#i got tumblr access on my school computer now so guess who decided to post a fic they did yesterday :3c

[generalskales]

Pillow Fort

Read It On Ao3 Here

Characters: Griffin Turner, Original Male Character

Prompt: Griffin and Eiji build a pillow fort.

"You mean to tell me, that despite being alive for what amounts to possibly a thousand years, you have NEVER built a pillow fort?" "That is what I said." "Get all the pillows and blankets in the house that you can find, we're building one."

"It just seems to be, I don't know, not a good use of our time? We can go out and help the ninja with their patrols, or do some chores around the house?" Griffin almost felt sorry for the young immortal, the poor guy doesn't even know how fun a pillow fort is. The brunet just shook his head and smiled at the blonde standing across the room from him, and continued to rearrange the furniture. Eiji just huffed out a sigh and went upstairs to raid the rooms for what he was asked to collect. Not long after the other had left, Griffin had a sudden burst of energy and rushed out the door. He needed to run and he needed to run now. Thankfully for the master of speed, there was a large clearing behind his house just a short hike away from his house. Whenever he got a burst of energy and didn't feel like tearing through the house like a cat at 3 in the morning, he rushed out to run the perimeter of it. Judging from Eiji's face, however, it should have occurred to him to maybe explain this to his roommate after telling him to go fetch something and then bolting. "If this was your idea of a joke then you better explain it because I don't particularly find that funny." Griffin felt embarrassed, mainly because he was caught but also because he kept forgetting to mention that he has to run a few laps at least once a week or else he'll go nonstop for a few days and risk collapse. "You know how elemental masters have to sometimes find an outlet for their elements or else it can possibly kill them? That's kind of what I'm doing here." "I understand, but I would like to be told of this before I'm sent to fetch something and then find you gone, especially when it's this late in the day. Seriously Griffin it's almost sunset, at least tell me where you're going before you rush off like that." "I can't control the energy, sometimes I don't feel like cleaning up the aftermath of an indoor burst." Eiji pondered that last part, before nodding in understanding and agreement. Griffin sighed in relief and was about to ask how he could apologize for the worry he caused before he was cut off by the blonde. "So, why do you care so much about pillow forts? Is it like a family tradition of yours or..." "What? No! Well... Hold on, I need to gather my thoughts coherently." "I'll wait." Griffin didn't feel like he could talk about this topic without letting it slip that he was in love with the other master, not at his track of all places. He made a gesture suggesting that he wanted to carry Eiji to another area, and was relieved when the blonde caught on and held onto him somewhat tightly. "Where are we going?" "Back to the house, we'll talk as we build." "Whatever makes you comfortable Griffin." Griffin never really paid attention to how far away the clearing actually was, he thought it was a lot shorter. Granted, he was usually going so fast it really was just a stone's throw away for him. He felt kind of bad for making Eiji march all the way out to get him. The pillow fort didn't take as long as Griffin had hoped. He planned on focusing so much on building it that he could ignore the inevitable conversation that would end with him broken-hearted and out one wonderful roommate. Eiji, on the other hand, looked pleased with the result. It was a simple little fort, just barely big enough for them to be comfortable, but the look on his face betrayed his emotions. He ducked underneath the blanket they used as the roof and invited Griffin to join, patting the spot next to him. Griffin happily obliged, laying his head on Eiji's thigh. "So, we built the fort, and I think I can see why you were so intent on having me build one with you. It was fun, despite the purpose still being unclear to me." "Well, what do you think the purpose is?" "I read up on it while I was upstairs as to what it was, and the purpose, usually, is to entertain a child? I am not a child and neither are you, so there has to be another reason for your suggestion." "You talk like a nerd." "Says the man who spent half a day teaching me Sonic the Hedgehog lore." "Hey, that's very important information!" "Back to my question, why did we build this?" "Well, like you said it's usually to entertain children, and yet you have never even heard of one much less build one. It's a nice thing to experience as a child and while I understand that your childhood was... far from great, it's something you never even thought to act upon? I don't know exactly, I think I just wanted to give you something nice to remember about me when I'm not around anymore..." Eiji paused, processing what Griffin just told him. He had a look of concern on his face that was usually reserved for a problem with his silk moths. Eiji's eyes were a nice blue, it reminded him of a pool. He would be honored if he could drown in them. "Griffin? Are you okay? You're staring off into space again." "A pool would be a better descriptor..." "I'm sorry a what? Griffin, what are you staring at that has you so enthralled?" Griffin quickly sat up and attempted to hide the blush that was appearing on his face. "Is there something wrong?" "No, no there isn't. I was just thinking about going swimming later..." "Griffin, usually when people lie they avoid eye contact, and you're not even facing me while speaking. Either be honest and tell me what's wrong or you're getting moth therapy." He shuddered at the mere idea of moth therapy, he didn't know what it was but something in the back of his mind said he probably he didn't want to know. He tried to think of an excuse but his mouth moved faster than his brain. "Eyes." "What?" "I was staring into your eyes, they remind me of a pool because I used to go swimming a lot and the water was the same shade as your eyes and gosh they're so pretty." Eiji, unfortunately, went silent. A sign that Griffin has majorly fucked up and he needs to find a way to play it off that wouldn't offend him further. He was interrupted by what was unmistakably laughter. It wasn't the prettiest laugh he's ever heard, but definitely one of the nicer ones. It was genuine, and it helped deter the approaching doubts Griffin had about his feelings. "Thank you! No one's ever really commented on them. Although you've seen my mask, they're usually too terrified to notice! You were enthralled by my eyes? I don't really understand why, because your eyes are even more fascinating!" "How so?" "Griffin... please tell me you're joking." "I don't understand what you find special about my eyes?" "Well, I find your left eye specifically to be interesting, it's two different colors. Brown and blue, split right down the middle it seems. You have sectoral heterochromia." Griffin gave Eiji a confused look and left to go find a mirror. Obviously, he would have noticed his left eye being two different colors... right? He never felt so stupid looking in that mirror, he's had this his whole life and he's just now noticed? He stared intently in the mirror, wondering and slightly hoping that this was some kind of hallucination from lack of sleep. No wonder people did double-takes the rare moments he removed his shades from their proper place. He figured he may have gotten used to it, a lot of people in his family had some strange-looking eyes. Maybe he just thought his eyes were ordinary in comparison. He's known a few people with heterochromia before, but he never thought he had it as well. Eiji was always the smart one, spending possibly thousands of years locked in an evergrowing library of knowledge does that to you. Almost as if the thought summoned the other elemental, Eiji appeared in the doorway, holding a bowl and a pack of popcorn. "Want to watch a movie in the fort with me?" Griffin smiled in the mirror, staring into his roommate's pretty blue eyes. "Sounds great, but I swear if you pick another slasher film then you're dealing with me tonight. I will demand so many apology cuddles you'll wish you never knew me." The blonde smirked and gave him a wink. "Aww, I was looking forward to a Vorhees marathon... I'll go pick something else then, see you in the fort birdy." Griffin was about to backtrack and say that he was joking until he remembered quite vividly the select reasons why he disliked the genre. He's seen enough blood courtesy of that stupid tournament. He shook the thoughts away before staring into the mirror one last time. He had to agree, his eyes were fascinating.

[freudensteins-monster]

You Say “Mad Scientist” Like It’s A Bad Thing

Based on my own tumblr post: 3am thoughts… Has anyone written Jane Foster as a mad scientist, I mean like a villain?

Chaotic neutral Darcy and Jane featuring modern/human SHIELD Agent Bucky.

Available on AO3.

Content Warnings: Implied/Referenced Torture, Aftermath of Torture, Amnesia, Memory Suppressing Machine | The Chair (Marvel), Dark, Sort Of, Ambiguous/Open Ending...

In a world full of megalomaniacs, straight up supervillains, and fricking aliens, mad scientists were a dime a dozen. Dr Foster was one such scientist who was quickly moving from mildly irritating to SHIELD’s Most Wanted.

Dr Foster’s gimmick was portals. She first gained international attention when she claimed responsibility (via an untraceable Instagram account, @dr-mthrfckng-foster) for diverting LA’s 405 to a dirt road in rural Australia. Then came a string of impossible robberies – bank vaults and the private collections of the world's richest assholes stripped bare in seconds. Then she created a portal that caused an Indonesian typhoon to bear down on Wall Street, flooding the trading floor. And then she robbed a top secret government black site of some classified technology.

And that’s when Director Nick Fury made finding and stopping Dr Foster SHIELD’s number one priority.

Agent James Barnes had been stuck on suspension for two weeks, with two more to go, and was itching to get back into the field. He had way too much free time on his hands: he’d caught up on his sleep and everything in his Netflix queue. He’d cleaned out his refrigerator, done laundry and enough meal prep to last him until next month. He’d caught up with his family, cleaned his whole goddamn apartment twice, and now he was well and truly bored.

He was out for his fifth run of the week (and it wasn’t even Wednesday) when his work phone rang.

“Thank Christ,” he muttered before answering.

“Barnes.”

“It’s Hill. How’s the arm?”

“Fine,” Barnes grunted, rotating his metal shoulder irritably. “You got something for me?”

“Are you up for a recon mission?”

Usually he would have protested. He headed tactical units. He was an elite ‘first through the door’ kind of field agent. Not that he couldn’t be stealthy and patient - he’d been a sniper in the army for christ's sake - but going unnoticed in public was kind of a problem for him these days; he’d have to wear jackets and gloves in the middle of August to hide his prosthetic for starters.

On the other hand, his mother had been calling him every second day to feed him carb-heavy meals in exchange for help around the house, all while dropping not-so-subtle hints that he should start dating again. Requests for more grandchildren couldn’t be far behind.

“I’ll be there in thirty.”

Thirty-five minutes later Agent Barnes was back at his desk at SHIELD HQ perusing through the increasingly large file of one Dr Jane Foster. 

She had been a brilliant student and had earned a PhD in Astrophysics from Culver University by the age of 25. By all accounts she should have been one of the leading researchers in her field, and if doctoral programs handed out superlatives Dr Foster’s would have been “Most Likely To Win a Nobel Prize By 30”. 

Unfortunately for Dr Foster, and the rest of the world, she had been forced from that path by a sexist tenured professor who publicly denounced her theories, and the woman herself, as crazy, discredited her published work, and used his influence to ensure she was denied all of the more lucrative research grants.

When federal agents went to interview him after the 405 incident they found his office looking like a tornado had gone through it and the professor himself was nowhere to be found. A few weeks later he stumbled into a US Embassy in Russia after being found wandering in from the forests outside Vladivostok, half mad and still decrying the evils of allowing women into scientific fields.

He had been placed into witness protection and promptly admitted into a psychiatric facility under his new name, and was being monitored by several undercover agents in case Dr Foster felt like punishing him some more. 

Anyone else who had a part in ruining Dr Foster’s legitimate career was also under surveillance, as was her mother in London, a terrified ex-boyfriend in Boston, and a handful of known associates, though Dr Foster hadn’t been in contact with any of them in years.

SHIELD and other federal agencies had tried the usual methods of tracking down a rogue mad scientist. They tried to find out where her base of operations was, firstly by looking for any properties in her name, but Dr Foster had been a broke student with an impressive amount of debt (until the day she decided to wipe it, and the rest of Culver’s student debt, out). So if she had property it would definitely not be in her legal name and all but impossible to trace back to her. Then they tried to look for drains on the powergrid. However she managed to generate her portals - SHIELD scientists still hadn’t figured that out - it surely had to be using huge amounts of electricity. So far they’d found six grow labs and two server rooms running illegal god-knows-what, but no Dr Foster.

Agent Barnes read the file twice, reviewed all the transcripts of the interviews with her known associates, and came to one very important conclusion: she had an accomplice. 

As smart as Dr Foster was there was nothing in her academic history to suggest that she had a background in computer science that would account for the notable hacks and the untraceable nature of her activities. To add to that several interviewees had made passing remarks about her not having a cell phone for most of her academic career, and how she had zero interest in social media.

Two days later, after getting the okay for a field trip from Hill, Agent Barnes made his way to Culver University to speak to anyone who had even the vaguest recollection of Dr Foster. And that’s how he learnt about the intern.

He’d started by dropping by one of the physics labs where Dr Foster had spent most of her time, and by pure chance met a doctoral candidate who remembered her, and her intern.

“I think her name was Darlene. Glasses. Always on her phone.”

…which led him to the academic advisor who put the two of them together...

“Darcy. Darcy Lewis. She was actually a PoliSci major but left it too late and Dr Foster’s internship was the only one available. She had only been working with her for a few weeks before… before Dr Foster’s funding was revoked and she was asked to leave.”

...who pointed him to one of Darcy’s former professors…

“Average student. Good debater. Often late, and always had a coffee in her hand.”

...who gave him a few names of some former classmates who might remember her…

“Not the worst person to be stuck with on a group assignment. Pulled her weight. Obsessed with her stupid iPod.”

“I swear she lived off pop tarts and coffee. And not Starbucks either. Some stupid hipster chain.”

“Deja Brew. Serious problem. Went through one of those loyalty punch cards every week. Always complained about having to go home for the holidays and resort to big chain coffee shops.”

...which had him driving out to Darcy Lewis’ hometown, located a few hours south of Roanoke, Virginia, stopping first at the local high school to speak to the school principal…

“She’d always been good with computers but wasn’t allowed to use them at home for some reason so she spent a lot of time at the local library using theirs. We had to suspend her once. One of her classmates accused her of accepting payment from other students to hack the school’s records and alter their grades. Their grades were definitely getting altered, but we couldn’t get any concrete proof it was her.”

...who was able to find a photo of 16 year old Darcy in an old yearbook and told him what bar he could find Darcy’s mother in.

“She knows not to come to me if she’s in the shit, because I would call the cops in a heartbeat. Especially after that stunt she pulled before she went off to college…”

“What stunt was that, Ms Bennett?” Agent Barnes asked patiently, hoping he wouldn’t have to enable her alcoholism to get some useful information. 

“I made some mistakes, okay,” she slurred defensively. “I was having an affair with my boss. Don’t know how Darcy knew. She told her stepfather but he didn’t believe her. Then a few weeks later we went out to dinner for my boss’s birthday... all the tv’s in the bar start showing security camera footage of us falling into offices and motel rooms. Took her all of a minute to ruin two marriages and a law firm.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he replied diplomatically. “Is there anyone she could turn to for help? Her father, perhaps.”

“He died when she was about twelve. They were as thick as thieves,” she recalled with a tinge of bitterness.

“Was there any place that was special to them? Someone she might go to ground?”

She shook her head. “He used to rent this old cabin near the Catskills off a buddy of his every other year. Winter or summer, Darcy loved it. But it's long gone. Forest fire, I think, the year before his accident.”

Back in his car Agent Barnes reviewed the data points.

Dr Foster had a base of operations somewhere. Had to be private, and as best SHIELD could guess it must be off the grid and Dr Foster must be generating her own power.

Dr Foster was a space nut at heart, and while an abandoned observatory might be too much to ask for, she’d probably want somewhere with minimal light pollution.

And while they could portal anywhere, neither of them spoke any other languages and had no familiarity with any international locations, so they were most likely still State-side. (Dr Foster’s mother had moved to London when Jane was twenty-three, but she’d never found the time to visit.)

Miss Lewis was familiar with the Catskills area. A base of operations there could be very isolated.

Dr Foster was most likely building and modifying her own own equipment so she had to be able to access materials. Sure, she could portal to her local hardware store, but having Darcy drive into the nearest town for supplies would attract less attention.

Miss Lewis had an addiction to coffee procured from Deja Brew, a small hipster chain with only a handful of locations along on the east coast. While she could have found another way to get her caffeine fix, people were creatures of habit.

Miss Lewis was also known for stocking up on poptarts. In one of the only images of the other side of one of Dr Foster’s portals there was what appeared to be, if one squinted, a box of limited edition pop tarts on a counter.

He plugged it all into SHIELD fancy search engines and got a few results back. The most promising was an abandoned ski chalet turned abandoned research station halfway up a mountain, an hour drive away from an up and coming tourist town, whose main street hosted a Deja Brew cafe. They also had a small mom and pop hardware store, as well as a post office, and a grocery store that had still been selling pumpkin pie pop tarts around the time Dr Foster’s portal had been caught on camera.

Agent Barnes came to with a groan. The flesh of his shoulder where it met his prosthetic felt like it was on fire, and he was pretty sure he could smell fried wiring.

The research station had come up in SHIELD’s initial search for a potential mad scientist's lair, but had been dismissed for not using any power and for not sending back any heat signature readings. Perhaps they’d found a way to fool the scanners. Or maybe they just weren’t in the day the readings were taken. Whatever the reason, Agent Barnes had a good feeling about it. He filled his tank up at the nearest gas station and got on the highway, forgoing checking in at the Triskelion on his way past in favour of driving all night. He’d call Hill when he had something solid. 

** *** **

“Fuck…”

He willed his eyes open and came face to face with Darth Vader.

Barnes reeled back at the sound of the synthesized voice. “Who sent you? Who do you work for?! The Rebellion?” 

“What the fuck!”

It took him until his eyes adjusted to the fluorescent lighting to realise that Darth Vader was wearing a grey knit dress and black tights. Darth Vader laughed and ripped off his mask to reveal a smiling bespectacled brunette underneath. The accomplice. Darcy Lewis.

“Sorry, I was just messing with you, dude,” she teased, tossing the mask over her shoulder. “I’ve always wanted to do that. But seriously, who do you work for? Who knows you’re here?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he lied. “I was just camping in the woods, man. I saw the lights and decided to check it out,” he rambled in a lazy Canadian accent. “How the hell did I get here? Did you electrocute me?”

He used his not-quite fake panic to test the limits of his restraints. He’d been strapped into some sort of junkstore barber chair, with thick metal shackles locked around his wrists, ankles, and chest. His metal arm could probably make quick work of them but the damn thing was not responding. His panic became a little less fake.

“Just camping, huh?” she echoed back with a raised eyebrow, leaning forward to the point where Barnes couldn’t avoid getting a good look down her top and the 15-carat pink diamond (worth about 40mil and reported stolen in one of Dr Foster’s vault heists two months ago) hanging around her neck. “So that wasn’t you poking around town this morning?” she asked pointedly, drawing his attention to the wall of monitors he hadn’t noticed showing various street cameras around the town. “I’ve got eyes and ears everywhere, dude. You got into town bright and early in a beat up looking truck with plates that didn’t exist two weeks ago and started flashing my yearbook photo around. So, who do you work for?”

He levelled his best steely-eyed agent stare at her and switched back to his native pissed-off Brooklynite accent. “I ain’t tellin you shit, sweetheart.”

“C’mon now,” she cooed, taking a seat on his lap. “Who do you work for? FBI? Interpol? SHIELD? Crawford County Library Services? Listen, I was totally going to return Eat Pray Love, but we had to skip town in a hurry and it got lost in the move. I will totally pay to replace it.”

Years of training (and regular poker games with the Black Widow) had taught him to school his features, even if that last one threw him for a loop.

“Nothing? You sure you don’t want to talk to me? Fine,” she whined. “Jane!”

It was only then that Barnes switched his focus from his captor to his surroundings and realised that there was another occupant puttering about on the other side of the large telescope that took pride of place on a hydraulic platform underneath the research station's retractable roof. The infamous Dr Foster.

“Jane!”

“What?” came the irritated reply. 

“Come over here and practise your monologue. Look! You’ve got a captive audience and everything!” she announced, laughing at her own joke. 

“I don’t have time, Darcy,” the disgruntled voice argued. 

“Hey! I spent two days writing up that monologue, the least you can do is spend twenty-five minutes reading it out loud so I can make sure it doesn’t make you sound too much like a cartoon villain.” 

“Twenty-five minutes?! Are you kidding me?” Dr Foster stormed out from behind the telescope to wave a wrench at her assistant. She looked less put together than her ID photo, appearing to be long overdue for both a shower and a nap. “I’m in the middle of something. I’ve almost figured the problem with the mobile portal generator, and… Darcy, why is there a man tied to a chair in my lab?”

“This man?” Darcy snorted, taking Barnes’s chin in her hands and wiggling it about. “This is the intruder. You remember the intruder alert, like fifteen minutes ago? Lots of flashing lights and alarms? Well, I found this guy passed out on the lawn. For most people, hitting my force field would be like getting lightly tased, but this bad boy,” she continued, tapping a fingernail against his dead metal arm, “meant you ended up getting the full 50,000 volts to your heart. Thanks for letting me practice my CPR by the way,” she added with a wink.

“It’s not a force field, Darcy. It’s a glorified invisible pet fence, upsized and modified so it reacts to the electrical impulses in the human body.”

“It keeps people out; I’m calling it a force field.”

This was definitely the weirdest interrogation he had endured by a large margin, Barnes mused as he followed their bickering like a pingpong game.

“Who is he, Darcy?” Jane sighed wearily. “What is he doing here?”

“Fiiiine. Janey, meet Agent James Barnes of SHIELD.”

“What?! SHIELD?!!”Jane screeched. “Why did you bring him here?”

“He found us, Jane. What was I supposed to do?”

“Something other than bringing him inside our secret hideout.”

“I am not killing him and burying him in the woods; I just did my nails.”

Jane scowled, turning the full force of her overtired fury on James. “Why can’t you SHIELD issue jackbooted thugs just leave me alone? Can’t you understand how important my work is? I am challenging the very foundations of modern science - of the laws of the universe! I am on the verge of a breakthrough! And if you or Nick Fury think you can stop me, you’ve got another thing coming!”

Before his mouth could betray him and ask how the hell they knew his boss Darcy spoke up.

“A little off script, but I like the energy, Jane. Very much the mad scientist vibe we’re going for. But next time, try not to make it so personal – we’ve got to hide the target of our frustrations, remember? Instead of saying “SHIELD” say “government”, instead of saying “Nick Fury” say “president”.”

“Right, right,” Jane nodded absently, tapping the side of her head with the wrench she had just been waving around like a weapon.

“Now, go back to work. I’ll handle this.”

“Okay, thanks Darce. Oh, have you seen my soldering iron around?”

“It’s in the locked cabinet because you’re not allowed to use it unsupervised, you know that. Gimme ten minutes, I’ll bring it to you.”

Jane wandered back to her side of the observatory, muttering under her breath, leaving Barnes at Darcy’s mercy.

“She’s not the criminal mastermind here, is she?” he wondered, his eyes roaming over the strange cupcake of a woman in his lap.

“Not exactly,” Darcy admitted. “I mean, it’s not like she set out to be a mad scientist. I kind of rebranded her after that little freeway incident.”

“Rebranded?”

“Yeah. She was in a bad way after New Mexico and then when the first live test of her portal engine went a little sideways I didn’t want dudebros on the internet coming after her, so I changed the narrative. Instead of ‘girl scientist makes mistake, should stick to making sandwiches’ I changed it to ‘Dr Foster, genius astrophysicist, causes chaos, totally on purpose.’”

“And all those robberies?”

“I may have encouraged that. I’m all for sticking it to the one percenters, and Jane needed to fund her experiments somehow,” she added with a shrug.

“So Jane’s the absent-minded professor and you’re the brains behind this operation, huh?”

Darcy laughed and slid out of his lap causing a distracting amount of friction. “I’m really not. So you, Coulson, and Fury should be really, really scared.”

“How do you know those names?” he had to know, cover be damned.

“You don’t know? Of course you don’t,” she huffed. “Fury and his clearance levels. I’d tell you to ask him about New Mexico sometime, but you’re not going to be able to.”

“Why not? What are you going to do to me?” Barnes fretted, unable to ignore the sinking feeling that he was in big trouble; she wouldn’t have told him anything if she intended on letting him walk out of here.

“Oh, relax. I’m not going to kill you. I’m just gonna scramble your brain a little.”

She circled his chair, flipping switches as she went, and something behind him started humming ominously.

“So, admittedly I didn’t major in hard sciences. I had an ex who did, but he also fancied himself something of a cat burglar, so when he went to jail I liberated all his college textbooks and gave myself a crash course in electrical engineering. And it helped that those HYDRA designs were really easy to follow.”

“HYDRA?” Barnes cursed.

HYDRA had been the scientific branch of the Nazi regime and believed that discovery required (human) experimentation. They were supposedly eradicated at the end of WWII but Project Paperclip saved some of HYDRA’s greatest minds, giving them immunity in exchange for their genius. If Foster or, more worryingly, Darcy had aligned themselves with some surviving HYDRA faction the results could be catastrophic.

“Yeah, I found them in that SHIELD warehouse when we recovered Jane’s stolen research.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They just call it ‘The Chair’, which is totally not creepy at all,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “And this is the Halo,” she added, drawing Barnes’s attention to the whirring circle of metal that was lowering itself over his head.

“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted, renewing his efforts to break free of his restraints. “Get that piece of scrap metal the fuck away from me!”

“Hey! Don’t mock my work. It may look like I raided a junkyard for the components - and I did - but my welding game is on point. It’s totally safe. Mostly safe. It’s just going to send focused electrical pulses to your…” she paused to consult some smudged writing on her hand, “hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.”

The Halo stopped moving and two metal plates extended, pressing against the sides of his head, holding it like a vice.

“Please… don’t do this,” he begged as she approached him with a rubber mouthguard.

“C’mon, open wide. You don’t want to end up braindead and unable to chew your food,” she jested, waving the thing in front of him. “Oh, just one question before I fry your brain,” she added just when he was about to give in. “How did you find us? I was so careful,” she whined.

Agent Barnes, terrified as he was, still managed to look smug at his small, short lived success. “Deja Brew coffee.”

“Curses!” she wailed theatrically. “Betrayed by my one true love!” 

Darcy huffed and quickly returned her attention to the matter at hand. 

“Thanks for that,” she said with a smile as she forced him to bite down on the mouthguard. “I’ll know better for next time. Start making my own coffee at home… but it never tastes as good,” she muttered to herself.

She stepped away from him and bent down to pick up a similarly frankensteined industrial remote with long wires snaking back to the chair and a clichéd big red button at its centre. He began struggling anew, screaming around the foul tasting rubber, begging for mercy.

She took great delight in his terrified expression and put on her best supervillain voice, “Give my regards to Nick Fury.”

Nick Fury observed his agent from behind a two way mirror as he sat behind a table in an interrogation room. Barnes had been sitting there for the past hour as still as a statue, except for his unfocused eyes which flitted about the room. 

In true horror movie fashion, Agent Barnes’ screams echoed down the mountainside like an avalanche, sending animals fleeing in terror for miles around.

** *** **

Local LEO’s had found him wandering aimlessly down a stretch of highway just outside the ruins of what had previously been Puente Antiguo, New Mexico, and ten minutes after they ran his prints Agent Romanoff had been on a quinjet to collect him. She’d been directed to the nearest hospital and found him sitting up on a bed but not responding or reacting to any of the medical staff as they buzzed around him. Agent Romanoff took a cautious step forward and held her breath as his unfocused eyes settled on her. 

“Hello James...”

An excruciating minute later the veil lifted and he attempted a smile. 

“Hey Tasha.”

She’d brought him back to base and dragged him to SHIELD’s medical bay for more tests - not that Barnes put up much of a fight, in fact he was terrifyingly compliant. The SHIELD doctors confirmed what the New Mexico doctors suspected: the bruising and electrical burns around his temples and his memory loss were indicative of some back alley version of electroshock therapy. His memories should come back in time - how long was anybody’s guess - but for the moment Agent James Barnes had no memory of the last four weeks.

Fury picked up a tablet with depressingly little information on its screen and stepped into the room, waiting for Barnes eyes to focus on him before taking a seat. 

“Agent Barnes.”

“Director.”

“I know you’re probably sick of questions by now, but I have a few more for you, if that’s alright.”

“Yeah, sure…”

It rankled Fury to no end how meak and passive Barnes seemed. Heaven help him, he missed the argumentative sonofabitch.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Being called into your office.”

“What for?”

“I punched Rumlow.”

“Why?”

“He was bragging about taking advantage of a drunk woman at a club when he was last on leave. He didn’t like me calling out his shitty behaviour. He punched me, I punched him back.”

Fury sighed. He hadn't gotten a straight answer out of Barnes at the time of the incident and he couldn’t feel happy about getting one now. 

“Do you remember what happened once I called you into my office?”

His brow creased and his eyes zipped back and forth like the carriage of a printer as his mind searched for the elusive memory.

“You suspended me?”

“I did,” Fury confirmed. “For a whole month. But two weeks into it I pulled you in for a special assignment.”

Barnes tensed, shrinking in on himself. The confusion about his lost time seemed to be the only thing that got under his skin, but only when someone brought it up. Once the moment passed he forgot to be concerned about it.

Fury took pity on him. “For the past two weeks I had you running down leads on the whereabouts of Dr Jane Foster.”

“The scientist with the portals? Did she do this to me?”

“It’s not exactly her MO, but then again no law enforcement agency’s ever managed to have a confrontation with her. Never had the chance. Those portals of hers let her keep at a distance. You might have been the first person to have a face to face with her, but I can’t confirm it because I don’t know where the hell you were when this happened,” he grumbled, letting a little more of his usual exasperated tone filter through. “You missed check in by two days. The last we heard from you, you were at Culver running down leads on what you said was a potential accomplice. We found your car in Tromso, Norway, a day after you were found on the side of a road in New Mexico. You don’t appear on any security footage or speed cameras in the area. There’s no activity on your work or personal credit cards. Your activity logs on our highly secure system for the last two weeks are nonexistent, as are your call logs on your work phone. Even the messages you sent Romanoff from your personal phone complaining about your assignment have since been deleted - from her phone too. She’s real pissed about it. As far as your digital footprint is concerned you disappeared from a gas station outside Roanoke, Virginia, last week - do you know how weird it is to know you were headed out towards a place called Roanoke only to up and vanish?” He sighed at Barnes’ painful silence. “Is there anything you can remember, anything at all about Dr Foster or her accomplice? Anything that will help us catch up to you without talking to everyone on campus to figure out what you discovered?”

Barnes’ brow creased in painful confusion.

“I think… I think I saw Darth Vadar.”

Director Fury blinked. “Right…” He took a deep breath to stop himself from venting his frustrations at Barnes, the sorry bastard looked like a kicked puppy as it was. Instead he got up and tapped the tablet against the metal tabletop harder than strictly necessary. “Well, I’ll just go put out a BOLO out for Darth Vadar then.”

“Okay,” Barnes murmured, and promptly zoned out again.

Agent Romanoff exited the viewing room looking uncharacteristically unsettled. 

“I want a full detail on him at all times,” Fury ordered as he stormed off towards the elevators. Hill had just stepped off and was looking even more grim than usual. “Until his memories come back he’s vulnerable, and once they do he’ll be a target.”

“I’ll get a STRIKE team on it. Not Rumlow’s.”

“Get another one along with any assets currently not on assignment. Flood that campus, interrogate everybody. I wanna know who the hell Dr Foster’s accomplice is, and I wanna know yesterday. Understood?”

“I think we might have more pressing concerns, sir,” Hill reported, tapping at her tablet as it beeped erratically. “Coulson’s said there’s an issue with the Tesseract. Dr. Selvig read an energy surge from it fifteen minutes ago.”

“NASA didn't authorise Selvig to test phase,” he grunted, taking the tablet from Hill.

“He wasn't testing it, he wasn't even in the room. Spontaneous advancement.”

“Motherfucker.”

[cleverbroadwayurl]

She Used to Be Mine (Jeremy Heere x Reader Pt 19)

Song: She Used to Be Mine from Waitress 

Need to Catch Up? tumblr has now officially takes things out of the tags that have lists. The link to every part and my masterlist is in my description for easy access! 

A/N: Oh my god I finally posted! I went on vacation and had so many exams the weeks before, and I had so much other work, so I’m sorry that this is so delayed! I should be back to regularly posting soon after next weekend (I have another event coming up)! 

Taglist: @retrogarden @be-more-heidi-hansen @catatonic-kuragin @scarsonthecuffsofyourjeans @bluhimaweirdo @stargirl-murphy 

Trigger Warnings: Mentions of an abusive boyfriend, mentions of character death, mentions of abuse, mentions of injuries, mentions of math, sad Jeremy, IF I MISSED ANYTHING LET ME KNOW

He watches you walk away, off into the distance before realizing how creepy that probably is. Jeremy grabs his keys from his pocket, phone still situated where it had been before. He walks carefully back to his car, hoping, wishing, that this is the last date you’ll ever be on with your boyfriend.

Jeremy jammed his key into the lock, exhaustion seeping into his regular routine, the typical for Thursday afternoons after an hour and a half math recitation. His brain is a mess of grey matter, he can feel the dullness inside of his eyes, paler than usual skin, even though his day consisted mostly of sitting, he still felt the tiredness through his legs. His backpack weighed down on his shoulders more than it normally did as he opened the door and threw his keys back into his jean pocket. He opened the door to his and Michael’s dorm, his eyes scanning over the posters that had been hung there when the two had moved in, the two carpooling in Michael’s PT Cruiser while their parents drove themselves and the boy’s stuff in their separate cars.

He throws his backpack onto the left side of the room, trash only slightly littering his side—he didn’t have time to clean up before his Calculus I exam that day. Darkness enveloped him as you continued to step through his side of the large dorm room, Michael’s side untouched from this morning. His brain had instead been skimming over the extremely long related rates and optimization problems. As much as they logically made sense, the calculation of them always weighed him down, each answer ending up being some fraction or decimal he didn’t particularly appreciate. His brain went over the process once again, constantly refreshing and double checking his answer, worried that he’d made a minor error and messed the entire thing up. He toes off his shoes, leaving them askew for the moment—he’d clean them up and put them away later. His brain was too tired for any real coherent interaction for a while.

His eyes scan the room, stopping for a second on the TV and switch against the wall that perfectly split the room into 2. Of course, a gaming console was how the two thought it would be best to divide the room. Jeremy had been right at Red Robin all those months ago: the bean bags wouldn’t fit in here. As Jeremy turns to sit onto his bed, eyes scanning the white walls that consume him, his eyes fall onto the postcards, the posters, the notes that had been sent to him. Of course, almost monthly, Christine would send him a friendship letter, an update about how magical college was and all the friends she was making. She’d updated him a few times, telling him that she decided to go to counselling because the stress was too much sometimes, and he had never been prouder of her. His eyes continue circling around the room, taking note of the blue sweater that hung near his bed in case he got cold in the middle of the night or right before getting out of bed.

Jeremy swings his feet around and lays down on the bed, a little bummed that Michael isn’t there so he can vent to him about his answer that was a fraction his professor said it wouldn’t be a fraction but it was. So, laying down and taking in the glow in the dark stars that he’d transported from home and stuck onto his ceiling at school would have to do. Another 15 minutes or so pass, and Jeremy is still going over each pencil mark, each moment of erasing over and over again. It isn’t until he gets the same answer 4 or 5 times in his mind that he gives it a rest, deciding that it would be healthier to focus on something else for a little bit. The exam is over, 2 out of 4 done. With no other classes for the rest of the day, Jeremy also takes a second before deciding that homework could wait until his brain was more coherent that it currently was. That, and the only class he had the next day was calculus yet again. The only logical thing his brain can come up with is to watch something on Netflix while curled up under the covers until Michael gets back from his classes.

As Jeremy gets up and grabs his laptop, his phone vibrates. There’s a text from one of his newer friends on it, asking him how he thought the exam went. He supposed that the text was a good thing. He has friends—he was making friends, too. It wasn’t hard to once he’d kind of broken out of his shell and got more comfortable with himself. And that was of course after Jeremy realized that most of his peers felt the same things he did ever so often. Of course, he left out the part about the weird super computer that tried to take over the school; he assumed that wasn’t a universal experience.

But Jeremy ignored the text for the minute. His brain wasn’t ready to comprehend everything in a healthy way yet. He knew that he was going to obsess over that one problem up until the minute that the grade would be entered into Blackboard, which could be hours, days, even sometimes weeks. He sets his laptop onto his bed before crawling back into it, fingers gliding over the mousepad, searching for the one app and closing a certain web browser. He finds it easily, and the app launches. Two fingers glide over the mousepad once again, scrolling down and eyes skimming for something mindless, something that could easily take his mind off of the events of the day but not too mentally challenging. His eyes hit “Keep Watching” and he stops, looking into the subheading.

Finally, he feels okay enough to reply to the text.

Jeremy: I don’t even know, I got a fraction for the related rates thing. Didn’t she say that we were going to get a nicely worked out problem?

He sends the text before locking his phone and putting it on “Do Not Disturb” so that he couldn’t be distracted by the outside world for a little bit. His eyes go back to the Keep Watching subheading and the content in it when he freezes. Right there, in plain print, easy text, is the piece of media you and Jeremy had watched together all those months ago.

Fuck, he remembers that night instantly, his mind rewinding to you with that bright orange cup, head against his chest, eyes fluttered shut, calmness finally flowing in and out of you. It was the most relaxed he’d ever seen you. He knew that it probably wasn’t a wonderful slumber, given your entire situation that affected your entire life to the point that you couldn’t even keep it together, strong as you were. He can remember the way his stars glowed, the way his sweater draped around you and somewhat onto him. He can remember the way you’d shifted right before he’d fallen asleep, almost snuggling into him more than before, hands calmly gripping his body, reaching out for him like he was the only thing in the world that mattered to you.

With a shake of his head, Jeremy is brought back. It’s 3:43 on a Thursday, months after the event, you’re probably hundreds of miles away. His heart hurts inside of his chest, bad enough that he feels like with to sharp of an exhale, it would come tumbling from his lips. He has no idea what happened with you. He has no idea if you’re okay, no idea if you’d managed to get free, managed to get rid of the stupid, what his British Literature professor called, Separate Sphere ideology, the Angel of the Household falling into freedom. His brain replays the moments in the gazebo, the leaves clapping with gusto as the breeze passes through, the way you smiled at him, moments where he was able to actually help you instead of just guessing and praying that things were okay. The way you told him that you got lost in time when talking to him. The way your lips curled into a smile, the genuine laugh, the looks of desperation almost peering into freedom. They were things he couldn’t forget, things that stuck on his mind for hours at a time.

At least this was only a basic remembering, no sensory details completely throwing him for a loop, causing his stomach to work in tandem with his mind. Seeing you in social media posts made the memories worse, they stung with each second they passed through his mind as his limbs would tingle, hands shaking and gripping, waiting for the memories to pass. As much as he wanted to admit that he was okay with not knowing about you, letting you go, he wasn’t. Deep down, it was apparent to everyone. He would lie awake, toss and turn, dream about the good, the bad, and what he assumed happened to you. Of course, it was always the worst in his nightmares, something he didn’t wish to dwell on while the sun was up, and the best in his daydreams. You hadn’t posted about your boyfriend recently, but you didn’t really before either, especially after you’d started even talking to him, even less since the incident—which is what he called that one night in passing with others. The only people who really knew the details about the incident were his dad, Michael’s moms, and Michael himself. Everything was under lock and key—both you and the issues you had—he was really the only one who knew exactly how you were feeling, the things you had been, or maybe still were, going through. He can remember Michael’s surprise when he first told him about you, about your situation, about your strength, about your new life, how much you’d changed. From happy to struggling to understand what was reality and what was something that was gaslit and given to you on a counterfeit silver platter.

And you’d gone silent lately. You were almost completely off the grid, to him at least. It was painful, every breath sitting inside of him, heavier than any gravitational pull in the universe. His heart, his mind, couldn’t help but fill in the blanks. Had you died? Had you done something too rebellious and ended up worse than the last time he saw you? Did you need help to live? Did you need help to even survive?

He can remember the way your hand brushed against his, the way your breath evened in hugs, that very first night, the way his hands glided across your back and helped you clean up. He can remember how your hand felt in his, your head against him, soft calmness seeping from you and into him. He can remember you leaning against him and his entire body lit aflame as he helped you up and down the stairs of the gazebo, the way your smile felt against his lips—clumsy kisses that had managed to turn into something absolutely beautiful and worth craving nearly daily. He can remember that smile that was etched into your shining face as the sunlight created an aura around you, leaves fluttering in the background. Jeremy remembers your hand slipping from his, a final farewell, or something similar leaving your lips. He remembers watching you walk away—why didn’t he watch longer?

Jeremy reaches his hand out, shaking as he tries to move the cursor away from the piece of media. He stops. Sharply, quickly, he shuts his laptop and casts it aside. Rolling over, the tears that had been forming in his eyes now spill down his cheeks. He can feel his legs contracting, toes curling so hard that his muscles begin to hurt, hands gripping the blanket. You were okay. You had to be okay.

Right?

[hopefullybetterthanatherapist]

My First

Well this is my first time blogging. I got the idea through a sort of sad story of a young woman with bipolar disorder who killed herself when she drowned in a water tank in LA while she was manic. But in the first half of the documentary she used Tumblr as a why to write down her thoughts because she can type faster than she can write. This makes sense to me and I decided to give it a shot. As my URL shows, I’m trying to figure out a way to think through my racing thoughts I have. I’ve practically exhausted all medications and I’m still profoundly unhappy. Yes, I could see a psychologist but I feel the schools of thought are predictable and boring, as well as making me feel so narcissistic for talking so long. I can think and write about myself, but I don’t want to talk with someone else mostly because I know they won't get it. Maybe secretly I think I’m smarter/more clever/more enlightened than everyone else but that’s probably not the case. I’m the one still sad. I’m the one who thinks I’m a fuck up, who continues to find myself down a road that is logical but not exciting or quite frankly, worth living for. No I’m not suicidal but I can’t help but feel that I have two option to have a way out: death or career suicide. So I am absolutely terrified of death so that option as of right now is a no-go. I guess as a way of coping I tell myself I deserve the life I have, my boyfriend, my mundane job, my depression/anxiety, the rape (? I still don’t know what to call it but another very long post that will have to wait.) Right now I am using the time I have with myself to write here. I’m not going to look back or re-read what I write because I  know I will just bring at the self pity I dump here. I am also terrified that someone will get access to this blog/journal and I could end up in a bad, lonely, jobless state. So I have to be careful, I should probably change my computer password, since I have had it since I was freaking 13. But a dead horse is a pretty good password... Maybe I’ll go with the theme and do another dead pet. Morose but it comes from love ( at least I hope.) I don’t think my dog and my birthday is a strong password to keep my paranoia of having this discovered is enough... So I changed it up, and cross my fingers I remember it.

[peter-parkedcar]

I GOT TAGGED

I was tagged by @kyloren-sucks This is my first time being tagged in anything like this and i am so excited honestly

THE RULES: Answer 30 questions and tag 20 blogs you would like to get know better!

1. nicknames: KC because one of my best friends is also named Kayla and it gets really confusing so sometimes I go by KC because it’s my first and middle initial (middle name is Camille)

2. gender: female I think? sometimes I wonder

3. star sign: Scorpio!

4. height: 5′10″

5. time: 6:36 PM

6. birthday: November 13

7. favorite bands: I don’t even know ugh I can never decide and I never really like anything enough to be my ~favorite~ i mostly tend to listen to podcast or like white noise or instrumental stuff tbh

8. favorite solo artists: same answer as above

9. song stuck in my head: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I0hXe0cMUM Wild Horses by Bishop Briggs

10. last movie i watched: Thor: Ragnarok and I loved it!

11. last show i watched: One Punch Man

12. when did i create my blog: Oh wow I’m not even sure... I think it must have been like August 2013? I was super bored at a data entry job and I wasn’t supposed to have Internet access but something happened and I did and I was so bored a created a Tumblr (and still got more work done than all the guys there, I was the only girl in the office -_-)

13. what do i post: all my fandom stuff as I come across it, lots of political stuff too 

14. last thing i googled: how to find the network password on my phone so I can log in on my computer

15. do i have any other blogs: I sort of used to but haven’t updated it in over a year oops. it was about me catching up on old video games since i wasn’t allowed to play any growing up and now i barely have time to play anything anymore with work and school. maybe soon i will have time again

16. do i get ask: nope

17. why i chose my url: It’s a running joke among the friends I used to play DnD with that I would be an elf ranger and I threw sea in there because I like the beach so much

18. following: I follow 290 people apparently?! too many wow I should unfollow some probably

19. followers: I have 112 followers but i think most of them are pornbots lmao

21. average hours of sleep: 7-8 usually

22. lucky number: I really like the numbers 13, 76, and 91 for some reason?

23. instruments: I used to play piano, and i’ve taught myself a decent amount of guitar!

24. what am i wearing: red and black plaid pajama pants and a star trek t-shirt

26. dream job: Doctor

27. dream trip: Anywhere tropical and warm where I can live at the beach and go SCUBA diving

28. favorite food: oh my god i’ll eat like anything tbh i am not picky at all. but i especially love pizza, hamburgers, sushi, burritos, and Korean food (i’m half Korean half white)

29. nationality: American (I’m sorry)

30. favorite season: Summer! I’m always SO COLD except in the summer which is really sad because I live in Southern California and it isn’t even cold but if it drops below like 70 I need a jacket because I’m a big ol wimp

idk who to tag! so anwer if you want to i guess?

[anaetudes]

with school starting soon (and if yours already started i wish you a good week!) i decided to make a masterpost of apps to help making the school year easier and more productive. So I picked some of my personal favorites and let’s check them out!

Phone apps:

Forest (iOS/Android/chrome extension) - 1,99$/free  forest used to be my fav focusing app while i used android, it’s pretty simple and super cute! Basically you set up a timer to let a forest grow and you turn your phone down. If you turn it up or close the app to check your tumblr dot com or something else, your forest dies and the counter stops!

Tide (iOS/Android) - free  tide is like a timer made for you to get focused. You set up the timer with the time you want to get focused and it will also provide background sounds like rain, the sounds of a forest, a coffee shop... while the timer’s on to help you focus even more (if you’re into that ofc)! If you prefer silence, the app also lets you turn the background sounds off. When your time’s up, it can send you a notification so you can have your well deserved break time!

Sleep Cycle alarm clock (iOS/Android) - free  not a morning person and you usually wake up grumpy (like me)?? this app is for ya!! sleep cycle alarm clock tracks your sleep and based on that it awakes you at the best time according to the app (thanks sleep cycles). But are you afraid to run late to class because the app didn’t wake you on time? Don’t worry, you can still set your usual alarm clock to wake you up!

Headspace (iOS/Android) - free  bad days, we all have them. but are you one of those people that don’t know what to do on a bad day?? Why don’t you try headspace? This meditation app it’s simple, intuitive and truly relaxing! You have dozens of “packs” so you can meditate for different things! Feeling stressed? Try the stress pack! Felling anxious? Try the anxiety pack! You already got the hint! Before trying all this packs you’ll do the basics where you are taught how to meditate and you also have small exercises to do if you don’t want to do a full session! Personally, this app really helped me passing some bad days and moments and it’s what somehow taught me how to be calm and relaxed on those rough days!

H2Opal (iOS/beta release on android) - free  this is already a current reminder in the studyblr community: stay hydrated, full stop. With H2Opal you can make that super easily! This app will give you reminders during the day to stay hydrated and how much you need to drink to reach your daily goal. When you drink you can either insert the amount of water you drank manually or you can buy their tracker that does that boring job for you and makes tracking water even more easier

My Study Life (iOS/Android/chrome extension) - free   i am a person who hates planning and this app saved my life. My Study Life tracks your schedule (holidays, your classes, the rooms...), exams and tasks and lets you know when they are close so you can have your life organized and don’t forget nothing! 

Curiosity (iOS/Android) - free  curiosity won’t help you study or keeping your life in order but will expand your genereal knowledge. Everyday curiosity provides you some articles (mostly science related) for you to read! You can mark them as favorite so you can read them later, you can access to the other days articles and it has podcasts! How cool huh?

Duolingo (iOS/Android) - free  you love languages but you have no time/money to learn a new one? use duolingo! This app lets you learn english, french, german, spanish, portuguese and italian (i guess you can have more or less languages to learn depending on your native language) and you work on your grammar, vocabulary, speech and writing. If you already learnt any of the languages and you want to relearn it, duolingo will make this 5 minute test to check how are you and what are your weakest points in that moment! That will be useful because when your start the real course you can have some of the classes done (mostly the basics) letting you learn what really matters! This app is super easy to use and it’s my go to learn new languages now!

Post-it Plus (iOS only) - free  the post it app! yes it’s what you’re wondering, a app with post its! This app lets you either create your own post its or take pictures to already existing ones and then you can arrange the same post its in boards like “chores”, “to do list”, “homework”... you create them, you choose! And to make it better you can also share your post its! This is super useful to note quick things like homework or dues when you have nothing at hand to note them!

Quizlet (iOS/Android) - free  we all know what quizlet is, right? This flashcards app saved my ass more than one time when i was feeling too lazy to make my own flashcards and i wanted to study differently for something! It’s easy to use and it’s super interactive! Besides letting you making your own flashcards, you can also search for already made ones, join classes, invite your friends and arrange your flashcards in binders so you can always know where they are!

Photomath (iOS/Android) - free  oh, is that that math homework you’re struggling for hours? And even done you still aren’t sure if it’s done that way? Why don’t you try photomath? This app basically scans maths problems and shows the answer and how to get there step by step! It might help you with homeworks but i still suggest you to ask your teacher how to solve it on the next class!

Computer apps:

Cold Turkey blocker (macOS/windows) - works with subscriptions but it has a free one   it already happened to all of us: we are supposed to be studying or working but instead we spend 1000000 hours watching cat videos on youtube and we get nothing done! Cold Turkey is here to help you with your problems! You set up which sites you want to block, for how long and at what days of the week! Distractions cut, productivity up and work done!

Cold Turkey writer (macOS/windows) - works with subscriptions but it has a free one  imagine the situation above but for one specific occasion: writing an essay. Cold turkey writer blocks all the distractions (like all, no exceptions on this one) until you write the number of words you set up for your essay or for the number of minutes you decide! As the website says “Cold Turkey writer runs full screen and turns your computer into a typewriter until you reach your specified goal”, so you better start writing if you want to check your favorite websites! 

You can check Cold Turkey website to understand more about the blocker and writer and how they work!

StayFocusd (chrome extension) - free   this one is very similar to cold turkey blocker but it’s a chrome extension.

[annazverina]

My Break From Twitter

Starting on Friday, 23 March, 2018 I decided to take a few week break from my biggest addiction, Twitter. I had been on Twitter all the time, mainly because I was addicted to world news and updates from my favorite celebrities. Whenever I had a break I’d go on Twitter, and I’d be back on five minutes later. I constantly refreshed, even though there weren’t any new tweets in my feed.

The Sunday beforehand, Ant McPartlin was arrested for drink driving. The next day he announced he was stepping down from TV. The next day Declan announced he’d be hosting the rest of SNT without Ant. This was a ton of information to process in just three days. I determined on Wednesday that I needed to get away from Twitter to process all this information. Ant and Dec weren’t the primary reason I breaked, though. I had come to realize that I was getting addicted to Twitter, and I needed to step down for a while to refresh my mind.

I didn’t make any announcement on my Twitter that I was leaving. I just deleted the app from my phone on Friday, so I wouldn’t have any temptations to get on. I still had access through my computer, however. I logged in a few times.

The first time I logged in was the next day, Saturday, ‘cause it was hard to not congratulate Dec and Ali on their news that they’re expecting. The next time I logged in was Wednesday morning at around 3 am. It was thunderstorming, I was loopy, and I felt like getting on. I wish I hadn’t. I felt a wave of guilt rain over me, as I had entered into the dark playground. It was like I had locked myself in an individual instrument practice room at school when I reentered Twitter. That day I deleted the app again.

I logged on to support Declan for the last two SNT shows. I was on for the duration of the show, and then I logged back off for the week in between them.  

My point of making this long post is to tell you my experience being away from Twitter. I didn’t step away from social media entirely, but I stepped away from the social media I was most addicted to. My biggest addiction used to be Instagram, until I began having a motivation to actually go on Twitter… when I joined the Sherlock fandom (that’s also why I initially joined Tumblr). I followed @ ContactSH and @ ContactJHW, who essentially gave us the Series 4 of Sherlock we as fans wanted.

On 16 June, 2017 I joined the Ant and Dec fandom. It’s basically been non stop since. I followed the boys and SNT_News, though I didn’t follow any other fanpages until after the boys won their NTAs last January. I only followed two others, and they gave me my motivation to check Twitter 24/7. This went on for a little less than two months, with this motivation stopping when I decided to take a break.

While breaking, I felt more… in the moment, I guess. I did a lot of stuff while away, including spending time with family, practicing my instruments more, going through my last marching camp, writing a lot, and doing my schoolwork (though my academics are still shit). I had the temptations to log on, and I often got anxiety when I couldn’t get on. I had the addiction to always know what was going on in the world, when I now know that I can just get on in the morning and evenings.

I haven’t redownloaded Twitter. If I come up with a good tweet I can just get on through Chrome on my phone. I only plan to check Twitter before I leave for school and in the evenings. I need to focus on my music and staying in the top half of my class right now. World news shouldn’t be my biggest priority. I have friends in the real world who I love and want to spend more time with.

The point is, I’d love for you to step away from social media, even if it’s just for a few days, and see what it’s like not constantly having to check for news and update your feed. Trust me, if you have a lot of followers, they’ll understand. Everyone needs to break for a while.

I felt a sense of relief not being on Twitter. This summer I’d like to spend some time away from social media entirely, including YouTube, and talk about my experiences leaving them. I don’t know when I’ll do that yet. It depends on what my summer plans are. My summer is only eight weeks instead of thirteen due to band, which cuts five weeks off.

As soon as I’m able to watch the series finale of Saturday Night Takeaway, I’ll write about the last two shows. Until then…

Have a great whatever time of day it is for y’all!

-AEZ

[carolinesgrandadventure]

Everything is going great! | culture shocked

That is a big, fat lie.

This post is long overdue. In which I talk about what’s been happening these past two weeks in Vietnam and try not to lose my mind retyping x3 a post that I accidentally deleted x3 because I’m working on my phone and the Tumblr app is very glitchy. 

A guide because this post is so long: Basics covers my homestay famiy and daily schedule. The City covers my thoughts on Hanoi. Challenges describes my misfortunes of travel and lessons learned.

Disclaimer: This post might seem a little over-dramatic. Let’s begin.

Basics

I share a homestay with one roommate, Frankie. My host family is friendly, comprising of a professor father, accountant mother, a 13-year-old host sister (our main translator), and a 10-year-old host brother. We live in a 5-story tube house in an back alleyway of a network of alleyways. It is so tucked away that even my local Uber drivers get lost trying to find it!

Frankie and I share a room with two hard mattresses on the floor, two mosquito nets, two fans, one shower toilet bathroom, and no AC. Despite Hanoi’s heat and humidity, it hasn’t been too much of a problem to sleep without AC. However, those mattresses are incredibly uncomfortable despite supposedly being good for the back.

Taking a shower has become my favorite time of day. What I mean by a “shower toilet bathroom” is a bathroom the size of a small walk-in closet containing a sink, shower head, toilet, and drain with no dividers. One must take care not to get the sink or toilet wet while showering. This type of bathroom is incredibly space efficient, but one must be okay with a wet bathroom floor for the next several hours after showering. There’s also no hot water, but it’s refreshing to take a cold shower after a long, humid, and sticky day.

Everyday I wake up anywhere between 6:30-7:00 a.m. usually because of loud jack hammering from the active construction site next door. Whether I’m rudely awakened by construction, cats meowing, babies crying, or motorbikes, I always am delighted to enjoy a breakfast prepared by my host mother. At around 7:50, Frankie and I leave the house and walk to the bus stop where we take a short 10 minute ride to our classroom at Hanoi Medical University. We then attend class more or less 8:30 a.m.-4:00 p.m., our exact schedule varying day to day. Our local instructor and country coordinator are both members of Vietnam’s Institute of Population, Health, and Development. They have been very informative, teaching us about Vietnam’s health challenges and system. Some interesting topics we have covered include the prominence of traditional medicine, the health differences between rural and urban Vietnamese populations, and the inaccuracy of government reporting. One of the main takeaways for me from these past two weeks is the issue of development on health outcomes in Vietnam. Many rural populations have poorer health outcomes than urban populations because they lack equal access to healthcare due to the limited number of clinics and resources (among other things). After classes end, I’ve done everything from shopping to getting a massage to going back home to study (read: nap). I return home by 7:00 p.m. to have dinner with my host family, which is always fun to see what we get to eat. After dinner, my host family, Frankie, and I chat for a while. Sometimes the neighbors come over to chat, too. The neighborhood kids enjoy running in and out of the house to say hello and stare at Frankie and I. The parents like coming to practice their English and bring their kids to force them to practice their English with us, too. In school, grammar and written skills are prioritized, and, as a result, many Vietnamese’s English speaking skills are not as developed. I admire their desire to practice speaking English with native speakers because I’m scared to do so with Chinese speakers… It’s quite a lot of work to communicate with people who do not speak the same language because even though you don’t understand, you make an effort to understand by processing the many context clues available. When Frankie and I get upstairs to our room, it’s often 9:00 p.m. or later and I am exhausted. I’ll take a shower and then try and do some work before falling asleep. I haven’t really been successful in doing homework after dinner… (hehe yikes) Last weekend our host family took Frankie and I out to the night market in downtown Hanoi to eat ice cream and walk around. Personally, I expected more of the night market, but it was still nice to walk the streets around the lake without motorbikes and cars whizzing by. We also paid a visit to the Vietnam People’s Air Force Museum.

Ice cream at Kem Trang Tien in Old Quarter. I got a yummy “rice flake” flavor.

Frankie and I also made spaghetti for our host family, the one American dish they occasionally cook at home. My host sister sprung this upon us saying, “Ok, you can make us spaghetti tomorrow night, right?” And Frankie and I were just like, “Oh, okay.” I don’t think we had a choice; it turns out our host mom had already bought the spaghetti noodles before our host sister asked us to cook! We went to the grocery store, found some canned pasta sauce, and made damn good spaghetti, if I do say so myself. Thankfully, our host family loved our cooking. I thought it was pretty hilarious to be eating spaghetti in Vietnam in rice bowls with chopsticks for dinner. My host sister keeps mentioning how she wants to try eggs Benedict… 

Let two American girls cook you the best spaghetti of your life! :)

Lastly, a shoutout to Shom, my Duke friend also on an SIT IHP program, who I was able to get lunch with in Hanoi. I’m so glad we could follow up on our 5 month plans to meet up. It was really nice to see a familiar face. :’) 

This weekend we are in the midst of typhoon Daksuri so our planned weekend activities are more low key. Possibly a movie, possibly a trip to Hanoi’s silk village, and with any luck, a day trip to see some scenery outside the city.

The City

Hanoi is the capital of motorbikes. It is humid, hot, noisy, dirty, and in my opinion, not particularly charming. There is the constant grumble of motorbikes. The air always smells of gasoline. Hanoi's got a lot of rough edges such as its ceaseless traffic, lack of public trash management, and pollution. The small river in my neighborhood is navy and its odor of rotten eggs and feces can be smelled 10 feet away.

I think Hanoi is best described as organized chaos. For the most part I cannot discern the order that the Hanoiians maintain except when I cross the street. Crossing the street is quite the adrenaline rush. 

Start by stepping out from the curb. You can't choose a good moment to start crossing, you just have to do it. Turn to look in the face of oncoming traffic. Stare down the motorbikes that barrel towards you and shake an outstretched hand at them. Walk slowly. The honks are only to communicate that they see you. Get to the middle of the road. Look the other way and do the same thing: stare and shake. And when you finally get to the other side, don't forget to breathe. In those moments of crossing the street, anyone simultaneously becomes part of the order and chaos that is Hanoi. 

Downtown Hanoi, also known as Old Quarter, is cleaner and is home to many of the best restaurants. Old Quarter surrounds Hoan Kiem Lake. Some parts of Old Quarter remind me of Shanghai's French Concession, with tree covered streets. But this is unsurprising given that both cities have strong French influences. Again, I can't romanticize about Hanoi too much though... One afternoon while enjoying a view of the lake, I noticed an old man peeing on a tree right next to me, out in the open.

Hanoi is also a city of alleyways. There are so many alleys to get lost in but there are no dead alleys; something is always happening whether that be a waiting trinkets seller or another pho stand. I have also never been to a city with such a dense concentration of food stands. Every family in Hanoi must own a food stand, there are so many of them!* 

Challenges 

In the past two and a half years that I've been in college, I have never experienced a serious case of homesickness... until now. This was unfortunately spurred by a stressful situation of multiple technology failures. This past weekend my perfectly working laptop spontaneously broke. Like broke broke. Like serious, needs-a-motherboard-replacement broke. At first I thought I couldn't turn my laptop on because of an ant infestation. It just so happens that when my laptop broke, I also had a mild ant infestation. Sugar ants were crawling out of my keyboard and I was panicking, recalling a similar story of a broken laptop and a bunch of ants. Then I went to a computer store that night with my host family and it started working again. And then I put it away for the night. And then it really wouldn't turn on anymore. 

I took my laptop into Hanoi's top rated computer repair store on Monday. Against my better judgement, I left my laptop at this small, unprofessional looking shop for them to look at further. It was a great test of believing in the good will of people for me. 48 hours later I was devastated to learn that my computer was seriously broken and would need a $330 fix.

This ordeal was rather stressful for me because every graded aspect of my study abroad program relies upon a computer and I was without one. I actually finished an assignment on my phone using Google Docs. It also didn't help that the day after my laptop broke, my phone started acting up, possibly because of the humidity. I had to stick it in rice; thankfully my phone still works except I now have a dead area on my touch screen. I'm guessing part of my phone's digitizer broke. Don't ask me why my important tech decided to all break without warning in the span of 3 days because it is beyond me. 

I decided not to get my laptop repaired here in Hanoi. I'm in this awkward transition time right now relying upon other people's laptops. I probably can't get a replacement laptop/tablet until I get to South Africa because complicated customs processes. I guess we'll just have to see how things work out, but for now I'm making do and trying not to think about my broken laptop.

Going through this episode of intense stress really highlighted to myself my discomfort in Hanoi: it's dirty, loud, I don't fit in, and I can hardly communicate. I really, really wished to be at home this past week for the convenience and familiarity of going to an Apple Store, receiving comfort from my family (and dog), and sleeping in a soft bed.

I'm mostly over that now. I’ve realized that it is what it is and I am handling the situation to the best of my ability. In the end, I can't really change much; I can only be resourceful and rely upon the generosity of my host family and classmates. C'est la vie. I'm grateful I still have the support system that I have available. I knew to expect some challenges and discomfort but I did not realize it’d be like this!

St. Joseph’s Cathedral, a late 19th-century Gothic cathedral in Old Quarter.

This next week my group travels to Lac village in rural north Vietnam. Next weekend we're taking an excursion to Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO world heritage site. I'm excited to get out of the city and explore other parts of Vietnam! 

Bus count: 11 

*By the way, of course I will write about the food in Vietnam within the next two weeks.