “I have nothing for you, Newt.” You pursed your lips.

Newt beamed and kissed your forehead. “I have your heart, don’t I?”

You shoved him away with a laugh. “You are too cheesy!” After a pause, you grabbed his tie, pulled him close, and kissed him again. “I love you, my Newton Geiszler.”

“And I,” Newt kissed you, “love you, my (Y/n) (Y/l/n).”

The two of you had remained in that position in comfortable silence. Thoughts had floated around in both of your minds, of marriage, of home, of love.

“(Y/n) (Y/l/n), please, report to the loading dock. Report to the loading dock, (Y/n) (Y/l/n).”

You shook yourself out of your stupor and jogged to the dock. You asked one of the commanding officers where you were supposed to be headed.

Marshall met you in front of a helicopter. “Ms. (Y/l/n), good to see you.”

“What do you need me to do, sir?”

He sighed and said, “This is last minute, but I need a Jaeger pilot.”

Your eyes widened. “I haven’t drifted with anyone for years, sir. WIth all due respect, there must be more experienced pilots.”

“There are not.”

You grit your teeth. What had happened to the other pilots? “Sir, I have no partner to drift with.”

“We’re desperate. They need back-up.”

“I need gear.” You needed to tell Newt. But gear was important, too.

“We have your gear in your new Jaeger.” Marshall almost smiled. “I will inform Dr. Geiszler of your new mission.”

You gulped. “Fine.” You licked your lips. “Wait. Sir?”

“Yes?”

You took off your bracelet and handed it to him. “My promise to Newt that I’ll be back.” Then, you stepped into the helicopter. You were handed a tablet that had your new partner’s information as well as the mission at hand. A lieutenant gave you more details. The location. The status. The monster.

“A double Category four?” you gasped. “Two of them? We’ve had one category three and one four, but this.”

The lieutenant shrugged. “Guess that’s why he wanted the best for the job.”

You gulped. You weren’t the best. You were retired, just helping the base whenever you can and trying to keep Newt sane. You hadn’t been in a Jaeger in years. You were being shoved into one of those with a new partner that you should’ve known for months through training. It was…

Sobs rattled your chest.

No, you were coming back. There were two Jaegers on the ground already. Maybe three could stop the double category four. Yes, three could stop a double category four. You had to.

You rubbed your wrist to make sure it was still there. A part of you was missing.

You shook hands with your partner, a girl built for war. Greta told you that her partner was still in a critical health condition. You two talked a bit. She was a child of two war heroes, and she was continuing their legacy. She didn’t like it at first, but she did it because she knew she had to do something.

You shared your story. Your upbringing, your downfalls, and your successes. Being a Jaeger pilot meant no lies. It would be pointless and just caused more pain when the two Jaeger pilots drifted.

Then, you were drifting with her.

After drifting, you checked your nose. Not bleeding. Your head wasn’t too bad. Your stomach wasn’t coming up your throat. So, you were ok.

“Newt’s a nice guy,” your partner commented with a sly smile.

You blushed. “Yeah.” You licked your lips. “Now, time to kick some ass.”

You and your partner fought with all you could. You fumbled a bit, forgetting a few key actions and controls, but your partner must’ve done this before. She stayed calm and instructed you to do things quite easily. The other Jaegers were a lot of help as well. They used simpler words that you have forgotten and explained complicated plans clearly. You really were thankful. They probably saved your life.

Right as one of the category four’s went down, another appeared, seemingly bursting from the ocean in an unneeded splash of waves accompanying it.

Your brain already ached like you had taken all of your subject’s finals in one day. Too many protocols crashed in your head like equations and acronyms.

Sensing your distress, your partner reminded you with a slight frown. “We can’t retreat.”

“I know.” You grunted. “We have to beat them.”

Meanwhile, Newt was searching for you.

“Dr. Geiszler,” a voice boomed.

Your boyfriend froze. He slowly turned around and greeted grandly, “Marhshall, sir! How are you?”

“Doctor, Ms. (Y/l/n) has left for a mission and will be back by tomorrow morning.”

Newt tilted his head. “With all due respect, Marshall, my girlfriend would’ve told me she’s going out of base. She’s just tricking me and playing hide-”

“I requested that Ms. (Y/l/n) return to her position of a pilot temporarily.” Marshall showed him your bracelet. “She told me to show to you as her promise to come back.”

Newt scrutinized the bracelet. He snatched it from the Marshall’s hands and felt it between his fingers. “No.” He heaved. “Wait a minute, you took a retired pilot and forced her to drift with a stranger? Even I think that’s crazy!” He laughed. “And I know crazy.”

The Marshall stayed stoic. “She knew the risks and took the mission.”

“Then why didn’t she tell me?”

“Because the mission was urgent. She had to leave immediately.”

Newt gripped the bracelet. “How many Kaijus were there?”

“Doctor, that information-’”

“I am one of two scientists that helps figure out what the Kaijus are and what they want. What was her mission, Marshall?!”

“There were two category four’s on scene. One had just been defeated, and another category four appeared.”

Newt’s eyes widened. Kaiju biology and fascination was overcome with fear. You were in a Jaeger with a pilot you met that day with a double category four situation. You gave him back his bracelet… Newt’s voice didn’t shake. “I need to talk with her.”

“Doctor-”

He growled and shouted in the Marshall’s face, “You will not have a Kaiju biologist in this base if I do not speak with my girlfriend!” Newt shivered as the anger was once again replaced by terror. “Sir, please,” he begged.

Marshall nodded. That was all Newt needed to run to the control room. He grabbed the microphone from an unsuspecting soldier. “(Y/n), please, are you there? (Y/n)!”

You heard Newt’s voice through your earpiece. “Newt?” You smiled. “Newt!” You pushed the monster off your armor with a groan. It was getting tiresome.

Newt sighed with relief. “Thank God! (Y/n), I’m going to get your through this, ok? I know those bastards better than-”

A soldier tried to swipe the microphone away.

Newt hissed. “Back off! That’s right, that’s my girlfriend in that Jaeger. Come close and you get-”

“Newt,” you warned. You reached behind your back for the sword, despite the pain that struck your shoulder. “Ready?” you asked your partner.

She winced as she reached behind her back. “Ready.”

The two of you brandished the sword and jumped on the Kaiju. However, the monster swiped the two of you away like flies. You crashed right into the ocean. You felt something crack, like a twig. You screamed.

“(Y/n)!” Newt ran to check your vitals. Both you and your partner were not in good shape. He gulped. “Ok, (Y/n), I need you to not put your weight on your right. Your partner, too. Sorry, what’s your name?”

“Greta,” the two of you responded.

Newt nodded. “Both of you, keep weight off of your right as much as you can.” Newt racked his brain. “Stay in the ocean. The water will take away a bit of your weight. Get the Kaijus to the ocean. Then, fight.” Newt inhaled deeply. “Does anyone have water for crying out loud! I am helping Greta and my girlfriend!”

Even with a broken leg, you laughed. “Newt!”

Right then, the kaiju leapt onto you. You pushed back, but your leg was crumpling under the weight. You reached for the cannon, but it was swatted out of your hands. Your partner swung the sword, but the kaiju decided it was a good meal. “We’re losing weapons!” you shouted.

“Really?” your partner remarked.

You buckled under the kaiju’s weight and fell to the ocean floor.

“(Y/n)!” Newt shouted. “Marshall, don’t they have any other weapons? Rockets? Another secret arm? More cannons? Marshall-”

“They’ve exhausted all of the weapons given,” the Marshall gravely stated.

Newt shook his head. “No, no. (Y/n)!”

“Newt?” you breathed. The suit felt like lead, and you were going down. It felt hard to breathe.

“(Y/n), retreat. Get back to base. Now!”

You pressed your palms against the monster and pushed as hard as you could.

Then, your left side burned. Your eyes widened. “Greta!” You glanced at the woman next to you. She wasn’t moving. “No!” Suddenly, the kaiju felt heavier. You felt like you got shot right in the head. The bad part was you were still alive to feel the burn of the bullet that passed and the hole it left in your brain. With no partner to drift with, the pain you and Greta shared crashed onto you.

Newt looked at your vitals. You were dying. Greta was dead, and the weight was too much for you. “(Y/n), leave the suit now! You’ll have a better chance swimming! Get out!”

You pushed against the kaiju once more. You had a few precious seconds to dismantle the suit that held you to the Jaeger. You unbuckled on thing. You took off one strap.

The kaiju jumped on top of you. Your arm was pinned down, and the other burned. “Newt!” you screamed.

Newt scanned the Jaeger plans and muttered under his breath. There was nothing. No emergency protocols. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. He ran a hand threw his hair, and he desperately tried to pull at its roots. Maybe an idea would pop out and he could save you. “(Y/n), please, you’ve got to try. Please, please.”

You lifted your arm, but the monster banged its head against your arm. Then, it cut the robot right in half.

Everything below your waist went numb. Your legs hung limply from wires. You couldn’t jump or run or even crawl. Water poured into the robot, and it was going towards you. “Newt,” you whispered, “Newt, I love you.”

“No!” Newt shook his head. “No, you are going to get out of this and get back your bracelet and we’re going to live to see the end of this war. We will get married and have kids and pets and visit Hermann and grow old-”

“Newt,” you said softly with a small smile. “I’m sorry. I should’ve-”

You stopped. Then, radio silence turned to static. Newt blinked. He gulped and tried to smile. “(Y/n), come on. You can do this. Come back.” He licked his lips and waited. “(Y/n),” tears dropped from his chin and he quickly wiped his eyes, “come on. I know you’re there.”

Marshall patted Newt’s shoulder. “Doctor-”

Newt slapped his hands off of his shoulder. “Get off of me,” he sneered. “(Y/n)!” he shouted. He looked at your vitals. There was nothing… No heartbeat. No breathing rate. No brain activity. “She disconnected from the Jaeger. That’s why.” Newt nodded and gulped and wound up his tie.

The Marshall opened his mouth.

“No! You do not get to speak. (Y/n)!”

Marshall whispered, “Please, escort Dr. Geiszler to his lab.”

Newt felt arms on his shoulders. He turned back and swatted them away. “Let go of me. I am the only biologist in this base, and I deserve to be here!” When the soldier tried to grab him again, Newt punched him in the chest twice and pushed him away. “Get away from me,” he muttered lowly. He rubbed his bracelet, your bracelet. It was still your bracelet. You were alive. You had to be alive. You had to be-

Two soldiers dragged him out of the room. “No! (Y/n)! Give her back to me! Give her back! I need to tell her! I had plans! I had everything!”

Then, he had nothing.

He had grown tired of screaming and fighting and even experimenting. He sat in the lab while Dr. Hermann Gottlieb tried to work. There was a thick air, full of unsaid things and painful memories. Newt could barely look at the floor, let alone the chair you used to sit in.

“Newton-”

“Don’t, Hermann,” Newt spat. “Don’t.” He stared at your bracelet, his bracelet, as tears slid down his cheeks. He sniffed. His chest shook with silent sobs as he continued to stare. The scientist wanted to stop staring at that damn bracelet, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bare not to look at it. It was yours. The one thing he had from you. He needed to look at it. He needed to make sure you were real, that the love you two shared was real and…

Newt cracked and fell to the ground with a thump. He held onto to his empty dissection table and wailed. His empty chest kept on shaking, and he held his bracelet, your bracelet, tightly in his fist.

Hermann ran to his side, but he wasn’t sure what to do. He awkwardly reached out his hand, but Newt pushed him away. “Don’t,” he cried.

“Newton, (Y/n)-”

Newt sobbed. “Don’t say her name!”

Hermann pursed his lips. He really didn’t know what to do. The mathematician grabbed a blanket and threw it on Newton. Newt didn’t even bother wrapping it around himself, so Hermann did it for him. Newt shook his head and pushed both the blanket and Hermann off. “Stop it.”

“Newton, you are in bad shape.”

“Why does it matter?” Newt whispered. “I don’t deserve. I don’t deserve anything.”

“Don’t be ridiculous-”

“I couldn’t save her!” Newt yelled with puffy eyes and a stuffy nose. “I have Ph.D.’s a-and experience with some of the most terrifying monsters in the universe. I-I graduated from MIT, and I-I got excellent recommendations, and now it means nothing.” Newt jammed his finger into his chest, as if he was trying to pierce flesh or bones. “I couldn’t save the woman I love.”

“You could save the world, Newton. You’re a-”

“She was my world, Hermann! Don’t you get that!” New shrunk back into himself. “I don’t have anything. Not without her.”

Days, weeks, months passed. Newt had been given what was left of your things. A small box with a few photos of family, of the two of you. You had a few trinkets from travelling during the war. You had one medal for defeating a few kaijus way before you were with Newt. Newt was given another medal. One in honor of your death. He didn’t really look at that one that much.

There was no letter. Newt dug through box for some sort of closure. More than a shaky i-love-you and a broken sentence. Marshall told him that you had written a letter, but many things were lost when you stopped piloting Jaegers.

So, Newt searched for the letter. He kicked out the soldier who moved into your room and searched. There was nothing to find. He found one of his ties in the back of your closet. Newt cried for a long time until he couldn’t find any more tears.

Then, Hermann found something. “Newton, I found something.” He handed Newt a folded up piece of paper. “It was taped to your board in the corner. I thought it was yours, but it had better handwriting.”

Newt stared at it. Tears came and silently fell from his cheeks. He wiped them and unfolded the piece of paper.

It wasn’t a letter.

It was a list. He vaguely remembered telling you that he had a list of what he wanted in the future the day he gave you a bracelet. You wanted to make one, and you did. That list had a few things scratched out and erased. It had doodles of his glasses and his tie. His name was on the list. Newton Geiszler. However, what got him the most was the last thing on the list.

Newt’s smile. You wrote those two words as the last thing on your list. You labelled it as the most important thing on your list, indicated by words, arrows, and different colors.

Newt pressed your list to his chest and cried.

Hermann brought over a chair and led Newt to sit.

Newt doubled over, and, and when he saw his tears fall on your list, he wiped it off the paper and dried his eyes. Then, he did something he hadn’t done since you’ve died. He smiled. He laughed. Out of all things to put on your list, from peace and him and marriage and stability and happiness, you thought that the most important thing was his smile.

Newt held up the list to his eyes and beamed. Well, if he couldn’t give you peace, marriage, stability, your happiness, or even life, he could smile and think of you. It would be hard, but if that’s what you really wanted, he would try his damned hardest to do so.

SOOO MUUUCCCHHH ANGST!!!! I love angst. Writing it! I mean! I hope you all enjoy it!

[katharaya]

By Any Other Name (1/1)

Hello @silksieve! I’m your Holiday Harbinger for the @masseffectholidaycheer​ this year! As per your request, here’s your Sentinel!Shakarian with a bit of Tali and EDI thrown in. I hope you like it!

I’ve also posted this over at AO3 for your convenience! :)

By Any Other Name

---

Sometimes showcases of affection  – and pet names – don’t translate perfectly across species.

---

It starts one artificial morning on the Normandy, with Garrus in Shepard’s bed, the warmth of her body still lingering on the sheets, waking up slowly to the sound of safety implied by the softly humming engines and the quiet clinking of metal as Shepard tinkers at her work bench.

Garrus cracks open an eye and watches her fiddle with her armor’s shield capacitors, her tongue sticking out a bit as she concentrates.

She’s so fascinating to watch when she’s tinkering. She’d told him once that machines were her first love; if she hadn’t been a biotic she’d have happily spent her life just creating new inventions, maybe in some R&D facility instead of firing guns out in space.

“What,” he’d said, “and miss out on this turian bad boy experience?”

She had laughed and knocked him off his feet with her biotics, pinning him to the bed. “The only thing that made this worth it, honestly,” she’d said, and kissed him.

Garrus chuckles softly at the memory, and Shepard’s head whips around, alert as always. She smiles when she sees he’s awake.

“Morning, baby,” she says, setting down her tools. “Sorry, did I wake you?”

And Garrus has never been a particularly coherent person during mornings, so when he hears her it takes several seconds to process her words.

Ba… by…?

Was that… was that an insult? Did Shepard just call him names?

“What?” he says, voice rough with sleep and subvocals thrumming with vague, still-not-quite-awake annoyance.

Shepard just laughs, rolling out of her chair to kiss him good morning, before she straightens up and starts to gather the rest of her clothes scattered on the floor.

“I’m gonna take a shower,” she continues. “And no, that wasn’t an invitation. I do really intend to shower.” She flashes him a grin – a quick, there-and-gone thing – but the fact that he’s allowed to see it is honor enough, he knows. “I’ll meet you in the mess for breakfast, okay?”

And then the sliding door to the bathroom closes with a pneumatic hiss, and Garrus is left on the bed, confused as hell, before he finds his voice and calls out, “Shepard, what did you just call me?”

He thinks he hears her laugh, but the spray of water starts and drowns out any other sound.

---

“Maybe it’s a translation error?” Tali offers helpfully as they stand in the airlock of the geth dreadnought, waiting for Shepard to cross the docking tube and let them in.

Garrus shifts uneasily on his feet, the steady thump-thump of Shepard's mag boots over the comm doing little to abate his uneasiness.

“Maybe. I hope so. I mean, I’m no baby,” Garrus says petulantly, and huffs when Tali snorts behind her mask.

“You cried when Shepard got back from Aratoht,” Tali snickers.

“I did not,” Garrus says, affronted.

“Yeah you did. EDI let me hack into the Normandy’s security cameras after Joker unshackled her. I saw you sniffling in the battery, you big softie.”

“I—” he says, losing all plausible deniability. “I was stressed,” he says instead, defensive. He kicks a stray bit of metal littering the airlock. “She could’ve died on that mission and you know it.”

“She could die on any mission,” Tali counters. “We all could.”

“You know what I mean,” Garrus grumbles. “And anyway, showing concern for my girlfriend’s safety by crying doesn't make me a baby.”

“It kinda does,” Tali says, and he can hear her smile behind her mask.

“Does not.”

“It does a little bit.”

Garrus glares. “Does not,” he mumbles under his breath.

“If you say so,” Tali says, the grin evident in her voice.

Shepard is still walking across the docking tube. Garrus’ visor informs him that his heart rate is going up. Spirits, what’s taking her so long?

“Hey,” Tali says, pressing two fingers gently against his wrist. “She’s gonna be fine.”

“Yeah,” he croaks out. “Yeah. It's just— she’s got this thing with open space, you know?”

“I know,” Tali whispers. “I was there.”

“I— yeah. Right.”

They hear the hiss of a door opening over the comm, the steady thumping of Shepard’s boots turning into her usual quick pace.

"But see?” Tali says, brightening. “I told you she'd be fine.”

Garrus lets out a sigh of relief. “Yeah.”

“So no need to be a baby about it.”

“What?” he says indignantly as the door in front of them slides open.

Tali just laughs, already running across the walkway.

---

He probably should’ve just asked Shepard, but between all the missions and meetings and frantic, clandestine make-out sessions there’s not a whole lot of time, and next thing he knows he’s on a shuttle headed to Cronos Station with Shepard and EDI.

It’s almost too easy to get into the swing of things; he’s been fighting with Shepard for what feels like forever, and it’s almost as natural as their tango on the Citadel.

Scratch that, it’s better than their tango on the Citadel, because firefights have guns.

Shepard biotically throws the Atlas pilot across the room before he can fully get into the cockpit, and Garrus follows up with a well-placed concussive shot that takes him out of the fight permanently.

Garrus takes a half-second to celebrate, which he really shouldn’t have, in hindsight, because suddenly he’s flat on his back behind cover, shields down, with a massive crack on his chest plate and what feels like a bruised rib or three.

“Garrus!”

He hears Shepard call to him over the alarms from his visor, her usually calm voice laced with panic. There’s the sound of an overload chain activating, followed by a round of rapid gunfire, before Shepard is dropping to his side, already fiddling with her omni-tool.

It takes a moment for him to register the notice from his visor that the area is already clear. He’d be pretty damn impressed if it was anyone but Shepard, but as it is, well. He’s gotten used to it.

“Garrus,” she’s saying, calling up the medi-gel dispensation program on her omni-tool. “Talk to me. You can’t die on me here, baby.”

“I will not,” Garrus coughs out indignantly, “die with last thing I hear is you calling me a baby.”

“I— excuse me?”

“I said I will not— urgk—!” Garrus winces as he twists a little bit the wrong way and oh spirits, that’s painful. “Shepard, I’m bleeding over here. Slap some medi-gel on your manly turian boyfriend, why don’t you?”

“Ah— right,” Shepard says, and a rush of relief washes over Garrus as the medi-gel kicks in.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Sure thing, baby,” Shepard says, grinning.

“And about that—”

“I hate to interrupt,” EDI says, very much interrupting, “but my sensors indicate that this station’s hangar venting protocols are about to activate in approximately sixty seconds.”

They make the mad dash to the control panel, with Garrus wincing at his still-sore ribs and a helpful countdown courtesy of EDI along the way. Shepard hacks into the terminal with seconds to spare, rolling her shoulders as she draws her pistol again and pops the heat sink.

“Right,” Garrus says, checking his rifle as they start moving forward again, “about this ‘baby’ thing—”

“What about it?”

“My research indicates that it is what humans refer to as ‘pet names,’ typically used between lovers or between parents and children to signify the closeness of their relationship,” EDI chimes in helpfully from behind them.

“You mean she says that because she likes me?”

“Given the length of your courtship, I hardly think you should be this surprised, Garrus,” EDI comments.

Shepard chuckles softly, sliding into cover as Garrus’ face turns a light shade of blue.

“Don't turians have anything like that, Garrus?” Shepard whispers, lining up her shot.

“Not really,” he says, peering through his scope at a Cerberus guardian patrolling the end of the hallway. “Turian relationship distinctions are all in the subvocals, mostly."

“That is correct,” EDI says cheerfully, stunning an engineer with an overload before Shepard takes him out. “My research indicates that the tone of Garrus’ subvocals when speaking to Shepard match the tone typically reserved for talking to one’s spouse—”

“Anyway,” Garrus cuts her off with the sharp cracking fire of his rifle, followed by the thud of a body falling onto the metal floor. “I can understand using ‘baby’ for a child, but for your lover?”

“I can only postulate that it is meant to signify the desire to care for one’s partner, in the same way one feels compelled to care for a child,” EDI muses, before announcing that the area is clear, prompting Shepard to move up to the next room and start hacking the fighter jet controls.

“Still weird though,” Garrus says, sweeping the room for anything useful. “Hey, EDI, did your research turn up any other alternatives?”

“A vast number. There is, in no particular order: honey, sweetie pie, pumpkin, cupcake, muffin, sugar—”

“Er,” he says, mildly perturbed. “Those are all foodstuffs, aren’t they?”

“Correct.”

“Are there any that don't invoke – er, edibility?”

“There is the phrase ‘moon of my life,’ popularized in the early 21st Earth-century by human author—”

“Mm, closer, but isn’t there anything short and sweet?”

“There is the term ‘bae,’ also popularized in the early 21st Earth-century. Contrary to what some humans thought, ‘bae’ was not a shortening of ‘babe’ or ‘baby,’ but rather an acronym that stood for ‘before anyone else.’”

Garrus hums thoughtfully. “Bae,” he says, rolling the unfamiliar word in his mouth. “Hm. Short, to the point. I like it.”

“No,” Shepard says, eyes still on the terminal as she worked.

“Bae, did you remember to bring spare thermal clips?”

“Garrus, no.”

“Oh, you didn’t? You can have some of mine. Don’t want my bae getting caught without a heat sink in a firefight.”

“Ugh,” Shepard grumbles. “This is your fault,” she says, glaring at EDI.

“I accept accountability,” EDI says evenly, the ghost of a real smile on her perfect chrome mouth.

---

They stand, looking out at the ruins of London, hand-in-hand in the face of uncertainty.

Anderson is mobilizing the troops a little ways off, and behind them Tali and EDI are linking their omni-tools and exchanging the codes for the targeting program they’ll be needing before EDI heads back to the Normandy with the others.

He and Shepard watch, silent, as a burning fighter jet streaks across the sky and crashes in the distance.

Garrus’ heart is thudding in his chest; his hands feel clammy in his gloves, but Shepard gives his hand a comforting squeeze and throws him a sideways smile.

“Ready?” she asks, the ghost of resignation and defeat lingering in the corners of her eyes.

He smiles, letting his old bravado leak through, and says, “You know I’m right behind you… bae.”

And Shepard looks at him, and blinks – once, twice – before her face morphs into something between trying to hold back a smile and looking like she’d eaten something incredibly sour.

"Something wrong, bae?"

And Shepard starts shaking, before she lets out an indelicate “Pfft—”

And then she laughs, happy and whole-bodied and free, and Garrus thinks that if he can make her laugh like this – here, in the middle of a dilapidated city on a broken planet, with Reapers raining down hell from the sky – then maybe… maybe everything just might come out alright.

[maximumkillshotstillwritess-blog]

When You Call Part 4

Warnings: A/B/O Dynamics, Angst, Alpha!Dean, Omega!Reader, FLUFFY AF, some angst, panic attack  

Pairing: Eventual Dean x Reader  

Characters: Alpha!Sam, Alpha!Dean, Omega!Reader  

A/N: Ohh guys it’s time for part 4!!! I know that this was a few days coming but I promise it’s worth the wait! The responses to this series is overwhelming and I can’t thank each and every one of you enough for your support! Once again, many many many thanks to @emoryhemsworth for being my Beta reader, and thank you for dealing with all of my grammar and tense issues… you have a heart of gold!! This one is still slightly angsty, but it is also Fluffy AF! (Italics in this one signify internal dialogue as well…)

Overall Masterlist- Click Here

“When You Call” Masterlist- Click Here

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Previously…..

“I thought you didn’t want your rut to get worse,” I replied nonchalantly.

“I can handle myself. I’d rather smell you. Your scent calms me, ‘Mega.” Damn him and that growl. Heat pooled immediately in between my thighs and Dean smelled it. “There’s a time and a place and with how banged up you are. This ain’t the time or place. Get in, ‘Mega. We still have a few hours before Sam’s early morning ass gets up.”

As soon as I got into the bed Dean scooched himself closer to me put his arm under my head. Usually, this wouldn’t be a problem, but Dean’s in rut, so now I can only describe what I felt as a push and pull. I want him, I always wanted him, but this… This was a craving, more than that, a necessity… I needed Dean…

Yup… this was gonna be a long night.

Y/N’s POV:

Found via Google Search

I began to slowly awaken to the dull thud of what sounded like footsteps. My head snapped up to see Sam dressed in his running outfit, all except for one shoe.

“Damn it, did I wake you?” asked Sam as he fiddled with a shoelace that just wasn’t cooperating.

As I gained consciousness I began to notice that I wasn’t just sleeping on my side, like I always did. I moved my legs and realized that they were tangled with Deans. Dean was fully facing my back cradling my head with his arm, effectively making me the little spoon. The next thing that I noticed was a heavy weight on my hip, when I touched it to feel what it was, it was Dean’s hand.

The weirdest thing was, the more purchase I gained the more I realized that I felt nothing but a dull pain in my ribs. Hmm, I guess sleeping for those three days did wonders for me.  

“Wake is such a strong word, I’m a light sleeper anyway, so no big deal. Need help with that pan-hands?” I responded, joking with him of course. The minute I tried to sit up it felt like tiny knives were surrounding my ribcage and stabbing me simultaneously. I couldn’t help but whimper and try to curl into a ball, protecting my ribs from nothing in particular.

“Shit, stay down Y/N/N. Your ribs are shattered. Lemme get you some painkillers,” Sam immediately sprung into action. I gratefully swallowed the pills and checked to see if Dean was pulled to consciousness by my lack of self-awareness. I looked and noticed that he was still out like a light.

“I didn’t feel anything when I woke up… shit!” I silently cursed myself.

“That makes sense,” quipped Sam.

“Oh really?”

Originally posted by lucifersagents

Sam sat down on the other bed to talk to me while he finished taking care of his stupid laces. “Yeah, there are studies that show that Alpha scents have a chemical in their pheremones that affect Omega’s in the way an opiate would, almost like morphine. I think they named it ‘OC-42’. That’s why many Omegas are never fully sated when they’re with a Beta, especially in heat. They don’t have that chemical to literally get high off of. Another study showed that an Omega’s scent has that very same effect on Alphas, especially when they’re in rut. Really interesting stuff.”

I listened intently as Sam and I always had similar interests when it came to research.

“Ok, first off, you need to send me those articles, and secondly, why do they call it ‘OC-42’ and what does that have to do with me going from no pain to crippling agony?” I asked.

Sam chuckled, “I’ll email it to you today! It’s called ‘OC-42’ because ‘OC’ is an acronym for ‘opiodal chemical’ and ‘42’ is in there because the chromosome that’s responsible for the production of that chemical seems to be the 42nd chromosome in human DNA. As for the reason why this makes sense for your case? You were wrapped up in Dean, hell you still are a bit. Here’s the trick, when you were sleeping, half of your face was on his arm, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Y/N, one of the scenting glands are there, at the bend of the elbow. That’s why you didn’t feel anything until your head left his arm,” replied Sam.

“Hmm, that is definitely interesting,” I said with a smirk.

Originally posted by lucifersagents

“What’s interesting?” groaned Dean as his eyes slowly began to open.

“Apparently you are like morphine to me, because I’m in heat and you’re in rut,” I replied.

“And that’s different from how we normally are, how? I’ve always been your morphine,” uttered Dean mischievously as he began to sit up carefully.

“Hell no Winchester. You, my good friend, give me all of the headaches,” I chuckled in response.

Originally posted by thejabberwock

“You know, that would hurt if I didn’t know better,” smirked Dean as he called the diner and ordered the food to go. After he hung up he began to get dressed.  

“Where are you going? Don’t leave,” I began to panic. Why was I panicking? Those assholes were dead, what did I have to worry about? I can’t be alone, I can’t be without him.

“Sweetheart, relax. I’m just going to get you breakfast, you haven’t eaten in days,” Dean tried to soothe me but it wasn’t working.

“Nononononononono… Dean, you are not leaving me. You can’t leave me, what if someone else comes? I can’t fight, I can’t run. I can’t even get to the bathroom on my own. How in the hell am I going to be able to fight for myself ?” I rushed out the sentences as the walls began to close in.

“Sweetheart Sam won’t go anywhere, okay? One of us is going to be with you the whole time… Don’t worry.” Dean reassured me.

“I’m not asking for Sam… I’m asking for you, Dean! Please don’t leave me!” I was near tears until I smelled that familiar scent that reached to the core of my anxiety and smothered it. I felt strong hands wrap me from behind as Dean petted my hair and shushed me.

“Then it’s settled, I’m not going anywhere, ok? I’m right here, I’ll protect you no matter what…. “ Cooed Dean as he slowly got my breathing down to normal. I didn’t care about the pain in my ribs as I twisted myself around to bury my face in Dean’s neck.

Dean looked at Sam, “Sam, could you get the food before your run, it’s already ordered. I got it from the diner in town, you remember?” He kissed me on the top of my head as soon as he finished speaking, letting me know that he wasn’t going anywhere.

“Yeah, sure, I’ll be right back” replied Sam as he grabbed Baby’s keys from the table and left

Dean’s POV:

The minute I saw the desperation in her eyes I knew three things: I knew that I was done for, NO ONE WILL EVER TOUCH HER AGAIN, and that I’d die without her. I don’t know what caused these feelings. It’s not the rut, it wasn’t a territorial feeling, even if it was they usually come and go with the waves of rut. Those feelings were and still are deep. They are in my soul. As I wrapped my hands around her to soothe her, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

Seeing her beg for me to stay broke my heart, but I also felt a sense of reassurance. Knowing that Y/N wanted me and only me, knowing that it was my scent that calmed her, reassured me of the fact that we have a connection that is deeper than just feelings or memories. We have an instinctual tether to each other, a bond. Yet there was something more than just a bond.

I had no idea how I didn’t see it before. Every single time we go on a hunt I’m always hypervigilant of Y/N and everytime she gets hurt I immediately go into “kill everything” mode.

That would also explain why Bobby and Dad wanted us as far away as possible from each other when we presented. They kept us away from each other because they knew… They knew what -whatever the hell- we were and are looked like. It was dangerous at the time, so they separated us… I only sobbed in front of my father once, that was when Y/N was ripped away from me on that hot summer day.

Originally posted by amal-albuloshia

Dad and Bobby had tricked us into separating, unpacking something in her overnight bag that she was going to take on the hunt with us. When she went up to get it, dad whispered: “I’m sorry Dean.” When I asked him what he meant, he locked the doors and revved up the Impala. I begged him to stop. To just wait for her, I begged him, I bargained with him.

As we began to pull away, I heard Bobby yelling, “Y/N baby doll calm down… No, you aren’t going! It’ll be alright. It’s for the best for once trust me!”

I remembered looking in the rear-view mirror of the Impala, I couldn’t turn around or I would’ve thrown myself clear through Baby’s back window. I saw Y/N trying to break free of Bobby’s grasp as I heard her scream “No you can’t take him away, Papa no! DEAN! Papa, you can’t do this.” Her hands were clawing at the air, trying to rope the car back to her as tears fell down her face while Bobby continued to struggle to keep her at bay.

I felt this hot searing pain go through me like I was being ripped in half. The pain was an old friend. I used to have that pain every night when I was a kid and only one person could numb me, could take the pain away, that person was Y/N. The pain was constant until she would lay down with me and hum to me. I taught her “Sweet Child O’Mine” just so that she could hum it to me when that pain got torturous. When I was a kid, that pain would be accompanied with flashes of my moms face, little sounds clips of her humming “Hey Jude,” all the times she said, “I love you, Dean.”

That day, that pain was the same, but instead of my mom in my head, it was Y/N. Her smiling face when we would sneak out with Sammy and try to give him some sort of a normal childhood by taking him to the park. The light as it danced off of her hair, the utter joy at seeing Sammy’s smile, at seeing my smile.

I remembered when she nearly died on a hunt. A ghoul got her pretty good and she wouldn’t let anyone else touch her but me. Bobby and Dad gave a huff as they sat across the room while I patched her up.

Then all of the nights, the way that she’d hold me, protect me. Almost like a pirate guards their treasure, so certain that, if anyone dare touched what was hers, they’d walk the plank, I am hers. Same with Sammy, everytime he so much as whimpered in a dream her whole body shot up, moving to his bed to soothe his mind.

As I openly sobbed in the front seat of the car that day. Dad, of course, didn’t care. Maybe it wasn’t that he didn’t care, but that he remembered the feeling of mom getting ripped away from him. He knew the pain and didn’t know how to make it better.

That also explained why Uncle Bobby hated us going anywhere together. He didn’t want Y/N to get hurt if I died, well at least not hurt beyond repair. After reliving all of this I finally put two and two together.

I never realized that Y/N never felt like family to me. As I held her tiny frame in my arms while she nuzzled my neck, I didn’t feel like I was holding a family member, she felt like home. She felt like a jewel that I’d be an idiot not to protect. Like my reason for existing, my reason for being. Every single time I’m around her it feels like I finally found the missing puzzle piece, and that feeling was always there. I just never pinpointed it.

I didn’t know what to call it when I was four because I was so young. That pull, that feeling I always had towards her, it wasn’t just friendship, lust, or hormones, hell it wasn’t even instinct… It was love. Not the feeling of being in love, no, the real thing. The love that people have died for. The love that people will crawl out of hell for like Y/N did. This love that I have for her is the love that most people don’t even get to experience in a lifetime…  and I experienced that love every day since the first day I met her at Uncle Bobby’s. I don’t feel like she’s family because she isn’t. She doesn’t feel like family because I love her… I love her.

After Sam left the room, I knew I had to tell her. I couldn’t wait anymore and we didn’t have much time before he came back.

When she calmed down I began what could’ve possibly been the most awkward conversation of our lives.

“Y/N, sweetheart, we need to talk,” I said not nearly as confidently as I had hoped it’d come out.

“About what, Dean?” she asked. Damn, she looked up at me with those doe eyes, I knew that I was a goner before, but now… Now I’m not only gone… but loving it too.

Just breathe Dean, just breathe. You are talking to your best friend… that’s it.

“About something that I’ve been feeling for a while and I didn’t even know it.”

Dude, cut it out with the voice shaking, she’s gonna get spooked!

“Oooooookay… Don’t see how that has something to do with me but continue.”

This is good… she didn’t run! Progress Dean, good job, ok now… Just don’t fuck up!

Thanks for being vague yet again conscious.

My pleasure!

I leaned into her neck and took a deep breath, I felt even more of a pull to her when I did. I muttered into her neck “It has everything to do with you.”

“Listen, I know that what I did, going out on my heat without one of you, it was stupid and childish. It was selfish and I should’ve at least let Sam come along. I know that, I was just so furious.” Muttered Y/N as she pulled away from me, covering her face in shame.

Quick, comfort her! She thinks you’re still pissed.

“I get it if you don’t want to hunt with me anymore. I compromised myself. You don’t need someone like that on your team.”

SHITTTT MOVE YOUR MOUTH WINCHESTER!!! I SWEAR TO EVERY DEITY IF YOU DON’T OPEN YOUR DAMN MOUTH!!!

Originally posted by destielonfire

“NO! Nononononono, you can’t leave, Y/N. I’m not pissed about what happened, ok?” I semi-rushed the words out of my mouth. I took  breath after I let the words fly out, trying to figure out what to say.

C’mon man, she’s gotta know… you need her… she needs you.

I get it conscious, thank you for your lovely input, yet again!

I can tell you’re being sarcastic, wise-ass.

“Then why are you looking at me like that?” asked Y/N. Damn her lips are in a semi pout, they looked so perfect and before I knew it I leaned into her.

Originally posted by gifworld13

That first kiss. Her lips were so soft and still slightly chapped as I molded mine to hers. Their inherent warmth entranced every single fiber of my being and for once, I was complete. I could feel her begin to moan into the kiss as she brought her hands to my cheeks. Then her scent hit me, fields of wildflowers, fresh rain, pie, her slightly fruity notes that were all her own. My God, it felt like the gates of heaven opened to finally give me some relief. Relief of all of my stress, my worries, all that mattered was her.

Originally posted by samslostshoe-deansbaby

When I broke the kiss and touched our foreheads together I breathed, “I’m looking at you like this because I love you.”

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Jun 5th, 2018

[ohdeargodnotyouagain]

Mother

Mel’Jam Oseser watched as the security came up from behind his desk partner. They were eerily quiet, and thus the woman didn’t even raise her head to look up from the paperwork strewn across her desk- and halfway onto his own. His pen twirled in his slender fingers as he watched them take either side of her, sounds of construction and drill bits whining blocked out any sound of the other office workers in the large room. Their shared space was in the corner, thus there were very few places for Umass to run. She pushed a piece of stringy blond hair from her face, tucking it calmly behind her ear. The motion seemed to draw her attention away from the shipment manifest and to the two men who had just stepped up to the entrance of their cubical. “Ms. Llauth… We need you to come with us.”

                Umass, who had been with the M.O.T.H.E.R. project for almost seven years, looked up at the man who had spoken. He was one of the countless security officers that roamed the halls, and thus, neither Umass nor Oseser had bothered to learn his name. She pushed the rest of her hair out of her face, “What- why?” It wasn’t often that an officer came to them, unless there was some dire need on the floor that required their specialized attention. Oseser watched as her eyes drifted to the floor far outside their cubicle’s window, where they could both see workers busying themselves with their day to day tasks.

                The security officer looked between Umass and his partner, who didn’t change his blank expression. Her head snapped to Oseser, who cocked his head ever so slightly to the side. “Perhaps it would be a good idea to follow them, Umass.” And as if that was an order, the two men lurched forward, practically ripping her from her chair entirely. She let out a startled cry, pushing one the officers back, and then climbed over the cheap wall that separated her from the other ranking officials; who were startled to say the least.

                With the workplace efficiency now thoroughly disrupted; Oseser sighed, putting the pen he had been fiddling with absently back into the cup were a good dozen twins went unused. The larger of the two officers pulled her off the wall with another scream and cuffed her when her face hit the ground, dragging her back up to her feet not a second later. It was all in one swift motion that for a moment, Oseser was impressed by their timing. He had expected it to take longer with how much she struggled. “Oseser- please- I haven’t done anything wrong- tell them- tell them I’m innocent! I haven’t done anything wrong!” She pleaded loudly as they walked her out, half carrying and half dragging her by the bonds now securing her arms firmly behind her back.

                Oseser stood up, causing the officers to pause for a moment. When he did not move to stop their arrest, they moved on. He strode around to the other side of Umass’ desk and started to slide personal effects into the garbage or box that had her last name written on it in large block-like letters. This had been such a disappointment for him- she was the third in a month. Umass let out another terrible scream as they took her into the elevator at the very end of the room and the howls were abruptly cut off when the silver doors shut. He let out a slow, rather bored, sigh from his nose as the workers around him returned quickly to their areas. Oseser continued: A family picture. Box. He hadn’t known she had children- unfortunate.

                A coffee cup. Recycling. A pen. His cup. No, that wouldn’t work at all- it didn’t match any of his current utensils. It went into the recycling as well. The papers were straightened and the stack that she had been working through was added into a neat one of his own. By the time he was done, the entire desk looked like it had been freshly made and awaited its next user. He came back to his desk, looking over what paperwork Umass had left behind. Making some minor corrections with a red pen, he glanced outside to the floor below were workers either still did not know nor cared about the events that had just transpired. The wall behind him and immediately on his left was completely made of a large piece of glass, so he could see exactly what was going on with his employees. And exactly what was going on with Mother.

                The hulking creature looked at him through his window. Though he was sure she could not see through the tempered glass; he felt as if those black eyes were watching him even now. He dismissed the idea, pushing a stack of notes that Umass had slipped in the files into the recycling bin. It was truly a disappointment. He had high hopes for this one. With her ideas and changes to their department they had gone up to almost an eighty-nine percent efficiency rate. It was ridiculous how they had to keep changing out people to work with him. One might think, if they weren’t already briefed on his resume, that he was the problem.

                No, he was the most efficient one of them all. And he knew this without having to second guess himself. Oseser took up his clipboard and walked to the entrance of the cubical. For a second he looked at Umass’ now completely empty desk. It was… vaguely disheartening, to see her no longer there. For every project there was supposed to be at least two people to manage the floor associates… but here he was… once again, the last man standing. How he hated that feeling.

                He walked out of his cubical, sparing a moment to straighten the paper on his clipboard. An effort was made walking past the eyes that were so purposefully glued to their computer monitors. Oseser spared them no glance as he past them by, heading toward the same elevators that Umass had been dragged toward. He waited for the elevator to come to him after pressing the button and the low drone of music hummed inside his ear when he stepped inside. It was simply background noise after so many years of hearing the same song.

                The doors began to shut, and his skin crawled. The same feeling he had when he sat in his cubical alone after hours; nothing but himself and Mother. He looked up and met another gaze that dared to stare back at him. A darker skinned woman, whose eyes bore into him without fear or malice. He stared back, raising one graying eyebrow at her. The woman walked out from a cubical to watch him go; completely disregarding the fact he was completely aware of her. She had a faint dusting of freckles across her nose and wore a well-fitted black suit. One very similar to his own, and he straightened his out of self-consciousness. For another moment he stared back at the darkened ebony discs that were transfixed on his before the doors shut completely, causing him to jump a little at the suddenness of the absence of her gaze. He made a mental note to see who that intern was- obviously she was an intern. Who else would so freely stare him down?

                The elevator ride was short as he walked onto the main floor of the sector. It was a giant, consuming place that had far too many corridors and wings to be called simply a ‘building’. He stepped out of the elevator and immediately those who were loitering about moved into action around him. Oseser looked at the towering monstrosity above him. Large yellow letters were spray painted on her chest, separated by periods to symbolize the acronym.

M.O.T.H.E.R.

                Multifunctioning Organic Titan Humanoid Extraterrestrial Recycler

                In all of her glory, he looked up at the humanoid giant that stood well over thirty-five feet tall staring down at him with dull black eyes. He stood unmoving as the black tar dripped from her open maw. Mother’s face, though made of wielded metal and twisted iron, looked disturbingly feminine. Oseser waited another few minutes, seemingly unconcerned about the tar hitting the bulkhead a few feet from his shoes. A pen twiddled in his fingers as his gaze was drawn to a few workers who were on lines hanging from the walkways that crisscrossed above Mother’s head. The spark of the wielding unit held between them sent light flashing across the floor, only one of the many sounds that made this place unreasonably noisy. He had gotten used to it, among so much more he had to put up with on a daily basis. Perhaps that was why it made this place so disturbing when the workers went home and he was left alone in the silence.

                The black tar was about to seep off the slightly raised platform, marked clearly with slipping hazard signs, and onto his shoes before a mop swept over the galvanized floor. It soaked it up before it endangered the boots. He looked up at a hulking man that held the mop. “Good morning, Miakyl.” Oseser a brief flicker of a smile in greeting their head custodian who didn’t return the nicety.

                Miakyl was every bit of six and a half feet tall, with a long braided beard with moon rocks and black pearls interwoven into it. “Morning, Doctor Oseser.” Above them there was a sickening sound- a revolting gagging wet cough as Oseser and Miakyl both took an automatic step back. Mother’s maw opened widely, like a snake about to eat a meal, and a large surge of black hit the floor with an extremely loud bang- Oseser took out his pen immediately with his eyebrows raised in a childlike eagerness that Miakyl turned away from.

                “Excellent- such a large mass was more than likely going to turn inspiring results.” These thoughts made his penmanship messier than usual as he scratched out notes on the clipboard. Men and women in wet suits came forward with special equipment and pressure washers. The tar peeled away from what looked like… a generator? Oseser’s eyebrows raised as the workers cleared off more of the unit. “Interesting, she’s making larger objects after they had introduced her artificial intelligence to make more resource based units… Doctor Llauth had been right at least.”

                Out of the group of five workers, the one with a red band around his arm inspected the generator, even filling it with the synthetic gasoline mother had also had a hand in creating. He walked all the way around it as Oseser took notes; neither man noticed each other. Eventually the man ‘tsked’ under his breath and took out a large roll of red stickers from his belt. All of them had bright yellow letters, that matched the yellow on Mother’s chest, that read ‘RTM’ across it.

Return to Mother.

                The appliance had some sort of defect that it couldn’t be sold back to Earth or her colonies, and such, it had to be returned to mother for another round of regurgi- recycling. It would be forcefully broken down by them, fed through her tubes and she would work the practical magic that had saved their little spec of the galaxy.

                Oseser stepped forward, “Foreman, what was the issue with this one?” The man grunted as hooks came down from the ceiling to attach to the top of the generator and lifted it away. He wiped his hands on a towel that hung from the back of his pocket while the rest of his team filed back to the edge, awaiting another one of mother’s gifts to them.

                “She didn’t make the turbine belt for this one again. Seems she has trouble with moving parts now days. I’ll run another diagnostic and see if she’s getting bored. But we’re still short with that order from Beta Colony in Sector Two. Doctor, forty thousand is just too much for her-.” Oseser sighed through his nose as he wrote something down on his clipboard.

                “Let’s not speculate on the possibilities that Mother can perform. She has never failed us before and she never will. Keep all the men fully prepared. Give her a break from the next around and clean out the feeding tubes.” He ordered and the foreman grudgingly agreed to him. Miakyl once again stepped up; he went back to mopping up the tar that leaked from the open jaws above them and Oseser turned to check on the rest of the floor. One of the wielders pulled up his mask to look up at him passing by but gave no comment to either of them- only sharing a brief look between himself and Miakyl.

                Unfortunately, due to Umass’ sudden absence, he was forced to do the other half of the walk by himself. At this point, the secondary floor manager would meet up with him to ride the elevator down to the research facilities that were on the next floor beneath the Mother project. He made his way back to the elevators. Few people stopped to speak with him, questions on how to improve things or permission to try new regimens for Mother. If they were within the guidelines he had created; he allowed them. Another short elevator ride, this one with that same distant drone of music or a radio broadcaster discussing today’s events. Both were simply background noise, if he didn’t already know about the day’s news at this point then they weren’t worth knowing about.

                It was almost a complete scenery change when he walked into the hallway for the research facility. Versus the wide open spaces for Mother and grand entry hall for the operational floor… this place seemed small, cramp and quite dirty. It wasn’t all their fault, Oseser knew. The war had caused the station to be low on manpower for months. Many of the scientists were United Earth employed, and when the rumors of the station planning to leave the union started, they jumped ship like rats. Even after the riots, battles and threats were mostly over, few had returned to their duty out here on the edges of the UE’s quadrant. Oseser slowly past the windows that lined this place, looking both left and right at the men and women in full body suits that were experimenting on different aspects of Mother.

                He stopped short at a scientist from about midway into the room directly on his left. Peering harder against the glass, since he wasn’t allowed in for a laundry list of reasons the council had given him, he watched as a scientist held a piece of metal above a mass. The mass was black and shifted on the tray it currently sat on. It didn’t reach out for the metal being held by long forceps. The man holding it switched to his hand, and the black mass immediately shot out what looked like a tentacle from it’s shapeless heap and took it from the scientist. While Oseser had been startled by it, the scientist hadn’t. His pen scratched absently at the clipboard in his arms and he shook his head. “Magnificent.” He whispered, watching the scientist do much the same as he was before having another lab assistant bring him a fresh sample. The other was taken away to another table for a new task............. 

[jamiekturner]

How I, a designer, learned to code and released an app in 4 months

Okay, I’ll be honest with you right away. The title is a little misleading.

I started learning Swift 4 months before and I knew some coding before that.

But I have never created a native app for any platform. Thinking about it now, I had no idea what I was up against…

For you to understand the how I did it, first I must tell you the why.

Traveling back in time

I always loved computers. My father bought our first machine when I was around 8 years old, and I became hooked in a second. It had a blurry CRT screen and it was running DOS, but it did what you wanted it to do.

That thing was pure magic for God’s sake!

Of course I mostly played games on it but I fell in love with the whole environment. I learned about how a PC worked, turned all the knobs and switches in the programs and became the guy others came to for tech-advice.

Fast forward to 1999. It was the time of 56k dial up modems and ADSL lines. I was still into computers as the Internet started gaining popularity in Hungary. I spent most of my afternoons in the school’s IT room visiting Geocities pages.

It was the beautiful era of <frame> based websites with the dancing baby animgif and I wanted a part of it.

I started learning HTML and created my first website. And since it was ’99 I appropriately named it Zolee Site Millenium. It ran on our school server and was only accessible via a Frankensteinian URL, something like www.kkt.piar.school.gov.hu/~hosszu2 (notice the nice tilde character in there). But I was online, I conquered a little bit of the new promise land called the World Wide Web. It felt amazing.

My love for gaming stuck with me in the following years: I was playing a lot of Counter-Strike. As it became the most popular game, I always had a chance to create a website for my current team.

I loved designing and building pages, but after a while started focusing my efforts on the visuals and usability. The latest trends of web development passed right by me as I learned more and more about pixels and user-experience.

Today I work as a full-time UI designer at a Hungarian agency. I have no experience with the current top frameworks like Node, Angular or Bootstrap. And I’m okay with that.

But I’ve been keeping an eye on HTML, CSS and JavaScript goodies, because I always work on personal projects on the side.

The idea for GAget

In 2011 my website got a huge facelift. The layout got featured on DeviantArt and I felt excited about new users checking it out every day. But I also was really frustrated.

Not because of the number visitors, but because there was no quick way for me to check them. There were two options. I either had to keep fiddling with Google Analytics, or I needed to find a simple app to do the trick for me. That’s what OS X Dashboard widgets are for, I thought, so I started looking around.

But the solutions out there were either too nerdy and ugly or just didn’t give me enough data. So being a designer, I drew up a mockup of what the best solution for me could be and posted the design on Dribbble.

A couple of dozen likes made me dig into the topic a bit more. I found out that widgets were essentially HTML + JavaScript apps, so I started taking it a little more seriously. I mean, these were the two languages I was most familiar with.

The working prototype was running on my Dashboard in a couple of days. I named it GAget [pronounced the same way as gadget] as an acronym for Google Analytics widget. A silly name, but it stuck.

The widget was released about 2 weeks later, in August of 2011.

I stopped updating the bookmarks featuring GAget after a while…

The amount of feedback was stunning: MacStories, SwissMiss and tons of smaller blogs featured GAget. I even had my name printed in the Hungarian version of PC World magazine.

I knew I had to keep working on it.

What to do next?

Today the widget has over 84 thousand downloads and it is being used by thousands weekly. With a friend of mine we even created an iPhone version. So when Apple released Yosemite and discontinued the development of Dashcode, GAget’s future started looking pretty grim.

But as one hand took something away, the other gave something back: Apple opened up the Notification Center for developers to display widgets there. Hope! Maybe the success story of my small widget could continue!

My Instagram post about the new design.

I started reading Apple’s documentation on Today extensions (this is what they call widgets). But it was all native Objective-C code. Ugh! Dealing with a compiler, memory leaks and multi-threaded processes was not what I wanted to do. It sounds scary if you’ve never done it before. But I made up my mind, GAget needed to become a native widget!

My biggest problem was that I had no idea where to start.

The Objective-Struggle

I purchased a book about iPhone development in Objective-C, but gave up after a couple of sections. To be honest, for someone familiar with front-end languages and a bit of PHP, Objective-C looked way too complex. Look at this code:

@​i​n​t​e​r​f​a​c​e​ ​​R​e​m​i​n​d​e​r​V​i​e​w​C​o​n​t​r​o​l​l​e​r​(​)​

@​p​r​o​p​e​r​t​y​ ​(​n​o​n​a​t​o​m​i​c​,​ ​w​e​a​k​)​ ​I​B​O​u​t​l​e​t​ ​U​I​D​a​t​e​P​i​c​k​e​r​ ​*​d​a​t​e​P​i​c​k​e​r​;​

@​e​n​d​

What could an interface, a property be, what does nonatomic or weak mean and what the hell are @ and * doing in there? I understood end though!

https://fat.gfycat.com/DifferentGivingFunnelweaverspider.mp4

The swifter way to code

The tutorials in the book were leading nowhere. After a few weeks of struggle, I didn’t get any closer to a native widget.

Then I remembered that Apple introduced a new programming language called Swift alongside Yosemite. It was new to everyone, so a lot of gurus started writing about it, discussing why it sucked and how you should learn Objective-C before even thinking about touching Swift. All this buzz made me take a look: I downloaded and started reading its documentation.

It felt like a breeze. The code started looking familiar, something like a little complex JavaScript! I fired up Xcode and started copying what people were doing in tutorials.

My main goal was an OS X widget, but most tutorials were focused on Swift itself or iPhone apps so I had to keep searching. I still had a lot of unanswered questions, like:

How can a widget and a containing app communicate? (Core data and app groups)

Can I use hover interaction? (No)

How do I open only one row of the widget while closing the others? (Auto layout and some manual height hacking)

Apple’s one page long documentation on widgets forced me to dig up source codes on GitHub and Stack Overflow and it took me countless hours to figure out the answers.

I collected and published the links I found useful along the way. They might be relevant for you too, in case you’re starting out with iOS or OS X programming.

I managed to find everything I needed and started moving faster than I expected: GAget for Yosemite started to take shape.

MVC, multi-threaded processes, app targets, view controllers and core data meant nothing 4 months ago. But thanks to the tutorials, Stack Overflow and a lot of sleepless nights I managed to learn the bases of Swift and OS X development.

Thanks to 800 people the beta testing was a blast. GAget is now available in the App Store as a designer’s first native application.

What I learned — besides a new programming language

I knew that working on a personal project is awesome long before Swift came along. You get to do whatever you want and you don’t answer to a boss or a client. You can add and remove features any way you like and you work in your own pace.

Deadlines

However, I found that giving yourself a deadline can be extremely motivating. Every New Year’s Eve my wife and I sit down and make a list about the things what we want to achieve in the following year. This time I listed that I want to release the new version of GAget by the end of January: this was my deadline.

Even though I ended up missing it by a month (thanks to Apple’s review process and a few other projects), I was working the hardest in January to check this thing off my list. Having it written down on a piece of paper is a powerful motivator.

The circle of learning

I also discovered that while learning something new there are three phases you cycle through: excitement, struggle and solution.

Excitement phase:you alway start here. You have a new idea and start learning things, everything looks promising and you wonder what you can do next. You feel motivated and you’re experimenting with the stuff you know. But you eventually reach a barrier in your knowledge.

Struggle phase:as you encounter the first real problem your excitement and motivation levels start to plummet. You have no idea what could help you or what to search for. You are desperate: even checking out the 3rd results page in Google for an answer.

Solution phase:Finally! You find the solution to that nasty problem. You move faster than before, and start to feel excited and motivated again. You go back to phase 1.

So next time you start out, remember: the struggle phase might be long and frustrating but the solution is out there. Finding it is part of the fun.

And don’t forget to check out GAget ☺

  The post How I, a designer, learned to code and released an app in 4 months appeared first on Design your way.

from Web Development & Designing http://www.designyourway.net/blog/user-interface-design/designer-learned-code-released-app-4-months/

[lbjork64-blog]

Basic MS-DOS 6.22 setup guide

Foreword

I love computer science and the underlying systems. Aside from that, I love studying symbolic, abstract things like mathematics and languages. It may come as a surprise for some of my followers: the little known fact that I also love retro computing. I find retro computing an easy and intuitive way to dive into the zen garden of computing as it was in the past, and to appreciate the underlying foundations of modern computing. This can be a helpful corner stone for my computer science studies, It can also really function as a living museum: imagine going to a museum where the exhibits are not dead: they are alive, moving, write in front of your fingertips; and you can even experiment with them too!

Of course, being stripped off the many things one takes for granted such as the Internet, 32/64-bit architectures, modern graphics can beset one with dismay. In no situation is this more apparent than in MS-DOS: through the black box a user communicates and navigates their way round. Luckily for me, I have had some experience working with MS-DOS when I was rather young. I started fiddling around, albeit not so seriously, with these stuff when I was about 7 or 8. I can tell I had great fun. Ergo, this very fact and the fact that I have always enjoyed my journeys very much is one of the main motivations to write this blog post.

I will write about how to set up a basic and working MS-DOS 6.22 system, which includes the operating system itself, and some supplemental tools. Since this still isn't quite sufficient for day-to-day use, I will also write a short section about other essential software and hacks. Along the way, I will add some facts and little bits of detail I deem important, write about my experiences and thoughts about each aspect of the process, and maybe some current issues which I encounter.

But first, let's start off with the introduction, just so as to whet your appetite.

Oh, before that, though! It is important to note that anything in this post is given without warranty. That really just means I do not guarantee that it will work, nor the safety of your computers or data; you are responsible for having come here and following this guide. I'll just do my best to write based on my accounts, which may vary among different persons. By and large, this means that I am not responsible for your mishaps or any problems that may occur. Alright, if that is settled, you can move on…

Introduction to MS-DOS

Not so long ago in a land not so far away, maybe circa 1970~1980, relations between people and computers were complicated, literally. As yet, however, people didn't really mind the hassles in their relationships, for it was the best thing Generation X and the preceding ones had ever seen since sliced bread; computers had only just begun making a lot of tedious paper works, spreadsheets, computations, and other hectic tasks more feasible to the quintessential worker back then. To conclude, some people may well have just accepted that things couldn't possibly get any easier; the computers had already made it so much easier than in the case where they had not been there. So, life was great in the 80s — why care?

To us in the 21st century, looking back at the technology then, it does seem quite a hassle. This is primarily because computers in the old days obviously had old hardware which offered a relatively small amount of computational power and memory, and a primitive user interface. Needless to say, were you to ride a time machine to set foot back then, you would be bereft of the Internet and the ability to contact your friends and family in real-time; it would not be until about the 1990s when you would be able to hear the first EE-AHH of a 56k modem leaching through the grapevines, as it were, consequently connecting one to the world wide web. To clarify the point, suppose you were a quintessential office worker of the class of 1980, you'd be working on tonnes and tonnes of computer work, which were mostly text, displayed on a monochrome (or if you were lucky, CGA) cathode-ray screen — hardly would your eyes last; you'd also be typing out commands and combinations of keys for which you must resort to muscle memory; and at the end of the day, you'd have to rely on unstable, low-capacity, analog, magnetic storage called floppy disks (or diskettes) to save the precious daily work for which your eyes had teared and your brain had tired.

MS-DOS was the epitome of the idea of a personal 16-bit computer on everybody's hands. The name is an acronym standing for Microsoft - Disk Operating System. By definition, it was an operating system, which ran on and worked with disks (I'll let you guess what kind of disks I'm talking about — that's right: floppy disks!), and invented by Microsoft. Only during the first few versions of MS-DOS, must one run the operating system directly off some diskettes, and unfortunately, re-set the system Y2K-faulty date and time settings on each and every boot up before work could even begin. Subsequent versions of the operating system saw improvement: it could be installed straight onto an internal storage of the computer — the hard drive, which, needless to say, had low capacity; and the time need no longer be set by hand: it could be obtained straight off CMOS. As the title suggests, we will be discussing MS-DOS 6.22 — the final version of MS-DOS, not accounting for the fake version 7 — which means we will be covering something pretty current and easy.

The reason why we are not taking MS-DOS 7 into account is because it wasn't really an official version when it was released. Whereas MS-DOS 6.22 made it into the mainstream, MS-DOS 7 just disappeared. Apparently, its development had been supervised by an entity called China DOS Union, and the version just kind of disappeared, perhaps into China. Suffice it to say, a more toned-down version of MS-DOS 7 did make it into the mainstream; it was included as the underlying MS-DOS system of Windows 95 through to ME.

It's not all rainy days and dark skies for old technology, though, for not all of it is lost into history books. One such case is the command-line. Yes, it still exists and is necessary in many cases today. So tedious had the command-line become, that no sooner had people begun to complain about it than the computer mice was invented. This pointy, draggy thing was obviously beneficial because it made computing much easier to most people in general, but that was all it did: making computing much easier to most people in general. Suffice it to say, there is a reason why I wrote that emphatically. Apart from browsing the modern web, the mouse proves nearly no use to many hard-core computer-heads I know, nor does it prove any beneficial to me; we'd sooner everything were done on the buttons of the keyboard.

No matter how far you go to add ease of use to it, you cannot stagger away from the clickaty-clack of the keyboard, for it is one of the most fundamental and basic terminals to control a computer; you could get by with a mouse, but the basic functions of a computer can only be accessed with a keyboard, even today. To add to that, there's also speed and power, considering the fact that you wouldn't need to move your hands consistently back and forth between the mouse and keyboard just to do something different if all the features were on the keyboard and the load were on muscle memory.

As I have discussed with my friend before, the two previous paragraphs above this one really details why certain efforts on seemingly (to most people) obselete command-line stuff still exists: Vim, emacs, zsh, etc. Obviously, these have evolved from the history of computing, which frankly extends far before MS-DOS even came to existence. I admit it is hard, but once you master it, it pays off in the form of added speed, agility, and control. MS-DOS and its software is no exception: there are advantages, as certain aspects thereof work better and have worked better since their conception, while naturally exhibiting the other aspects which do not appear today, because they should be improved or changed nonetheless; for instance, text-mode survives and thrives, but the 56k EEH-AHH does not.

The three previous paragraphs above is also one of the key motivations to get down to trying out retrocomputing, especially DOS: not because you will be using it later on in life, but because it can enlighten you with knowledge about the foundations of computing, which has not changed much; and it can get you accustomed to some important aspects of computing which will definitely be beneficial with your everyday work, if you are into computing. Personally, I believe that everyone should at least be able to get by in the command-line because it is only there where one can find extremely powerful tools one could not have otherwise dreamt of: Vim and GPG, for instance. A case in point is this one day when I was trying to format my USB drive on Windows Explorer, but then it gave me an error without any explanations; then, I tried formatting it on the command-prompt using my pre-existing MS-DOS skills, and not only did it tell me what the fault was, it also went straight ahead and formatted the disk successfully without the constant nuisance of GUIs.

On the sidelines, I daresay I will arrange for there to be a nice, guided tutorial on Vim or other cool command-line stuff I use on my blog. They will mostly be on the UNIX shell, though, since that's what I have grown into, courtesy of MS-DOS.

It does appear that I have written a rather cute biography about MS-DOS and old computers. Of course, this is written from my knowledge on the subject. I'm 16 years old and I haven't really actually experienced the past, but I can get to grips with it based on my experience. If there should be any aspects which I described wrongly, please tell me about it very, very nicely, and I will correct it.

Anyway, the next section will describe the prerequisites — what is expected of you and your machine — before you begin with the actual installation.

Installation: Prerequisites

This section describes the prerequisites — what is expected of you and your machine — before you can begin with the actual installation. In light of the fact that we are all living in the 21st century with all the bewildering computational power and capacity now, in no way should these prerequisites be as hard to meet as they were in the 20th century. Nevertheless, it's advisable that you not turn a blind eye on this, just in case something is missing.

Here are some software-oriented specifications. I will put some information for those running on VirtualBox (a virtual machine software), but this may be ignored in reading if you are running MS-DOS on a native system or some other kind of virtualization.

≥ 64 MB of RAM. Memory, memory. For your information, although VirtualBox recommends 32 MB for memory, I wouldn't mind going to 64 MB for this one just in case. That is just one marker of my personality, really. Suffice it to say, I would not go too far on this lest it be a preparation apropos of nothing; MS-DOS is known to only utilize a certain amount of memory (circa 640 KB): if there is more memory than it can utilize, it simply ignores the overmuch.

≥ 1 GB Disk space. Again, VirtualBox recommends 500 MB for disk space, I don't see the harm of pushing it to two fold (1 GB), just in case. Again, I wouldn't go too far on this one: not because MS-DOS wouldn't use it, but actually inasmuch as it would be useless space and the initial formatting process brought upon by the MS-DOS setup could take way too long.

≥ 128 MB Video Memory + 3D acceleration. VirtualBox recommends 9 MB for video memory without 3D acceleration. However, since you know me well, I'll just go for 128 MB + 3D acceleration, just in case! You can hate me all you want.

≤ 50% CPU execution capability. If you are running natively, you can ignore this one because your system is bound to handle it; if you are running MS-DOS on a virtual machine, read up. This is important if you are using VirtualBox, lest the guest OS consume a needless margin of 100% CPU all the time, which could be a detriment for your system on the whole: host and guest alike. This is a very common problem posed by DOS as guest operating systems; it is as though DOS were a hungry, greedy, CPU eating monster. My wild guess says that setting this will only permit MS-DOS to use 50% of what it would use if it were otherwise unset. Technically, you could go as low as about 40%, but this seems to slow DOS down a little too much, so much so that some basic MS-DOS programs fail to work.

MS-DOS 6.22 setup floppy disks (images) + optional supplemental disk(s). You will need the setup disks to setup the operating system to full operation. Albeit optional, it may well be beneficial to have the supplemental disk(s) to get neat additionals like DOSSHELL; setting them up and using them will be covered later in this post. If you are using a virtualization system, you are quite certainly going to use floppy disk images, or virtual disks as they are often called, unless you have a floppy disk drive with you and prefer the clickaty-clack of the drive head peering through the magnetic jargon.

Here are some hardware-oriented specifications. This is important for those who are running MS-DOS on a native machine. If you are using VirtualBox or some means of virtualization, you need not worry about this inasmuch as your virtualization system should provide all this for you on the ready; it is still good practice to check through this so as to see if you really have everything.

PS/2 mouse pointer and keyboard. MS-DOS was made in the time when only PS/2 mouse pointers and keyboards were around. Sometimes, serial ports were used for that too! So, this is quite vital lest you not be able to take control of the console later on. However, there have been cases where my USB mice and keyboards work, but it is safe to assume I was just lucky.

≥ 1 floppy disk drives. Of course, MS-DOS was made to work on disks. From the start, if you even want a chance at setting up MS-DOS via floppy disk, it behoves you to have a floppy disk drive. Having more than one floppy drives isn't necessary, but it can be advantageous in certain configurations.

A monitor. Isn't this one obvious?

Of course, if you have a better alternative than what my prerequisites have so kindly stipulated, then you are welcome to use that; I won't mind. This section is here just to make preparation a little bit easier.

Now, there is certain to be something that may be bugging you and me right now, isn't there? Yes! I did not provide you with any download links to MS-DOS 6.22 setup disk images! Why didn't I do that, you ask? Well, this started when I got frustrated by other MS-DOS bloggers who were really just ignoring the need to provide those disk images to the public domain, even though the operating system had been deprecated for years! I also saw those bloggers leading very happy and popular lives, than I did. So enraged and jealous did I become, that I have decided to follow such stupidious trend: I will not be giving any resources to those disk images, as part of a revenge scheme. Blame the elitists for that, hah! Here are the pictures of the 3 setup disks. I won't lie, but that's what they expect you to be able to do: take them right off the screen! Duh! Okay, I am really angry and frustrated right now — let's just get a move on.

Alright, let's move on to the installation, shall we? I will be using VirtualBox to run MS-DOS and taking screenshots from there to put into this post.

Installation: Basic MS-DOS setup

First of all, insert the first installation floppy disk. This should be bootable by default unless the disk or drive is faulty. The first screen you should see after inserting the disk is the quintessential greeting of Starting MS-DOS.... As well as at the beginning of the setup process, this greeting appears on every boot up of the installed operating system itself. I think it's really cute, and it means you're great to go as this is how the fun really begins! :D

You are doing great! Now, the setup is in English, or it may be in a different language if you have purchased your copy in a different country. All you need to do from here is basically use your common sense and follow it out to the end on your own. From here, I won't say much, apart from one picture and a piece of commentary for each step, in that order. You can find the entire photo album of the MS-DOS 6.22 setup process from start to finish right at the link.

This is the default introduction to the setup. It tells you simply about what is going to happen, like an introduction to an essay with some tips and advice and how you can navigate around it in a basic sense. Your keyboard is to be used to handle everything as that is really all you can and need at the moment. The text user interface has got a pretty complete and friendly face so that you can indulge in it, as it were.

Don't let's expect me to rewrite whatever the instructions on the screen say; I expect you to read it yourself, then you should already know what is there, because I see no sense in being more redundant.

This help screen should tell you how you can navigate around. I won't tell you how to get into this screen, because it's obvious and you should really already know (press F1 lol)! This screen is just here on this post for reference.

On a brand new computer or virtualization session, your disks should literally be 100% bereft of partitions, partition tables, or whatever. If such is the case, then you should see this screen, proposing the allocation of the remaining free space, which just so happens to be the entire disk, since it is 100% bereft of partitions and thus, 100% free of things!

Only on an old computer with existing files must one be cautious of this potentially perilous step. The first paragraph neatly claims that None of your existing files will be affected. However, to be on the safe side, you had best back up your belongings on the hard drive lest the setup fail to manage the disk properly.

On one note, I don't really know what the setup will show if you do have a used disk with existing data and partitions in it, although if you do have a pre-existing MS-DOS installation, the setup will ask you whether you want to quit setup or simply reinstall the system files, leaving any existing non-system files untouched (but do not trust this fully). However, I think it should follow the flow of common sense so you could understand it pretty easily, and it might even claim to save your existing data for you. Nevertheless, data security should always be practiced.

I'm not sure if some people are absent-minded enough to think the setup will have already been completed when they see this screen. Well, truthfully, it isn't; and this is the very reason why the setup stipulates that the user keep the disk in place in the drive — so that it can continue later after a reboot.

Hardly will the disk have been touched at this point, but it will certainly be touched and modified after you've pressed ENTER to reboot. The MS-DOS setup already knows what it must do: it relays the user's instructions to allocate the space on disk and declares that it be done on next reboot provided that the disk be in the drive. So, be kind: keep the disk in the drive, press ENTER to reboot, and don't forget to get your BIOS boot order right. :)

As promised, the space which you wanted formatted earlier gets formatted!

The first partition MS-DOS finds is always given the name of drive C:, because the first two letters, namely A and B, are reserved for the two floppy disk drives on computers back in those days. Having two floppy disk drives proved quite useful on two usual occasions, all of which set in the 1980-90s:

Drive A: would be used for the system disk: the floppy diskette which would contain the Operating System and all the necessary commands, utilities, and programs; drive B: would be used for the other stuff: disks inserted here would usually contain more programs or utilities, text documents, or other types of data or work the user keeps.

After the OS had found its way to live in a hard drive, drive A: could be used for any normal, misc., external input and output of files and data: utilities and programs, documents and text files; drive B: was finally free to be used as a destination location if files from drive A: needed to be copied to another disk, namely the one in drive B:, using MS-DOS commands like DISKCOPY.

Admittedly, hard drives had not come built-in; operating systems and files had to be accessed from floppy disks, rendering the computer an expensive hollow data crunching box. No sooner had operating systems begun to gain complexity than hard drives began to be installed on all computers. This late arrival of hard drives has lent the hard drive and subsequent IDE drives a name of C:, D:, E:, and so on; a tradition which has continued until today.

After the previous step, you will immediately be flung here. These are user-based settings: configurations pertaining to you and your personal life. This should not be as intimate as the one you'd be expected to fill at a clinic.

MS-DOS stores the date you set in absolute local time, without converting it into UTC then storing it in the CMOS. This information could prove useful if you are dual-booting somehow. It's helpful to have the time and date configured correctly. Unlike MS-DOS versions 1 through to 3, the date and time is stored courtesy of the CMOS.

After that, you will want to tell it something about your country and localization so the system understands how to process real numbers (in US: 3.141592; in Sweden: 3,141592), currency (in US: $72; in Sweden: 72kr), and other things related to locality. The keyboard layout is also important; you will usually want to set this to what concurs with your physical keyboard layout lest you end up with a weird, seemingly malfunctioning keyboard.

From this point on, I will not mention that you can use the ENTER key to continue. Besides, this is already written on the blue walls of the setup.

The setup wizard will ask you where you wish to place the MS-DOS operating system. Such is the complexity of the operating system, it is behoved to reside on a hard drive; this hard drive is usually the drive C:, and the directory is usually \DOS. These are the default settings, and it's recommended that you leave them as-is unless you are cooking up a storm or tweaking your computer.

After the previous step, you will immediately be flung here. This is where you can allegedly fill out your registration card assuming you have one. In addition to that absurdity, this screen will only last for a few seconds, which is scarcely enough time to write anything, really.

To understand why this may seem absurd now, but not in the 1980s, see the next section.

A few seconds later, et voila! At this stage with the yellow progress bar, the setup will be adamant that you feed it with more floppy disks and will keep pesking you about it for a few times. All you need to do is keep feeding it with floppy disks; you need not worry about hard ejecting the floppy disks from your drive and inserting a new one because it will have already been unmounted when it prompts you to do so.

Then, not long after, you will find this screen which asks you to clear your drive of floppy disks. This is really rather important in order that unnecessary panic attacks be migitated; unless you remove all disk(s) from your floppy drives, the computer will fail to boot into the new operating system, because it will try to and hopelessly fail at booting up that pesky floppy disk drive that should have been removed, in lieu of making a valuable attempt at booting the actual operating system.

Once you've done, you will be rewarded with the good old Starting MS-DOS... greeting message, but then something will have changed: you will no longer see the blue wall! Bad news for lovers of the blues (no pun intended)!

However, you will instantly be flung into an uncanny stare-down between you and the computer's command prompt. Assuming you know MS-DOS commands, this should be a comfortable place for you. I, myself, know a few useful commands to get by, because I have been practicing them since I was about 9 or 10, I think. :P Don't you fret if you not know life in the command prompt; there are plenty of guides on MS-DOS command line available online — the challenge is choosing which one to stick with! :P

You may have noticed that some commands have been pre-typed, namely C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE /X. This is normal and can be thought of as the autorun commands — commands that are run automatically every startup — which can be configured as an imperative list of commands in a file called AUTOEXEC.BAT in the root directory.

To get you pumped up for now, here are a few commands you can try on. I'll also give you the UNIX-like synonyms of each command; they may not work in the same way, though.

DIR — displays visible, not hidden, files on the current directory. Use DIR /P (the same command with the /P parameter) to pause the output every so often, if the output scrolls off screen. (UNIX: ls -l)

TREE — gives you a nice view of the directory tree. (UNIX: tree)

CD x — changes the working directory to the specified directory x. Let x be .. (2 dots) to navigate one directory backwards. If x is an argument not provided, it outputs the current working directory. (UNIX: cd x)

MOVE x y — moves file x to location y. (UNIX: mv x y)

COPY x y — copies file x to location y. (UNIX: cp x y)

REN x y or RENAME x y — renames file named x to y. (UNIX: mv x y)

DEL x — deletes file x; if x is a directory, only contents therein will be deleted. (UNIX: rm x)

DELTREE x — deletes a file or everything in a directory x recursively (UNIX: rm -r x)

RMDIR x — removes a directory x iff (= if and only if) it is bereft of contents. (UNIX: rmdir x)

FORMAT x — formats drive x. (UNIX: mkfs.fat x)

DISKCOPY x y — copies the entire contents of source drive x to destination drive y where both must exist. (UNIX: dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/dev/fd1)

ECHO x — displays the string x on the screen; if x is not given, a newline is displayed. (UNIX: echo x)

TYPE x — displays the content of a file x. (UNIX: cat x)

EDIT x — opens up the MS-DOS editor, editing a file named x, if it is given. (UNIX: vi x)

QBASIC x — opens up the MS-DOS QBASIC IDE for the QBASIC language; opens file x if it is given.

DATE — shows/sets the current date. (UNIX: date)

TIME — shows/sets the current time. (UNIX: date)

CLS — clears the screen. Use it when the screen gets too messy. (UNIX: clear or reset)

MSD — a diagnostic tool which displays admirable information about your installation.

HELP — built-in, interactive manual to MS-DOS. (Some UNIX systems: help)

VER — displays the version of the MS-DOS.

In no way is that an exhaustive list of all MS-DOS commands. If you should require a reference, see the HELP command. There are tonnes of other commands which I do not know of or are too complicated to explain on such a tiny blogpost like this one.

When working with files as arguments to the commands, paths are delimited using the backslash \, and the wildcard asterisk * can be used to globally match, much as glob patterns would work on the UNIX shell. The commands and the filenames do not need to be capitalized, although it is generally customary to do so. However, it is definitely not frowned upon to do otherwise!

There are two ways you can control the power to the machine:

CTRL+ALT+DEL to reboot. This key combination instantly reboots the machine, discarding any unsaved work of yours, if any. It works in almost all situations, so it can be useful when you want to get out of a halting program.

Power button once to shutdown. This isn't a trick, nor a way to forcibly shut down the computer. It's basically how you do it! You turn the computer on with the button and turn it off just as you would turn it on. On a virtual machine, you can just close the window and confirm that you will exit the virtual machine; everything will be fine. Your work will be gone if unsaved, though.

There are other utilities which use ACPI to assist reboot and shutdown without using the CTRL+ALT+DEL combination or the power button and also run on command-line. You are free to look those up if you want to, but apart from forcing you to safely quit all the running programs just to go to the DOS prompt and type the shutdown command, I see little use of it.

If you are coming from UNIX, you may well be familiar with the function of the up arrow on a shell: it goes backwards through the history of commands that have been typed. This isn't default DOS behaviour, although it can be simulated by running a daemon called DOSKEY. Simply type the DOSKEY command and it should work from the first command thereafter. If you want to get it to run on every boot-up, put it in AUTOEXEC.BAT.

Congratulations! You've officially set up your working and running MS-DOS machine. It's really rather bland right now; however, the next section covers some ways in which one can spice up the MS-DOS installation so as to make the most out of the DOS environment.

"God speed MS-DOS!"

Listen here, folks. Some of you may have already noticed that certain processes in the MS-DOS setup process and the Disk Operating System itself seems rather rushed and sped up: progress bars go flying off the screen within a second or two, leaving you no time to fill in any registration cards and whatnot. This is primarily because the designers at Microsoft had not expected you to run their operating system on a new and fast computer with a fast I/O (= Input/Output) for the installation disk.

For instance, on VirtualBox, the entire setup process can take only a minute or, at its worst, two. There are two reasons for this:

I/O of the virtual floppy disk images containing the MS-DOS setup utility is faster than I/O on physical floppy disks containing the same thing. Obviously, the I/O on virtual disk images will be faster because it is basically just gathering data from a file on your relatively high-speed host hard drive or SSD. Simply speaking, you are just reading off your hard drive or SSD, and the speed utterly depends on how fast your host's data storage system is. This is a significant factor for those running MS-DOS on a virtual machine. This axiom is true, ergo any I/O of any virtual floppy disk image containing anything will be as fast as reading from your host's disk.

Your computer is faster than what the MS-DOS team had expected. This is also another factor that may contribute to the speed of the DOS system in general. Apparently enough, computational speed has been increasing over time, and consequently, it is now much faster than when MS-DOS had made its arrival. This factor not only applies to virtual machines, but also applies to those modern computer systems with DOS on them.

This may sound a tad bit crazy, but there are utilities like SLOWDOS which attempts to slow the speed at which MS-DOS programs run, especially on fast computers where their running too fast can be a detriment. You may want to give that a look if the god speed bothers you.

Installation: The supplemental disk

MS-DOS 6.22 is undoubtedly the most stable and true version of the DOS series. It is the best it can be. However, it could have been better if Microsoft had not removed some utilities that had existed in DOS 5.0 and provided more extra utilities that DOS 6.22 should have had. Luckily enough, Microsoft responded, as it were, to this by releasing some supplemental tools on a separate floppy disk, which includes but is not limited to these utilities:

DOSSHELL (MS-DOS Shell) — a text-interface/graphical file manager and launcher. This had existed in MS-DOS 5.0, but was no sooner taken out than came the release of MS-DOS 6.22.

ADOS (Access DOS) — an accessibility program for DOS users with disabilities or issues using their computers.

Tools to create MS-DOS startup disks — this can be useful for recovery purposes. The resulting disk can be used on your computer and others' too!

Improved networking drivers — you can have Internet on DOS, yup.

MS-DOS 5.00 utilities that had been removed — Self-descriptive enough.

Dvorak keyboard support — Captain Obvious.

Those are all I can remember because they are quite significant to me, but you can see a full list of what is offered for yourself in the screenshots later on. Let us move on towards the steps of setting up the supplemental tools, or what I call additionals. The picture gallery for all these steps is provided.

Make sure you are at the DOS prompt, and it is ready to accept commands. Then, insert the supplemental disk, navigate to the A: drive, and check the contents of the disk using DIR /p just to appreciate the glorious repertoire of utilities, all of which are within your grasps. You'll quickly notice that nearly all the files have had extensions postfixed with an underscore (_); this is because they have been compressed. To uncompress and put them into your machine, see the subsequent steps...

Only once you have made sure that all files are ready, your computer is ready, and you are in for it, can you then invoke the setup utility with the SETUP command. The setup utility is a simple batch script that will decompress and copy the appropriate files with the appropriate settings into a specified path. Do type the command without any arguments first so as to review what it can provide and how you can interact with it.

Now that you know what you are into, run the SETUP command with all the valid arguments as guided in the previous briefing (usually C:\DOS). The setup will ask you a few questions. Answer them accordingly with what befits you. At this point, you can review once more what it can provide, and select how much provision you want on your computer.

Installing the whole package requires a "whopping" 1.4 megabytes — lol. :P If you are really short on space, you can select a few, or choose not to install at all (but why would you do that?)

My personal recommendation is that you should give DOSSHELL a try. It's not that useful, but it is a significant signpost that shows off the capability of the MS-DOS architecture and the extent of usefulness (or uselessness) to which the supplemental tools can become.

This looks important, and I daresay it is! You have the responsibility to choose the appropriate type of computer display you have so that the setup utility can pick and choose the appropriate drivers or packages that suit your display.

The worst case scenario of choosing the wrong display option is that one or more of the installed utilities could cease to run or look terrible on your display. For this reason, I suggest that you be prepared with basic background information concerning your hardware, so you can answer any questions that may come forth. If you are absolutely unsure, your display is very likely to be VGA. Choose that as a safest choice iff this step fills you with dismay.

After you have chosen your display type, setup will ask you to confirm your choice lest you not be sane enough. It's just a sanity check; if you think you are sane enough, continue as you wish.

No sooner will you have confirmed your choice than the setup will begin unpacking and copying necessary files into your computer. In the middle, you could be asked for your decision on replacing a file called ISO.CPI. If you are not doing anything fancy, I suggest that you should replace it, although the choice is entirely up to you.

Once the setup has finished, you will be flung back to the DOS prompt. Assuming everything goes well, you should be able to run and use the utilities of your choosing. Go ahead and try them now! Do not forget to try the DOS shell by invoking the DOSSHELL command (with 2 S's).

If things do not seem to work as planned (e.g., you have chosen the wrong display driver or the utilties are a mess), you can run the setup again with different settings.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of commands you can try on after you've installed the supplementals. These are the things that I know.

DOSSHELL — starts the MS-DOS shell.

ADOS — starts the Access DOS utility. This is useful for computer users with disabilities. Features include but are not limited to StickyKeys, Voice read-out.

EDLIN — a very primitive command-line text editor. It might be best left for experts because one can easily screw up.

Aftermath

For now you have a fully operable system, no better time has there been than this present moment to start reading up on the MS-DOS 6.22 built-in handbook via the HELP command. Things in DOS from here are really beset with text, but those texts are all in English, so, really, if you can read this blog post, you can understand MS-DOS. Aren't I right? ;)

After getting accustomed to the operating system, you can then move on to installing other utilities or programs onto your setup, which allow for work on a wider domain. Indeed, there are more powerful stuff than what the MS-DOS core and supplemental tools can provide. They include but are not limited to:

Borland C++ — for the programmers who are eager to code in C/C++. This is an IDE equipped with libraries, a geeky user interface, and its own compiler.

Microsoft Basic — for the programmers who are eager to code in BASIC. Likewise, this is an IDE with libraries, a geeky user interface, and its own compiler (or interpreter?). I believe this was deemed a necessary introduction in university/college programming modules.

Corel WordPerfect or WordStar — for people who are eager to write in an old-fashioned environment. These are good word processors.

LOTUS 1-2-3 — a really popular spreadsheet tool with presentations and charts.

Microsoft Works — a primitive office suite, featuring a word processor, spreadsheet, communications, etc.

DOOM — if you hate productivity, you should definitely give this game a try. It's a game where you shoot bad guys up. Since I'm not into games, that is all I know about it.

There are lots of other stuff that are well worth trying, but I'm just a mere mortal who cannot provide an exhaustive list thereof.

There is a rich demoscene culture behind MS-DOS. Demoscenes are programs with visual and sound effects aimed at showing off the coding effort of a particular team so as to see to it that the audio-visuals are eye-pleasing even on such a low-level system like DOS. These are usually coded in low-level languages like Assembly so that they can tap into the advanced, hidden parts of the system like 3D graphics and sound. They include:

Second Reality by Future Crew — a demoscene with the best audiovisuals I've ever seen. It requires quite a bit of memory, so you might want to run MEMMAKER to free up some memory. You will also need Soundblaster or a compatible sound card to play the audio.

Panic by Future Crew — a runner-up to Second Reality. Again, it requires some memory and a compatible appropriate soundcard.

Impulse Tracker — I know, I know — this is not a demoscene: it's a music tracker. It's still useful if you are eager to make music in the same way that the demosceners had done. So, why not give it a try? It needs a compatible soundcard, though.

More often than not, compatible sound cards include Soundblaster 16. It's so generic. :P

Speaking of soundcards, multimedia is really rather limited on MS-DOS unless you choose to install drivers for them. With appropriate hardware and their appropriate MS-DOS drivers, one can literally see to it that there be CD/DVD/Blu-ray support, Internet, sound, graphics, printing and plotting, and whatnot on a mere MS-DOS system. Yes, I did mention Internet. It's possible, but I haven't tried it yet. If you do get Internet right, you could browse the world-wide-web with ARACHNE, share files via a workgroup, or even run a 16-bit webserver. The trouble is getting the right hardware and the right drivers for it, especially nowadays.

Once again, there are lots of other stuff that are well worth trying, but I'm just a mere mortal who cannot provide an exhaustive list thereof.

As you go on topping-up your MS-DOS system, it is important to watch out for viruses that may come embedded with the stuff you download for your MS-DOS setup. Built-in tools like MSAV and VSAFE offer a basic layer of protection; do use that via their respective commands, and also do some research on how you can keep yourself safe. Their user interfaces are logical and follow intuition. VSAFE is a daemon that loads on the background.

As you keep striking out with all the daemons in the background, and the demoscenes and programs up and running, you will eventually find the need to be aware of the memory consumption. MS-DOS is a short-sighted operating system that only offers 640 KB of RAM due to technical microprocessor limitations. You can get more information about your system's memory with the MEM command, which shows how much memory you have (total), use (usage), and have left (free). If you are in need of memory, you can use MEMMAKER, an intuitive utility allowing you to free up some memory.

You will also need to be careful with your hard drive. Over time, hard drives do fail; for instace, I replaced my old 500GB drive on my laptop with a 1TB one after having used the old one for a mere 5 years. They can also become corrupt for some reason we may not know or be aware of. It is important to occasionally run disk checks with SCANDISK, which is intuitive enough to be used by an average Joe. The tool is also useful on other media too: other harddrives, floppy disks, etc.

If you have got bored of working on MS-DOS, but still want to maintain the DOS-feel, you could give Windows versions 1 to 3.11 a try. These historic versions of Windows require MS-DOS to run properly because it basically just sits on top of it, and they basically extend MS-DOS with some more graphical stuff. Since Windows is such a big subject and certain programs do rely on Windows as another stratum, it does require a separate area of discourse apropos of it; so, if you are interested in it, give me a shout out, and I may as well make a tutorial like this one about Windows on MS-DOS. Needless to say, Windows on DOS does consume quite a lot of memory, so be prepared for what you are going into! Personally, I find Windows 3.11 the most attractive because it feels like the best those series could ever be. I have a neat picture of my Windows setup below.

Once you are comfortable enough working with your MS-DOS system, you might as well consider editting and playing around with your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS. You can easily edit them with the built-in text editor EDIT. Honestly, I have to admit I'm still scared of going into those files. :P

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have just finished installing and perhaps gone on to customizing a fully operable MS-DOS that is primed and ready for real-world applications — in the past. Admittedly, this one single blog post is not enough to enlighten you to the full domain of MS-DOS computing, so let alone historic computing and the inner-workings thereof itself; however, it is a great start, indeed.

I know MS-DOS isn't quite useful nowadays, but getting to install such an epitomic marvel of computing of its time can really be an eye-openner into the known history of computers and the deeper inner-workings of computer systems, and it may also make you feel nostalgic by unlocking past memories of computing during childhood or the teen years, which is an excellent feeling, especially now in the 21st century.

Anecdotally speaking, I have always been fascinated by the black box that we call MS-DOS since I first saw it when I was 7 years old; I played around with it and quickly picked up the commands, and then I became more and more passionate about it, the more I could understand it. MS-DOS is not a very stable, let alone current, operating system; however, since I had had some experience with it, this skill further aided my journey into modern computing, which still requires the quintessential knowledge of the inner-workings of computer systems, and the command-line, especially on UNIX-like environments, with which I work daily. Furthermore, apropos of the nostalgicism mentioned earlier, starting up MS-DOS and playing with it for a half hour always gives me peace of mind, reminding me of my childhood with less responsibilities.

To conclude, although the practical usage isn't at all useful in this time and age, the skillsets attained from it certainly is, as I have so proven. If anybody is interested in the inner-workings of computer systems and is enthusiastic enough to give it a full-on shot, then I recommend beginning with the history of computing, whereby focusing on the key aspects of the intricacy of such systems, without the boring jargons presented by typical history books in grade school classes. In the end, even though you get some historic background of computing, it isn't a history subject: it is a beautiful part of a significant journey into computing. Most people fail to see this, though, proving that it is really true: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. MS-DOS and historical computing is beautiful, wherefore we seek it, wherefore I seek it.

Special thanks

I'd like to give special thanks to my mom and my best friends who have always been here, especially while writing this blog post; I'd usually spend upwards of 2 hours writing pieces of this post daily for 3-4 days. Should there ever be any misinformation, controversy, or anything that troubles you, please contact me very, very nicely.

And of course, I'd like to give special thanks to those readers who have read this post thus far. You are a hero for having read a total of 8401 words and 48.723 kilobytes of this prose of mine. Thank you for going through it with me, because to me, writing really takes me on a journey, which allows me to explore the subject in which I'm writing, in a heavenly and peaceful way. It's like reading a good book and your mind is flying about in terra incognita; you just can't put down! :)

I hope that this post has helped you in some way and that you enjoyed reading it inasmuch as I have enjoyed writing it for you.

—— Linus Björk (June, 21, 2017)