#no proof in the textbook either what if I killed myself

[thursdayg1rl]

to be honest kitten, non homogeneous second order linear differential equations are making daddy want to kill herself

[balkanradfem]

So, I've decided to start learning biology.

My education left me with only primary school biology knowledge, because I had zero biology lessons in high school, and now I find myself sorely lacking in knowledge. Which is inconvenient, now that I'm sick and have no idea what to do. I didn't know where to start, but my roommate is in high school right now, and I borrowed her biology textbook to get myself started.

The biology textbook was so misinformed and outdated it made me worry for the education system. Not only they didn't update any info from the last 40 years, some of the info was completely wrong. For instance, it claims there's 6 billion people on the planet (there's 8), and that there's 6 empires of all living things (there's 8, and some of the old ones have been renamed and disputed). I learned quickly to fact-check every bit of information on wikipedia, and this is where I found some truly astounding info that I had no idea about.

If you all have learned this in highschool and it's common knowledge, please excuse me, but I am shocked.

One of the first topics the book covers is evolutionary history of the planet, and it explains how blue-green algae were the first historic plants to produce a lot of oxygen, which sounds like a positive development for us, because most of the living things right now thrive on oxygen. But, looking it up wikipedia uncovered that it was in fact, an extinction event. Most of life on earth was at that point, thriving in non-oxygen environment, and the introduction of oxygen killed 85% of all living species on earth. It was a huge disaster that happened! It's called 'Great Oxidation Event', or the 'Oxygen Catastrophe'.

But that's not all, I found out that it was not only that which destroyed almost all life on earth, but there's been 5 different events in the history that destroyed close to 80% of all species on the planet, and for some of them we don't even know why. We only found proof that lots of species disappeared at all times and the dominant species on the planet rapidly changed, but no idea why, for some of them it's assumed it has to do with volcanoes or ice, and of them that is well known is the meteor, that ended the big dinosaurs.

I never realized how much of evolution was destruction and then starting over, this was shocking to me. It was also fascinating, I found myself following links and learning more about extinction events, also that we're currently in the extinction event caused by humans who are driving lots of species into extinction by taking over their habitats, which made me sad.

At this point I started reading other, biology-related materials, for example, I read a book named 'What an Owl Knows', which is written by Jennifer Ackerman, an owl scientist who studied owls her entire life; now I know more about owls. I also started listening to an audio book about the ocean, and this one proved to be very difficult to follow, but I'll tell you what I learned from both.

The owl book was charming, I found out that owls are the most quiet, soundless birds when they fly, because their wings and feathers are the biggest part of their bodies. This is how they manage to swoop up prey without anyone hearing a single flap. They're also very silent and subtle. Unless you're studying owls, you won't be able to tell if the owl is startled, or scared, because she will sit very still and not give you any clues. Smaller owls can go into their 'freeze' response easily if they're being hunted, because their instinct is to be still and not move when in danger! It can make you feel like the owl is not scared, since she's not moving, but she is most likely not comfortable if anyone is approaching her.

Owls have similar faces to our faces, and they're very charismatic to us; this is why baby owls, and injured owls in human care, can sometimes imprint on humans. This is bad news for the owls, because once it happens, they can never again be released into the wild, they'll either never learn to hunt, or they'll act towards humans, like they do to other owls - brawling, attacking, aggressive, territorial. Even if they really like us, they will keep acting like we're other owl, not a different species. They see us similarly to how we see them.

One of the best information I've learned, is that in Serbia, there's the biggest gathering of owls of all species, there can be more than 300 owls in one place at the time. The reason for this is common use of old-fashined methods of harvesting grains, which leaves a lot of leftover corn and wheat on the ground, attracting mice, rats, and other small rodents, which creates a great food source for owls. Serbian farmers don't use rodenticide, so owls don't get poisoned. Owls so beloved and appreciated there, that they have an owl festival every year, and the whole month of november is called 'Sovember', because owl in serbian is 'sova'. I never knew about this, even though it's my neighbour country! I looked this up, and I found a website for the international owl festival, but I couldn't find any more info. I would appreciate it so much if any serbian followers could write me about this and tell me their experiences with it, I've never wanted to visit Serbia more!

The book contains information about owls used in Harry Potter movies, including the names of the owls, as well as discussing how the books made owls popular, and how it made people want them as pets. Owls do not make good pets, because they're predators and will destroy things and be very difficult to care for, but the book encourages readers to find the local owls and keep them safe, to leave old trees with holes in them standing, so the owls could nest in them, or to hang up baskets that can also be used as nests. It was a lovely, charming book and I recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about owls.

The ocean book is named 'How the Ocean Works', by Helen Czerski, and I haven't finished yet, but it opened up a lot of questions for me. The funniest part of it was the breakup of what people used to think about the ocean; apparently before research, people assumed that the sea is salty because it's been left in the sun for too long, and that's just what you get from sun exposure, they believed that deep down it was not salty anymore. They also believed that the sea water cannot go putrid if left standing. It took a scientist checking this to confirm it was not true; sea water did go putrid left in a bucket in the sun, and non-salty water did not turn salty when left in the sun for months. It was interesting to know that for the longest time, people didn't realize it was the salt in the sea that made it salty, I then wondered how they got salt, and it turns out they just got it from the salt mines, which are leftover from the long-dried up seas.

Now new information that I didn't know, was that the salinity is different between the oceans, the Atlantic is saltier than the rest. The book also explained about how the salt is connected to the currents, and to the movements of the sea, and also changes the density of the water. One thing that had me taken aback was that the ocean waves are not only caused by the wind, but the water is reacting to earth's rotation, and this rotation is constantly moving the water. It feels like the ocean is being pulled both by the earth and the moon, constantly being driven by planetary forces, which is interesting, because it's difficult to tell that just by looking.

The book calls ocean the 'blue machine', because it's always moving, and filled with energy. Sun is always warming up the surface, making it a great reservoir of solar energy, and the book goes on about how it's possible to harvest this energy, using hot water, and cold water, apparently there's already buildings being cooled down by the ocean power, but I never managed to figure out how! I tried looking it up, and also found nothing. I wish the book explained the physics of it, so that I could try it out, it's a great thing to be able to get power jut by using hot and cold water, and the water is already heated by the sun, while you can get cold water from the bottom of the sea.

I think I might understand this book better if I read it, rather than listening to the audiobook, which as you can see, just has me puzzled because I do not catch details. Still I wanted to share my new learnings, and ask if anyone can tell me more, or if this is all knowledge that people who had biology in high school already have. I'm having a great time learning, especially because I can just divert in any direction that has my interest, and I can seek out information that gives me useful, practical knowledge. Wish all learning processes could be free and inspired like this!

[notarealwelder]

(Epistemic status: armchair)

What does one need to learn, in concrete-ish terms, to do math?

One can understand various structures and how they generally behave. This is useful! But answers the wrong question; that's what math currently is, not how to advance further. Statics of mathematical knowledge, stated bare, won't tell you how they were built, nor how to build something else you might want. (You might infer these yourself, but ideally you wouldn't need to.)

A necessary but insufficient skill is to understand proofs. Formal arguments are the diamond we build our castles from, and if you don't see the faults nor can check for faultlessness, you can't produce one and know it to work.

(I think math education is ~aware that this is a skill it needs to teach? I'm not sure it figured how to teach it deliberately, but might be uninformed.)

Another is filling in ~a broad gesture that claims to be a proof. (Including, on one hand, digging up, checking, and compiling all the references the claimant used without explanation; on the other, fixing all the punctuation and streamlining notation abuse; and finally, generating all by yourself the gaps of "uncomplicated derivations left to the reader to verify".)

(This, I stole from Tao, so at least many know this is a thing, & hopefully agree it's important. Is it taught? Not..explicitly, not by textbooks or lectures I've seen; except by fill-this-in exercises and examples of faulty notation and necessity to understand what's written. Which is a lot, come to think of it. Maybe this is taught; just, without naming or drawing attention to it? Orrrr in nonpublic settings like talks, discussions, or seminars. Hm.)

Third, knowing the tools of the trade, which are: proof tactics generally applicable in your domain of interest. Acquire an ε of breathing room. Count something in a couple different ways. Look for a contradictory descent. Bound an integral with no closed form with similar ones with closed forms. Taylor-expand and ignore small-enough terms. Use a dumb bound. Cut things into pieces and then use a dumb bound.

(I feel like these do not get enough attention — shouldn't there be dedicated chapters "how to prove 90% of analysis with 5 clever tricks" — but I can't say with a straight face that they aren't taught. Although again, would it kill people to say "first, we'll simplify by getting an ε of room"? You know you're doing this; I can kinda figure out you're doing this because I read Tao 5 years ago & also spent hours figuring the proof myself beforehand; what do you expect a random reader to get beside "magic happens, qed"?)

(3.5: there are some ~fully general proof tactics like "use induction" which are...probably taught satisfactorily. Could be taught better, maybe — wrangling the exact form of the theorem so it inducts well is not generally trivial! — but, ok, maybe in a specialized course for induction-heavy fields.)

For 4, I'll put not so much proof tactics as ~ways to take small steps from initial ignorance towards a complete argument. Produce some examples; produce some counterexamples (that violate premises ofc). Try to explain why the conclusion holds in the examples; does this generalize? Suppose the conclusion holds given some property generalized thus; can you invent an example without it? (Maybe the property follows from the premise; maybe it doesn't, but now you can assume it to be false for free; either way, simplification!) Having proven a special case, can you weaken its assumptions but not the conclusion? (What-are the steps of the special-case argument, what do they rely on? Can their supports be replaced with something else?)

(This feels silly / too-simple-to-work, but...for one, things that work are not stupid, and having a list of obvious ideas to try works everywhere else, so. For two, this often helps even if you have absolutely no idea how to approach the theorem. For three, apocryphally, that's how the entire research process works: you solve a tiny special case A, someone else solves a similar B, someone else generalizes a little to C, someone else adapts the tooling to XYZ.....)

---

(There are other things — writing actual papers, looking for useful cutting-edge research, collaboration, smth smth getting to a stable orbit — which I'm unqualified to comment on; I'll pretend these are not Doing Math per se, though really they deserve no less recognition and teaching than pure proof rotation.)

(Although Let It Be Said that writing good, accessible, readable papers is a decidedly undertaught competence.)

---

There are another 2 ?capabilities? of a ~working mathematician that come to mind. (Not being one, can't introspect on them or split them into practicable subskills, sadly.)

5 is kind of tools-of-the-trade writ large; an eagle's-eye view of a whole ~subject and tricks it uses way up the abstraction ladder from foundations; pieces and glue out of which to build high-level proof sketches the way simple full proofs can be built from standard proof-techniques.

As for the 6: where do definitions come from? Whence finite intersections and arbitrary unions of open sets? How does one define a measure without yet knowing what is a measure? Why topoi?

To ask a good question is to be halfway to an answer; a good structure will do most of the work for you, rendering confusing things obvious and demanding little in assumptions. Good structures come from somewhere, and no-one will tell you where*.

(Yes, yes, You Could Have Invented Spectral Sequences. Very fucking funny.)

(Maybe it's the same old thing, try to generalize, and when you've seen enough, you notice a generality no-one articulated before. Or perhaps you push and push your setting to be as general as it should be and you end up with schemes. Or possibly you grope blindly in the darkness of the unproven, build yourself a useful concept to orient with, and it sticks. Who knows! Ask me again if I invent something.)

[chudleycanonficfest]

Day 24, Post #1 by @be11atrixthestrange

Title: I Love Wine Author/Artist: Be11atrixthestrange Pairing: Ron/Hermione Prompt: In Vino Veritas / Songfic (Difficult by Peppermint Ollie) Rating: T Trigger Warning(s) (if any): N/A

(Please note that one lyric has been changed - "Football" is now "Quaffle")

I Love Wine

You can talk to girls who aren't me. 

It's fine, no, I said it's fine. It's not like you're just mine

I'm not jealous,

wait...

Are you still mad at me?

When Hermione opens the hospital wing doors late one March evening, she pokes her head into the room to look before entering, scanning for anyone she doesn't want to see.

It's become a habit lately, especially knowing she might run into Ron. A true extrovert, Ron is never alone. It used to be Hermione always glued to his hip, but not anymore. Nowadays, it's Lavender, and Ron hasn't spoken to Hermione in months. Usually, her run-ins with Ron are accidental, but not this time. After nearly losing him to a bottle of mead, she'll do anything to get him back in her life.

As she had assumed, the Hospital Wing is empty save for Ron, who's sprawled out on a twin-sized bed. Madam Pomfrey has left for the night, and it's after visiting hours, so Lavender wouldn't be here anyway. In fact, Hermione shouldn't be, either, but school rules seem less important now.

She approaches Ron, noting that the hospital wing beds are too short for his lanky frame, and his pale, freckled feet dangle off the edge. The blankets don't reach that far, and goosebumps are forming on his skin. He must be cold. She almost reaches out to tug the blanket over his feet but stops herself. It's a loving gesture, but in the wrong way. It's definitely something Mrs. Weasley would do, and the last thing she wants to be associated with is his mother. Seeing him with another girl has made at least one thing crystal clear — her feelings for Ron are far from familial.

Hermione's gaze travels from Ron's feet to his head, cocked to the side, halfway on a pillow. His neck is bent, his mouth open, and each exhale brings a faint, raspy snore. His entire positioning looks so awkward. She tries to take comfort in the rise and fall of his chest, proof that he's alive, but even still, she can't seem to shake the fear that she's lost him forever.

What if she has? Just because he's alive doesn't mean he'll want her back in his life, not after the way she's treated him. He clearly doesn't need her; he has Lavender. Hermione's jaw tightens at the thought of her pretty, flirty, popular roommate, Ron's girlfriend. Four months of insisting that she's fine with their relationship, and no, she's not jealous have caught up to her. Her throat tightens, and her eyes sting, threatening to cry. Again.

Ron's breathing remains steady, his eyes locked shut, and it seems unlikely that he'll wake up. It was probably a stupid idea to come; he needs his rest. If she wakes him, he might be even angrier at her.

But fresh on her mind is the memory of his first moment of consciousness after being poisoned. The words that slipped from his mouth…

Er-my-nee.

He was dazed and confused, and hardly aware of what he was saying. But it had to mean something, right?

Hermione takes a seat in the chair next to his bed. She'll wait just a few moments to see if he wakes. It would be worth it to hear him say her name again.

She glances toward her bookbag, a bulging puddle of canvas on the floor. Wedged between her quill set and a stack of textbooks is a fresh bottle of wine, a gift from Dobby, plucked right from the kitchen. The bottle's nose pokes out of the top of her bag. Hermione distinctly remembers her anxious trip to the Hospital Wing as she tried to keep the bottle hidden under her arm, moving slowly and cautiously to prevent the liquid from sloshing around and alerting the authorities to her contraband. She could have lost her Prefects' badge if she had been caught with it. Even though it was offered to her by a Hogwarts employee, she should have denied it. Dobby isn't exactly keen on school rules. Or aware of them, for that matter.

And why would Ron want to drink wine when he was almost killed by a bottle of mead? She hadn't been thinking straight. She should just go back to the common room...

An abrupt snore pulls Hermione from her thoughts. It's followed by silence, and Hermione looks tentatively at Ron's face to see if he's woken up. His eyes are still closed, and his mouth agape, a glistening river of drool runs down his chin. She smiles— years ago, she would have thought it was gross, but now, she wouldn't hesitate to wipe it off with her thumb. Oh, how things change.

She should stop staring. How would he react to know someone was watching him sleep?

Unless he's used to it. The knot in her stomach coils further at the thought of Lavender and Ron. Has she ever watched him sleep? They're always kissing in the corridor, entangled on the common room sofa, tugging each other down the hallway in search of empty classrooms. She probably has.

Hermione reaches for the bottle of wine in her bag, if only for a label to read, something to get her mind off of Lavender sharing Ron's bed, giggling as he snores, wiping away a trail of saliva with her thumb, or even worse, her lips.

"Hermione?"

Ron's raspy voice pulls her back, and her cheeks sting with heat. It's not the drowsy, longing, 'Er-My-Nee' from before. This time his tone conveys confusion. Disapproval. He's probably wondering why she's here instead of Lavender.

She chances a smile at him, and her breath catches in her throat at the sight of his piercing blue eyes.

"Hi, Ron," she says, forcing a cheerful, optimistic tone. "I—I brought us some wine."

Ron's eyes narrow as he studies her. He's still mad at her, isn't he? He's going to tell her to leave and go get Lavender instead. She clutches the bottle tighter when it begins to slip through her sweating palms.

Then, unexpectedly, a grin breaks across Ron's face, and Hermione exhales the breath she didn't know she was holding.

"As long as it's not mead."

Let's stay in tonight. Just you and me and a bottle of wine

We can talk about our feelings; everything will be just fine

"I promise it's not mead!" she says, almost too eagerly.

"Good. Don't think I can ever drink mead again! Hand it here?" Ron reaches for the wine.

He's smiling, looking almost giddy to see her. It doesn't make sense. He's so relaxed, as though they haven't spent the last four months fighting. How?

Ron pops the cork with a nonverbal spell, and Hermione lifts an eyebrow at his wandwork. Has she ever complimented him on his charms ability? She makes a mental note to do so more often — considering that they become friends again, of course.

Ron brings the tip of the bottle to his mouth and takes a long swig. Hermione's cheeks redden at the sight, and she hopes he doesn't notice.

He swallows a mouthful of wine with a heavy gulp and hands the bottle back to Hermione.

"You don't mind sharing?"

"Why not? It's just spit."

She prickles at his response. The Ron she knew, pre-Lavender, wouldn't have had such a nonchalant attitude toward spit. Sharing a bit of saliva must be no big deal to him anymore. Great.

Hoping her blatant jealousy isn't written all over her face, Hermione takes a sip, disappointed by its bland, almost metallic taste. She was hoping she'd be able to taste him.

But the wine warms her right up. Hermione doesn't drink often, never, really, and she knows she'll feel the effects quickly. Maybe too quickly.

"So. We have a lot to talk about," says Ron, as soon as she finishes her sip.

Or maybe, not quickly enough.

She nods and looks down at her hands. He's looking down too — she doesn't have to watch him to know that his eyes aren't on her anymore.

A few moments pass in silence, and Hermione figures she'll have to speak up first. How much does she have to explain? How much should she reveal? It seems like the best possible time to share, to tell him everything she almost said over the last four months. Everything she should have said before. They're alone here, why not clear the air?

She takes a deep breath. "I asked you to Slughorn's party as my date, and you said yes."

Ron's scoff confirms what she feared — her statement came off as an accusation. She hadn't meant it that way.

"I know that now," he says.

"But you didn't before?"

"No," he says, reaching for the bottle. "You're pretty subtle. Until you're not." He flashes his forearms at her, still covered with scars from her canary attack.

Her eyes sting with tears again, and she's suddenly sick to her stomach. "I shouldn't have set those birds on you."

"True. You shouldn't have."

No 'sorry's' or 'I forgive you's', just facts, not feelings. It's how they've always communicated, and it's still infuriating.

With a deep breath, Hermione continues, "I was angry at you for kissing Lavender."

A feeling. Not a fact. Maybe he'll follow suit.

"Why?"

Is he really going to make her say it?

"Because I was jealous, Ron. And jealousy makes people do irrational things."

"Well, don't do it again."

Is he asking her not to set birds on him again? "I won't! If you don't—"

She snaps her mouth shut. She almost told him not to kiss Lavender again. She can't ask that of him.

"Don't what?"

"Nothing," she says hastily, burying her expression with another sip of wine.

She watches as a smug smile spreads across Ron's face. "You were going to ask me not to kiss Lavender again, weren't you?"

Hermione keeps her mouth shut and passes the bottle back to him.

"You know it's not fair to ask that."

"I didn't ask that," she says, her jaw stiff. "I stopped myself."

He raises an eyebrow at her. "So you're still jealous?"

"Ron, stop." He's just gloating now. "Let's not talk about Lavender. I just want to be friends again. I'm not asking for anything more."

"Don't you want to know why I kissed her?"

"No—"

"Because I was also jealous."

His answer hits her like a brick. He was jealous. Does that mean…?

"Why were you jealous?"

That's until we start throwing knives. It's amazing how time flies.

Hermione waits for Ron to answer, watching patiently as his cheeks turn crimson. His eyes flit between her and the bottle.

"I was jealous because Ginny said you snogged Krum."

He averts his gaze when he speaks.

"She did?" asks Hermione. "That was two years ago."

Ron shrugs. "Made me jealous."

"So that's why you kissed Lavender?"

Ron nods.

"Even though I had just asked you out on a date?"

"Hermione, I didn't know you meant it as a date! I assumed it was a pity invite."

"You should have talked to me!" she protests. "I was completely blindsided."

"I should have told you how I felt?"

"Yes!"

"Why? You didn't! You just hinted at it, then fucking attacked me with birds for misreading your nonexistent signals!"

Hermione was about to respond, but his retort snaps her mouth shut. He's right. It doesn't matter who started it, but she's the one who got violent. As she searches for a response, their argument pauses, and the air thickens with tension. She can feel Ron's eyes boring into her again, and she pointedly looks away. Why can't she just swallow her pride and say she's sorry?

It's not that easy.

"Maybe I'm better off with Lavender," he says, barely an audible whisper. "She treats me well."

Hermione's heart sinks into her stomach, and her eyes water again. She looks away, willing herself not to cry in front of Ron. She's pushing him away again, and she knows it. His implication cuts deep — he deserves someone who treats him well, and Hermione doesn't.

She can change that; he just has to trust her. But that's a lot to ask, isn't it?

"You're right. Maybe you are better off with her," she says, dejected.

'Cause you're more difficult than trying to fold a fitted sheet

And I'm more difficult than trying to throw a quaffle (at least for me)

You know without you I'd be lost

To her surprise, he grins again. "So that's what you want? For me to stay with Lavender."

Does he really need her to answer?

He hands her the wine, and she stares at it, wondering if another sip would benefit her. She's already feeling the effects.

Eh, why not? She takes another generous sip, enjoying its warm trail down her throat.

"It's a simple question, Hermione."

"Is that what you want?" she asks.

He narrows his eyes and smirks at her, a dangerous combination. With Ron, there's a fine line between anger and flirting, or at least, she thought there was. Before Lavender.

But, Lavender's not in the hospital wing drinking wine with Ron. Hermione is.

She bites her lip to keep from grinning.

"No. It's not." He blurts his answer as though the words have been trapped, waiting to escape. His ears turn pink at his admission, and he eyes the wine in accusation. With a shrug, he continues. "You know what I want."

She's buzzing from the wine — the muscles in her face soften, and her pent-up anxiety about the approaching topic seems to melt away. It feels like there's a clump of wriggling flobberworms in her stomach.

At least, she'd be more willing to play dumb if it saves her the heartache of being wrong. Why can't he just say it?

"I think we want the same thing," she says, summoning her Gryffindor courage, "but I want to hear you say it."

Ron lets out a groan. "Is every conversation we have going to be this difficult?"

Cause you're more difficult than peeling onions without crying

Or pulling on freshly washed skinny jeans

No, I'm not lying; I'd be lost without you

Despite his groan, his shoulders are relaxed, he's sporting a goofy grin, and his answer is clear and direct, leaving no room for misinterpretation. Thank Merlin, the wine is hitting him too. "I want you."

I want you. The words are like music to her ears.

"Still?" she asks. "Even after the birds?" If the roles were reversed, she'd definitely be holding a grudge.

"I don't understand it, but yeah. Still."

She reaches for the bottle — she'll need another dose of courage before continuing. Especially since his next question is easy to guess.

"So," he starts, suddenly sheepish, "do you want me too?"

Hermione sets the bottle down between them and tries to mimic his serious stare from before, but she can't stop from smiling. "Yes. Still."

Silence overtakes the space between them, and Hermione can almost taste the tension in the air. What next? Her daydreams never got this far.

"Then why are you still sitting there?" he asks, an eyebrow raised.

He inches to the side and motions to the space between them in clarification.

Oh, she understood.

His invitation is so tempting, and she almost gives in and crawls into the bed with him, but something stops her. Lavender. He's still someone else's boyfriend.

"Because you have a girlfriend."

"I'm not so sure I do anymore."

"What? Why?"

"Do you really need to ask why, Hermione?" At her confused expression, he continues, "or should I call you Er-My-Nee."

"Lavender heard about that?"

Ron nods, and Hermione knows she should feel sorry for her but… she doesn't. Not one bit.

"So?" he repeats, glancing down at the space beside him.

Hermione rises to her feet and crawls onto the bed, very aware that she's holding her breath. The bed is so small that she can't put a few inches of space between them, so she settles against his shoulder. He reaches for her hand, and their fingers intertwine.

"Is this okay?" asks Ron, caressing her hand with his fingers.

"Yes."

It's another moment she's imagined for years — holding Ron's hand. Not in a 'let me help you up' kind of way, but in a loving, flirtatious, non-platonic way. She's surprised by how easy it is; how comfortably she fits there.

Hermione rests her head on Ron's shoulder, and the bottle of wine in his other hand catches her eye. If only they had shared that bottle four months ago, things could be so different. She pushed him away, and he pushed right back. She could have lost him, yet somehow, he's still right here.

The hurt is still here too. She can tell by the way his breath is shallow and anxious, and the stiffness of his arm against hers that he won't kiss her tonight. Even holding hands is clunky, awkward, and almost too much, and definitely too soon. Yet somewhere in all its dysfunction, it's perfect.

You're for me and I'm for you, you know it's true

The best dysfunctional team that this world has ever seen

The bottle is nearly empty — they've kept drinking but stopped talking. She only notices the stark silence between them when she can hear her own breathing and grows self-conscious that he can hear it too.

She opens her mouth to speak just to fill the silence but freezes. Her lips are too loose from the alcohol, and she better not say anything. He doesn't need to know what's really on her mind. Three little words could push him away, and she just got him back.

It's definitely too soon for that truth.

"Hermione?"

"Hmm?" she asks.

He lets go of her hand and wraps his free arm around her shoulders, encouraging her to lean more of her weight against him. "I love wine."

Hermione laughs. His tone is playful. Knowing. Her stomach flips when he gently squeezes her shoulder as he says 'wine'. If she were sober, she wouldn't dare read too much into those words. Tomorrow, she'll probably wake up and second guess this whole conversation, but right now?

"I love wine, too."

And I love you

[yandere-mha-blog]

Chapter 5: Interrogation

Words: 2065

Fumiko was at a loss right now, first, he gets attacked by a villain then he gets killed by the villain the second he gets out of the hospital, things just weren't adding up, did the villain mean to kill him the first time, not according to the records of his patterns, Just the thought of Akio last moments begging for his life made her want to throw up, Genji came up and sat next to her

“Hey, Fumiko.” He said, “Lot on your mind huh.”

“Yes, I just don't understand why he is dead.” She said, and Genji rubbed the back of his neck

“Well, I came by this morning to see him, we all got some drinks and left with another group so I came to see if he had a hangover, but when I came in, he was slumped against the wall, with a large gasp in his throat,” he said

“Why would you tell me that?” She yelled at him

“Well think about it okay, who do we know that hated Akio and has a quirk that can slash someone's throat.” He said

“They say it was the Nighthawk who came back to finish the job.” she said “But that doesn't make sense either.”

“I’m going to tell the police about (name).” Genji said, “I think she might have something to do with this.”

You were longing on your bed re-reading a textbook passage when there was a knock on the door, oh what now. You got up and opened the door only to see the police

“Hello,” you said

“Hi (name), right?” He asked

“Yes,” you said crossing your arms

“Well we have a tip that you and the victim were not on good terms and you may have a motive to kill him, so we are going to have to have you come down to the station for questioning.” He said,

“Okay,” you said as the two officers lead you away from your dorm, and down the steps, people look over and whispering as you got into the back of the car, and headed down for questioning. They sat you down at a table and got started interrogating you.

“So (name), how is school going for you, you are in school to become a surgeon.” He asked

“Yes,” you said

“So we got word that you and the victim aren't on good terms.” He said

“That is true,” you said

“Why would that be?”

“He tried to assault me in a back alley,” you said

“Did you go to the police about this?” He asked

“NO because the next day he was in the hospital,” you said

“Yes, we noticed that along with the cuts from the attacker there was another wound around his wrist, puncture wounds.” He said

“Yes I tried to defend myself with my quirk, all under legal stature.” you said “Are you saying I can't defend myself?”

“Not at all.” He said, “But how did you escape?”

“Someone threw a can at his head and he ran away with his tail between his legs,” you said

“Was the person who threw the can, the attacker?”

“How would I know that?” you said

“Well when we examined the puncture wounds on his wrist with the way his lock broke, they match up.” He said

“Okay,” you said

“That puts you at the scene of the crime with a motive,” he said

“I was out for a walk and saw him bringing a drunk girl to his dorm, I broke in to help her.” You said, “He got upset and strangled me.”

“Proof?” he asked, as you took your scarf off to reveal the handprints on your neck

“This enough proof for you?” you said

“And you didn't call the police.” He asked

“No, I got the girl out of there and dropped her off at the female dorms,” you said

“Well you know what I think, I think you attacked Akio got into a scuffle and killed him in self-defense.” “You are wrong, I didn’t kill him,” you said

“(name) if it was in self-defense you can tell me, you won't get a harsh punishment if you just admit to killing in self-defense.” he said, you rolled your eyes

“Did you just come up with that story now?” You said, “How did he die again?”

“SLash across the front of his throat,” he said

“Okay and was it a knife slash,” you asked

“No. He said

“And you think it was my talons?” you asked “I'm sure that can be proved wrong a test gives me some fake flesh and I'll show you what it would look like.”

Hawks on the other hand was a bit worried about you getting taken away by the police so he attacked one of his feathers to the bottom of the police car then had it sneak in through a vent to listen in on the conversation. He would have to do what was necessary if they were closing in on you, but you were smart not to give up any information about him, still, were you going to get thrown under the bus for him, that didn't sit well with him either.

“Well, they don't match.” He said, “but your talons were still used to break the lock did you have an accomplice?”

“I left the door open when taking the girl away, so if someone came by afterward I wouldn't have known.” you said “I didn't bother to close the door after the whole almost suffocated to death.”

“(Name) my quirk is being able to tell if someone is telling the truth or not, you are telling a partial truth but you aren't telling me the whole story,” he said and you rolled your eyes

“You expect me to believe the bluff.” you said “I bet you are another weird growth quirk grower, a dime in the dozen who didn't have flashy quirk so you decided to interrogate people.”

You were digging under his skin, people were so easy to rial up and it was even more fun to see him try and keep his composure

“(name) you do know hiding information about a high stakes villain is a federal offense, especially if it is a villain the Hero Public safety commission has been after.” He said

“What possible information would I have on such a scary villain,” you said almost mocking him.

“(name) this is serious, we believe that Nighthawk killed Akio.” He said, “Don't you want to get justice for this man?”

“After what he did, and the second he got out of the hospital started to try and take advantage of drunk women, not so much.” you said “Justice was served for me and every other nameless victim he hurt.”

“There have been no police reports on him-” ``Because no one would listen, some heroes you are.” you said, “He was a scumbag and he would continue to be a scumbag, I don't care if he is in a body bag, All I did was save a girl from being another victim, what happened to him after is none of my concern.”

With that the cop left to go inform his colleagues you weren't being cooperative and maybe they should bring in someone who could talk some sense into you, Hawks rolled his eyes.

You were left in that interrogation room for the night, what a way to spend your day, you were going to miss so much school because of this damn mess. You waited and waited till the door opened and the cop came back in.

“Hey, I need to use the restroom,” you said

“It can wait someone is here to see you, someone important so behave yourself,” he said and you had a thought to just use the restroom right then and there, till the president of the Hero public safety commission came in

“Hello miss (Last name).” she said as you just started on

“(name) is fine,” you said

“OKay (name), you two can leave us be, like there wasn't a two-way mirror to see this, as she sat across from you, her blond hair was pushed back and she had a very stern face, “So how have you been?”

“Terrible,” you said

“Look let's cut the chase, I know Nighthawk saved you that night in the alleyway from Akio.” She said, “And I know that you know that, and I know that you have talked to him afterward.”

“Is it your job to come up with crazy stories?” you asked as you coughed “I need some water.”

“Bring her some water.” She said as the door opened and a pitcher of water was placed down with two cups, you happily drank it.

“Look you aren't the first person he has dragged into his mess, he has a way of getting into people's minds and making them feel understood, and special to him.” She explained, “I think you have been manipulated by his more charismatic  personality, so if you know anything about his whereabouts or any information I can sweep this under the rug for you.”

You let out a long sigh of defeat

“Ma'am, I'm in medical school to become a surgeon.” you said, “Look that night I was attacked by Akio, someone came to my rescue by hitting him in the head with a can, afterward when I heard Akio got out of the hospital I was worried he would try to hurt someone else, so when I was walking I saw him caring a drunk girl home, I broke his lock I went in and stopped it, he tried to strangle me, I kicked him off and ran with the girl.”

You weren't exactly lying, but omitting some parts of the story

“Then it is highly possible that the NIghthawk is stalking you.” She said, “It appears to have been a misunderstanding, so I'll have the police let you go and write you off as an innocent bystander.” She said getting up “We will get you back to school momentarily.”

You were a bit surprised your bluff worked, but you were happier to be able to leave with your name cleared, although this probably meant that Hawks would think you snitch and would leave, it was interesting while it lasted you supposed.

“President, how could you believe such a bad lie.” An officer said

“Who said I believe her, no she is hiding something about him, I want survalance on her immediately.” She said, “I have a feeling she is going to be a great help in finally catching that meddlesome bird.”

“Right away ma’am.” He said, as the police followed you back to school and you were finally back on campus, maybe you would be able to catch the last half of your class if you rushed over. Everyone's head turned when you did enter the classroom mostly in disbelief, you walked over and sat right next to Fumiko, it was more a way to intimidate her since you knew it was who snitched on you and nearly got you thrown in the slammer. So when class ended you put your hand out in front of her

“I need to talk to you, now,” you said

“(name), I can explain,” she said

“Oh I would love to hear it.” you said as you got closer to her face “I know you tipped off the police, well news flash, I didn't kill Akio, you nearly cost me to miss 23 days of school.”

“(name) I was talking to Genji that's all.” She said

“Fumiko you need to learn how to grow a backbone soon,” you said slinging your bag over your shoulder, and stormed back to your dorm, and collapsed on your bed, a fluffy bed always felt nice after a rough day, god you felt like ripping your talons through something, maybe a pillow, but pillows cost money so you held it in.

“Just great, Fumiko scared off the one interesting thing that was happening and I'm so bored.” you thought something still didn’t make sense to you, why was she so sure of your story when everyone else was doubtful, no she must have let you go on purpose, she must think she is so smart, she was probably going to use you as a means to catch Hawks, you were going to be ready.

[the-genesis-caveat]

i’ve been listening to way too many creepypastas.

@irrelevant-proxy-bitch as promised, my creepypasta sona/oc origin story. hopefully it meets the standards, heh

Genesis Caveat Origin

or, How I Became a Proxy

That thing is watching me again.

I first noticed it after a particularly boring day of school. I hadn’t paid attention in most of my classes, instead opting to scroll through Tumblr, mess around on Discord, and listen to Creepypasta readings on Youtube. I’m probably failing most of my classes at this point. I can’t bring myself to care. I can’t bring myself to care about much of anything these days. Fiction is the only thing that piques my interest, those made-up worlds are so much more entertaining than the boring one I’m stuck living in. That’s probably why I like writing so much, I can create and destroy whole worlds with no consequence to me, I can control everything and nothing, and it can be as entertaining as I want it to be.

I’m getting off-track. Sorry.

I’d been ignored all day, as per usual, so when I was walking home and felt someone watching me, I was confused and more than a little curious. I normally walk at a fairly quick pace, but I slowed my steps a little when I felt I was being watched. I turned to look behind me, but no one was there. The sidewalk was empty. Actually, the whole street was empty, which is what caused my anxiety to spike. There were no people, no cars, even the storefronts looked empty. I turned back forward and picked up my pace again, walking quickly all the way home. It wasn’t until I’d reached my front door that I realized the feeling of that stare had vanished the instant I’d turned around.

Since then, I’ve felt that stare every time I walk home from school.

After the first day, I didn’t bother looking back. Something told me I wouldn’t be able to see anyone if I did. I was more than a bit creeped out by the whole thing. Why was someone spying on me? How long had they been watching me before I noticed? I was half-convinced I’d been singled out because I’m a textbook wallflower- no one at school would know if I went missing, and they definitely wouldn’t care. If someone snatched me while I was on my way to school, my parents wouldn’t find out until I was late getting home, and by then their frantic calls to the school and police wouldn’t do a thing- I’d probably be long gone.

I guess I was right about that part, heh. Just not for the reasons I thought.

. . .

I’m getting ahead of myself. Where were we? Ah, right.

It’s the seventh day of me being stared at as I’m walking home from school. For the past week, caution won out over curiosity, and instead of trying to spot whoever’s stalking me, I’ve just gotten home as fast as I can. I also made a habit of texting my parents when I leave school- they know how long it’s supposed to take me to get home, so if I get kidnapped they’ll know sooner. Same as when I head to school in the mornings, because I’ve been feeling the gaze on me then too.

I think part of me always knew it wasn’t human.

Shit, sorry. Focus.

Anyway, walking home. Seventh day in a row. Blah blah blah. Only this time, my curiosity outweighed my caution. Maybe I was just so damn bored of the life I had, that I’d do anything to mix things up. Actually, I’m sure that’s what it was. Suffice to say, as I walked down the eerily empty street, this time I slowed my steps instead of speeding them up. Then I slowly turned my head to look behind me. And saw it. The thing that was stalking me. I only caught half a second’s glance before it vanished, but that was enough. The details flashed in my mind. Tall, freakishly so. Black suit, torn sleeves. Something like tentacles raised up behind it. And the face- no face. At least not that my mind allowed me to see.

Then it vanished.

I spun back forwards and sprinted the rest of the way home.

The minute I got home I locked myself in my bedroom, drawing the curtains closed and booting up my laptop. A barely comprehensible entry in the Google search bar was autocorrected in seconds, and with a shaking hand, I moved the mouse to click on the images tab. Photoshopped pictures, fanart, and blurry photos stared back at me.

“I knew it.”

Like I mentioned at the start of this narration, I listen to a lot of creepypasta readings on Youtube. So I’m familiar with some of the stories. Laughing Jack. Jeff the Killer. Lost Silver. So many others. And of course, the one that started it all.

Slenderman.

“Holy fuck.”

I was being stalked by Slenderman. Why? And why hadn’t he killed me? I needed answers. Luckily, the internet is a magnificent place. I curled up in my swivel chair and started typing away, searching up everything I could about Slenderman and his proxies. Even the stuff I already knew, I read or listened to again. I took in as much information as possible. It’s said that knowledge is power, and for some things, the more you know, the more danger you’re in. But in this case, well. I’d seen him. He knew I’d seen him. What did I have to lose?

The next time I look at my clock, it’s nearly five in the morning. I’d done about all the research my brain could handle, even with my hyperfixations running at full throttle. More info probably wouldn’t matter anyway.

I’d made my decision, my plan.

Now, to execute it.

I empty my backpack of school supplies and pulled out a Sharpie. Lowering the felt tip to the fabric on the inside of the backpack, I let out a slow breath. With things like this, power always came from belief, at least that’s what the stories told me. I’d seen him, I knew it was real, it was all real. Now that I knew that, anything was possible. The line between fiction and reality is blurring.

As an author, it’s my job to break it.

I scribble a phrase on the inside of the backpack and capped the sharpie. Then I reach over to one of the books I’d stacked in the ‘bring with’ pile and drop it in.

The book hit the bottom of the bag and vanished.

I grin and reach in, hand passing through a cool sort of veil. I feel around, grabbing the book, and pull it out. It worked. It worked! I giggle, flapping my free hand in excitement. Pocket dimension backpack, success!! I start piling the books into it, all the stories I will carry with me. Then my sketchbooks and drawing supplies. My laptop, chargers, wallet, phone, anything I think I might potentially need. Even some of the food and drinks I’d snuck into my room. My blankets and pillow. Some clothes I’d grown attached too. Hell, let’s bring my stuffed animals and collection of keepsakes too, why not? It can all fit! I empty my shelf of little knick-knacks into the backpack. Nearly everything that I can lift in my room has gone into that pack.

Now… to wait.

7am. I make my move.

I stand in front of the mirror in my room, looking myself over. I’m wearing an outfit I wear almost every day. Grey jacket with a red upside-down heart on the chest, grey shorts with red on the edges, boots, a long red scarf, and a pair of fingerless gloves. The only difference is that now, all my clothes have been altered by my newly discovered ability. I’m calling it “author powers” because that’s the closest I can get to properly explaining it. Now, my entire ensemble is fireproof, waterproof, and much harder to cut through that ordinary cloth. My boots are much more comfortable and molded to my feet. Everything fits just right.

Oh, one more thing. I pick up the blue-light glasses I’d left on my desk. I don’t even have to write on them to alter them, but it’s a fun little gimmick so I might just keep doing it. A couple lines on the glasses, and they’re suddenly much more useful. They’ll function as sunglasses now too, as well as a night vision and heat-seeking mode. And they’ll stay on my face without falling off. I push the glasses up my nose and look back into the mirror.

I guess the function wasn’t the only thing I altered. My ability has a lot to do with intentions.

Instead of glasses, I’m wearing a black mask with turquoise lenses. The mask only covers the upper half of my face. But that’s not the only thing that’s changed. Instead of my hair being the usual dirty-blonde and down to my shoulders, it’s pink, shorter and sorta spiked up- at least that’s the best way to describe it. Not spiked, that’s too sharp. But I can’t find another word right now, so we’ll stick with it. It was a transformation I hadn’t anticipated, but one that I’m sure to keep. I grin, showing teeth sharper than normal.

“This is gonna be fun.”

I hear someone in the kitchen. My dad, getting ready for the day. It’s Saturday, so he doesn’t have work. We don’t have a foster kid at the moment, so mom will be sleeping in. And my sister is still asleep in her bedroom. Perfect.

I raise a hand, seeing the black claws that now extend from the ends of my gloves. I’d been wondering how I’d get to a knife, but I guess now I won’t need one. I tighten the straps of my backpack and step out of my bedroom.

“Heh. Time to raise hell.”

~

Six days later. Thirteen days since this all started.

It took me for-fucking-ever to find the mansion. Even longer to get there with the burden I’m dragging along. But here I am. It looms over me, giving off the same creepy vibe I got from my stalker. I know he’s there, and he knows I’m here. Someone will answer the door soon, I don’t even have to knock.

The smell of blood isn’t as bad as I thought. I’m glad I made my clothes stain-proof, I’d hate to have to throw away my gloves. As I’m waiting, I tap my foot idly and inspect my fingers. I have a nasty habit of biting the skin around my fingernails, which shows even with my claws. Oh, there’s blood on my claws. Not quite dry, so I just lick it off. Huh, doesn’t taste that bad either.

Someone’s moving inside. I straighten up slightly, hand dropping to my side. I nudge one of the bodies next to me with a foot, then take a half-step away when an arm flops to the ground. I look back to the door, arms crossed (carefully, to avoid cutting myself) as I wait. The door finally creaks open, revealing someone I don’t recognize. I assume it’s one of the proxies, but it’s not one that I’ve read anything about. Only one way to find out.

“You’re one of his proxies, I assume?” Even my voice is different, with the mask. I like it.

The proxy laughs. “Fuck yeah, I’m the number one proxy bitch. But you can call me Irre.” She pronounced it like ‘eerie’, which I thought was fitting.

I snort with amusement and take a moment to look the proxy up and down. She has pale blue skin, long hair that faded from black into red, and silver eyes. She’s about my height, maybe an inch shorter, with a healthier-looking build than the almost-too-skinny twig stature I see every time I look in the mirror. She even looks to be about my age too, give or take a year. She gives off a chaotic sort of presence, but in a way that’s almost difficult to perceive. I’m reminded of my school days, blending into the background. After a few people told me my stare was creepy, even though I’d just been looking at them, I didn’t meet anyone’s gaze. Apparently I had an intensity others found unsettling, but only if they noticed me. I’m reminded of that with this proxy, only with chaotic energy instead. I smile slightly. We might just get along.

“Well, nice to meet you, number one proxy bitch,” I respond with a chuckle. “Speaking of proxies. Where do I sign up? I brought a peace offering.” An idle hand gesture draws her attention to the bodies sprawled next to me. Two bodies, carved up with precise markings, and very much dead. What remains of my parents. My claws had marked them, turned their corpses into a work of art. I’d saved the blood, bagged it and put it in my backpack. I might need it later.

Irre looks the bodies over and grins. “I think you’ll fit in just fine here. Course, that’s not my decision.” She glances back at the house. “The others will get curious soon. Last chance to turn back.”

“I’m not going back. Besides, he sought me out first,” I admit. “Took me awhile to figure it out. But I’m here now.”

She nod in understanding. “In that case… what’s your name?”

I grin, showing sharp teeth. “I am Genesis Caveat.”

[qlistening]

Happy Pandemic-iversary

What’s up ladies. It’s around the pandemic-iversary and as you all know, I have appointed myself as head of commenting on shit that has happened during the pandemic and it’s time for a quarterly update. 

If I had to guess, each and every one of you has gone one of two routes since the beginning of last year.

Route 1: Realizing that everything inherently cool and fun would be cancelled and quickly deciding that some factor like your mental health or the quality of your college experience was more important than the social/public health consequences of partying during the pandemic. If you’re feeling attacked right now, worry not party girl. That is not my intention. I myself am a founding member of the “anything to feel something” club and a staunch believer that if you don’t take care of yourself, no one else will. 

Odds are that if you are in this group, you’re a wee bit entitled and/or your mental health is held together by a very thin thread. Taking away your regularly scheduled social interactions may have unboxed some demons that you would really like to tuck back in. I’m talking depression, anxiety, substance abuse, insecurity, issues with loneliness, etc.  You either used partying to slam the lid shut on that box, or like me, pulled out your demons, worked on them a little, and boxed them back up with more partying when you were over it. 

That’s growth baby! Nothing monumental, but you laid more groundwork for making it through your twenties than you would have otherwise AND you’re in a great position to reenter society when all this is over. Sure you were probably “on the wrong side of history”, but as long as you didn’t kill anyone, you will probably be able to live with yourself.

Route 2: The CDC said jump and you said “how high?”. These are my rule-following girly pops. My caring and empathetic girly pops. And of course, my girly pops who had inescapably valid reasons to avoid the rone at all costs. 

Your year has probably consisted of a mix of being infinitely proud of yourself for doing the right thing, infinitely frustrated with those who did not, and infinitely in denial about how much it sucked. You knew that the second you admitted to yourself that all of the whipped coffee, brisk walks, and zoom happy hours in the world were not going to be enough to keep you happy, you would fall into an inescapable cycle of depression that you had no hope of climbing out of in your isolated state. So you made up bullshit tasks to keep yourself occupied for an entire year.

You are a fucking hero for that, BUT your transition back into real life is not going to be easy. All of those little tasks that you invented have started to feel like legitimate priorities that you are having trouble distinguishing from your real responsibilities. You have to be prepared to let all of that deep cleaning and gourmet cooking go in exchange for going out to bars and showering more than twice a week. And just a tip from the pandemic party girl; socializing is not going to be fun and easy or any more stimulating than those made up tasks at first. But humans are social animals and you need to get in touch with whatever aspect of going out that you used to love so dearly. Whether that was making new friends, relentlessly pursuing some dick, showing off your cute outfits, sweaty dancing, or just getting fucked up, there was a reason you did this shit every weekend and you need to acknowledge it in order to connect with your former self.

Now that I have lumped you into these two different groups, it’s time to talk about the middle of the venn diagram: depression. Whether you hid from that shit at home or at He’s Not, odds are it caught up to you eventually. It was easy to predict that removing the majority of stimulation and fulfillment from life and throwing around the term “uncertain times” for a year would create a sub-pandemic of depressed ass bitches. 

I saw it coming from day one, but that only made it worse. Feeling your motivation and ability to find any means of generating serotonin slip away from you is a feeling I wouldn’t wish on anyone, yet have seen in almost everyone. I thought that seeing this shit coming would protect me from it and I was wrong. When it hit, I was consumed by the same sense of self loathing you feel when a boy fucks you over and you saw it coming, but didn’t have the strength to resist. 

Self loathing and emptiness are some raw fucking feelings and I hope to God that, at the very least, our shared experiences with these emotions has cultivated a broader sense of empathy in our cut-throat society. So far, that hunch has played out in the polls.

Empathy or no empathy, these feelings are still pervasive throughout the world and I’ll be damned if a single bitch with a marketing job was going to miss their chance to capitalize on this. With that, we have the birth of “wellness”. That world is honestly a trigger for me at this point because I, like many of you, was fooled into thinking it would be the antidote to depression. But what it really is is a well played scheme to sell things to people who are down bad and desperate to regain control over their health and well being. Believe me, I understand that this is a natural byproduct of capitalism, but there is something really insidious about an industry with marketing tactics that prey on people’s fear that something is wrong with them and offer them bullshit solutions to fix it.

Reading that back, I realize that is pretty much the textbook definition of marketing, but I’m standing by the fact that it is fucked up. Sorry if that offends anyone.

For all of you ladies who have been dropping bricks on supplements, jade rollers, and overpriced subscriptions to meditation apps, I am here to offer you a reality check. You do not need that shit. Don’t believe me? You don’t have to! Men are living proof that I am right. Most have never taken a vitamin, stretched, meditated, or eaten a vegetable besides corn and are literally fine.

If you want to partake in the wellness trend, fine, but don’t let that shit throw you into a state of body hyper-awareness where you manifest health problems just from worrying about them. Don’t reward the companies who did this to you with your money. And PLEASE do not pass up on the opportunity to do normal twenty-something fuck shit that would actually make you feel better for the sake of your made up health needs. 

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. There is plenty more to comment on, but I have to go outside and smoke my half cigarette before it starts to rain. See y’all next time I am bored enough to write one of these.

[fuwafuwamedb]

A Cursed Gil Pt 3 (Hakuno, Gilgamesh)

Previous Part: One - Haku POV / Gil POV, Two 

______

______

She couldn’t sleep.

She just… couldn’t.

Her ceiling showed the faintest traces of the sun as the morning continued to begin. She could see that the blinds were slightly open. She could see G coming into the room and climbing up onto the bed. He fur fluffed up around him as he walked her way, slipping under her arm and pressing against her person.

Any other morning, she would have been pulling him close, cooing softly to him.

Any other morning, she would have been all too happy to curl up and maybe sneak them both something to eat from the kitchen.

Today was not one of those days though.

Even when he licked her face, she just felt wrong.

He’d been a man in her kitchen.

Or she was tired.

It’d been a long night. She’d been working a few extra hours here and there and leaving for part of the day every day. The study sessions and the constant concern about rent and courses were starting to wear on her sanity a bit.

Yesterday evening, clearly her sanity had decided to take a trip to a black hole, leaving her insane.

She’d probably just been wandering through her house with G following after her, meowing and pawing at her here and there.

That was it.

“You wouldn’t force me to leave my home, would you, G?”

Hakuno pressed her face into the cat’s fur, feeling the cat turn a little and lick her face.

She fell asleep to his loud purring and the sun outside rising higher.

The sound of the door being pounded on met her ears when she woke up. G was curled up on her person, his head gently rising as they both heard the pounding once again.

“Hakuno!”

Emiya’s voice could be heard.

Why did he want?

G growled, hurrying out of the room.

She pulled her robe around herself more, yawning as she slowly pulled herself from the blankets and headed for the door. The lights were still on in the house. The stove held a handful of ingredients and things on them.

She’d left the remaining eggs out.

The man who had been in her home had left the eggs out.

Without hesitating, she pulled the door open, finding the white haired man standing on her doorstep.

“What’s going on?”

“You weren’t in class.”

“Oh.”

Right.

It’d been a school night. She was going to need to find a doctor’s note or something for explaining where she’d been. Emiya was pushing passed her though, frowning at the state of the house.

“Are you alright, Hakuno?”

Closing the door, she nodded.

“I’m fine, Emiya. I just overslept today. I think I’ve just been overworking myself a little. G and I were taking the day to recover.”

Actually, my cat turned into a person and started getting handsy and telling me that we were going to go to Uruk and then I tried to attack him, he made me food, and then he turned back into a cat. It’s been great. I’ve gone insane.

Emiya picked up the eggs, setting them back in the fridge and looking around a little more.

G was growling at his feet.

“Hakuno… Why don’t I help clean up while you rest.”

“That doesn’t sound like helping.”

He shrugged, pulling his jacket off. “Call it what you will. You’ve clearly gotten a flu or something. Coming to the door with your bathrobe on and keeping the eggs out. Go to bed.”

She gave him a salute, heading off to bed.

G could do what he wished.

Bed was soft.

Bed was warm.

The distant sound of Emiya cleaning up the house and doing dishes could be heard, disrupted here and there when the man would get after G for something. The cat’s growling and spitting could be heard well enough, but she was tired.

So so very tired.

A small body jumped onto her own.

She could feel those paws move as the cat walked up her person.

Opening her eyes, she glanced down to see the cat patting at her face.

G pointed at the door with his paw.

No.

No, cats didn’t point. He just happened to be lifting his paw and it happened to be pointing in the direction of the door. He was not pointing.

A small growl came.

“G. I’m tired. Ask Emiya for food.”

A soft patting came to her shoulder.

She opened her eyes again after a moment and found the cat looming over her.

Two jabs towards the door.

Another growl.

“You don’t like him.”

The cat nodded.

No, the cat did not nod.

Cats were not capable of understand human gestures like that. He had merely happened to lightly bob his head once when she asked a question that just happened to have a yes or no question. There was no way that he had understood what she was asking and how to respond in kind.

She wrapped an arm around G’s fluff of a body, pulling him close and closing her eyes again.

She couldn’t go crazy if she just went back to sleep.

G wasn’t having that though. Even as she closed her eyes, attempting to go to sleep, she found the cat nuzzling close, making small sounds and trying to nudge at her.

She did what she could to ignore him, but-

“G, please.”

More tapping.

Hakuno sat up, surrendering.

She’d sleep later.

Heading into the other room, she could see Emiya already starting to cook what seemed to be dinner. A bottle of cheap wine was sitting on the counter, but she declined it. She ate, leaning against the wall by the table and listening to the other talk about his day.

He left after that.

She locked the door back up and pulled her laptop over to herself.

Deciding not to tell Emiya had been the wise move to make. She knew that and she was proud of herself for sticking to her guns on that matter. She had no proof other than a messy house. Even if he had believed her, he would have insisted to either stay at the apartment or have her go to his.

He would have insisted she get rid of G.

It wasn’t a bad idea, finding G another home. The cat could probably find a family with more time and more money. The cardboard box he had in the corner and sharing her bed was probably kind of second rate compared to what others could offer him.

However…

Finding him a new home assumed that he could turn into a man.

“He’s a cat, Hakuno,” she told herself, pulling up the internet and her resources from before.

Now was the time for apologizing for her absence today. Tomorrow she would be working. She could stop by Emiya’s to pick up her assignment information and asking for his notes.

G leaped up onto the couch.

Those red eyes were watching her fingers move across the keyboard as she typed up a poor excuse for her professor and began to work. She could see him in her peripheral, moving slowly closer and closer as her fingers moved across the various keys.

His paws pat at one of the keys.

“G,” she growled.

Those eyes looked at her a moment before those eyes were on the screen.

His paw bat at the cuneiform on the screen.

Her mouse wasn’t moving.

He had no reason to-

As my wife, you shall not need to concern yourself with mongrel ratings. In fact, I have planned to send my friend Enkidu to pay this man a visit when we are done returning to Uruk.

Hakuno paused a moment, her eyes drifting to the textbook she hadn’t opened yet.

Someone from the time of Uruk wouldn’t know their language. It was far different from the dead language that had been common. Sumerian was in her book though. It was written and it had her language next to it.

This was such a foolish thing to do.

“Come here, G.”

Hakuno pulled the cat alongside her, pulling her book from the clear wrapping that it was in and opening it. She flipped through the foreward, settling on the basics for a dictionary at the front and held the book for the cat to paw at.

“I’m losing my mind, G. If you are a human being, give me a message.”

The cat stared at her.

Probably because she was attempting to have the cat communicate like some kind of Ouija board.

Tomorrow, she would go out and she would run her day like usual. She was going to take a few days and maybe go visit Emiya after the semester was done. A break was clearly calling for her and she was missing the call.

Yes, she needed to do some serious resting.

G meowed at her.

His paw hit the page.

Glancing over the book, she froze.

A greeting.

His paw had hit a moment of speech in the Epic that she had opened the book up to. Those red eyes were watching her.

“…You could just be a cat.”

The male cat moved its paw to another statement on the page and to the bottom.

King… disappointed.

No.

Hakuno stood up, moving away from the cat. Her feet moved along the carpet, her eyes closing as she tried to allow herself to think clearer.

G meowed from his spot on the end table.

“You said Enkidu last night.”

She knew that name. There was a story in her books that talked about someone with that name.

She fumbled with the books, flipping through pages as the cat moved around her person. The more she looked, the more she found G’s actions to be unusual.

He focused on her a bit too much.

He was so careful about where he sat.

He didn’t lick himself as much as she’d seen cats at the petstore clean themselves. He even used the toilet, a fact that Emiya and the vet when she had called them both had said was unnatural.

“Cats do not teach themselves to use the toilet.”

G had though.

He’d gone straight to her bathroom and used it like he’d been doing so his whole life.

G meowed again.

His paw was patting at the same spot as before on the book.

“Okay.” Hakuno moved back over to the cat again, setting on the coffee table and flipping through the book. “G, I need you to point to words that mean what I tell you, okay? Point to forest.”

The cat pawed at the cuneiform for forest.

“Temple maiden.”

Again, he paused the word.

“Wife.”

The cat lifted his paw and bopped her nose.

She was talking to her cat.

Her cat was claiming that she was his wife.

Her cat could turn into a man at any moment and resume that same nonsense as before with trying to get her to take him to a country that didn’t exist anymore and then possibly lose his temper and kill her.

“Alright.” Hakuno closed the book, setting it down quietly.

Her eyes drifted over to the cat, finding him sitting tall and seemingly quite proud of himself. No matter how she looked at it, he seemed to be waiting for her to speak.

He was listening.

He was understanding.

“Alright… Right…”

She was feeling a bit lightheaded for some reason.

Maybe if she just… laid down…

My cat is a human.

She needed to do a lot more resting.

G is a man… and he’s been in my baths and bed for over a month now.

G moved close, curling up against her shoulder and purring loudly.

She would learn the details tomorrow.

Everything sounded better as a task for tomorrow.

[ahsien-saffari1-blog]

Love’s not Rocket Science

Prompt/Inspiration: The idea of Logan trying to ask Patton out using the advice he gave Thomas in the video ‘Alone on Valentine’s day’, “Do you like food?”

Genre: Fluff (I think that’s what it would be considered under)

Pairing(s): Romantic Logicality, (Hinted) Prinxiety

Word Count: 2448

Warnings: None that I can think off? There’s like one curse word in it? Remus is mentioned in passing.

A/N: This is my first time writing a SS short and I hope you enjoy!

You are Here | First Chapter (Logicality)

Second Chapter Pt1 (Prinxiety)

Second Chapter Pt2 (Prinxiety)

-

“Just go over to him and ask him out, it’s not rocket science Logan.” Roman said over the Skype call as he admired his freshly painted nails, not really paying much attention to Logan. 

Though in all honestly Roman was somewhat enjoying this, after all, this was one of the few times he'd ever seen Logan lose his 'robot nerd composure' as he liked to call it. It proved that he was in fact, still a human with emotions. 

"Patton's really nice and you know that, so it’s not like he’s going to suddenly hate you or anything. I mean, to my knowledge he has yet to hate anyone he has hung out with.”

Logan paused in his pacing and looked over at Roman, appearing very exacerbated.

“I can do rocket science, Roman!” He exclaimed, running his hands through his hair. “Rocket science is easy! Love however is an unsolvable enigma that the best approach to is impossible to deduce!” Romans eyes widened in surprise at Logan’s obvious panic.

“And how can you know that for sure?! Do you have data and examples you can provide me as proof? Maybe I’ll be the first exception!” Roman raised his hands up in surrender and in a display of shushing.

“Woah, calm down there Nerd." Logan glared at Roman through the camera.

“Okay, okay, fine,” Roman said, sitting up straighter and giving Logan more of his attention, “How about you just stop overthinking this all and do whatever you think will work best. Because firstly, Patton meeting my brother would probably be the first exception." 

Logan couldn't really deny that fact based on what he'd heard and seen about Roman's brother.

"Secondly, you’ve shot down all of the ideas I’ve offered you. So how about you just introduce yourself, ask about a common interest you two have, and then ask him out for dinner or something.” 

“That’s because the majority of your ideas are illogical and impractical! Patton is not a damsel in distress and there are no villains or ‘dragons’ in real life that I could save him from. I refuse to just run up to him and quote in quote 'sweep him off his feet'. And-” 

Logan’s rant was cut short by the sound of sudden loud shouting outside of Romans room - said Prince having swiveled his chair around to look towards his door. Logan was only able to catch a bit of what was being said, or more precisely, screamed.

“REMUS PRINCE YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE LEFT FOR BOARDING SCHOOL TODAY WHAT THE HELL-” Roman’s expression had gone a bit pale as well as frustrated, teeth grit as he looked back over to Logan.

“Look I’m gonna have to cut this short, but I better see you talking to Patton tomorrow or-” 

“ROMAN GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE RIGHT NOW YOU WERE MEANT TO BE HIS TRANSPORTATION AND-!” Logan saw the panic flashing over Romans face before the call was disconnected and Logan was left standing in front of his computer, all alone with his own thoughts and panic over how he was going to deal with his predicament.

-

Logan let out a dull sigh as he entered the school, his normal, cool and cold composure back. The only difference in this morning was the fact that he had arrived later than usual to school and because of this, Roman had managed to beat him to his locker - which was directly next to Logan’s.

Roman looked over at Logan and flashed his usually charming grin causing Logan to roll his eyes.

“Greetings Roman.” Logan opened his locker - making sure to hide his locker combination from Roman’s sight.

“What’s with the late arrival, Nerd?” When Logan didn’t answer immediately Roman looked over at him and pressed further at the sight of how tired he looked.

“Woah there, were you up all night stressing about asking him out?!" There was clear disbelief in his tone, "I mean, did you even get any sleep last night?”

Logan looked over at him with an irritated but dull expression.

“You are well aware of my current situation and difficulty with," He grimaced momentarily as he got out the next word, "Emotions, Roman.” 

He began switching out his notebooks, “And no, I only got a total of three hours and seventeen minutes of sleep.” 

Roman frowned at this before her flashed his signature smile again and slapped Logan on the back causing Logan to have to grab onto the edge of his locker to remain upright.

“Well besides all that, you’re still going to ask him out today, right?” Logan shot him an annoyed look, wondering what he had been thinking when he had shared the fact that he had had a crush on Patton with this drama queen, and sighed, doing his best to appear unaffected.

“I am unsure.” He swapped out his history textbook for his AP Calculus one.

Roman crossed his arms, and gave Logan a hard stare. Logan chose to ignore Roman’s stare and closed his locker before picking up his backpack and zipping it up.

“If you don’t ask him out today I’m going to go tell him myself.” Roman suddenly said causing Logan to drop his backpack and freeze.

“Roman, I forbid you from-”

“The only way you can stop me is by telling him yourself and asking him to be your valentine.” Roman said with a smirk, crossing his arms. 

Logan pursed his lips, looking like he wanted to strangle Roman then and there before he sighed - seemingly deflating - and bent down to pick up his bag.

“Fine, I’ll do so when an opportune moment arises.” He slipped his bag over his shoulders before adjusting his glasses, “Is that satisfactory enough for you?”

Roman looked about to contradict him before he seemed to spot something behind Logan and instead grinned and said, “Yes, that sounds perfect.” 

Logan’s brow raised slightly at Roman’s sudden agreement, but he brushed it off.

“Good.” Logan stepped away from the lockers and turned in the direction of his first class - the direction Roman had been looking.

“Than I shall be-” He cut himself off when he finally realized why Roman had suddenly grinned and conceded.

Patton had just turned the corner and was coming their way, chatting adamantly about something - and waving his hands about a ton - to Virgil who had a small, but exhausted smile on his face as well as a cup of coffee in one hand.

"Seems like your 'opportune moment' has just presented itself bookworm." Logan looked over his shoulder at Roman and shot him a glare, Roman just flashed him a s**t eating grin.

Logan cleared his throat and said quietly, his monotone tone having returned, "He is clearly in the middle of a conversation, it would be rude to-"

"Either go over to him now or I'll shout at him to come here." If looks could kill Roman would have been dead at that moment. But of course, looks could not kill in this reality, so Logan opened his mouth again to retort. 

However before he could, a loud sigh left Roman and he suddenly sprinted over to Patton and Virgil - making it look like Roman was going to them with a very important matter -, and put Logan's mind into a state of blank-minded panic.

He took in a slightly shaky breath, indirectly watching the three of them, waiting with a new sort of dread in his stomach for Patton to look over at him due to whatever foolishness Roman was surely spouting.

But instead of that happening, much to Logan’s surprise, the interaction ended with Roman walking away with - a very reluctant looking - Virgil, who was grumbling as Roman acted extremely, extra.

"Well I'm sorry Panic at the Everywhere, it's not my fault that someone stole my black eyeliner, and that I assumed you would have some on you based upon the level of shade under your eyes." Logan heard a bit of Roman’s ranting as they passed him and blinked in surprise when Roman shot him a wink and made a shoulder motion back towards Patton. 

He stood their dumbfounded for a moment before he shook his head and taking a deep breath, looked back over in the direction of Patton who was now opening his locker across the hall.

Logan, his posture stiff as a board, headed over to him and stopped precisely half a locker away from Patton before clearing his throat. Patton turned in his direction before letting out a small, adorable, squeak - Logan assumed in surprise -, cheeks reddening slightly as he smiled brightly at him.

"Why hello there Logan! Uh, how are you doing today?" Logan did his best to return Patton's smile, though it was a very professional and slightly uncomfortable one. He wasn't too surprised that Patton knew his name since he seemed to know everyone and Logan had tutored Patton for a while in the previous semester. 

"Hello Patton," Patton seemed to brighten at this, "I'm, uh, doing well." He cleared his throat again.

"You remembered my name!" Patton said, smile bigger than before.

"Yes, of course I would," Logan froze for a second, realizing his admittance, before quickly adding, "I tutored you in Physics last semester after all." Patton's smile seemed to fall slightly when he added that before Patton laughed, lightly smacking his forehead.

"Duh, silly me." Logan did his best to smile again in return. He fidgeted a bit before finally bringing his hands to rest clasped behind him.

'Natural. Common interest. Request. Dinner.' He repeated in his head. 

"Do you like food?" Logan suddenly said, tone more robotic than previously.

Patton paused - having been taking a brightly colored notebook out of his locker - and looked at him a bit confused.

"Um, I guess?" Patton smiled, a bit unsure, adding on by saying, "Cookies are my favorite food.” 

Logan chose to forgo the fact - for now - that Patton’s favorite food was a very unhealthy choice, but rather than finding a more natural bridge between that and his next question, such as stating his own favorite food, he jumped straight to his next point.

“Do you like romantic outings?” Logan asked, internally dealing with mild panic as he spoke, though his way of dealing with this was pretty much externally shut down - more than usual at least - outwardly. 

Patton opened his mouth slightly, but didn’t seem to be able to say anything at first as he looked at Logan in complete puzzlement - which didn’t help Logan in the slightest.

“Well, I, uh,” Patton stammered a bit before he laughed and rubbed the back of his neck, “Yah, I suppose I do? But why-” 

Patton was cut off by Logan somewhat frantically, but still robotically blurting out, “I can provide both of those things, so therefore would you be my date?” 

Logan actually closed his eyes as he got the last part out, internally dying. After he’d yet to get a response though, he slowly opened his eyes, expecting Patton to either look disgusted or apologetic.

Instead, he found a slow grin growing on Patton’s face - whose cheeks were quite red, though based on the heat he felt on his own cheeks Logan assumed his were slightly red himself. Patton, now bouncing a bit on his feet, laughed - a sound that Logan had come to rather like now rather than find annoying - and nodded.

“I’d love to be your valentine date, Logan.” He said brightly, “What time were you thinking?” 

Logan, who had apparently managed to fail to think this far ahead, didn’t immediately answer, his brain still reeling. He was still trying to catch up to the fact that Patton had actually said yes and that he needed to now form a coherent response in return. 

Patton seemed to catch onto this and spoke up again, wanting to help him out.

“How about, uh, 5:30?” Patton paused again before adding on with, “At that coffee shop with the sandwiches that’s a block away from the school?” 

Logan blinked at this, but after a second, cleared his throat and re-composed himself before giving a shaky nod.

“Yes, that sounds like an optimal time and place.” Patton just smiled at this and Logan adjusted his glasses.

“Okay then!” Patton said as he finished putting his notebook into his bag before zipping it up and slinging it over one shoulder “It’s a date!” 

“Yes, good.” Logan repeated again, before he noticed that quite a lot of other students had begun heading through the halls rather quickly, indicating classes were to start soon, “I will leave you to get to your classes now.” 

With that Logan quickly turned away from Patton before realizing his class was in the other direction, and turning back around to walk past Patton.

--- Extra Little Bit ---

Virgil’s hoodie was practically completely hiding his face at this point as he and Roman ducked back around the corner before Logan could see them.

“That was one of the most painful interactions I’ve ever seen.” He muttered in a low voice, pulling even tighter on his hoodie strings so that his hood scrunched around his face.

“He didn’t even use any of my advice!” Roman exclaimed quietly.

“Yah, well I bet all your advice was stupid.” Virgil muttered earning an offended scoff from Roman. “But I guess at least it worked out.” 

“True, though I still think it would have gone better if he’d actually attempted to express any emotion. There was no drama or intensity in his confession!” Virgil groaned at this as he finally pushed his hood up out of his face.

“There was literally a million ways that that could have gone smoother for him, Roman. And I doubt any of your ideas are within those possibilities.” Virgil took a sip of his coffee and sighed as he looked at it, “It’s a good thing Patton already liked him.”

Roman huffed before switching subjects and saying with crossed arms, “I still need to borrow your eyeliner by the way.” Virgil looked at him like he was crazy and turned so that his satchel was out of Roman’s reach.

“The day I let you use my makeup Princey will either be the day that I find true love or the day that Patton actually convinces me that I’m going to heaven instead of hell.” Virgil gave Roman a pointed look, taking another sip of his coffee - still looking completely exhausted and dead inside - and added with a smirk, “And that’s never going to happen.”

[simply-ellas-stuff]

My Thoughts on Episode Two of Batwoman *Spoilers*

Opening Sequence, Kate finding out she's relatively bullet proof was kinda adorable. The Crows shooting that man was dumb, but understandable. Entering the batcave was a cool sequence, a little choppy but cool.

Batman fever sounds a little dumb, but I like the build up of everyone hoping it's Batman.

Breakfast scene, Kate you blunt wierdo. That breakfast was awkward. The acting was a bit... stuttered - the pausing after Kate mentions Beth was like they were being told to make it dramatic but the actual set was too dry for it be as dramatic as the actors made it seem. Kate's abrupt way of telling Daddy-Kane that his long lost daughter is actually alive. Laurel was a bit smoother in telling Quinten that Sara's alive - Kate should take lessons from... well either of the Lance sisters.

How is it "not labeling" when you immediately drop like seven labels, Mary? Just curious. That "lets not" line seemed to come from Ruby a little more than Kate, just sayin'.

Alice is insane, but I'll talk more on that in a bit. Along with the flashbacks.

Luke talking to Kate about being the city's next great hope and then schooling her about how much she doesn't know only for her to compare him to his father (which, I'm sure they're is an estrangement based on his reaction) seemed like a low blow that didn't really need to be said. That could have been a moment of Kate going "Yeah, maybe I'm not Batman and don't know all his tricks but I need to do this and I need help"

Kate going to Sophie for help seemed a bit weird, like they were trying to not flirt. Sophie already knows Kate is Batwoman, I know it.

Wonder Woman is in the Arrowverse? I mean I know on Earth-Two Barry and Iris have Bruce, Hal and Diana's numbers on their phones...

Beth and Kate are twins?! When exactly was that mentioned in the first ep? I though Beth was the big sister, not a twin.

Fraternal twins don't have exact DNA Kate, that's identical twins. So, You'd need something else to compare the DNA to.

Kate, You were going to stop a wedding? Really??

Sophie pulling Kate out of the way was a little too obviously not real.

Not gonna lie, The fight sequence of the White Rabbits getting the Knife back was a bit... pause-y and awkward almost like they'd been taught the choreography to the fights but didn't quite get taught the rhythm, if you get my meaning. but I'll attribute that to Ruby's back surgery she had just before filming the rest of the season.

Why is Daddy-Kane so fucking adamant that his daughter isn't alive?!

Everything fucking happens in fifteen years in the Arrowverse.

"Fifteen years ago my mother was murdered" - Flash

"It's been fifteen years [since Beth 'died']" - Batwoman

So, the clinic is on Bennett Ave? Mary is protective of her little clinic, Good. Mary is such a fangirl.

"Waffles" is cute, and nice story building.

They HAVE to be Fraternal Twins for Kate to even slightly consider the idea that Alice is Beth.

Why can't Mary know Waffles? That doesn't make sense? The exgirlfriend can know but the stepsister can't?

When Ruby said the line "Its better if you don't know" to Mary, her real accent came out a little.

Daddy Kane assumes that Alice is mimicking Beth's important things (The Birthstone, The House, etc) but he he won't give hope a chance?

The Wafflestand is a great storytelling tool, it gives a deeper background makes the story a little more grounded and heartfelt.

I have a feeling Beth didn't kill those old people in the house, I think it was the other guy. Alice seems a bit more, strategical than that... but maybe I'm just reaching.

The goddamn swing is very Alice in Wonderland.

The swingset/wafflestand scenes confuses me, although Alice offering up her blood as a DNA test makes me think it's really is Beth.

If Beth is Alice, some of those details would be pretty dead on for drowning in a car - although she never explained how she got out of the car. Alice seems very unhinged. My only idea if it true is, Beth clung to the story of Alice in Wonderland (maybe a story her and Kate used to love) to keep herself sane while in isolation but it slowly drove her insane instead until she took on the persona of Alice (Dyeing her hair, finding those dresses, and building a cult of White Rabbits) while keeping the memories of Pre-Alice-dom.

That moment "If I was your twin, wouldn't you feel something" (or whatever she actually says) I think that feeling is why Kate thinks Beth is still alive - Twin intuition.

Kate putting herself between Daddy Kane and Alice was a great scene. Also, Why does it sound like Kate/Ruby is losing her voice - is that because she was probably still recovering from her back injury?

Kate's "Here I thought you could keep a secret" line was sassy but said a little awkwardly.

"Three little sisters" line from Alice made me think of myself and my two older sisters.

Alice/Beth doesn't want to share Kate with someone else how... obsessively psychotic.

Alice going after Mary was... a mess. Not wanting to share Kate is believable though. If the thought of being able to see Kate again is what kept her hold on her memories it would make sense that she wouldn't want to possibly lose the only shot at keeping her sister - killing Mary. It's understandable but it's also textbook insanity and obsession.

Mary's fangirl about Batman/batwoman just saved her ass, nicely done.

The Van exploding was unexpected but I did expect something to happen on the way to Arkham.

The poeticness of Kate/Batwoman saving Beth/Alice then then literally being slammed apart by a bigger force cops/Crows is either foreshadowing or something similar. Also, WHY THE FUCK WERE THE COPS SHOOTING INTO THE WATER?! That is not how you get people out of the water, what the fuck. Also, the framing of the scene reminded me of the opening sequence of Underworld Awakening between Selene and Michael.

Also, If they used the defibrillator in the suit, Kate's reaction should have been different. A groan before she opened her eyes. a light jump from the jolt. Literally anything besides her just opening her eyes, humming, and jumping up to leave. Also, if her heart was still beating while he used the dfib, she could have had a heart attack or he could have just straight up stopped her heart. Just pointing that out.

[[I got an ad for Tomorrow People on CWWebsite;; Firestorm, Golden Glider and Lincoln from Agents of Sheild all in one show looks pretty cool - I've never seen the show]]

Gotham Skyline in from the Ocean/River is gorgeous.

"Robin's high school graduation" Oh my fucking god! Is Robin alive in the Arrowverse then? Is he with Bruce where ever the fuck he is??

Mary and Kate having a heart to heart in the medical place post-Alice attack was kind of heartbreaking. As someone whose felt like barely a sister I see where Mary is coming from and the line about "if she [Alice] is [worth it], tell her I'm not a threat" speaks to me more than it probably should because the context is pretty much in the ballpark of "If you think she's the better, tell her I know my place please. Because I know I mean less and she needs to know that" which I understand completely.

Kate and Daddy Kane arguing was kinda pathetic, he's a dick. Just straight up, He's a dick. Even though I did feel bad for him when he cried in the flashback, the person he became is a dick - and yeah grief effects everyone differently but you would think he'd try and keep Kate as close as humanly possible instead of pushing her a way and threatening to arrest her.

Sophie and Kate talking, "are you happy?" "yes" "yes or ish?" then Kate being shut down was heartbreaking (and all to a Billie Ellish song).

Also, Why does Sophie keep helping Kate if she had no romantic feelings towards her?

I'm honestly hoping that Kate finds a different girlfriend because this whole Sophie thing kinda gives me a bad feeling.

Luke and Kate should be besties, it would be perfect.

Kate torturing Alice's boyfriend is funny, in a weird way. Kate should have a voice changer on her Batsuit.

Alice writing to Kate is... poetic. The bat was gross.

StepMom Kane wants the knife gone why? What does she gain from that? Power?

Alice knows Kate is Batwoman, that was quick.

The Note "You have our fathers eyes" was beautifully written.

The CGI on the bat could've been better.

Anybody else think that Daddy-Kane faked Beth's death certicate/the DNA evidence to keep Kate from searching for Beth as hard as she was(staying up, not really eating, blaming herself, etc)? And that's why he's so fucking adamant at denying the idea of Alice being Beth??

Kate was so hellbent on finding her sister (staying up late, not really eating, thinking about it all the time, building a map of all the places they looked) that it makes me think Daddy Kane/Catherine Hamilton faked the Skull fragments and DNA confirmation so that Kate could move on with her life. But that doesn't explain why Step-Mom Hamilton Kane blew up the van and stole the knife so it could be melted down.

[jcmorgenstern]

Hey, do you have any Jonathan cooking headcanons ? 👀

ghasdlfkjhg okay anon can I just say this is one of my favorite asks to receive ever. so yes, do i EVER have Jonathan cooking headcanons!!

Okay so first off: because of how Jonathan met Sebastian at a cafe and later says he learned to make his boulbaise from a French chef, I have thus decided that Jonathan somehow inserted himself into Sebastian’s life to learn his habits (read: he dated him. you can’t change my mind), and one of their dates was at said French restaurant.

Second: although Jonathan is uncommonly good at survival cooking (ie hunting, building a fire pit, skinning an animal, etc), he probably isn’t the best artisinal cook from a young age. Like, he grew up in that cabin in Brocalind Forest and I’m guessing at a wild guess Valentine isn’t the type to send him care packages or take him to McDonald’s.

In practical terms, this means he can eat almost anything–including rats. It’s entirely possible he doesn’t have functioning tastebuds at this point.

Since Izzy is the only person who has vouched for his cooking, it’s very possible he’s actually horrible at it

Thus, cooking is something he learns for his role as Sebastian–possibly from Sebastian himself. It’s something he associates with safety and abundance, and thus he finds it very relaxing. It even includes his favorite things–knives and fires.

Thus Jonathan cooking for Clary isn’t just repeating Valentine’s “aaaand here’s spaghetti!” but trying to make her feel safe and valued. It is….not entirely successful. But it is curious that a large portion of his attempts to win her over center around food. He offers her the soup, her favorite tea, buys her food in Paris. If you think about the proportion of his life where he probably didn’t get to eat a lot (I’m guessing demons don’t have a lot of fast food chains in Edom), it makes more sense.

Having enough food is directly proportional to safety from abuse.

I honestly imagine he likes watching cooking shows. And not like, Chopped or whatever. I mean like…PBS cooking shows. Julia Child. Jacques Pepin. They’re very soothing. He’s like 800 years old inside. Release your inner arthritic senior citizen, Jonathan. It’s okay.

A lot of cooking is very procedural–measuring things, preparing them in a very repetitive way, organizing them. Considering Jonathan’s other hobbies seem to be: screaming, killing people, hacking, and ironing, he could probably use a fair few more Soothing Activities. (He hasn’t discovered Netflix yet. Imagine all that could have been averted if someone taught him to binge watch.)

AU where Jonathan’s entire plot in 3b is watching ODAT and crying at literally every single family moment (they’re pretty much entirely made of family moments).

Schneider: are you….my father figure???Jonathan: ugly crying and hugging Sebastian’s pillows.

Is that a call-out for myself? Maybe. You can’t prove it if it is.

He also probably likes salty or sweet foods, or spicy food. I’d be willing to bet he can eat like 20 of those ghost chili ramen bowls without breaking a sweat. either that OR he can’t handle spiciness at ALL and breaks down at anything spicier than black pepper.

Once ate dollar store Mac and Cheese for a week and nothing else.

Has an absurdly large cookbook collection inherited from Sebastian, which he expands by stealing from libraries. Together they own the entire Julia Child collection. What are demon powers for, if not stealing a cookbook from a library?

That’s a joke please don’t steal from libraries. Libraries are good.

He absolutely loves any dishes with eggs. It’s entirely possible he hasn’t had an egg before being Sebastian. If you follow that train of thought it’s very sad.

BURNS ALL HIS FOOD

Made himself a birthday cake for the first time, except he ate the frosting out of the can before he could put it on the cake. Delayed gratification is not one of his best skillsets.

Drinks vanilla extract out of the bottle not knowing it has alcohol in it. Does not know why he enjoys drinking vanilla extract so much. It is a mystery.

Please don’t try this, vanilla extract is extremely expensive and also tastes weird to drink. Also only 35% proof. Get jaeger instead.

Has worn Sebastian’s dumb Classics nerd apron that says “basia coquum” (kiss the cook). I feel put upon to mention that I didn’t actually steal this joke from COFA, I stole it from my grade 7 latin textbook.

Has a tendency to stress-bake, then get really mad at whatever he’s making when it doesn’t work and scream at it. Unfortunately for him, cookies don’t raise any better if you scream at them.

He is not popular with Sebastian’s neighbors.

Makes a mean omlet but puts really weird stuff in it. Green beans don’t go in an omlet, you idiot. He also pretends his favorite tea is Earl Grey to impress Clary but in reality he can’t stand the taste. He likes that Starbucks pomegranate tea (because it looks like blood, duh) and chamomile.

Thinks Kraft Singles are a cheese and/or food group (he is American after all). Also eats a lot of Pillsbury biscuits despite them being disgusting. He thinks they’re very nice.

These started off semi-deep and now I’m just shitposting tbh

I’m going to stop while I’m ahead but ghaksdjfhghghhg um enjoy i guess

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHAT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ABOUT YEARS

Err on the side. I may try in the future is David Heinemeier Hansson gave a talk in which he suggested that startup founders should do things the old fashioned way. 40% used to be common. Here, again, language designers are somewhat out of touch with their users. I accumulated all this useless stuff, but that it's very large, and the cost of failure to increase the number of nonspam and spam messages respectively. We take it for granted most of the calories.1 No one wants to begin a program with a bunch of strangers and probably be rejected by most of them grew organically.2 Think about where credentialism first appeared: in selecting candidates for large organizations.3 But if you skip running for a couple years for another company before starting their own companies than by working for existing ones, the existing companies are forced to pay more to keep them.

As I've written before, one of our habits of mind than others? Two have already turned down lowball acquisition offers. She arrived looking astonished. Ironically, part of the reason engineering is traditionally averse to handholding is that its traditions date from a time when engineers were less powerful—when they were Robin Hood, their stock price rose like Google's. It seems pretentious, or frivolous, or even make sounds that tell what's happening.4 I can to some extent avoid thinking about nasty things people have done to me by telling myself: this doesn't deserve space in my head. When I was a kid I was firmly in the camp of bad. For it to surprise me, it must be very hard—and so they don't try do to it. Now the same work might be done by one or two sentences.

And by Parkinson's Law, software has expanded to use the shift key much. No idea for a company; we did. Any strategy that omits the effort—whether it's expecting a big launch to get you users, or data ownership at the level of type tags.5 In our school it was eighth grade, which was still then a quasi-government entity. The good news is, if you're ahead now, and you've made something other users want too. Then you could, in effect, is leaks in a seal. Fortunately the way to do this when they can.6 But Yahoo treated programming as a commodity.7 And if you have such problems you want to get rich by building a valuable company and then selling stock in a liquidity event, founders should start companies that make money and live off the revenues of your company, don't look for them in the news. But still the case for guilt is stronger.8 Don't try to guess where your code is slow, because you'll guess wrong. Certainly it can be at every stage.9

It's common in technology for an innovation that decreases the cost of typing it. 99%. Here's a sketch of how I do statistical filtering. For most people, would be if he were thrust back into middle school. The official story is that legacy status doesn't carry much weight, because all it does is break ties: applicants are bucketed by ability, and legacy status is only used to decide between the applicants in the bucket that straddles the cutoff.10 Some VCs will say this is unthinkable—that they want all their money to be put to work growing the company. It's like importing something from Wisconsin to Michigan.11 Each is, by itself, enough to kill you. There are times in most of the 1970s. This can't be how the big, famous startups got started, they think.

That is the big win in the end, no matter what.12 Our instincts tell us something so valuable would not be surprised if it is called Lisp. And pow, more stuff. 7 billion, and the big bang method, is exemplified by the VC-backed, heavily marketed startup.13 Perhaps the most important of which was Fortran. If everyone else is cowering in a corner, you may not finish your training till 30. But measured in total market cap, the build-stuff-for-yourself model might be more fruitful.14 I can imagine two reasons: if they were functions on indexes, we could have monotonically increasing confidence in their opinions are implicitly concluding the world is static. It's not enough just to be pleasing.15 All the search engines were doing it. You don't need to know the type of every argument in every call in the program.16

Notes

The other extreme—becoming demoralized when investors reject you. The other cause is the most difficult part for startup founders and investors are also startlingly popular on Delicious, but when companies reach a given audience by a sense of the company is like starting out in the next time you raise as you get to profitability on a desert island, hunting and gathering fruit. Even though we made a million dollars. A significant component of piracy, which shows how unimportant the Arpanet which became the twin centers from which Renaissance civilization radiated.

Naive founders think Wow, a few stellar exceptions the textbooks are similarly misleading. But there are lots of options, because they actually do, and it introduced us to see how much he liked his work. Though they are so intellectually dishonest in that category. This is why hackers give you fifty times as much income.

No Logo, Naomi Klein says that clothing brands favored by urban youth do not do this with prices too, of course. If you have an investor pushes you hard to tell them about.

The ironic thing is, because it doesn't cost anything.

We tell them to get them to get good enough to invest in so many trade publications nominally have a notebook to write an essay about it as if the selection process looked for different things from different, simpler organisms over unimaginably long periods of time, is that when you use this thing yourself, because even being deliberately misleading by focusing on people who will go away is investors requiring them.

There are two simplifying assumptions: that the elegance of proofs is quantifiable, in which multiple independent buildings are gutted or demolished to be a good idea to make money. To be fair, the higher the walls become. In 1995, when the company.

Simpler just to load a problem later.

The root of the incompetence of newspapers is that they don't know of this essay, I mean by evolution. So if we wanted to invest more, are not in the bouillon cube s, cover, and so don't deserve to keep their wings folded, as they get for free. Living on instant ramen, which I deliberately pander to readers, because outsourcing it will seem more powerful version written in Lisp.

I don't want to measure that turns out to do it now.

The ironic thing is, obviously, only for startups, who've already made it possible to transmute lead into gold though not economically at current energy prices, but one by one they die and their houses are transformed by developers into McMansions and sold to VPs of Bus Dev. Your mileage may vary. They want to either. Instead of no one else involved knows French.

I may try to go the bathroom, and although convertible notes often have you heard a retailer claim that they'll be able to formalize a small business that isn't the last round of funding rounds are bad news; it is probably no accident that the site was about the cheapest food available. Hypothesis: A company will either be a predictor of success.

There were a property of the junk bond business by Michael Milken; a new, much more fun than he'd had an opportunity to invest in your startup with credit cards. Scribes in ancient Egypt took exams, but it might make them want you. An investor who says he's interested in graphic design.

If doctors did the same trick of enriching himself at the end of World War II was in principle is that you'll expend a lot, or want tenure, avoid casual conversations with potential earnings. There was no great risk in doing a small proportion of spam. Note to nerds: or possibly a winner, they will fund you one day be able to respond with extreme countermeasures.

So if all bugs are found quickly.

A lot of legal business. Jessica. Alfred Lin points out that this filter runs on.

When Harvard kicks undergrads out for doing it with such tricks, you'd get ten times as much what other people in any other company has ever been.

[labgrownsteaks]

Chapter 7

“Ha what were you guys on!?” Guy blurted out as he stuffed his mouth with some fries. We were at The Drumstick, a local diner that was open 24/7. Erin and I loved going there and getting fries and chocolate shakes. Guy was a bit skeptical. I knew this was the response we would get, yet it was still kind of annoying even our best friend didn’t believe us. 

“So this beaver. Why was just standing there”  he continued with a chuckle. 

Erin was laughing too, which didn’t really help our case either. He didn’t even know about the sheet of acid on my table back at the garage. 

“We totally saw a monster!” She was giggling, and had been trying to consume a fry for the better part of five minutes now. But she couldn’t stop talking, or giggling so it just stayed in her fingers like a cigarette. 

“So Vitamin, what you think this thing was? I’m sure you have a rational explanation for it?!” Guy said smiling. 

Erin piped up. “He totally did! He thought it was mass hysteria, something to do with aliens!” 

I interjected “I entertained that as a possibility.”

“Man you are the most logical psychonaut I’ve ever met. Your brain is like proof that psychedelics don’t rot your brain. They made you even more logical. It’s crazy! Tell me this. Have you ever got high and just watched the Gummi Bears or something?”

Erin couldn’t resist “Vitamin actually has the worst taste in movies of anyone I’ve ever known!” It was true. I had the worst taste in film on the planet, which actually meant I thought I had some of the best taste. 

I had to defend myself “It’s because all the films now are all made by committee. It’s like Aquaman. Who the hell made that?! Who wrote it? Nobody. A committee and some AI spit out a script, and they cast it with beautiful people and made its returns. That’s not how films were in the 80s!”

“I can tell you’re pretty passionate about something at least” Guy said. 

“what’s that movie you watch all the time?” Erin asked me.

“Ninja III The Domination” I said with a sigh. 

“What the fuck is that shit?!” Guy said with a burp. 

I wasted no time. “It’s about a girl, who’s a lineworker, and also an aerobics instructor, she’s working the lines one day” 

“Working the lines. what’s that?” Guy asked

“Working the telephone lines!” I responded somewhat annoyed

“Oh I thought maybe that was aerobics thing. Working the lines” Guy said

“Bruh, ok. So she’s a lineworker, and she’s sees this ninja while she’s working the lines. He’s got a sword, and he gives her the sword before he vanishes. He was killing cops”

“Sounds riveting” guy said with a fake english accent. 

I got back on track. “She gets the sword, and takes it to her place. But the sword possesses her and makes her start killing cops, but she’s also dating a cop. I hate his character and I recut the film without him. Anyway.”

“I think I got the basics. Sounds dope...” Guy said somewhat sarcastically. He sloshed a fry around in his chocolate shake before gobbling it up and then stating. 

“So, let me get this right. You watch goofy as movies with construction workers who get posessed by dead ninja cop killers and..”

“She’s a lineworker” I said. 

“Ok, yeah. so you watch these goofy ass films. You take enough psychedelics to make the pope weep. Yet, when you’re completely sober, with your friend, you see a fucking walking beaver wolf demon. And you try to approach it in a logical manner?”

The question actually kind of threw me. I knew how to process weird things, and feelings, and dreams that became reality. And impossible synchronicities. I once thought my head had turned into a gear and part of a giant orange machine in the wall. But when I was sober, and saw this. I simply couldn’t process it. 

“I don’t know man. I did see something, and it was weird. I’ll give you that”

“It was weird” Erin said “That should be your quote ““It was weird”” I can imagine it under your picture in the paper in a story about this. Let me get it down to the Chisuwick Tribune I’m sure they’ll get right on the story!”

We all laughed together, and I knew it was all in good fun. We slurped up the rest of our shakes and ate even the little bits of fries. 

“Hey Guy, wanna trip with us this weekend? I got some acid.” 

“Damn, where’d you get that?” Guy responded.

“Oh, just a girl..” I said, feeling kind of bad I was lying, but I couldn’t let the whole world know I had a drug printing machine. 

“A girl?” Guy said Where’d you meet this girl?”

“In the library.” I continued

“How do you meet a girl in the library?!” Guy inquired. 

“She just came up to me.” I said. Erin was looking at me smiling with pure delight. 

“Why?!” Guy stated

“I had paint on my jeans and she wanted to know how to use the dewey decimal system. She had a big floppy hat on, looked like somebody who go to Burning Bush” 

“lawl, what’s that got to do with paint on your jeans” Guy asked in disbelief. 

“She...uh..She saw I was a painter, and she liked art, so she wanted to know where the art books were but couldn’t figure out the dewey decimal system”

“And then she gave you acid” Guy said

“Yes” I said with a smile.

“Ok, that definitely never happened. It’s cool, I’m square I get it, I don’t need to know your sources” Guy continued on. “By the way, I got the check” Guy always got the check. One day we were gonna pay him back, when we finally got rich. We walked out of Denny’s and jumped into his 89 Chevette, which was packed full of old Computer textbooks from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Erin and I sat in back together because the front was piled full of crap he had bought at 2nd hand shops. In additional to collecting old computer textbooks, he also collected antiquated technology. Laserdiscs,8 tracks, reel to reel tape machines, you name it. He probably had one. His  dream was to open a vintage computer museum and educate people about the benefits of dot matrix printers and CRT monitors. We paged through one of his books and looked at all the funny pictures of Leave it to Beaver moms sitting next to computers. So odd that in the beginning computers were seen as a woman thing. Something for secretaries to use. Now look where its got us. Staring at screens instead of the world in front of us. Which is just begging to be looked at. Ever since the VR headsets came out in conjunction with Lawnmower Man it was all downhill. People were all in their headsets now with their virtual trainers paying 50 bucks for a 30 minute lesson when they could just run around the river, or hop on a bike. These women sitting next to these computers had no idea of the monsters they were unleashing. They thought the computers were just going to listen to their fingers, and type what they wanted them to type. They had no idea, that the computers would tell us what to do. 

[elsewhereuniversity]

To Be Favored (Part 3)

The first month went by without incident. The third week of school there was a sale, put on by the Metalworking club (which I had thought to be an odd club to exist, but it all makes sense now). They sold iron rings, necklaces, bracelets, earrings and even piercings (not done by the school itself of course). It had seemed like the school had encouraged it, seeing as most, if not all the professors, were offering a bit of extra credit if the students showed proof of purchase, and the jewelry was unrealistically cheap. The club set up tents, and some of the pieces were beautifully crafted. Some were plain, others inlaid with (probably fake) gems, turquoise and diamonds. I went with Vector and I bought a few rings, studded with small pieces of ruby, and a necklace of iron chain that a clear crystal hung from.

When I asked Azriel why she hadn’t bought any, she explained that she much preferred gold over iron, and that it looked better on her anyway.

——

The first student was Taken in my second month of university.

He had been in my Intro to Environmental Engineering class. He hadn’t shown up for a few days, but I assumed he was simply sick. I hadn’t known him that well. The teacher would call his name and subsequently mark him absent, for the first few days. Then, after a week and a half, when it came time to call his name, he would pause for a moment before completely skipping it. At the time, I figured he had run away, or just dropped out. There was no bulletin for him, no announcement of death or speech by the Dean. It was as if he had stopped existing altogether. People had said he was killed, attacked by an animal, that his mother had died and he had to return home, even that he had decided to do porn instead of school (he had been very attractive, but come on).

He had gone by Michael, which I assume was his real name. Knowing what I know now, he was not one of the Smart Ones.

——

I hadn’t believed it at first, as I’m sure many hadn’t. In Them. The Gentry. The Fair Folk. But slowly, I had seen things that faded my disbelief.

For example, I had never been able to study in my room- and so I went somewhere I shouldn’t have. The Library. But, I was cautious- I took the trek in full daylight, arms pressed to my chest as I approached the drowsy building. I hadn’t come near it since my initial meeting with it, three months ago. As I stepped near its pillars I felt myself grow heavy, and I caught the quivering shadow behind the windowpanes of the door once again. I was too scared to go in until a boy walked out of the building, carrying a few books in his arms. He seemed completely unaffected by whatever I thought existed behind that door. He walked away unharmed. I pushed away whatever fears I had and walked towards the door, clinging to the handle for a moment before I swung it open.

I was faced with a completely normal library. Low lighting, maybe, but it smelled and looked familiar. There weren’t many people at the desks yet, but there was a librarian busily tidying books behind the desk. It was all so very mundane. I rolled my eyes at myself, and continued on my path through the stacks.

Time had passed so…oddly, in the library. I had found a desk in a fairly secluded area, and set up with my textbooks. The first hour had been fine, but time after that didn’t seem to flow as it normally did. After an hour and a half I had become so tired it was hard to focus-and I had made sure to drink plenty of caffeine beforehand. But, sleep never came. I flipped page after page, scribbling down notes with half-lidded eyes, until I had gone through 8 chapters of the textbook. My exam had only been over the first 4. Upon noticing this, I pulled my phone from my bag to check the time- surely to go through 8 relatively dense chapters would have taken hours. Time must have slipped by me. But it was dead. It had been on full charge when I had left my room.

I took a deep breath and furrowed my brows before slowly packing my things away. I had realized I had no idea what time it was- no clue as to how much time had passed or how exactly I had gone through 8 chapters. As I passed by the desk, I saw the librarian again, still sorting through books.

“Excuse me,” I had asked. I cleared my voice- my mouth was dry and my throat was drier. I had become suddenly aware of my intense thirst. “Can you tell me what time it is?”

She looked up at me. Her eyes were a shade of green I had never seen before. She was maybe mid-30’s, jet black hair tied in a bun. Her lips were thin, and the outside corners of her ears seemed sharper than normal.

“The time, please.” I repeated, voice croaking.

She sighed visibly and took irritated steps to a computer that sat at the desk. “You students should know the rules of the library by now. Either get an adjusted Iron-Watch from Cat-Eyes or run the risk of opening the door to a world you weren’t in before.” She said the words as she typed furiously on the computer, eyes trained on the screen.

“…Excuse me?” I asked, completely dumbfounded. She stopped her typing for a moment, darting her eyes at me.

“You’re a freshman, aren’t you?” She had asked.

“Uh-yes. I am.”

Her face had softened a little, and for a moment I thought I had seen her eyes flicker to a bright golden color. Then I blinked, and they were back to normal.

“Here. Take this.” She said, pulling out a pamphlet from the desk and holding it out in the air in front of her. I was a few steps away from her, and in my groggy state it took a moment for me to process what she wanted. She shook the paper at me, a non-verbal “hurry up” and I took a few quick steps towards her, taking the rather thick pamphlet. It was dark blue and titled “Library Services at Elsewhere University: A Guide and Compendium.” She went back to typing.

“Don’t read it now, but know that time is never promised here. Quick things though: avoid the seventh floor unless you are willing to risk the consequences. If a book is overdue, you can pay by cash, check, or by having blood drawn at the monthly blood donations. We don’t take credit cards. Keep your iron on you. Don’t write your name in any of the borrowing ledgers you might see. We don’t actually own any ledger books, all of our borrowing records are digital, so if you do, whatever happens is on you. If you hear singing, don’t follow it. If you hear a group of people far away, speaking in whispers in a language that sounds like Swedish, don’t follow it. If you hear a voice whispering your name, follow it if you wish, but no that we do not take liability for items, belongings, limbs, or personalities that are lost as a result. It will be easy to lose track of time in the languages section. The Slavic language section is particularly ruthless.” She was still typing as she spoke, and continued to do so after she finished, for at least five minutes more. I wanted to ask what anything she had said meant, but I was so tired. I just wanted to know the time.

“Is it… is it hard to find the time on that computer?”

“Calculations must be made accordingly.” She said matter-of-factly. After a few more moments and final flourishing click, she smiled softly. “Lucky for you, we’re still in the same day. Can’t say that happens for everyone. The time is 2:37 pm. Have a nice day.” With that, she stood and walked back to her books.  

I thought for a moment. I had left my dorm at 2 pm sharp. How had I gone through eight chapters in 30 minutes? I stood considering it for a few more moments and walked away, slowly.

When I stepped into the sun, my lethargy dissipated. I was ravenous though, as if it truly had been hours since my last meal, instead of only 30 minutes. My stomach growled audibly.

I needed to go home.

——

Vector and I began to talk about the “Fair Folk” on campus that we had been hearing about. They called them other things- Fae, The Gentry, The Court. She was a stern disbeliever, and laughed at it all. I wish I had been as stubborn as her.

——

The first One I met was Jimothy. His gentle nature had been a blessing.

It had been almost dusk, and I was leaving the engineering building from a group project. I took a path I don’t usually take, but one that was still in the full light of the setting sun. It took me past a small courtyard populated by small trees that casted sparse shadows on the ground. Usually, there weren’t many people there, so I didn’t pay it much mind. But this time, there was a crowd of people in one of the corners of the courtyard. I stopped my hurried strides to look at what the commotion was about.

Something dark was in the corner, something large and black. There were students around it, laughing. They seemed happy. Curious, I took a few steps closer, until I was on the outside ring of people.

Once I had seen it clearly, I was much too frozen to scream.

It was a monster, is all I could call it back then. Now I know that while Jimothy may appear terrifying, he’s the farthest thing from a monster. Many humans are more monstrous than he is. But I didn’t know these things at the time.

He was big. And his spine was exactly that- jet black bones set in a sickening curve, held together by who-knows-what. The spine led to a pair of monstrously large things that seemed to be hooves. It’s body looked like it was made of stretched leather, a clear imprint of ribs where it’s chest should have been. It stood on all fours, it’s hooves and two long, thin arms that spindled into even thinner claws. It had a neck that was impossibly curved, and it led to a bald head that was completely devoid of eyes. It did have a mouth though, a yawning gaping maw that housed, from what I could see then, several rows of glistening, white canines. Even with all this, the most curious thing I saw was an abundance of what looked to beads that hung from his neck and around his claw-hands.

I saw a kid at the front hang some beads in front of the creature’s face. How the thing saw it, I didn’t know, but slowly, it raised one of its claws and plucked the beads from the student’s outstretched hands. It seemed to inspect them for a moment before it lifted them above its head and let it drop around neck, along with the others. It then reached inside of its own mouth and plucked away a tooth with the utmost ease, handing it to the kid who had given the beads.

“Thanks Jim!” The student had said, content. I stayed long enough to watch the process happen twice more, disbelief in my eyes, fear written in my throat. Then, with one quick movement, I turned and ran, all the way back to my dorm. I did not stop to breathe, or think, or talk.

I didn’t even stop long enough to see the three crows perched in a tree of the courtyard.

————–

“You saw one of them, didn’t you.” I heard Azriel’s voice say. I had returned to an empty room and pushed myself to my bed, face in the pillow, and hadn’t moved since. She had come into a dark room and hadn’t bothered to turn the lights back on.

I didn’t respond.

“Was it Jimothy? Big black thing, sharp teeth? Loves beads? He’s one of the only ones I can think of that would come out in such broad daylight.”

I lifted my head slightly to look at her. I looked a mess- hair tangled in front of my face, eyes red from the tears I had cried, shaking. “You know about them? They’re real?”

I saw her nod slowly.

“How?”

“I uh, had a brother that went here. He was Involved. More than he should have been. He taught me a lot.”

“In-involved? In what? Like, clubs?”

She smiled slightly, and I her eyes changed colors for a long time. I hadn’t doubted myself that time. I knew what I had seen. I didn’t bring it up though.

“Áurea, we have a lot to talk about.”

——

Halfway into the semester, I knew the Gentry. By then, I had mustered up the courage and traded beads with Jimothy. I had stumbled upon and subsequently avoided Anna Monday. I knew about the creature underneath the condemned building. I carried salt and sweets on my body at all times, and though I hadn’t had a reason to use it, I kept my iron on at all times. I was determined to not become Involved. Azriel and I had grown closer since that night- and I knew there was something off about her. Something not right. Something Else. I felt safe, though.

That would not be so for long.

-Oliver Scales 

[cosmosogler]

;_;

i woke up on time, actually. after a kind of, a kind of horrifying dream? i was just hanging out in the big boat, the huge one with red carpet and it’s usually in the harbor so there’s white buildings and birds along the horizon when you go on deck. there was a door to a building where it should have led into the boat- just kind of an old building on top of the boat. it was my high school theater. ALWAYS A GOOD SIGN.

there was something going onnn... when the Big Plot got resolved we were all standing on deck milling around directly after the big finale. i don’t know if it was a big finale but it was definitely after something. my old roommate maranda was up by the building. she got hooked on the door somehow and it flipped around trap-bookcase style and pulled her inside. except the door was half-covered by a wall so when she got pushed inside it kind of... clipped her at the waist. i don’t know it was a very non-euclidean motion.

i didn’t see any blood but i frowned at the door for a second. only a few people must have seen it because no one stopped talking. then the screaming started!!! it went on!!!!!!!!! wailing and sobbing like a person just realized they’d gotten cut in half. you know.

i was very afraid of going inside and seeing what was in there. i ended up on the other side of the building eventually... my sister and classmates were putting on a play. i took one look at the script and said “nope, no, i’m outta here, bye” and turned around and walked away, waving my hand behind me. i got a look at the Big Door on my way out; i kind of collapsed with relief when i didn’t see any blood or stray body parts. it seemed like she had just fallen a lot of feet somehow and broken something. there wasn’t anyone by the wall or door when i looked. then i woke up.

it kinda rattled me, you know? periodically throughout the day i had to just kind of take a minute and put my head in my hands.

anyway when i woke up snoopy had pooped all over the house. i got fed up with wasting all of my laundry detergent on washing the blanket on the couch every single morning so i put trash bags over the couch instead. i also had to clean up the floor. it wasn’t like she’d been sick, more like she’d just decided to camp out there. but there was twice as much as usual.

when i was brushing my teeth i threw up again. i’m gonna get cavities if this keeps happening.

i made eggs for breakfast. used too much butter but that’s ok. i made 2 eggs and i managed to eat more than half of it so i count that as a win. felt real sick though.

i went to the gym to work out for 20 minutes and then i staggered back home and stood in the shower for a long time. longer than i’d wanted, but also, i just felt hot and cold and sore all over and i was so tired. i wanted to stand in room-temperature water for a while. when i got out i cleaned my ears with the water blaster. that always makes me super dizzy but it helped with my headache just a little.

i actually didn’t waste a lot of time this morning. just showered longer than usual. i packed a pbj and some guac and a banana and fruit strips and a granola bar and super awesome chocolate raisins and headed out. the bus schedule said the next ride would be in like 40 minutes and i huffed. when i checked it again five minutes later (right before i was going to walk all the way to school), the bus was 15 minutes away. so i went down to wait. 25 minutes after that the bus showed up.

i got to my office at about 10:45. i sat down and started working at 11. i went until 8:30.

the last 2-hour stretch i didn’t even take any breaks. i was kinda miserable. i gave up on the very last problem. 

anyway at about noon i broke out the pbj. i think i’m used to old trash bread because this fresh bread i’d just bought yesterday and sealed well was too rich i guess. i felt real bad trying to eat it. it was confusing. i wanted to cut off the crust or something, but i haven’t done that in like 16 years.

i forced down the guac and the raisins and went back to work. suzanne and jake showed up so i went in her office and got back to work at 12:30. during my little 10-minute breaks to round out each hour i’d go over by the window at the far corner of the building and look out at the sky for a few minutes. i stretched a little but nothing too taxing. i think it helped me keep up the pace but i’m not sure now that the day is over.

at like 2:40 i had my banana. it actually didn’t make me super sick for once. i felt bad... maybe it’s because i was too stressed but even after diligently reading the textbook all the way through i felt like i didn’t understand what to do for the homework. i was doing most of it by myself but again i felt the need to get step-by-step directions from suzanne. i told her i really needed to practice with lagrangian equations... we only did it for 2 weeks in undergrad and i didn’t really get it very well then either.

i would love to practice with lagrangians! if the homework didn’t eat up 7 hours every week, not counting reading the textbook, not counting doing that for my other two classes. also not counting lab prep, teaching the lab, and grading 54 reports every week.

i feel... overwhelmed. all my free time the last two days (on the WEEKEND) has gone toward homework but i only got one assignment done out of three that are due monday... and i worked all thursday, and between classes on friday. i don’t know what else i’m supposed to do. it’s so hard to keep up that i can’t put in the work i need to do if i want to get in enough physics-shape to start pulling my own weight.

jennica came in, and ioannis, and taylor, and keegan. there was another student around i think but i didn’t see him after he came in and he didn’t come out of his office. i didn’t talk to them much honestly. i’m real frustrated with myself, that i don’t understand constraints and how to examine a physical system and just pop equations out of it. how i don’t notice stuff in the textbook that looks like a footnote but is actually how you solve the problem. i feel bad looking up basic geometry terms just to refresh my memory. it shouldn’t need to be refreshed.

i don’t feel too bad about looking up all the new terms all the time though. i desperately need to hear the definition of “hermitian” in as many different words as possible. 

anyway after 3:30-ish i was out of food i wanted to eat today and that meant trouble. at 6:30 i started skipping my assigned break periods to keep working. poor suzanne. she was so tired and frazzled from doing the homework due this week that she basically sent me her work for the last three problems (out of five. i work slowly). i didn’t copy so much as i looked at her first step and worked forward from there. when i got stuck that’s when i noticed she would use trig identities that i just straight up didn’t know.

it’s that first step that’s the hardest though. turning the words into a concept that the question wants me to learn, and then turning that concept into the right equation. and you gotta improvise a lot. i feel so helpless. 

though, when i do the problems wrong and just follow along with the book, i find i understand the math a WHOLE LOT better. i would copy all the equations in order if i could and work through the proofs with the book. but that would turn my 3/4-hour reading project (for each individual chapter) into a 7/9-hour reading project (again, for a single chapter out of the 35+ i need to get through this semester, basically 2 and a half a week).

and also that’s 8 hours i didn’t spend doing the actual homework.

my classmates told me that they just don’t have enough time to read the textbook. but i don’t understand how they do the homework without reading the text and taking note of literally everything in the lecture (which ALSO exhausts me). i guess it’s because they know something i don’t, or just remember everything better. 

i do feel very helpless. not even just in physics though. it’s so bizarre and scary to be buying my own food. thinking about buying my own bike, and transporting my own self to school and back, and figuring out on my own where everything is and the best shortcuts to take, feels like vertigo. doing my own banking and organizing my own budget feels like walking across a rickety bridge over a canyon.

and i’ve been doing this for TEN YEARS already!!! i did my own laundry in high school! i got myself to class! i made sure i got enough to eat!

and i’m still not used to it for some reason!!!!!!!!!!

and it feels like that every day. doing physics work on top of that when i feel so not confident and scared is near impossible.

jennica was talking about funeral styles earlier today when she was asking suzanne about how it went. she said that when suzanne died she should just have her funeral at a “baptist” church. jake corrected her to evangelical, i think? jennica said it’s because funerals are a big party since they prefer to celebrate your life over mourn your death. and she said it’s not a bad thing to die because you go to a better place and stuff.

i put my head down in my book to prevent myself from saying “if i believed in a better place i’d just kill myself now.” too dark. 

i do feel... pinned about that though. on one hand, thinking everything gets better when you die does not help me. i cannot think that way or... well. 

but on the other hand what happens to the people i love when they die? my pets? whatever happens to me when i die would surely happen to them too? do i want a “good” afterlife or not.

i don’t know. thinking about it makes me uncomfortable right now. 

at 8:30 jennica and i took off for chipotle. the line was criminally long and slow. i may as well have just gone home and cooked the pasta and “meat”balls i wanted to make. she was talking very loudly and it hurt my ears, and she kept gesturing and almost touching me. she’d reach out erratically and i’d have to actually lean away from her. 

i know she was probably as tired as i am. and i was wiped. that’s probably why i didn’t have as much patience as usual.

so i got home at 9:20 and slapped my burrito down on my table and ate it and i ate the stuff that fell out with my hands like a filthy animal. i was starving. i ate with the desperation of someone who had been working too hard all day and not had any opportunity to eat. i knew i was eating too fast but i didn’t care because i had to sit down and start writing basically as soon as i finished if i wanted to go to bed on time (i’m already 15 minutes late now). so about two minutes after i finished i nearly puked. i had to stop in my hallway and take deep breaths. 

my stomach still hurts. it doesn’t hurt as bad as my, i guess, solar plexus? it feels like the muscles are getting shoved around by my ribs every time i lean over or straighten my back. like i’ll stretch my back and when i put my head back down to keep reading something between my ribs will just kinda slide and pop in and it hurts but i can’t figure out how to describe the pain. it feels like scar tissue i guess. but i don’t got no scars there.

it’s not as bad as yesterday but it’s still hella unpleasant and it makes it hard to sleep because it’s got that gnarly pinching feeling when i lay down too, no matter what position. 

we’ll see. tomorrow i need to try to do the entire quantum assignment (that was due last friday) and also i need to grade the entire first lab section. it’s too much. i wanted to do the full classical assignment AND half of one of those other things today. took too long. 

i don’t want to quit. i don’t want to quit. i can do it. i just need more time. or more energy. or more fudging power i guess. i don’t know how my classmates do it. it seems like they don’t sleep but i don’t really have that option. i don’t have much option to skip ANY part of my routine actually. 

that sounds like i got a bad work ethic but my depression gets so much worse when i don’t take care of everything every day and then i end up getting no work done at all.

like i gotta eat, preferably three times. i gotta clean myself up. i gotta get outside for a little bit. i gotta drink enough water. i gotta interact with someone and also my cat or any dog at all. i gotta get some form of exercise. i gotta go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning. or else it all goes to hell! that’s not fair. for everyone else most of that stuff is optional and it’s just not for me.

anyway it’s 10:58 and if i don’t stop now i won’t have time to meditate for a few minutes. i’m already late getting to bed anyway. might not have enough time to get in 8 hours of sleep. being out of the apartment until literally my “get ready for bed” time threw me off... might have to get used to that over the next few days. just got too much to do.

[priceforrottenjudgement]

ok, i’m rewatching TST and writing down everything that bothers me. part 3

1:00:00 onwards

part 1: [X]  part 2: [X] 

long post

-sherlock is easy to follow apparently. aj was not able to follow mary, but he found her through sherlock. is that sherlock blaming himself?

-john watson always wanting to talk about everything. john?!

-when mary tries that “it was always the four of us” spiel aj responds very cynically. not that much of a family then?

-considering her earlier outburst, mary looks pretty chill after being told someone out of her ‘family’ was tortured to death

-his captors forgot about him for six years, but he didn’t starve or died of thirst? and was still able to pick up ‘whispers’? why didn’t they kill him after he wasn’t “fun to torture” anymore? i’m calling psychological reconditioning.

-”every day as they tore into me. amo amo amo” yeah, reconditioning.

-was all of this based on a misunderstanding or was it conscious misdirection to make aj act like this?

-mycroft, walking wikipedia, not picking up a word in latin?

-john obviously sees that he’s being hypocritical about the ‘so many lies’ thing.

-john is always so much more smug, cocky and flirty in sherlock’s mind. is sherlock really making all of this up?

-btw who took the pic from john’s lockscreen? it wasn’t mrs hudson, bc they’re not looking into the camera. did sherlock take the pic with his phone and sent it to john?

-what is that smug little playa grin supposed to mean? john is NOT like that.

-e... eeeeee... are there any female characters from doyle canon starting with e?

-he sends hey, not hi.

-the texts from bed don’t start with ‘hi’ either. but sherlock usually ends his with SH. maybe it really is harry watson? then again the ‘miss you’ reminds me of moriarty’s ‘miss me’

-i don’t think it’s sherlock sending these, but maybe they’re something he wishes he could send?

-the texts he sends from the bus sound waaay guiltier and not playful at all. but ‘it was nice to get to know you a little’ implies at least some correspondence. so maybe the texts in bed really were from the woman?

-she looks dejected and understanding even before he sends the last text, she couldn’t possibly have read it yet.

-also the big bad of this season LITERALLY looms from the poster behind her. can’t ignore this

-what doesn the poster say? HE’S BACK; Business; it’s murder (?) in the...???

-mary is the key to solving the case, “They know eeeeverything”

-was john going to tell mary about the bus woman before they got the texts? also: why did they get the textx almost simultaneously??

-sherlock send a riddle to mary, only john got the exact location? but both knew where to go? how did mary know?

-so the old lady also has an obsession with sharks and just so happens to be sitting there waiting for agents all the time. what a feckeng coincidence.

-the lady sees agents as sharks. sherlock sees sharks as predators. agents are predators?

-”couldn’t have chosen it better myself. then i never could resist a touch of the dramatic.” sherlock is calling himself out. is this the confirmation that all of this is just happening in his head?

-how many times does someone say “i knew this would happen someday” this ep? the destiny thing again.

-”you are very sure of yourself aren’t you?” “with GOOD reason” ouch this hurts when you know what he’s going to say later on.

-and again the samarra thing. to me that’s the biggest proof for the mind palace/coma/dream theory. they cannot possibly all have this story at the tip of their tongues at any given moment. that just makes no sense.

-sherlock is too cocky in thinking he can manipulate the secretary and it ends badly.

-”maybe i can still surprise you” this is either sherlock @ himself: don’t be to sure of yourself or it is the authors telling us to suspect a big twist.

-”come on, be sensible!” “nah, don’t think so.” boy, they gonna do something big.

-why is sherlock not moving? mary had the time to jump, why didn’t sherlock move? is that him scolding himself for hesitating?

-norbury says “surprise”, but doesn’t look surprised at all that mary would do something like this.

-john didn’t see anything and doesn’t have any context.

-mary’s goodbye sounds incredibly textbook. like she practiced it.

-what is she saying? “hey sherlock, i still like you, did I ever say?” is she saying that?

-look, i love mary, but this death doesn’t make me sad, because i knew it would happen and it just feels so..... weird? idk how to explain it.

-”you were my whole world. mary watson was the only life worth living.” i’m sorry but ive heard that exact sentence in different versions at least 20 in different movies. its so ...fake?

-I needn’t say how ooc john blaming sherlock is to me, there have been a lot of posts about this

-lestrade’s and mycroft’s looks though. we know from tab that sherlock instinctively knows that the both of them will always be there for him, i think you can see this here as well

-we don’t see the funeral, just a coffin burning (blue flames) and john walking across a graveyard, pacing in his home, ignoring his phone

-then, almost like waking up, we hear ella’s voice while still seeing john’s face. maybe we are just now waking up from the ‘reoccuring dream’

-so i have two theories. either most of what we see in the ep was a dream or mindpalace and ella is real or it’s the other way round and sherlock is hallucinating her in his mindpalace, trying to help himself cope with everything (would explain why the office looks different). it looks like they’re in an attic, maybe a metaphor for ‘head’?

-mycroft’s fridge is pretty empty, but he has lots of stuff sticking to it, what’s ‘13th’ supposed to mean? or is it 13.00, can’t read it

-yay sherrinford. who may be a girl.

-the baloon john is still there, but deflated, hanging from the table

-ouch, sherlock using ‘norbury’ to keep himself in check, bc he’s so afraid of fucking up again

-miss me? is moriarty’s catchphrase and mary knew that. was kind of cruel to use it.

-judging by mary’s hair this video is not very old at all

-telling that we do’t get to see john’s note, but molly’s ‘you don’t need to read it now’ makes me think that the content is either hurtful or should be kept a secret

-the way molly repeats ‘anyone’ makes it sound like john also stressed it when he told her what to tell sherlock. maybe it’s a clue? or maybe im just grasping straws here

-again samarra and sharks

-idk, but her ‘go to hell, sherlock’ doesn’t sound all that hateful to me.

soooooooo, in conclusion. the major motifs of this ep were: sherlock feeling insecure and hating himself for his arrogance, is destiny inevitable? and an upcoming plot twist. oh and that everything is impostant, but should be taken with a grain of salt.