#physics without calculus notes

[er-cryptid]

[cressidagrey]

Lessons in Math (and Humility)

Welcome to Mysterious Mrs Piastri's Mondays. Apparently this is a thing now. (Ever since I hear that interview where Kimi was asked which subjects he's scared off an the answer was Math, I knew I was gonna write this.)

Pairing: Oscar Piastri x Felicity Leong-Piastri (Original Character)

Summary: Kimi Antonelli thought he could handle anything — race cars, pressure, a wet track…but his math homework may destroy him. Enter Bee Piastri. 

(divider thanks to @saradika-graphics )

Kimi Antonelli didn’t ask for help lightly.

Especially not with math.

He was a racing driver, not an idiot. He could handle telemetry, fuel loads, braking calculations, tyre degradation graphs — all of it — without blinking. He’d memorized braking points at Spa, figured out fuel maps on the fly, and survived radio calls with engineers who thought “you’re fine” covered every possible scenario.

He was good at numbers. At racing numbers.

But this assignment?

This nightmare of partial derivatives and matrix transformations?

It stared at him from his tablet like a personal attack, every line of notation a new insult to his intelligence.

After twenty minutes of glaring at it — tapping his pen, checking his notes, checking them again as if they might have magically rewritten themselves — Kimi finally let out a groan of pure, unfiltered despair.

He flopped face-first onto the hospitality couch, tablet slipping from his hands onto the seat beside him.

Without lifting his head, he announced, voice muffled against the cushions: “I’m going to fail math and bring shame to the entire grid.”

The nearest breathing human — unfortunately — was Ollie Bearman, who looked up from where he was very happily slurping a suspiciously neon smoothie.

Ollie raised an eyebrow. “What’s the problem?”

Kimi lifted one arm limply and waved the tablet in the air like a white flag of surrender.

“This. Derivatives. Partial equations. I don’t know. Numbers are evil.”

Ollie blinked once. Then grinned — the kind of grin that meant he was enjoying Kimi’s suffering way too much.

“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “Arthur Leclerc almost failed stats back in F3.”

Kimi turned his head enough to squint at him. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. Like, barely passed.”

Kimi perked up slightly, seizing onto the news like a lifeline. If Arthur — who had a literal racing dynasty backing him — struggled, maybe there was hope for the rest of them.

“How’d he survive?” Kimi asked, sitting up slightly.

Ollie’s grin widened.

“Oscar.”

Kimi stared at him. “Piastri?”

“Yep. Quiet nerd back at Prema. Absolute lifesaver. Helped Arthur cram for finals and everything.”

Kimi narrowed his eyes. He thought about Oscar: quiet, steady, terrifyingly good at everything he touched, like someone had programmed him in a lab.

Of course Oscar would have hidden superpowers. Of course.

Kimi hesitated, pride warring with desperation.

And then sighed dramatically, letting his head thunk back against the couch.

“Fine,” he said. “Find me Piastri. I have no pride left.”

Which was how, ten minutes later, they ended up with Oscar Piastri sitting cross-legged in the McLaren motorhome, frowning deeply at Kimi’s tablet like it had personally offended him.

“Okay,” Oscar muttered, squinting, “it’s not impossible. It’s just badly worded.”

Kimi leaned forward, full of hope — desperate, grasping hope.

Maybe this would be fine. Maybe Oscar Piastri — quiet, unflappable, secret nerd of Prema lore — could fix this disaster.

Five minutes later, that hope was dead.

Oscar exhaled slowly, dragging a hand through his hair. “I’m going to be honest with you, mate: I have no idea what they’re asking for.”

Kimi flailed, waving his hands like he could physically summon better news. “But you saved Arthur! You’re the math guy!”

Oscar held up a hand, grimacing. “That was basic stats, Kimi. You know, averages. Standard deviations. This—” he pointed at the tablet like it might bite him, “—this is multivariable calculus meets actual sadism.”

Ollie Bearman, who had been perched nearby pretending not to watch the trainwreck unfold, snorted into his water bottle.

Oscar sighed again, this time reaching for his phone.

“No—” Kimi said, panicked, feeling his dignity slipping further into the abyss. “Don’t call someone. Don’t bother anyone. I’ll just fail and move to a cabin in the woods, it’s fine—”

Oscar was already dialing.

“Relax,” he said, calm as anything. “Felicity’s here. She likes this stuff.”

Five minutes later, Felicity Piastri wandered into the motorhome.

Kimi had seen her around the paddock plenty of times over the last year.

The first two things he’d learned about Oscar’s wife were simple:

1. She was tiny and startlingly pretty — the kind of pretty that could probably kill a man if she wanted to.

2. If Felicity Piastri was somewhere, Bee Piastri, Oscar’s terrifyingly adorable four-year-old daughter, was never far behind.

Today was no exception.

Bee marched in beside her mother, two neat pigtails bouncing with every step, each tied with papaya-colored bobbles (a detail that felt almost aggressively on-brand). A stuffed frog plushie dangled from one hand, like a trusted battle companion.

Both of them — Felicity and Bee — looked unfairly bright and well-rested for how emotionally wounded Kimi felt.

Oscar, completely unbothered by the incoming reinforcements, handed Felicity the tablet without preamble.

She glanced at it. Paused. Then blinked slowly.

“You’re all stumped by this?” she asked, her voice dripping with mild disbelief.

Kimi wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole.

“It’s the notation!” he blurted defensively. “And the question’s vague! And the examples were misleading!”

Felicity tilted her head, looking at him with the kind of fond pity reserved for particularly slow puppies. “It’s literally just a chain rule application with a matrix shortcut.”

“That’s not helping!” Ollie said, muffled into the crook of his elbow where he was laughing himself into an early grave.

Meanwhile, Bee had clambered neatly onto Oscar’s lap without hesitation, perching herself like a queen surveying her court. Kimi noticed absently how Oscar automatically shifted to make room for her — steadying her with one hand, pressing a soft kiss to her temple like it was muscle memory.

“Mama, is it hard?” Bee asked, peering at the tablet with great seriousness.

Felicity smiled. “Not really. But it’s annoying.”

Bee thought about that for a second. Then squared her tiny shoulders like she was preparing for battle.

“Can I try?” she asked.

Oscar sighed deeply. “Bee, it’s complicated—”

But Bee was already moving, plucking the tablet from his hand like it was no big deal, mumbling to herself under her breath.

“Okay, so you take this one first because it’s inside the brackets... and then you swap the middle bits because that’s the rule from the blue notebook... and then you put it all together and it looks like a frog but it’s actually a plus sign.”

Kimi blinked.

Ollie blinked.

Oscar just shook his head like a man who had accepted the chaos a long time ago.

Three minutes later, Bee beamed, handed the tablet back to her mother, and swung her legs happily.

“There,” she said proudly. “Now it’s not grumpy anymore.”

Felicity leaned over, checked the solution... And grinned.

“She’s right,” she said brightly. “Great job, sweetheart!”

Oscar gave a low, half-proud, half-resigned chuckle. “Welcome to my life.”

Kimi stared at the screen.

A four-year-old. A four-year-old had solved the math problem correctly in under three minutes.

Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised. He had heard rumors last year — something about Bee spotting an issue with a McLaren suspension load calculation before any of the engineers did.

But seeing it in real time?

Devastating.

Absolutely devastating.

“I— how did you—?” Kimi stuttered, still struggling to comprehend reality.

Bee shrugged like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Mama says numbers are friends. You just have to make them sit next to each other nicely.”

Kimi blinked down at the tablet, then at Bee, then back again.

Maybe... maybe racing cars was safer. Maybe he should stick to corners and apexes where the worst that could happen was a spin, not having his soul annihilated by a toddler.

Felicity kissed the top of Bee’s head and said entirely too casually, “There you go. Courtesy of a four-year-old.”

Oscar smiled and held out a hand. “Great job, Bumblebee.”

Bee high-fived her father so hard the smack echoed around the motorhome.

Kimi slumped back into his seat, utterly defeated.

Maybe he had brought shame to the grid after all.

Later, Kimi found himself slumped in the corner of the McLaren motorhome, a half-crushed juice box in his hand — courtesy of Bee, who had handed it over solemnly “for bravery.”

The worst part?

He genuinely needed it.

He sipped the apple juice in silence, staring into the middle distance, quietly reconsidering his entire academic career.

Maybe he could just... never open a math textbook again. Maybe he could live the rest of his life solely calculating apex speeds and brake bias. Maybe if he was fast enough, no one would ever ask him to solve another derivative.

Maybe.

Across the room, Felicity leaned against the table, arms folded, smiling sweetly — the kind of sweet that definitely had shark teeth hiding underneath.

“Bee’s better at recognizing patterns than most adults,” she said casually, like she wasn’t casually shattering the egos of Formula One drivers before lunchtime. “She’s been beating Oscar at card games since she was two.”

Oscar, sitting beside Kimi and munching on a cookie he definitely hadn’t earned, patted Kimi’s shoulder with exaggerated sympathy.

“Don’t feel bad,” he said, trying — and failing — not to laugh. “She inherited her mother’s brain.”

Kimi just groaned into his hands.

It didn’t help that Bee chose that exact moment to skip past them, Button the Frog tucked securely under one arm and a packet of glittery frog-shaped stickers in the other.

She looked so pleased with herself. Completely oblivious to the devastation she had left behind. Or maybe — horrifying thought — not oblivious at all.

Kimi made a note to himself:

Never challenge Bee to anything involving numbers.

Never doubt Felicity’s terrifying brain ever again.

Maybe just stick to driving cars really fast. It was safer for his dignity.

Probably.

Maybe.

[glowettee]

hiii! i love your acc, it's so cute :3 i was wondering if you could do a post about self-love, it's something i've been struggling w/ lately. thank youuu

uncommon but life-changing self-love practices (that actually work) 🎀

posted by: glowettee

hey angel! thank you for this question in my mailbox! and ahhhh thank you so much you're so sweet!! i'm sorry this post was a little late, self-care is soooo important, i want to give you some tips that you don't hear to often that i do in my self-love journey! i'll share some not-so-obvious self-love practices that literally changed my life! ♡

♡ redefining your space psychology because your environment shapes your self-perception:

bedroom makeover with intention:

rearrange furniture to face the sunrise (this literally changed my morning mindset!)

create a "victory wall" with tiny achievements (i put up a photo of my first B- grade that turned into an A-)

place mirrors strategically (not just for selfies, but for daily affirmations)

use color psychology (i painted one wall rose quartz pink in my room and it actually improved my mood)

create a dedicated self-love corner (mine has fairy lights, positive letters from friends, and little trinkets from my childhood, along with printed photos from pinterest with self-love affirmations/lists.

♡ morning practices instead of basic routines, try these instead:

the "main character energy" morning:

write how your day went (successfully) and about yourself in third person (like "mindy gracefully picked up her pen, to conquer calculus, she did all her chores, and even studied japanese for 2 hours.")

practice "mirror dating" (spend 5 mins having an actual conversation with yourself - it's weird but works!)

create a "today i choose" list (instead of a to-do list)

dance to one song before doing anything else (i do taylor swift, or newjeans obviously)

write a love letter to a body part you're struggling with (i wrote to my uncooperative hair and now we're besties <3)

♡ digital self-love (but make it intentional) because we live online but need boundaries:

phone transformation:

change your passwords to affirmations (mine is a variation of "mindyisworthy2025")

create a folder of your awkward photos (embrace the cringe! and laugh with your friends, its so fun)

record yourself modeling, or pretending your a celebrity or k-pop idol

take selfies without filters (document your real smile)

set random alarms with love notes to yourself

hide little sticky notes with cute reminders about yourself in your room, so when you stumble upon it a month later it'll make you smile!

social media rebellion:

post the photos you'd usually delete (even if it's made private)

share your real study space (messy notes and all)

document your growth journey (even the uncomfortable parts)

create a finsta for your completely unfiltered self

make reels about your self-love journey (even if they're private)

♡ physical self-love (the weird but effective version) not basic bubble baths:

unexpected body appreciation:

thank your body parts for specific things ("thank you hands for letting me write my study notes")

have a private dance party in weird places (i do this in elevators when i'm alone)

wear your prettiest clothes to study, or even to the grocery store (even if no one sees)

make up your own choreography to your favorite songs

make your own workout or stretching routine with different stretches/exercises you make up yourself

comfort zone expansion:

try eating alone in public (start small - i began with coffee shops)

wear that "special occasion" outfit to class

speak up in class even if your voice shakes

send yourself flowers to your dorm/apartment (I LOVE DOING THIS EVERY VALENTINES <33)

take yourself on cute dates (let a coin flip decide where you go! or ask google.)

♡ emotional archaeology dig deeper than surface-level feelings:

create an emotion museum:

keep a "weird thoughts" journal (mine has my 3am existential questions)

make a playlist for each mood (even the uncomfortable ones)

collect "emotional souvenirs" (me and my grandmother had a cafe date a few years ago, and i still keep the receipt today)

document your crying sessions (trust me, looking back at these helps)

write letters to your past and future self

validation exercises:

practice saying "my feelings about this are valid" in the mirror

create a "proof of worth" folder on your phone

collect screenshots of nice messages

record yourself giving pep talks

keep a "wins" journal (especially tiny ones)

♡ advanced self-love techniques for when you're ready to level up:

relationship building with yourself:

schedule weekly "self-dates" (i do wednesday coffee dates with myself)

create a personal manifesto (update it monthly)

develop inside jokes with yourself

celebrate monthly self-love anniversaries

create traditions just for you

growth documentation:

take progress polaroids (not just physical)

voice record your daily thoughts

measure growth in unconventional ways (like "times i chose myself")

create time capsules every season

write monthly letters to yourself

self-love isn't just face masks and bubble baths (though those are nice too!). it's about building a deep, weird, wonderful relationship with yourself. it's about becoming your own best friend, confidante, and biggest supporter.

some of these might seem strange at first, but that's okay! the best relationships often have their quirks. start with what feels right and slowly expand your comfort zone. it's not just about practicing self-love, it's also about creating your own unique love language with yourself!

you're doing amazing things just by being you, and i'm so proud of you for prioritizing this journey! remember, the relationship you have with yourself sets the tone for every other relationship in your life.

xoxo, mindy 🎀

[vivisextion]

MEGATHREAD OF KIM MENTIONS BY ALL SKILLS

While doing my max stats run, I noticed Rhetoric called Kim 'Kim'. I thought this was a little unusual, as I assumed blue skills would address him in a more formal fashion. This led me down a rabbit hole of how they all refer to Kim, so here you go.

DISCLAIMER: These are all mined from fayde.co.uk (big shoutout, this post would not have been possible without it). I have removed all duplicates and interactions with variants ("Replaced with:"). It is also possible despite my best efforts my dyscalculia may have fked up with the larger figures but I did go over it multiple times, so it's unlikely. OK LET'S GO

BLUE SKILLS

LOGIC

All 3 mentions of 'Kim' are late-game. Otherwise, Logic defaults to 'the lieutenant'. Only 1 mention of 'Kim Kitsuragi' and that's only when talking about the case file number sequence for The Hanged Man.

ENCYCLOPEDIA

The full name usage is related to when you discover his past with pinball - even the one mention of 'Kim' is in reference to how Seolite people love pinball. Otherwise, the most common address is also 'the lieutenant'.

RHETORIC

Seems like the use of 'Kim' is an outlier and like I suspected, the default tends to be 'the lieutenant'. It wasn't a late vs. early game thing either because I got the 'Kim' mention on Day 1 of the game.

DRAMA

Interestingly, no 'Kim' at all. Drama prefers more bombastic and less personal terms, I guess.

CONCEPTUALIZATION

No use of 'Kim' or 'Kitsuragi'. The only direct address was the line "Dammit lieutenant, have you no intellectual curiosity?"

Otherwise, like most of the other blue skills, Conceptualization doesn't mention Kim that much.

VISUAL CALCULUS

Mentions Kim (in all forms) the least, which is not surprising.

Like all other blue skills, 'the lieutenant' is the most common used. They tend to be more on the less personal side.

PURPLE SKILLS

VOLITION

Only 1 direct address of 'lieutenant'. The line mentioning Pinball/Kimball is 'Any plan to call him Pinball or Kimball is immediately wiped from your neocortex, as if with some sort of mind altering device. It is simply not going to happen.'

Still more of a formal address preference.

INLAND EMPIRE

The only time IE uses 'Kim' is "If you can't trust your own eyes, who can you trust? Certainly not Kim. He's so… suspicious." in regards to finding a key card in Evrart's office.

Also prefers 'the lieutenant', like the blue skills.

EMPATHY

Also seems to refer to Kim in a more respectful way. The only mention of 'Kimball' is about footprints in the dust in the back of the Whirling: "This is so good it makes him forget the whole Kimball memory."

Also note the increased frequency in Kim mentions.

AUTHORITY

Of course 'Lieutenant Eyebrow' occurs during the famous showdown. One mention of 'Kim' is earlier game and one is late game. Makes sense Authority would be professional most of the time and use 'the lieutenant'.

ESPRIT DE CORPS

Will not shut up about Kim (101!!). Most mentions advise you not to complete important tasks without him. 1 repeat of 'Lieutenant Kitsuragi' mentions the black bomber jacket you get from hardcore mode. The last one is when Harry climbs the horse statue during the moralist run.

SUGGESTION

Much less quiet in comparison, but still polite.

Purple skills mention Kim a lot more, in general, than blue ones, which makes sense as they concern external affairs and people moreso. Out of all the skills, they refer to Kim the most, actually, as we will see.

RED SKILLS

ENDURANCE

The two instances of 'Lieutenant Kitsuragi' are during the confrontation with Ruby: "The torment Lieutenant Kitsuragi is experiencing is worse than your own."

PAIN THRESHOLD

Doesn't care about anyone but Harry, probably. Only mention is talking to Klaasje about the body hanging behind the Whirling: "A bitter cringe. It hurts. You look to the lieutenant…"

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT

The most disrespectful. Refers to Kim as a binoclard the most out of all the skills.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY

The only mention of 'binoclard' is when you try to teach Lilienne's twins to say 'fuck'. EC cheers you on. Volition is disappointed, as is Kim ("deeply unimpressed").

"Why does he have to be such a binoclard? It's just a funny word!"

SHIVERS

Doesn't have much to say about the lieutenant. 2 of the 4 are variations of each other during the Moralist quest. Duplicates are due to the Noid vs. Soona version of the quest.

HALF LIGHT

One mention is during the game of Suzerainty, when Kim has the upper hand, which is a funny time for a fight-or-flight response to kick in.

In general, the red skills don't concern themselves much with Kim, since they largely are focused on Harry.

YELLOW SKILLS

HAND/EYE COORDINATION

Second least mentions of Kim in the yellow skills.

PERCEPTION

Both 'Kim' mentions are Sight. Mentions of 'the lieutenant' by category: 2 Smell, 6 Hearing, 2 Sight. (No Taste… sadly).

REACTION SPEED

Gets a little more fancy with it 'the good lieutenant' and also addresses Kim directly the most out of all the skills (2 mentions of 'lieutenant'): "Too late, lieutenant." and "Impressive note-keeping, lieutenant."

SAVOIR FAIRE

The duplicates have to do with a line during the Ultraliberal quest: "The lieutenant speaks as if you're rich -- a common misconception -- especially if you count the tax. No, we've got a long way to go before we can feel financially comfortable. The hustle never stops!"

INTERFACING

Least reference to Kim of all yellow skills, which is surprising considering the Kineema interaction.

COMPOSURE

The chattiest of the yellow skills about Kim, though yellow skills still have the second lowest mentions of the lieutenant.

STATS RUNDOWN

Total Kim mentions by colour

Blue: 82

Purple: 245 (thanks, EDC)

Red: 31

Yellow: 62

Top 3 mentions

EDC: 128

Empathy: 43

Rhetoric: 30

Bottom 3 mentions

Pain Threshold: 1

Interfacing, Shivers, VisCal: 4

H/E Coordination, Endurance, Half Light: 5

Most common address

the lieutenant: 335

Kim: 32

Lieutenant Kitsuragi: 26

So, overwhelmingly, most of the skills seem to default to 'the lieutenant'. Not just the blue ones. Hopefully, that helps someone, although how I have no idea.

BONUS: YOU!

What about Harry, you ask (or not)? I GOT YOU.

Harry calls Kim a binoclard more than Physical Instrument, though one time he says it as an apology.

Both times he uses Kim's full name and title is during radio comms.

Harry calls him 'Kim' to his face (457) more than 'lieutenant' (89) (spread over early to late game).

To others, Harry refers to Kim as 'Kim' 39 times, compared to 4 uses of 'the lieutenant'.

The only time Agent Kim is used is discussing the Seolite conspiracy.

That's it! One last parting gift: Kim refers to Harry as 'Harry' 15 times. :)

[hyperfix-wip]

Octobie Anarchy: Skirts Are For Everyone

Pairing: Hobie Brown x fem! OC/ Spider-Punk x fem! OC (can be seen as platonic or romantic, up to you guys 😂)

Summary: Earth-318's Mei Prak never expected her first day back to school to end with helping a skirt-wearing Brit argue with a shitty teacher.

Word count: 4.7k

Author's Note: HOLY SHIT, I WASN'T EXPECTING THIS ONE TO BE THIS LONG 😭🤣 Also, I am pleased to introduce my OC Mei for the Spiderverse fandom! I am thinking of building up her lore in the long run, so we'll see how this goes lol. Event by @the-kr8tor and banners by @mushroom-graphics-allotment

Tags: Discussions of school uniforms, TW mentions of sexual harassment, TW brief violence to an object with an object, Possibly OOC!Hobie(?)

The shrill ringing of the school bell shrieks through the crowded corridors, signaling students to disperse from their friend groups and trudge over to their classes. Chatters echo against the walls and metal lockers while waves of teenagers wade through to their destinations. Amongst the crowd on the wayside is a young girl with disheveled dark curls languidly grabbing her textbook, stifling a yawn while shutting her locker before trudging along with the rest of the student body.

Bodies of monotonous black, white and beige surround the girl in her matching uniform, her beige cardigan blanketing over her hands and past her hips, her matching black tie and white button up peeking underneath, and her pleated black skirt fluttering against her knees. Her drooping eyes scan past her lashes and wispy curls, scanning through the throng of bodies in the hallway, while her skin prickles from being in close proximity with everyone around her. Despite being surrounded by students and faculty minding their own business, either facing forward or looking down on their phones, her skin vibrates into a low buzz, as if all eyes are on her. With a drowsy grimace, the girl weaves through the masses with ease, avoiding bumping into anybody while she navigates herself to her Calculus class.

The girl’s head grows a little fuzzy the more she traverses through the cramped hallway, her sensitive ears picking up different chatters and gossips among the sea of people around her–

(“ –need to pass this exam–”

“ –going to Flash’s Halloween party–”

“ –hot British foreign-exhange student–”

“ –saw Spider-Girl kick Hobgoblin’s ass last week–”)

Her lips curl up into a slight smirk at the last comment she overheard, a tingle of vindication creeping up her chest.

The girl’s wrist throbs into a dull ache as the metal web shooter rubs against the skin, further irritating the slightly swollen joint while she covers her hands with her sleeves. She briefly makes a mental note to check her sprained wrist during lunch before her eyes drift off to the familiar sight of her classroom, her face briefly pinching up while her Calculus teacher stands by the door lecturing a group of girls in front of him, holding a ruler in his hand. Even with hordes of students walking between her and that classroom, she can see his leering eyes lingering on their legs while he holds the ruler by one of the girls’ legs. Her skin prickles more intensely at the sight while the girl having her skirt measured shifts uncomfortably in front of him. The teacher then gives a gruff nod and a dismissive flick of the wrist to the group of girls, who quickly scurry away from him and into the classroom with unease.

Fucking creep.

The girl’s sleep-ridden eyes quickly harden while her skin continues to crawl the closer she gets to the classroom, her fingers fidgeting inside her sleeves from the impending dread of having to interact with the old and stout man. The teacher doesn’t look physically imposing to her– hell, she’s fought with bigger and stronger criminals before– but he still makes her skin crawl like them, like he is a lurking danger to be wary of.

Fortunately for her, she easily weaves into the stream of students entering the class without detection, avoiding his beady eyes while he catches another unfortunate student with a dress code “violation” that no other faculty member seems to notice.

The moment the girl steps into the dull gray classroom, she instantly spots her childhood friend Miles settling down in one of the desks in the back. As he takes his headphones off and looks up from his phone, his eyes light up at the sight of her while a teasing smirk creeps up on his face.

“Welcome back, Mei,” Miles calls out to the girl with a cheeky grin as she crosses the classroom to him. “How’s your first day back after getting suspended for a week?”

Mei rolls her eyes with an amused huff before pulling the chair in front of Miles’ desk out before leisurely straddling on it. “Shut up, man. Kinda wish I could stay home a little longer, to be honest.”

A snort slips through Miles’ nose as he leans forward, his dark twists swaying against his forehead while his grin softens into a lazy smile. “And leave me here to fend for myself? That’s fucked up, dude.”

“Whatever, dumbass,” Mei snickers as she leans against the backrest of the plastic chair, propping her cheek onto her knuckles. “So, what did I miss? Anything big happen while I was gone, or was everything the same as usual?”

Miles’s lips grow into a cat-like grin before leaning closer, and Mei follows suit with slight intrigue in her eyes.

“Well, you missed out on the new foreign exchange student starting beef with Mr. O’Neil.”

Mei raises her eyebrow before she looks over her shoulder, her freckled nose crinkling at the sight of the Calculus teacher lecturing another group of students, before she turns back to her amused friend. “So? Half the student body has beef with him. The damn narc pretty much got half the school in detention or suspended for–” she holds her hands up and air quotes– “ ‘not following the rules.’”

“Yeah, but this guy’s on a whole new level,” Miles snickers. “Like, the dude will find any loophole in the rules and argue his way out of trouble, pissing O’Neil off to no end.”

Mei stares at Miles with a confused look, but he only rolls his eyes as he continues. “Okay, first off: makeup. Y’know the deal– have minimal makeup and not wear bright and bold colors?”

Mei nods in response, covering her mouth with her hand to stifle a smile as she watches her old friend make his case.

Miles narrows his eyes at her, causing her to hold in a laugh trying to sneak out of her, before he goes on. “Dude practically came in all pretty and shit– gloss, eyeliner, blush, lashes. Like you can tell he was wearing makeup, but you’d low-key forget he is, and O’Neil got really pissed that he couldn’t outright call him out without being sure of it. Y’know what I mean?”

Mei shakes her head while stifling another giggle, mirth gleaming in her eyes. “You might have to give me another example or something, man,” she teases lightly.

Miles’ face drops to a deadpan before he scoffs and continues. “Okay, fine. Nail polish. O’Neil tried to send him to detention for having his nails painted, but the guy ended up getting out of it when he pointed out how his nails met the requirements in the handbook—“

Miles stops mid-sentence with another deadpan as Mei struggles to keep her giggles in.

“You’re just fucking with me, aren’t you?”

“A little, yeah. You really need to work on explaining things better.”

Miles groans before he drops his head down on his desk while Mei lets a small snicker slip through her lips.

“But nah, I think I get it though,” Mei murmurs with a pensive furrow in her brows. “Basically he’s fucking with O’Neil by taking advantage of the dress code not being gender-specific.” A small smile curls up on her lips at the thought of the narc turning red at the mysterious boy skirting around the rules. “Not gonna lie, I’m a little impressed that somebody’s that down to piss him off.”

Miles snorts and shakes his head at her, his own eyes lighting up with amusement while his lips curl up with a smirk. “Like you wouldn’t do the same shit if you had the idea.”

Mei only shrugs in response before crossing her arms against her chest. “Could’ve, but didn’t. Not that good with talking when angry, remember? Kinda why I got suspended in the first place, all because O’Neil stopped me to do a uniform check during lunch–”

“ –before you slapped the ruler out of his hand and cussed him out for being a creepy pervert?”

“Okay, is he not though?”

Miles holds his hands out in surrender, his demeanor still calm and casual. “Never said he wasn’t. I’m just saying you got in trouble on your own terms. Everybody else though…”

Both teenagers sigh at the same time before Miles drops his teasing demeanor and looks at Mei with a flicker of concern in his eyes. “O’Neil didn’t actually try anything with you though, right?”

Mei instantly shakes her head, her face pinching up into a grimace. “Nah, just tried to do his usual ruler thing, holding that stupid thing against my leg. Made my skin crawl and shit when his hand touched my knee.”

Miles’ eyes harden in anger and disgust, but Mei quietly waves it off. “I already spooked him when I called him out. It was bad timing on my part when the headmaster walked in on me cussing him out. The nerve of the bastard turning that shit against me and convincing the principal to suspend me for being ‘disrespectful’ and ‘aggressive.’” She then shrugs it off, “And honestly, it could’ve been worse than me getting suspended for a week.”

Miles sighs again as he pinches the bridge of his nose before looking back at Mei with a deadpan, which Mei instantly shrinks from with a groan.

“Miles, c’mon. Nothing actually happened to me–”

“Something could’ve–”

"Well, it didn’t–”

“It could’ve–”

“But it didn’t–”

“Mei, it could have.”

The bell suddenly rings in the classroom, and the rest of the students groan and wander to their seats while the two friends stare at each other in frustration. Miles’ eyes then soften from a harsh glare into a gaze filled with worry. “I just don’t want anything to happen to you…”

Mei’s glare instantly falters, her stomach lurching at the sight of her oldest friend worried about her, before she lets out a resigned sigh and looks away from him. “I know, Miles…”

A small lump sinks into the pit of Mei’s stomach from Miles’ words. She knows he means well, only worrying for her safety and well-being, which makes the guilt gradually fester inside. The metal web-shooters bound to her wrists also grow heavy, reminding her of her secret double life, of her responsibility as a hero, of keeping her as Spider-Girl a secret from her loved ones. Her face pinches up into a pensive frown as she stares down at her arms, a soft barrier hiding bruises and scars littered all over her skin, some from as recent as last week, and others from when she first became Spider-Girl years ago.

After a moment of silence, a small smile slowly creeps up on Miles’ lips before he gently nudges her arm. “We’ll talk more after, okay? Don’t want you getting in trouble on your first day back.”

Mei rolls her eyes with a snort before giving him a lazy smile of her own. “Can’t promise I won’t…”

Mei then turns herself to the front of the class just as the narc in question finally enters the classroom and steps to the front of the class. The old, balding man glares at the rows of students with a slight scowl, his face wrinkled up like an old bulldog, before snatching his clipboard for attendance. His beady eyes roam across the room, scanning through the sea of bored faces in front of him. When Mr. O’Neil’s eyes meet Mei’s, his eyes narrow in disdain while Mei returns the glare before sinking down on her seat. With a disgruntled sigh, Mr. O’Neil drops his clipboard back onto his desk before stepping closer to the front row of students.

“Before we start our lesson today,” his gruff voice echoes in the room, “I would like to share some concerns I have with you all.”

“Oh god,” Mei instantly mutters under her breath and rolls her eyes before her attention drifts to the empty seat in front of her, mentally preparing to tune out the incoming lecture.

“You all represent Horizon Academy, one of the most prestigious schools in all of New York City,” Mr. O’Neil continues, to the growing displeasure of the rest of the class. “This means you all have to behave like model students, to uphold the pride of this school and what it stands for.”

Mr. O’Neil’s eyes then narrow into a harsh glare as he crosses his arms against his chest. “This includes how you present yourselves in public.”

More groans echo in the classroom, but the narc continues to admonish everyone in the room. “Now, as of late, I have noticed that a lot of you students have grown complacent with yourselves. With all of you loosening your ties, leaving your top shirt buttons unbuttoned, shortening the length of your skirts, and wearing makeup and other varnishes on yourselves! Have some decorum! You all must uphold yourselves in a higher standard and not let yourselves look like slovenly hellions–”

SLAM!

Mr. O’Neil’s spiel suddenly gets interrupted by the heavy door slamming open, and everybody turns their eyes to the surprise guest. A tall, lanky boy pants as he leans against the doorframe, his dark coils puffed out and in disarray before he pushes his hair out of his face and carefully ties it up with a red scrunchie. The fluorescent lights shine down on the silver piercings scattered along his face and the slight perspiration on his dark skin as he stumbles into the stunned classroom.

“This is 318, right?” his deep British accent smoothly rumbles against the walls, but everyone stays dumbfounded at his appearance. His beige blazer is decorated with numerous pins, his white button-up is unbuttoned and his tie is loosely hanging around his neck, and his undereyes are stained with black smudges. However, the one thing everybody’s eyes are focused on before breaking out into a tizzy is the pleated black skirt fluttering against his thighs.

“Is that the foreign exchange kid?”

“The hell happened to him?”

“Dude, he’s wearing a skirt–”

“Why does his legs look good, though?”

Miles tilts his head to the side with a disbelieving chuckle as his eyes follow the stumbling student. “Well damn, today’s your lucky day, huh Mei?”

Miles’ face falters soon after as he looks at his friend in front of him, her body suddenly frozen and tense at the sight of the new kid. “Mei? You good?”

No matter how much Miles taps on Mei’s shoulder for her attention, she still stays frozen in her seat. Her skin prickles with an intense burning sensation as the metal web shooters under her sleeves grow heavy, and her hands slowly ball up into fists despite the throbbing ebbing from her wrist. Adrenaline pounds into her ears as her fists ball up tighter, her blunt nails biting into her palms and her wrist screaming from the sudden tension in her body.

Mei shouldn’t be feeling like this, shouldn’t be panicking from the sudden appearance of this guy. She’s only felt like that during her patrols when she faces her deadliest foes in New York. The Prowler, Mister Negative, Green Goblin– those guys are way more intimidating to her, not this lanky Brit stumbling into her Calculus class with a damn skirt on. Despite this, she still feels that familiar tingle on her skin, like small spiders frantically crawling all over her body, itching for her to get the fuck out of this classroom. 

Sirens blare in Mei’s mind the longer her eyes stay on the approaching figure of the student, murmurs of the new kid’s skirt fall on deaf ears for her.  All she can think of this guy is one word.

Danger.

The boy suddenly stops in front of the classroom as soon as his eyes land on Mei, and the tingles on her skin instantly crawl up to the nape of her neck and her scalp while she stares at his steely-dark eyes, as if they were the only two in the room. His eyes linger on her, as if gradually unraveling her layer by layer, intensifying the crawling sensation on her skin. After a moment of silence, the boy breaks out into a boyish grin before quickly approaching the empty seat in front of her and straddling on the chair.

“Well hello, darling,” the boy greets her with an unwavering smile like an old friend would. “I’ve waited a long time to finally meet you.”

Mei stares at the boy in confusion and disbelief at his sudden interest in her, her freckled cheeks warming up as she ignores all the chatter and stares surrounding them. “Uh, who are you?”

The boy’s smile grows as he leans against the backrest of his chair and closer to her, his towering figure hunching over her desk to stay eye level with her. “Hobie, Hobie Brown. And may I have the pleasure of knowing your name?”

The intense tingle on Mei’s skin and the sirens in her head gradually subsides the longer she stares at him, her heart rate calming down and her fingers slowly unfurling out of her fists, until only a faint buzz lingers under her skin. His stormy eyes soften as his gaze stays on her, his arm now propped on her desk with his cheek resting against his knuckles. The muffled noises in Mei’s head grow quiet, and the uncomfortable prickling along her scalp warms up into a fuzzy sensation, soothing the brief pang of anxiety inside her.

Before she could respond, a loud clack! reverberates in the air, and both Mei and Hobie look up at a fuming Mr. O’Neil standing in front of them with the end of his ruler on Mei’s desk.

“Mr. Brown, Miss Prak, it seems you two have more important matters than what I have to say for the class?” Mr. O’Neil sneers down at them. “I do hope the conversation warrants enough of a reason to avoid detention...”

The teacher briefly narrows his eyes at the annoyed Mei as she gives him a sidelong glance. “Or in Miss Prak’s case, another few days of suspension.”

Hobie’s face drops from a friendly smile to a blasé stare once he turns his attention to Mr. O’Neil. “I find introducing yourself to someone is actually very important. However, it is quite rude to insert yourself into a conversation you have no involvement in.”

Mr. O’Neil’s eye twitches while a small vein starts to pop out of his neck. “But Mr. Brown, is it not also rude to walk into class tardy, let alone interrupting an important lesson that concerns you and your fellow peers–”

“Sorry, Teach, but I doubt Calculus would be useful for most of us here,” Hobie interjects with a dismissive flick of the wrist before turning back to Mei. “Now, where were we, darlin–”

“Mr. Brown, it seems you have misunderstood something,” Mr. O’Neil interjects with a slight snarl. “I was just discussing with the class about the importance of maintaining your appearance here on campus–”

“So in other words, you’re not teaching what you’re supposed to be teaching–”

“It is quite the opposite!”

Tension buzzes inside the classroom as sparks fly between the feuding teacher and student, one close to popping a blood vessel and the other staring up in boredom. Mr. O’Neil huffs out in frustration before his eyes narrow at the fluttering fabric covering Hobie’s lap.

“Speaking of appearances, Mr. Brown, you have seem to have disregarded the dress code yet again—“

“Again?” Hobie raised a pierced eyebrow with a cheeky smirk, languidly pushing himself up from his seat until he towers over the stout older man. “I don’t recall ever being out of dress code.”

Mr. O’Neil grits his teeth while the vein on his neck slowly pops out more. “Don’t you start. You may have an excuse to continue wearing that paint on your face—“

“Gotta make myself look decent—“

“And continue to stain your nails with that varnish—“

“Never thought a neutral or baby pink would look good on my nails, but they’re growing on me—“

“Would you stop interrupting?!”

Hobie feigns an innocent grin as he cheekily holds his hands up in surrender, irritating the reddening teacher. “I don’t see why you have any issues with my makeup and nails. I’m just abiding by the rules like any other student.”

“Those rules were mainly for the female students—“

“Rules never actually said that though, did they?”

The vein on Mr. O’Neil’s neck grows bigger as his face turns redder with each comment.  Meanwhile Hobie continues to look down at the teacher with a Cheshire Cat-like grin on his pierced lips.

“I can let the makeup and the nail polish pass, despite my best judgment,” Mr. O’Neil growls through gritted teeth, his hands curling up to fists before he sharply points his ruler at Hobie’s skirt, “but I cannot allow this!”

Hobie glances down at his legs, swaying his hips side to side to watch the fabric follow the motion, before looking back at the stout man with a confused pout. “What’s wrong with it? I got it from the school, so this is the official uniform.”

Hobie then looks over at Mei, who up until now has been watching the back-and-forth with growing intrigue and amusement. “Although, seventy-one US dollars for this skirt alone? Is this school really having a laugh?”

Mei only shrugs in response, hiding the growing smile on her face with her hand. “Still gotta buy the spring skirt if you haven't yet. Costs another sixty–”

“Oh, fuck off–” Hobie mutters in disbelief as Mr. O’Neil glowers at Mei, who stares back at him with an unimpressed deadpan.

“Miss Prak, you are not involved in this conversation–” Mr. O’Neil rebukes before turning his attention back to Hobie, “ –and you need to change back into the right uniform, or I will have you sent to detention for weeks–”

“A little excessive, innit?” Hobie mutters as a nearby student quietly offers him some makeup wipes, and he sends a quick wink at her before grabbing a couple of wipes to clean the smeared black makeup off his undereyes. “I mean, I’m just wearing a uniform like everybody else.”

“You are wearing a female student’s bottoms!” Mr. O’Neil barks back, his face practically steaming like an angry tea kettle. “You are to wear the male’s khakis just like the rest of the male students–”

“But they’re so restrictive,” Hobie pouts mockingly as he starts to bend his knees and straighten up, “and these skirts are so freeing. You can practically run in these without worrying about your trousers ripping.”

Hobie then glances behind him as his fingers reach to the back of the skirt with a furrow to his brows, “Although I suppose most people would not want to expose their bums if they run…”

“MR. BROWN–”

As Mr. O’Neil’s face starts to turn purple while he continues to argue with Hobie, Mei glances over her shoulder and notices Miles blatantly holding his phone out with a stifled smirk on his face.

“Are you…?” Mei whispers with a gleam of mischief in her eyes.

Miles’ smirk grows a little more as he nods, and Mei’s lips curl up into an impish grin.  She slides her hand into her backpack and pulls out a small booklet before she turns back to the trainwreck of a show in front of her and pushes herself up from her seat.

“Okay, as riveting and important as this conversation is,” Mei interrupts the two with a cheeky smile on her face, slowly walking between them with her hands up in mock surrender, “I think we stayed on the topic of dress code for a little too long.” She turns to Mr. O’Neil, as if shielding Hobie from any more of the teacher’s tirade. “I mean, I don’t know about you guys, but I came here to learn some Calculus and try to make up some work after being gone for a week.”

Mei’s eyes then narrow at Mr. O’Neil as her grin becomes more taunting. “And isn’t education the most important priority for students to focus on?”

For a moment, Hobie looks down at Mei with confusion before his eyes briefly catch Miles recording them. Miles glances over to the Brit and puts a finger against his smug lips. Hobie’s eyes light up with respect and intrigue as they drift to Mei further provoking the seething teacher.

“Do not patronize me, Miss Prak!” Mr. O’Neil angrily yells at her as he points his ruler at Hobie. “As a teacher, I refuse to ignore this blatant disrespect against the morals and prestige of this school!”

“Morals?” Hobie scoffs dramatically as he sits on his desk, crossing his ankles and rocking his heels against the vinyl flooring. “These are just clothes, fabric that covers our bodies. Is this school’s reputation so fragile that a student wearing a skirt would ruin everything here?”

Hobie then looks around the classroom full of watchful students before looking back at the teacher with a bored deadpan. “If that were the case, then the school should get rid of the skirts entirely.”

“That is not the point!” Mr. O’Neil barks back. “The point is that skirts are for female students only!”

“Dress code didn’t say skirts should be only worn by female students though,” Mei jumps in as she flips through the mini booklet in her hands, stopping at a page before holding the booklet out to the teacher’s scowling face. “See? No mention of gender anywhere in the dress code–”

Mei’s skin on her hand tingles intensely for a brief moment, and she instantly lets go of the booklet and pulls her hands back in the air before the booklet gets slapped across the classroom with a loud SMACK! by a ruler. All eyes watch the booklet land on the window and slide down against the glass before everyone turns to the irate Calculus teacher.

“BOTH OF YOU! GET OUT OF MY CLASSROOM TO THE HEADMASTER’S OFFICE! NOW!”

Both Mei and Hobie stare at the teacher in disbelief as he stomps over to the school phone to make a phone call to the office. Mei glances over to Miles, who puts his phone down with a proud smirk, and she gives him a cheeky grin before looking over her shoulder to Hobie.

“We should probably go,” Mei whispers to Hobie with a snicker before grabbing their bags and gently pushing him towards the door, leaving behind a stunned classroom and a screaming teacher as they walk out to the empty corridor.

As the heavy door closes behind them, Hobie instantly lets out a snort before barking out a laugh, and Mei soon joins him as she walks up to his side. Their cackles echo through the halls as they wander down, with Hobie draping his arm around Mei’s shoulders and pulling her close to his side.

“Bloody hell, that was brilliant!” Hobie gasps out, his lips stretched out into a broad grin. “I didn’t think that wanker was gonna explode like ‘at. Honestly thought he was gonna drop to the floor with how purple he got.”

Mei struggles to wipe away her tears as she hiccups her laughter. “Dude, I’ve never seen him that pissed before! The fuck have you been doing for him to instantly hate you like that?”

Hobie scoffs playfully as he rests his hand on his chest. “I have done nothing, darling! I merely followed the rules like everyone else! S’not my fault that knob is too anal about the rules!”

Mei chokes out more laughter as she leans against him, barely able to breathe, before she grins up at him. “Oh, I think we’re gonna be great friends, Hobie Brown.”

An impish smile curls up on Hobie’s lips as he gazes down at her, his eyes lighting up with mirth. “Oh, I know we will…Miss Prak?”

Mei rolls her eyes with a chortle at Hobie’s teasing smile, her freckled cheeks growing more flushed from the laughter. “Mei’s fine, man.”

Hobie’s expression softens as his hand gently squeezes her shoulder, “Alright then, Mei…”

The two new friends trudge along to the office, unaware of the domino effect of their chance encounter as a certain live video of a teacher yelling at two students circulates throughout the school and social media.

[izzywantscheesecake]

end of the semester

Pairing: Roommate!Hobie x RoommateGN!Reader🕸🕷🎸 Fandom: Into/Across/Beyond the Spiderverse Quick Synopsis: Your final grade in a class was poor, so Hobie is there to give you a pep talk. Tags: Drabble, Use of Y/N, no specific physical description of the reader (besides maybe slight height mention?), reader can be male/female or none, Hobie and reader can be read as a platonic or romantic pairing, Fluff, Comfort, very slight use of british slang, kind of self indulgent.

It was a chilly Tuesday afternoon, the perfect day to use whatever was in the fridge to make something instead of ordering food like Hobie was doing for the past week.

He grabbed lettuce, already cooked leftover chicken, tomatoes, carrots, and cucumbers and placed everything to the side while he got started on cutting the latter.

It had been a good minute since he washed the veggies and began cutting, but his pace started to get slower and slower.

Something felt off. He just knew it.

Suddenly, the front door swung open, and there you walked in, hands covering your eyes as you let out the loudest groan known to man. 

In an instant, you grabbed onto your bag barely attached to your arm, and threw it towards the side of the ottoman, where it landed and fell over, exposing your pencils to the carpet.

You then kicked off your shoes and plopped yourself face first onto one of the couch pillows.

Hobie redirected his focus from the salad he was making to your pretty depressed state. “What happened to you?”

“I’m dead.”

“Alright, ‘Dead,’ can you explain what’s going on with my roommate right now?”

“Ha ha.��� You lifted yourself up from the pillow, with the emotion ‘upset’ practically plastered onto your face like gum on pavement. “Grades were put in today.”

“I know, haven’t checked mine yet. Just trying to enjoy the last meal of my day before it all turns to shit,” Hobie chuckled, pouring his cut cucumbers into the bowl with a knife.

“Yeah.”

“I’m assuming you checked yours?”

“Mhm, I did great in everything, you know, the standard A minuses and A pluses, but..” You paused.

“But?”

“..I did great in everything but calculus.”

“What'd ya get?” 

“C.”

Hobie went silent for a few seconds, before giving you a short round of applause.

“Not bad. At least it wasn’t an F.”

“I know, but..”

“But what?”

“I’m just disappointed ‘cause I worked so hard this semester. I took notes, spoke to teachers, bought extra material and even got a tutor at some point. All that just for a C. Maybe I should’ve studied longer, crammed more..”

You hadn’t even noticed Hobie move from his position and begin to walk towards you as you rambled.

When you snapped back to reality and saw his loud and obnoxious pajama pants standing in front of you, you paused. He kneeled down to match your height, and put both of his hands on your shoulders.

“Listen, Y/N. I know you’ve worked hard, I’ve seen it, but this is way more trivial than you think.”

“I-”

“I know a C isn’t usually considered the best grade and all, but.. It’s calculus. You got stuck with this class. Some people go through the entire four years of schooling without doing calculus, me planning to be one of them. I think the fact you passed this semester with an okay grade and even better grades on everything else is incredible.”

You stayed silent as he searched your eyes, waiting for any type of reaction.

“I’m just saying, don’t beat yourself up about this, love. It’s just one C in a sea of A’s.”

You smiled at him. “I guess that’s true.”

“Bloody right it is.”

He stood up, and walked back towards the mini-kitchen.

“Any road, pop on your PJ’s and find something for us to watch. We’re gonna need a good laugh before we see how I did.”

A/N: can you tell i'm about to fail my classes and this is my last ditch effort in creating happiness before shit hits the fan

[tropes-and-tales-archives]

More Precious Than Rubies: Part 3a

This is an alternate timeline story that has a Rafael Barba track and a Sonny Carisi track. The two paths split off in part 3.

WC: 2662

TW: SVU-typical talk of rape and sexual assault cases.

AN: The prompt was "I saw you staring at each other, I just wasn’t sure if it was sexual tension or murderous rage."

When the jury read their verdict of “not guilty” on all counts, you breathed a sigh of relief and then tended to your client, who collapsed against you in broken sobs.  You got him collected, then you both went out and made a brief statement to the assembled press.  You shook Jeremy’s hand and wished him well, and then you stood a moment in the weak April sunlight.

You descended the steps of the courthouse slowly, one at a time, and thought about what you should do. 

It was late in the day – you could go back to your airless little utility closet of an office and wrap up you paperwork on the case.  Or you could start making your way towards home.  Most of the cops and ADAs went to celebrate or commiserate at Forlini’s, but two blocks up was a charming little Spanish wine bar that most tourists walked right past.  It was right near your subway stop – you could go finish your paperwork there.

You had been a good student in high school and undergraduate, and you’d been top of the class in law school.  The sole subject you struggled in had been math and calculus, so it was fortunate that law didn’t require much higher math beyond calculating what consecutive sentences would add up to.

If you had been good at higher math, you’d know what an inflection point was – a moment when a curve changes from being concave to convex, or vice versa.  Life was full of inflection points – when the path a person could take is changed or decided on.  Most times, the person in question had no idea how their little choices affected the larger arc of their life. 

Take the subway or walk.  Eat the street meat or the leftovers you packed from home.  Go to Fordham law or Columbia law.

Turn right, towards your office.  Or turn left towards home.

Today, you turned left.

********

Barba was livid.  The problem was, he didn’t know who to be madder at:  himself, or Liv, or the rest of the SVU squad. 

He should have known better.  He should have known.  How many times had SVU handed him flimsy cases with circumstantial evidence?  How many times had he sent them away, refusing to even consider a case until it was more solid?

Too many times, and yet here he was – dodging Jack McCoy, sneaking out of the office, creeping past Forlini’s without looking through the plate glass windows, ducking into a tiny wine bar.  Steadying his nerves with a glass of ruby-red Garnacha and just letting the alcohol inflame his temper even more.

Because he should have known better.

And once he worked through his uncharitable feelings about his detectives, he moved on to the irritating new public defender.  If he had been intrigued by you initially, it quickly wore off once he saw you shred his admittedly feeble case.  You caught the social media posts that NYPD didn’t, but that didn’t make you a brilliant lawyer – it just meant you were thorough.  And lucky.  The next time he faced off with you in court, he’d settle the score.  And he’d do it with the same, tiny, infuriating smile you had sported during closing arguments. 

He finished off his first glass of wine and then ordered another, along with a charcuterie tray for one, as if he didn’t already feel like a loser.  He sipped his wine slower and tried to enjoy the notes of plum and juniper.  After his last overdue annual physical (and his doctor clucking over his blood pressure), Barba had downloaded some meditation app that basically charged him $2.99 a month to tell him to close his eyes and take deep breaths.  While he waited for the world’s smallest, saddest charcuterie tray, he closed his eyes and did just that.

He could feel the tension loosen a little bit.  His pulse slowed.  He took another sip of wine and tried to savor it.  Everything would be fine.  He’d take his lumps from McCoy, then he’d march over to the 16th precinct and give Liv a stern speech about sloppy police work.  Then he’d do better, be more vigilant, work harder.

When he opened his eyes finally, his newfound serenity evaporated immediately.  Across the bar, settling into a stool and pulling a stack of papers out of a battered satchel, was the irritating new public defender.  He ducked down and watched you furtively.  You shed your grey jacket.  You ordered a glass of white wine but no food, and you bent over your papers.  Your face was drawn and serious, as if you hadn’t just scored an impressive victory against the district attorney’s office. 

The waiter bringing Barba’s food created a flurry of activity that drew your eye, and Barba saw you see him.  You nodded at him in greeting and gave him a smile, and he wasn’t sure if it was meant to be friendly or to gloat.  He embraced his foul mood as it returned and settled for the latter instead of the former.

He scowled back at you and pointedly ignored you to focus on his food, but not before he saw you carefully gather up your stuff and walk around the bar to join him.  He was unable to be explicitly rude and ignore you, so he sighed and turned to face you.

“You here to gloat?” he asked, and he watched your face turn from casually friendly to guarded.

“I’m not gloating,” you replied.  “I wanted to say it was a good case, and that you did your best.”

Barba scoffed and took a deep swig of wine, polishing it off in one gulp.  “Liar.  It was a weak case, and now you’re gloating.”

You narrowed your eyes at him and watched him as he ordered another glass of wine.  “I’d think that you’d be happy that you weren’t responsible for getting an innocent man locked up,” you said, and your voice was clipped and almost borderline angry. 

He swiveled in his seat so that he could face you directly.  You weren’t wrong, but Barba was still smarting from such a humiliating defeat – especially on a case he shouldn’t have even taken to trial.  He had no one to blame but himself, but the heady red wine was hitting him harder than his usual scotch did, so he snapped back at you.

“Enjoy your victory,” he said, and you narrowed your eyes further until they were mere slits in your face, glaring out at him.  “You won’t get another.”  And then he turned back in his seat to make sure you knew you were dismissed.

He’d feel bad about it in the morning.  You were just some green public defender, some bleeding heart, probably, and likely someone who just eked out a law degree and a license from passing the bar.  And you had kept an innocent man out of prison.  But law was a zero-sum game:  every case you won was a case he lost.

And more than anything else, Barba loved to win. 

-----

It was another month before Barba faced off against you again, and it ended in a draw – guilty on a lesser count, not guilty on the more serious charge.  You’d be able to make a plea for leniency during sentencing.  When court was dismissed, he turned to nod at you, but you deliberately tilted your head in that sometimes-cute, mostly-irritating way you had and ignored him.

The next match up was just two weeks later, and you lost it handily.  Guilty on all counts, and your client was a repeat rapist, but Barba begrudgingly admitted that you gave him a good defense.  The defendant would not be able to appeal based on incompetent counsel.  Again, you refused to look at Barba, but he couldn’t miss the tension that melted from your frame when your client was led out in cuffs.  He realized that you had to defend monsters, and he wondered if you just now realized it yourself.

He got to talk to you a little during those cases, when you both did the mandatory tap dance around possible plea deals.  Even if you were young, you were a fierce competitor, snapping back at his own witty one-liners with sarcastic rejoinders of your own.  Unlike the other lawyers he squared off with, though, you never made it personal.  You never snarked on his suits (like Calhoun), and you never called him a peacock (like Buchanan).  You just threw out obscure case law and legal precedents that he sometimes wasn’t aware of.

Meetings with you left him both invigorated and exhausted.  Like a sudden burst of adrenaline that, when it was spent, made him weary.

He conceded that you knew what you were doing.  You seemed to know the law inside and out, and you seemed to have a supernatural instinct for when SVU was floating a weak case.  Barba wondered what your relationship with Carisi had been like – maybe your ability to see through the squad’s posturing came from whatever had happened between you and the lanky detective. 

Barba asked Liv about it once.  Liv had just shrugged and said that you and Carisi had already been a couple when he came to Manhattan’s SVU, and then a few months later, Carisi had turned up to work with red eyes and rumpled clothes for a long stretch before pulling himself together.

“She was sweet,” Liv said.  “She used to bring in lunch and dinner when we were working overtime.  But she was still in school then, I think.  Fordham.”

Barba pictured you in college student garb, maybe a pair of faded jeans and a Fordham sweatshirt, your face sans makeup and your hair pulled into a sloppy ponytail.  He pictured you bringing in boxes of food for the squad, maybe sitting and chatting with them a bit while Carisi played footsie with you under the table.  He pictured the tall detective walking you out, kissing you and promising to see you at home soon. 

Barba felt a measure of melancholic jealousy for that imagined domestic scene.  He’d love to have a girlfriend who brought him food when he was working late.  More to the point, he’d love to have a reason to even go home instead of pulling late nights in his office.  His mind started to wander to an imagined scene where you brought him food in his office, where he kissed you and promised to see you at home….he shoved that daydream aside violently.  Not you.  Anyone but the irritating public defender who stung and maddened him like a deep papercut that kept breaking back open after he thought it had healed.

He wondered again idly what had broken the two of you up.  Likely being on opposite sides of the law, Barba figured.  Carisi, the cocker spaniel of special victims advocate, and you, an avenging angel of the poorest criminals Manhattan had to offer.

-----

SVU had a new case:  a sixteen year-old, Anthony Forni, was being tried as an adult for sexual assault of a neighbor in his apartment building.    

And a familiar face caught it for the defense.

Barba and Liv were in his office, chatting about the case when Carmen knocked on the door and announced you.  As per your usual routine, you nodded curtly at Liv before zeroing in on Barba like a heat-seeking missile.  You marched over to stand on the other side of his desk, and Barba knew by now not to bother with polite small talk about the weather.  He seemed to have lost that privilege when he rebuffed you all those months ago at the wine bar.

“Counselor,” he said in greeting, and his mentally girded himself for a fight.  Increasingly, your meetings with him were getting tenser.  It was his fault, probably, when he made it personal by calling you “girl wonder” sarcastically once, and you had glared at him so hard that he almost withered under the force of your stare.  Almost.

“The Forni case,” you replied.  “Let’s talk plea deal.”

He scoffed at this and saw Liv start to open her mouth to add her two cents, so he held a silencing hand out to her.  “I’ll take my chances at court.”

The corner of your mouth twitched as you fought a smile.  “You sure about that, Barba?”

“I’d consider rape in the second degree.  Five years, and he goes on the registry.”

“I’d consider forcible touching,” you retorted.  “Probation, mandatory therapy.”

Barba laughed outright.  “A misdemeanor?  Don’t waste my time.”

You held up your hand and ticked off your points.  “One, you can’t prove that my client even had sex with the victim…”

“The rape kit tested positive for lubricant,” Live cut in, and you just rolled her interruption into your list of points without even looking at her.

“Two, the victim is married and is rumored to have a piece on the side, so lubricant is a non-issue.”  You paused for a split second, waiting for another interruption.  Your eyes never left Barba’s; he wondered if you were this intense with other ADAs.  He couldn’t imagine you staring down Callier or O’Dwyer with such passion. 

“Three,” you continued, “Forni’s mother has been fighting with the victim over noise complaints for months.”

“Which gives me a motive for the defendant attacking her,” Barba cut in.

“Which gives me a motive for the victim lying,” you snapped.  “And four, I have reason to believe that my client is himself a victim of sexual abuse.  He needs therapy and support, not hard time with grown men.”

“How noble of you,” Barba murmured, and he saw you clench your jaw.  “But what about support for the victim?  Moreover, what about justice?”

“What’s just about sending an underaged kid to an adult prison?  That’s vengeance.”

Barba shrugged.  “That’s the law.”

“An eye for the eye makes the whole world blind,” you replied, and Barba laughed outright again.  He was thinking, more and more, that you were some sort of bleeding-heart do-gooder after all. 

“Embroider it on a pillow,” he snarked.  “Don’t use it for a basis of legal argument.”

“At least I keep it pithy,” you sassed back at him.  “Your closing arguments are so wordy and long-winded, you couldn’t embroider it on a blanket.”

The two of you stared at each other for a moment, and Barba refused to look away first.  Instead, he studied your face, smirking a bit at the way your nostrils flared almost imperceptibly as you raged quietly.  Finally, you blinked and stepped away from his desk.

“I’ll see you in court then,” you declared, and you flounced out without another word.  Barba could practically feel the energy in the room shift as you left, like you were a storm front passing by.

He leaned back in his chair and then glanced over at Liv.  He’d nearly forgotten that she was even there.  That was the problem with you:  in court and in these little encounters, the rest of the world seemed to fall away.  Liv, for her part, was giving him that infuriating soft smile she had when she felt like she had some new insight into Barba’s character or inner thoughts.

“What?” he barked, sounding meaner than he intended.

“What was that all about?” she asked.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Her smile widened.  “I saw you staring at each other.  I just wasn’t sure if it was sexual tension or murderous rage.”

“Neither,” he said.  “And stop smiling like that.  It’s just business.”

Liv held up her hands in mock surrender and stood up to leave too.  But the smile never left her face, and she even chuckled softly to herself as she made her way to the door.

“For my money, that looked a lot like sexual tension to me,” she said, and she ducked out of his office before he had a chance to come up with a snarky response.

[intoloopin-archive]

LOOP GOES DISCO #1 - "THE LAST PIT OF HELL IS AN ASSHOLE'S HOTEL BATHROOM."

A SERIES REWRITE OF DISCARDED SCENES USING DISCO ELYSIUM GAME MECHANICS/LINGO.

TWS: Drug use. Cursing. Self deprecating language. Fighting. Forced vomiting. Blood. Feelings being expressed weirdly at inappropriate times (???).

CONTEXT: This is rewrite of a missing scene from END AT ME: it's a glimpse at the Hell party that caused Minwoo to call Taesong on July 14th going 15th + what proceeded the final motel scene by 4 to 6 hours.

starring: Bang Minwoo. Xu 'J.J' Jiahang.

word account: 3.8K / 3,848 words.

writer's note: OKAY, SO! To anyone who's unfamiliar on how DE functions, fear not: this works as it's own thing. But to hopefully get you into the right mood, I'll link a video to the game's intro as well as the skill sheet out of detail so you can grasp what's being evoked here. Most skills have been adapted to fit this new setting and Minwoo's own psychology anyway, so understanding how they function in game or not (hopefully!) won't take away from any fun of this psyche dive. With that being said! Good read! This is the most fun I had all week!

THE ASSHOLE’S HOTEL BATHROOM - Filled with too many soap cabinets and a candelabra for a lamp – things of value but no *practical use* – the Asshole’s Hotel Bathroom looks exactly like you expect it to. To put it simply it's a fancy, cold and soulless shit deposit.

REACTION SPEED (Easy: Success) - Like your goddamn man.

EMPATHY (Challenging: Success) - Like *them*, your man’s ‘friends’, who share no traits with him. Not an hinch of loyalty to anything or anyone.

YOU - You inspect Jiahang, the said man – just a man, his own man – that you have an arm's hold of, dragging along behind you. He doesn’t want to come into the Asshole’s Hotel Bathroom, of course not. He doesn’t want to leave The Party and its Party People either, but he must be surgically extracted from them. He must be attended to, immediately.

ESPRIT DE CORPS (Medium: Fail) - You still have no idea why he jumped on to take what the asshole man offered you, why he tried to bargain your way out of the room at the expense of his already too dazed system, with a dry gulp of a too big pill ill meant for you, putting on a show so you could leave.

INTERFACING (Easy: Success) - As if you would ever choose to escape out of any Hell without him – as if you could make out of any labyrinth without your North Star.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY (Easy: Success) - God, he’s beautiful even while bone deep in physical discomfort. That’s art in real fucking staggering movements, all live, full color. He has mastered the sweet, sweet pain it takes to *be* music. He has beat you at your own game, Minwoo love. Beat you right up. *Beat you good*.

LOGIC (Easy: Success) - Whatever is that he swallowed, he needs it out of his system. Now.

YOU - You lock the door behind you, let his pulse go. You both stand in discrepant different examples of equilibrium at the center of the room.

VISUAL CALCULUS (Easy: Success) - The toilet has its lid already set open, like a paid extra.

“What were you thinking?!”

“You need to throw up. *Now*.”

No talking. No time to waste. Reach forward. Be of help.

YOU - You take an unfocused step forward, leaving two feet between Jiahang and you. The proximity accomplishes nothing: your fingers trail millimeters over his chest, failing to check anything, just shaking.

JIAHANG - "Minwoo hyung, c’mon… Calm down, okay, calm down… I can… take it, I’m alright…," Jiahang’s marijuana voice is something deeper in tone and lighter in sound, close to a whisper. He takes pauses to hold in anxious, misplaced laughs. “It’s not my… First rodeo, so… Calm down…”

LOGIC (Easy: Success) - He’s not new to drugs, that’s what he meant. Both in general, and with today’s doctor’s prescription: weed, cocaine, maybe, and the other thing, the white pill.

ENCYCLOPEDIA (Easy: Success) - You knew this already. You pretended not to, for someone’s sake – you don’t remember who, now – but it’s become obvious to you early on. How could it not when it’s *you*, a Guryo son who knows what to seek for when telling… *high risk riders* apart from any crowd.

LOGIC (Easy: Success) - And yet you did nothing to put a stop to it. You let it come to this. This is as much as your fault as it is the asshole man’s. You’re a fucking asshole man, Asshole Man.

YOU - Your head bends downwards, away from him, away from direct view.

INLAND EMPIRE (Medium: Success) - Because it pains you; the sight of him pains you. It always has. Every inch of his body is a light that cuts right through your retinas, close to being fatal.

DRAMA (Easy: Success) - By God, he’s made you just as blind as the piano and guitar have. *He really is music*.

“Why are you, out of everyone, making stupid fucking decisions?!”

Give me something else. I won’t say that.

YOU - Give me something else. I won’t say that.

HALF LIGHT (Challenging: Fail) - Oh? And why the fuck not?

It’s not what he needs to fucking hear now, shit Head!

The night’s been already harsh enough. Try to be kind or something, fuck Hell.

Please, *please* don’t make me say it. I don’t wanna say it.

YOU - It’s not what he needs to fucking hear now, shit Head!

HALF LIGHT (Challenging: Fail) - Well, fuck-o, this is all you got. Have you forgotten who you are? You’re a brute and ruthless son of a gun. Shoot-words-to-kill, that’s the Bang Minwoo pattern of speech. You know nothing else.

“Why are you, out of everyone, making stupid fucking decisions?!”

[COMPOSURE CHECK: IMPOSSIBLE (3% CHANCE).] Breath.

[LOGIC CHECK: GODLY (27% CHANCE).] Come up with something else. Something soothing. *Anything*.

LOGIC CHECK: FAILURE. - As you search your oceanic brain for a cohesive, less deadly set of words, you find nothing but a dark void and the defeating sound of static. You’re tongue tied. You’re jaw set. You’re furious. You’re terrified. You’re only half inside your own body.

PAIN THRESHOLD (Impossible: Fail) - The smell of urine and powder mixed together, coming straight off the toilet to your nose. The sensation of being too small, too impotent inside a big room that you’ve never seen so big. The body of a loved one shivering close, mad with fever.

INLAND EMPIRE (Challenging: Fail) - It’s all too familiar, isn’t it now, crack baby?

[-1 MORALE.]

THE AWARENESS OF THE LOOP - TIME IS A FLAT FUCKING CIRCLE, AND YOU DREW ITS LINE THEN, AND YOU DREW ITS LINE NOW!

“Why are you, out of everyone, making stupid fucking decisions?!”

[COMPOSURE CHECK: IMPOSSIBLE (1% CHANCE).] Breath.

COMPOSURE CHECK: EPIC FAIL. - Thinking of breathing only makes your breathing worse. Stop. Thinking. Of. It. STOP. IMMEDIATELY.

[-1 PHYSICAL.]

“Why are you, out of everyone, making stupid fucking decisions?!”

YOU - “Why are you, out of everyone, making stupid fucking decisions?!”

JIAHANG - Slowly, as if he’s hearing you with a 15 second delay, Jiahang looks up at you with his big stars for eyes, embedded in a sea of red. “What..?”

“You–! Jesus Christ, you fucking heard me, Jiahang!”

YOU - “You–! Jesus Christ, you fucking heard me, Jiahang!”

“I can’t deal with you having a crash, I can’t witness that sort of *shit*! You know why I fucking can’t!”

YOU - “I can’t deal with you having a goddamn crash, I can’t witness that sort of *shit*! You know why I fucking can’t!”

JIAHANG - The delay’s gone, it seems: in front of you, Jiahang flinches, withers, pressing his tiny lips close together.

AUTHORITY (Challenging: Success) - BE CALM. He’s scared, but not of you – only of himself, what he’s done, and what you might think of him now.

EMPATHY (Medium: Success) - And he’s ashamed of what he took you back to, now that he realizes – the razor sharp flashes of your once uncle seem to flow between you telepathically.

THE BLURRY PHOTO INSIDE YOUR WALLET - *GOODSPEED, BANG WOOHYUN – BELOVED BROTHER, ADORED SON, TRUE FATHER. AND MAY GOD LAY YOU TO REST KINDLY.*

CONCEPTUALIZATION (Medium: Success) - He’s always scared of what people might think of him. It’s his Achilles tendon. When it comes to you, the fear of letting down goes hand in hand with an old, too familiar grief.

UNTRACEABLE RUSH OF DOPAMINE - Tell him. Tell him what we think of him, now and always. It’s time.

“I just don’t get– You or, or! You’re supposed to be music, for shit’s sake! Whatever the fuck that means!”

Don’t make me do this to me now.

I don’t fucking know what I think, alright?! Not about him, not about anything anymore! *I don’t know!* And I don’t want to know! I don’t give a shit! I never fucking have!

YOU - I don’t fucking know what I think, alright?! Not about him, not about anything anymore! *I don’t know!* And I don’t want to know! I don’t give a shit! I never fucking have!

DRAMA (Easy: Success) - Alright, sire, alright. Don’t open the Pandora’s Box that is your stone heart, if you’re too much of a pussy to see what’s been growing inside. Suit your weak self, take the coward’s road. Just be careful not to fall too hard while embarking on this deep, deep sink of yours into that old, old Egyptian river.

ENCYCLOPEDIA (Legendary: Success) - That old Egyptian river is called the Nile river. Say it's determiner and name three times quickly out loud. The joke writes itself.

INLAND EMPIRE (Easy: Success) - Not a easier joke to decipher than *you*, of course, Bang Man.

JIAHANG - It takes him a while, but Jiahang eventually recovers; straightens his spine up, grows back to big. “If you can’t see it, then… leave, then. You can… do that. You brought me my bag, I– I took the *thing* for you, you’re free– free to go. So go on. Turn around, just turn– turn around, if that’s what… what you want so bad!”

[VOLITION RED CHECK: IMPOSSIBLE (0% CHANCE). YOU CAN’T RETRY IT.] Leave.

I can’t leave him.

“I can’t leave you!”

YOU - I can’t leave him.

PERCEPTION (Heroic: Fail) - Ah, yes. That you have no strength to do. It's as simple as that.

“I can’t leave you – not like this!”

“I can’t leave you – not with them!”

“I just *can’t leave you*!”

YOU - “I can’t leave you, Jiahang – not like this!”

JIAHANG - You see a frown show up on his forehead as he mouths ‘like this’, like it’s an insult, but doesn’t say it. What he does say is a frustrated, confused plea of, “Then what, Minwoo? Then *what*?!”

HAND/EYE COORDINATION (Easy: Success) - Oh, sire. You know exactly what you must do.

[SUGGESTION CHECK: FORMIDABLE (38% CHANCE).] Convince Jiahang to throw up. Keep talking. He’s giving in.

[REACTION SPEED CHECK: CHALLENGING (65% CHANCE).] Make him throw up. You’ve lost too much damn time already with all this fucking talking.

[PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT RED CHECK: IMPOSSIBLE (1% CHANCE). YOU CAN’T RETRY IT.] Shove him into the bathtub and turn on the ice cold shower. Let the thermal shock overwhelm him, then make him throw up there. It’s risky, but it feels like the way.

REACTION SPEED CHECK: FAIL. You raise your arms and grab him suddenly by the elbows, catching him visibly by surprise – and it all goes quickly downhill from there.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT (Challenging: Epic Fail) - Your limbs struggle to make him bend any way, let alone to the direction of the toilet or the floor. Under your feet, the humid ground keeps you from grounding yourself enough to make any of this work. Nothing’s in your favor. You realize your mistake too late.

RHETORIC (Easy: Success) - You should have thought this through. Jiahang is, after all, much taller than you – and much too cherished for your hands to dare squeeze or scratch.

YOU - Your fingers let go without you telling them to. Bad equilibrium disrupted, Jiahang slips on the wet tiles and falls sideways, head bumping with the toilet’s unforgiving ceramic, nose first, sound second: a horrible cry out of pain you heard just once.

[CRITICAL MORALE DAMAGE.]

[CRITICAL PHYSICAL DAMAGE.]

YOU - DEAR GOD. MY DEAR GOD.

EMPATHY (Medium: Success): DON’T SHUT DOWN – YOU CAN’T. IT MAKES YOU MORE VICIOUS. YOU DIDN’T MEAN TO: HE MUST KNOW YOU DIDN’T MEAN TO. RUSH TO PROVE IT– HELP!

JUMP TO HELP!

YOU - YOU JUMP TO HELP! You’re on your knees quicker than you’ve ever been, palming his back, his shoulder.

JIAHANG - He glimpses at you sideways, then hides his face away, turning it to the opposite side. A lonely stream of blood drips from his left nostril, and he rushes to cover it with his trembling hand. You notice; you hear a sob.

RETHORIC (Heroic: Fail) - You’re a wordsmitch, fuck face, or are you not?! SAY SOMETHING. FIX THIS.

“Fuck, you– You didn’t give me *any other choice*, like!!!”

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry so so sorry I’m sorry sorry!!!!!!”

Fuck it. Focus on the mission. Put your fingers down his throat. Count damages later.

YOU - Make the worst worth it, you think, as you scoopes his face in.

LOGIC (Medium: Fail) - Will it even accomplish anything? The white pill’s been in his system for over 20 minutes, not to mention all the rest, a pool party of shit in his bloodstream. Anyhow: better safe than sorry, you assume – you pray.

YOU - You fight to get your fingers into his mouth, meet a wall of teeth, a resistence of tongue; it opens after you let out a small curse, like a castle’s gate.

SUGGESTION (Easy: Success) - So *this* is how it feels.

PERCEPTION (Medium: Success) - Under you, he’s stopped moving. Jiahang has no real strength or deep desire to push you out or hurt you. He might even understand the invasion, under the haze; be grateful for it, even.

YOU - You feel it when it comes, a stream of bile. You remove your hand and wipes it on your trousers, sees Jiahang bending over to sit and spill sick yellow vomit for seconds, a minute.

ENCYCLOPEDIA (Easy: Success) - Even though you’ve hurt him not a second ago – it wasn’t even the first time, either – he hasn’t bitten a single finger of yours off when he had the chance. Not a follower of the Eye For an Eye school of thinking, this pupil of yours, despite your suffocating influence. That’s good. You’re nothing but a bad preacher of a bad religion.

JIAHANG - When he’s done spitting and coughing, Jiahang begins to curl into himself, turning into a quiet small ball on the floor, too close to the release pool.

“I’m sorry. It was the only way– I’m sorry.”

“Jiahang-ah, please, let me take a look at you – Let me look at you, *please*.”

[AUTHORITY CHECK: EASY. 92% CHANCE.] “Show me your nose, now.”

AUTHORITY CHECK: SUCCESS.

YOU - “Show me your nose, now.”

PERCEPTION (Easy: Success) - He does, without a fight, lying on the floor with his head facing the ceiling. It’s bad, the bruise – the damage. You help guide him to sit up straight as he can.

YOU - You extend your hand to the side, up– The toilet paper dances off the holder as you push it, and it rolls away. You get enough of it to wrap it over your open palm three times, to make an amateur glove. You wipe the trace of blood off his mouth as gently as you can.

JIAHANG - “I’m such a… mess, just so–!” He cries, suddenly; a dam of tears, hot and uncontainable. “Awful, *awful* thing, disgusting fucking– fucking *thing*!”

“I know. I know exactly what you are.”

“That’s not all there is to you, baby, it’s not all there is to you at all, listen to me, honey, *listen*, **please listen**.”

“You could be worse.”

YOU - “You could be worse.”

JIAHANG - This gets his attention. “How even– Worse how?” Jiahang asks, mid hiccup, mid wail. “Give me one– One fucking example, if you… can. Can you? You *can’t*, can you?!”

SHIVERS (Medium: Success) - Around you and around him, The Party keeps on going, like a nonstop train. Your ears attune themselves to the purr of it – it's a habit. You’re too often outside rooms buzzing with life, only listening in through paper thin walls, missing the experience of it.

EMPATHY (Heroic: Success) - No one has come to check on him, you both have realized – Jiahang a minute faster than you. None of his Party People friends give a flying fuck. The reality is falling down on him like a skyscraper, crushing, breathtaking, killer.

AUTHORITY (Legendary: Success) - LET THE OUTSIDE WORLD GO QUIET. THERE IS SOMETHING HE WANTS TO HEAR YOU SAY.

[REACTION SPEED RED CHECK: IMPOSSIBLE (11% CHANCE.) YOU CAN’T RETRY IT.] Start listing the real world things that are worse than him. (There’s a ton, and you know them intimately – and you know him intimately. Give Jiahang something else to weep for.)

[DRAMA RED CHECK, IMPOSSIBLE (9% CHANCE.) YOU CAN’T RETRY IT.] Start listing the unreal, out of this world things worse than him – the ones you’ve seen in your open eyed dreams. (Not as many options, but a tad lighter. Make the sadness disappear, bring anything close to a laugh back. Be the mad man for a great cause.)

[INLAND EMPIRE RED CHECK: LEGENDARY (26% CHANCE). YOU CAN’T RETRY IT.] “You could be like me. I’m worse than you’ll ever be.” (The truth. It can only hurt you.)

Say nothing.

INLAND EMPIRE CHECK: SUCCESS.

YOU - “You could be like me. I’m worse than you’ll ever be.”

LOGIC (Challenging: Success) - There is nothing worse than you, False Prophet, Fake Noah. Obsessed with connecting melodies, speaking truthfully only through rhyme schemes on pieces of paper that meet no one, only the bottom of trash cans or the back of your hard pillow. You’re not functional. You’re no leading man. You’re no good.

INLAND EMPIRE (Medium: Success) - But it feels good, doesn’t it? To finally admit how rotten you are after a whole life of pretending you’re a giving three, a good soil.

EMPATHY (Challenging: Success) - To say to someone who knows it, understands it, and stays.

[+1 MORALE]

Wait, I gained a fucking morale point from THAT?!

YOU - What the actual fuck?!

RHETORIC (Medium: Success) - You’re neck deep into shit, pal. Just count your win. It’s only a consolidation medal, nothing more, nothingbless – kiddo needs his fake prizes to fill his kiddo fuel.

JIAHANG - “But… I feel like you already,” he tells you. “All the time, hyung… All the time, I feel like you– Angry, and upset, and– and so lonely.”

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT (Easy: Success) - Wait, what’s that taunting your face, blocking your neck…? Oh, fucking Hell…! You’re crying! You’re nodding at him and crying!

AUTHORITY (Impossible: Fail) - HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU CRYING?! You don’t do that anymore, you’ve forgotten how. Revoke it. Revoke it along with all this sweat taking over your body.

“Don’t you dare say that.”

“I’m sorry, Jiahang. This is not– Not what I wanted to happen.”

“Just– Give me a minute, God, give me a minute!”

YOU - “I’m sorry, Jiahang. This is not– Not what I wanted to happen.”

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT (Easy: Success) - The tears prickle your eyes, actually turn you momentarily blind. You blink, hard, adjusting to their salt. It reminds you of how hard to stomach you are, inside out.

PAIN THRESHOLD (Medium: Success) - And it reminds you of how much saltier you’ve used to be. The tears are already falling off your sad sockets, sire – let them.

[+1 PHYSICAL.]

JIAHANG - “It’s not so bad, right, I think, to have… Turned into *this*, because– You’re no longer… lonely, and… Neither am I, right…? We can both be happy with that, be happy…” He doesn’t finish speaking; just closes his eyes, closes his mouth.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY (Medium: Fail) - We like the visual he’s evoking, Minwoo love. Picture the two of you, holding hands, walking right into the dooming sun– Oh, oh! Romeo and Romeo, tongue deep into each other’s poison bitter throats!!!

EMPATHY (Medium: Success) - Your man’s not right. He’s fading. This isn’t the Jiahang you want; most importantly, this isn’t the Jiahang that *Jiahang wants*. This is no good, Minwoo.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY (Medium: Fail) - It’s as close as we'll ever get to having any Jiahang *at all*. Enjoy it! We should kiss him now. Seal this deal right up. Two shots of Marriage In Misery and a whole bottle of Honeymoon On The Floor (Animal Style) coming *right the fuck up*, sign it to the wingless lovebirds right there, near the piss jar!!!

EMPATHY (Medium: Success) - Let go of his hand. Check his eyes. Help him up.

INLAND EMPIRE (Legendary: Fail) - Or perhaps this is the time for you to leave. You shouldn’t have ever touched him, to begin with. You shouldn’t have spoken a single word beyond ‘Goodbye’ to this man when he was still a graduating boy. You shouldn’t have made him think that he needed to cling to ruination to shine. You shouldn't have come to know any of them.

Kiss Jiahang. (ANIMAL FUCKING STYLE!!!)

Check Jiahang up (medically.), then help him up. You both need to leave the Asshole's Hotel Bathroom and The Asshole’s Hotel all together.

Walk away – Just walk away. His shortness of breath seems contagious. It’s sticking to your lungs.

YOU - It takes no effort to untangle your hands from his, to place them both on his cheeks, tend to the temperature.

ENCYCLOPEDIA (Challenging: Success) - His skin is at 110 degrees, to be precise. The lucky-unlucky number, if you’ll believe it.

LOGIC (Medium: Success) - It’s a mind and body turmoil. I’m afraid you can do nothing about it.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN, *DO NOTHING*?! FUCK OFF.

I can do something, I– I feel it.

I refuse to let him fall. I reject it.

YOU - I refuse to let him fall. I reject it.

INLAND EMPIRE (Medium: Success) - Cute, my lord, but still not enough. You might as well swear to become a whole different man, in your desperation, if you want to make this medicine of yours come true – transform into a superhuman, super empathic man suit. Like the Taesong Taesong thinks he is.

Good, I’ll swear on it, I’ll be it – I've been waiting for an excuse to tend to the internal damage and start a renovation. This is will be my new wallpaper.

No, don’t swear on it, fool – There’s no need to be extreme. *There’s no guarantee it will work*.

YOU - No, don’t swear on it, fool – There’s no need to be extreme. *There’s no guarantee it will work.*

ENCYCLOPEDIA (Challenging: Success) - Exactly. Hold your horses, Bang Man. Take this promise in. You never tried to be anything besides what you are now. You’re a 26-year-old hound – in dog years that’s 116 to 128 years of living. There’s no space inside your head for new tricks, new instincts.

DRAMA (Easy: Success) - You’re chained to a wall, my liege. You have to tear it the fuck down, and clean the concrete aftermath, and rise from the ashes of it – full Fenix style. Fail at that and you’ll be here again, if not in this asshole’s hotel bathroom, then another asshole’s hotel bathroom; if not with him, then with someone else, just as meaningful. You got the need for change, now? The need to compromise the fuck out of you?!

AUTHORITY (Heroic: Success): Say you got it now.

Fine. I guess I got it now.

I got it! I fucking got it, goddammit!

I understand.

YOU - I understand.

INLAND EMPIRE (Challenging: Success) - My, oh my… It seems you really do.

THE AWARENESS OF THE LOOP - *OH?* OH! THIS IS A REAL STEP, THIS IS SOMETHING – OH, THIS IS *REALLY SOMETHING NOW*, LITTLE MOON, WHAT A MAGNIFICENT EFFORT! THIS IS PROGRESS YOU’RE HOLDING THE HAND OF, AND IT’S PLEASED TO MEET YOU AT LAST, SO PLEASED TO MEET YOU! THE THING ABOUT IT– THE THING WITH PROGRESS, SHARP-TOOTHED ONE, IS THAT THERE IS NEVER ANY INGLORIOUS END – THERE’S NO END TO IT AT ALL!

[HIDDEN TASK, ‘TAKE THE 1ST STEP OF A 100 INTO METAMORPHOSIS’, COMPLETE.]

[+30 EXPERIENCE.]

[YOU CAN LEVEL UP A SKILL NOW.]

[END?]

[END.]

[girlswithgoodhobbies]

How to Self-Study Any AP Course

If you're a high school student, chances are you are taking or planning to take an AP course. AP courses are a fantastic way gain college credit, as well as adding an impressive aspect to your school resume. But what do you do if your school doesn't offer any AP's??? The answer is to self-study!!!

What is Self-Study

Self-study is the process of independently preparing got an Advanced Placement (AP) exam without taking the corresponding AP course offered at the high school. This approach is often chosen by students who:

Have a strong interest in a subject not offered as an AP course at their school.

Want to earn a college credit or demonstrate academic rigor in areas outside their formal coursework.

Feel confident in their ability to learn independently and manage their own study schedule.

If you fit any of those three listed reasons, self-study may be the right path for you!

How to Sign up for Self- Study

Step 1: Figure out what you would like to study. Visit the College Board website and look under APs to see all the exams that are offered. Here you can also find unit break downs of the course that you would like to take, as well as the exam date, and much more information regarding the exam.

https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/courses

Step 2: Email your Guidance counselor or AP coordinator. This is how you will officially register for your exam. Once you get in contact with one of them, you will pay your registration fee that will arrive via mail.

Step 3: Begin studying!! I would like to add that when you sign up for an AP exam, you gain access to the AP Classroom tool from College Board. Although this is useful, when you self-study, there is a chance that you will not be assigned any coursework. Therefore, you will only have access to the rather short AP Daily videos. I find that these videos do not cover everything that you need to know for your exam. Which is why it is crucial that you have the resources listed below to be successful.

How to Successfully Self Study

Online courses. Online courses are the best and most useful resource for self-study. There are tons of websites with free tools that can be used to learn course content. In my opinion, the best being Khan Academy. Khan Academy is the official practice partner for AP and has in depth course lessons for a plethora of AP courses, including AP Calculus AB, AP Calculus BC, AP Statistics, AP US History, AP Physics 1, AP Physics 2, AP Chemistry, AP Biology, AP Macroeconomics, and AP Microeconomics. Learn more with this link:

https://blog.khanacademy.org/khan-academy-is-the-official-practice-partner-for/

Another website that I personally love is IITian Academy. IITian Academy offers exam style questions and high-quality resources that are for the most part free. Under the AP tab of their website, you can find exam style question banks with solutions, concise summary notes, mock exams and past exam papers for the following courses: AP Physics 1 Algebra-Based, AP Physics 2 Algebra-Based, AP Physics C Electricity and Magnetism, AP Physics C Mechanics, AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP Calculus AB, AP Calculus BC, and AP Statistics. In my opinion, the most useful tool is the concise summary notes. They may be a summary but are by no means undetailed. Copying down notes from IITian Academy allows you to not have to scramble to figure out what you should right down and what you should just keep in your memory. Learn more with this link:

https://www.iitianacademy.com/ap-exam/

Dedicate Time to Study. It is important to find time to properly learn the material. In my opinion, it is best to have a time during the day where there is nothing going on to just copy notes. Whether that be a study hall/ study period, after school, or even a less rigorous class where you can be off doing your own thing. If your afternoon schedule is packed with extracurriculars or work, try to find time during the school day. In my case, I have plenty of afternoon time to dedicate to self-study. One way I like to make studying feel less like studying, is to put on a show while I study. the material does not have to be the forefront of your focus when you are writing notes initially. For me, it's best to put the material into my passive memory until I am finished note taking so I can go back in later to thoroughly read them. But until then, I have my show on, or TikTok open.

Actively review material. Actively reviewing ensures that you are keeping the information that you are learning fresh. Practice questions can help you figure out how well you can recall a specific unit or subject, and what you need to work on. From there, you can take note of what you need to review and go back to that topic. The websites listed in the Online resources section have topic specific practice questions available.

Practice Exams. When you finish learning the course material, take practice exams to assess what topics you need to work on overall as well as getting used to the time restrictions of the exam. these can be found in physical review books as well as online. My personal favorite website for practice exams is Barron's. Once you sign up for free, you will have access to Barrons Online Learning Hub, where you can register and gain free access to timed and untimed practice exams.

https://www.barronseduc.com

Another website that has full practice exams is CrackAP.com. Keep in mind that this website only offers the pdf version of past exams, which means you will have to manually grade the exam, as well as time yourself with a manual timer.

https://www.crackap.com/index.html

Prep Books. Prep books give great targeted exercise for your upcoming exam. Depending on the prep book that you get, it may have key concepts that show up in the exam, and what material is more important than others. That way you can make it a point to pay attention. I recommend the Pearson Education Test Prep Series. Pearson Education Prep books offer detailed explanations of what is most crucial to know for your upcoming exam.

YouTube videos. You can find almost anything on YouTube. That includes unit summaries for each unit of your subject. It is also helpful for breaking down the most complex of topics. I recommend this for when no matter how hard you try, you just cannot understand a particular topic and need it to be thoroughly explained.

Conclusion

It is important to be aware of the opportunities that are available to you in order to succeed. Even if your school does not offer AP courses or does not offer the particular course that you would like to take, or simply because you feel that you would learn better independently, self-study is a viable option not matter where you are or what circumstances.

[brontes-anvil]

Return to Void Knights and Star Kingdoms

My whims have brought me back to this, and I'll be on it until something else catches my attention (probably Mario and Luigi: Brothership).

The Star Kingdoms find themselves in a perilous era. Many rot from within as the corrupt seize power. Others find the wilderness surging around them, birthing great guardians and predators to reclaim the cities. Others still are at the mercies of warlords both local and from strange realms beyond. In this era, beset on all sides, it seemed that nothing could answer the Kingdoms' prayers.

So nothing did, congealing knights, priests, and rogues to answer the call of the Star Kingdoms. Armored in people's dreams and nightmares and wielding illusion-cutting blades, gravity-piercing spears, and time-shattering hammers, these strangers aim to fulfill the hopes of those that summon them.

You play one such Knight, or perhaps a Local who has managed to wield one of the many Sources found in the Kingdoms and other strange realms, who can fight at the scale of giants and fairies, questing for the means to save the Star Kingdom you call home.

Who Can Be Found in the Star Kingdoms

The Locals, of whom no generalizations can be made, for Star Kingdoms and their citizens span the galaxy and come in many forms.

The Void denizens, who sheathe their form in dream and nightmare to exist in the material universe, seeking to aid those who call upon them. The Void's relation to the material cosmos is strange and often paradoxical. It is not uncommon for two knights acting in the area to be from two different eras of the Void.

The Beasts, who are exemplars of animal kind. The wilderness's perfect guardians and monsters, though their natures are as varied as their forms.

The Giants, nomadic masters of gravity and space, who were born, lived, and finally escaped the galactic core. Their forms are shrouded from the light, and they can 'walk' between planets without traversing the intermediate space.

The Gentry, living glamours, are masters of illusions and laser alike. They have limited material form outside their own realms, and so take to luring outsiders to them or stealing their forms.

The Daemons, mysterious oracles of time and idea, who dwell within grimoires, tapestries, calculus mechanisms, and all that store and manipulate knowledge. Together they seek to shape the Star Kingdoms into a form only they understand.

The Wizards, ancient mechanisms secluded in or otherwise forming towers that dot the Kingdoms, where they refine technologies to sate their curiosity.

The Dragons, refugees of a bygone cosmos, who collect lost worlds and civilizations as their treasures that they might rebuild some lost glory. Their breath is law, shrouding their lairs in an ancient physics.

Writer's Notes

Star Kingdoms exist all over the galaxy, but I expect campaigns and antagonists to be localized largely within a single solar system, maybe two.

I'm not going to be doing space combat this iteration. Space travel happens, but a lot of stuff there is going to be handwaved. Adventures happen mostly on foot, as it were.

'Kingdom' is used mostly as an aesthetic term. Nothing stops a Star Kingdom from being a republic or some other structure.

You don't have to be human, indeed I don't assume there's humans at all, but being a centaur, robot, or having x-ray vision isn't relevant unless you take a widget for it. In-universe, it is mostly assumed that you have like the lowest level of that thing.

I assume that sufficiently people-like things are capable of moral reasoning. Benign fairies, giants, dragons, daemons exist; malign Void Knights and Local also exist.

Shout out to @chirons-mortar and @frostedfluorite for some of their input/being a sounding board for some of my thoughts.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

This week in people trying to overextend their Degrees...

https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1742233111037870259

Original comment I'm responding to:

I'm afraid you totally misunderstood my point. 1. Many authors I know are more motivated by the impact of their intellectual productions than by the income it might generate through books and other publications. 2. Many of them face the following trade-off: will I give up income in exchange for increased readership by making my book free for download, or will I generate income while decreasing readership by charging for my book? (Note that offering a free download does not preclude also selling physical books). 3. The calculus is this: since the expected income has a 50% chance of being below $2000, I'm not going to drop my day job. Perhaps I should give up on what is likely to be a modest short-term income and maximize prestige and recognition instead. Prestige and recognition through intellectual impact can turn into future income (e.g. by getting a prestigious position). 4. Lots of people in the academic world have made this calculus and have offered their books for free download. Some of them simultaneously offer print version through publishers who don't mind (generally some non-profit university press). 5. Many of those people have realized that the free download, instead of reducing printed sales, actually *increases* sales. There are famous examples. 6. Academics are very familiar with the idea that you don't get paid directly for your writings. Scholarly publications (and talks) do not generate any income (in fact, they can cost money!). The income is indirect: intellectual or artistic impact is a precondition to a position in academia or industry research labs. 7. Computer scientists are also familiar with the concept. It's called open source software. You give away your software for free. Sometimes, your employer pays you to do so. Sometimes, you just want to make a name for yourself by contributing to an important project. 8. A similar phenomenon exists in music, particularly in jazz: a number of jazz musicians achieve financial stability through a teaching position at a university or conservatory. Additional income comes from performance. They get almost nothing from recordings. I'm not suggesting people shouldn't get paid for their work. In fact, I find it quite sad that most people can't live off of their creative work. If you can make a living by selling your books, music, or video games, more power to you! But I'm wondering whether the modus operandi that is prevalent in the academic world and the open source software world could not apply to other types of intellectual and artistic production. It may cause some creative productions to exist that would not otherwise see the light of day because of lack of commercial interest from publishers.

1. Many authors I know are more motivated by the impact of their intellectual productions than by the income it might generate through books and other publications.

Many Who? Did you read #Publishingpaidme? No? Really? Did you see the last person who declared something like this and people jumping on them—it was an agent? You haven't been paying attention. Many who? Cite your sources. Do you have sources or any publishing experience in novels? I have industry experience and I can cite sources beyond one article. Should we start with Bisheng in China?

Authors and writers who do creative works are more desperate, but want to be paid and paid fairly.

Backing into the "many" without citation creates a fallacy. You can do better as someone who teaches at NYU and has a degree teaching computer science. (Though no lie in my last project on story structure, professors were the worst at citations. And yes, I can name names with that and posted long and ranted long about that and their plagiarism.)

2. Many of them face the following trade-off: will I give up income in exchange for increased readership by making my book free for download, or will I generate income while decreasing readership by charging for my book? (Note that offering a free download does not preclude also selling physical books).

This is because society, in general misinterprets creativity and devalues it as a "real skill" It has nothing really to do with your first assumption. Much like AI often pulls from large creative datasets and devalues creativity and artists' skillsets.

Also, this doesn't prove to be true, but then you haven't really looked at selling models for books. There are more complicated things going on that you don't know and aren't accounting for.

Like the psychology of reviewers and trying to game for more reviewers when your book isn't getting attention, which you would know if you knew the last debacle with the whole gaming the Goodreads reviews by over reviewing.

The calculus is this: since the expected income has a 50% chance of being below $2000, I'm not going to drop my day job. Perhaps I should give up on what is likely to be a modest short-term income and maximize prestige and recognition instead. Prestige and recognition through intellectual impact can turn into future income (e.g. by getting a prestigious position).

Ummm… this isn't calculus. Did you take Calculus? I did This seems like a mix of unsupported statistics pulling numbers wherever you feel like it without cross referencing.

You're trying to use fancy words to sound smarter while proving you don't seem to understand basic psychology and don't know how publishing, artists, or self-publishing works.

Most artists don't do things for prestige value. They don't want to be famous. It's more like sharing is caring. This might be your value set, but it's not everyone's. Have you interacted with artists and creatives? The majority of the time we're swapping different techniques and trying to help each other to the top, again, see Xiran's expose on Goodreads debacle.

For those who want to be famous, etc, you know what they preach over and over again? Don't fuck this up for the rest of the artists: Make sure you get paid for your art.

Do you need a name? John Scalzi. He is famous for saying both things.

You need another name? Harlan Ellison. Harlan Ellison argued freaking hard for this. He won court cases for us. He is famous for preaching over and over again to make sure you get paid while also wanting the prestige.

Most artists that want prestige alone don't survive in the publishing industry. It simply doesn't work because you need the skill set to go with it, and there are certainly less masochistic ways to gain prestige.

You have who exactly? Desperation isn't the same as knowing marketing skills.

Lots of people in the academic world have made this calculus and have offered their books for free download. Some of them simultaneously offer print version through publishers who don't mind (generally some non-profit university press).

This isn't calculus either. Many who? This is also false equivalency. There is a faster road and more sure road to this than getting a novel published or a nonfiction book published. You should realize the fallacy of this and also be able to own you just don't know the artists that create the art you're claiming on.

Many of those people have realized that the free download, instead of reducing printed sales, actually increases sales. There are famous examples.

No. It increases customer dissatisfaction, actually to give things away from free. I can cite Mur Lafferty with a lot of interviews with self-publishers. You have who, exactly to back your assertion?

Second one backs the assertion. I could go more academic, but it's not like you're pulling anything to support your assertions, despite being an NYU professor.

It's actually a higher satisfaction rate to charge for your book rather than to give it out for free. You get better reviews. So when people charged 1.99 for their books over free, the amount of reviews and reviewer satisfaction went up. This might be inverse of what you expect, but this is well-known among self-pubbed authors.

Psychologically, this is inverse because sometimes people think cheap is lower quality. And free is the equivalent of a mattress left on the curb–it must be used and worn and not very good–in fact it might have bed bugs.

Academics are very familiar with the idea that you don't get paid directly for your writings. Scholarly publications (and talks) do not generate any income (in fact, they can cost money!). The income is indirect: intellectual or artistic impact is a precondition to a position in academia or industry research labs.

Academics is not the same thing. You're asserting that you know because oranges are also fruit like apples, so growing oranges must be exactly like apples. That's not the case. Because Academia takes a different skill set, but a related skill set from creating books in the creative sphere. It doesn't seem you have enough publishing knowledge to back your claim, so you try to make a related claim and then claim the feelings around it must be the same.

Because the proess of publishing nonfiction and novels and short stories is different from academia, the atmosphere and the reasons why people want to publish or have a publishing career also change. There is a lot of difference in this industry compared to academia.

But it's not. It simply is not. Also, academic papers get better pay than your average article. Ask me how I know this. I fucking looked it up. You get better residuals too, in the form of prestige means you get better pay in your career itself. It doesn't work this way in general publishing. You can fuck up one day and lose your entire career. The publisher says goodbye, no more sorry, you didn't sell well that we no longer want your books. BTW, you need a reference? Brandon Sanderson said this on Writing excuses that he felt lucky that he's been able to have a continued career in this regard.

Computer scientists are also familiar with the concept. It's called open source software. You give away your software for free. Sometimes, your employer pays you to do so. Sometimes, you just want to make a name for yourself by contributing to an important project.

Open source software is totally a different type of field and psychology from what you're arguing here. Also false equivalency and computer science as a core career pays well, that people can do it for prestige? No. They want to innovate the field further and try to find other computer programmers and learn and explore things.

My Dad was a computer engineer. I know this from personal experience of being near computer engineers. I know how they think. I also worked professionally in UX. You're thinking the psychology must be the same without experiencing the people. This is over extending.

A similar phenomenon exists in music, particularly in jazz: a number of jazz musicians achieve financial stability through a teaching position at a university or conservatory. Additional income comes from performance. They get almost nothing from recordings. I'm not suggesting people shouldn't get paid for their work. In fact, I find it quite sad that most people can't live off of their creative work. If you can make a living by selling your books, music, or video games, more power to you! But I'm wondering whether the modus operandi that is prevalent in the academic world and the open source software world could not apply to other types of intellectual and artistic production. It may cause some creative productions to exist that would not otherwise see the light of day because of lack of commercial interest from publishers.

No. You're jumping in order to cover your lack of knowledge of a thing. Focus on the feelings of the publishing industry. Show your knowledge of the people that produce books.

Jazz Musicians don't have the same psychology either.

So, in total, you're confessing you don't know anything about publishing industry, how it operates and who is working in it and for what reasons, but assert you must know because apples are fruit like oranges, so you have to be growing apples and oranges in the exact same way–don't you water them and put them into full sun? So then you must be able to understand that how you grow them and the pests that come onto them and the things the farmers have to care about as an apple grower and an orange grower must be exactly the same.

This is how your argument sounds like. Why not actually do the investigating and stop spitballing and, ya know, act like an academic and ASK THE PEOPLE and stop doing your backfire effect in the wrong way?

Also, it might behoove you to look into scams writers face and why people fall for those scams.

BTW, Anthropology Degree and minor in comp lit. Also published. So yeah, I know what I'm doing when I pick on your argument.

[kavinderrawat]

From Average to AIR 100: How Home Tuition Near Me Changed This Student’s Fate!

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For years, the myth persisted that only coaching factories in Kota could produce IIT toppers. But a quiet revolution is happening in homes across the country, where personalized home tutoring is shattering expectations. Meet Rohan Sharma, a once-average student whose life changed when his parents found the Best Home Tuition —right in their Dehradun neighborhood.

The Breaking Point: When ‘Average’ Wasn’t Enough

Rohan was the quintessential "middle-of-the-pack" student—consistent 70% scorer, decent grasp of concepts, but nowhere near IIT material. His parents, like many others, assumed enrolling him in a big-brand coaching institute would bridge the gap.

"I spent six months in Kota," Rohan recalls. "The classes moved so fast, I felt like I was drowning. The teachers didn’t know my name, let alone my weaknesses."

It was his physics tutor back home, Mr. Aggarwal from Saraswati Home Tuition, who spotted the real issue: "Rohan wasn’t slow—he was a visual learner stuck in an auditory teaching system."

The Transformation Formula: What the Best Home Tuition Near Me Does Differently

Where coaching centers operate like assembly lines, the Best Home Tuition  crafts masterpieces. Here’s how Rohan’s tutors rewrote his trajectory:

1. Diagnostic Learning: No More Wasted Time

Instead of plowing through textbooks, Rohan’s home tutor began with a "concept audit"—a brutal but honest assessment of his strengths and gaps. They discovered:

Strong in mechanics but clueless about modern physics

Algebra was fluent, but calculus felt like a foreign language

Chemistry formulas memorized, but applications shaky

"We didn’t just study—we surgically removed weaknesses," Rohan explains.

2. The 90-Minute Secret: How Elite Tutors Maximize Focus

Neuroscience proves the teenage brain absorbs best in 90-minute blocks with 20-minute breaks. While coaching centers ran 4-hour marathon lectures, Rohan’s home tutor  structured sessions accordingly:

First 30 mins: Recap previous concepts with rapid-fire Q&A

Next 45 mins: Deep dive into one challenging topic

Final 15 mins: Real-world applications (e.g., "How does this physics concept build smartphones?")

"Suddenly, topics that took weeks in Kota clicked in days," says Rohan.

3. Mock Tests That Actually Help (Not Just Terrify)

Coaching centers drown students in generic tests. At Saraswati Home Tuition, every mock exam was customized:

Early stage: Topic-specific tests to build confidence

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Final months: "IIT Survivor Series"—back-to-back full-length papers under real exam conditions

"My tutor analyzed every wrong answer—not just the ‘what’ but the ‘why’ behind mistakes," Rohan notes.

The Psychological Edge: More Than Just Academics

What separates the Best Home Tuition Near Me from crowded classrooms is its focus on the whole student:

Confidence Engineering: Rohan’s tutor used *"micro-wins"*—breaking problems into tiny, solvable steps to build momentum.

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Parent-Tutor Alliance: Weekly video reports kept Rohan’s parents informed without pressuring him.

"For the first time, I felt someone truly believed in me," Rohan admits.

The Proof: AIR 100 and Beyond

On results day, Rohan’s journey came full circle:

JEE Mains Percentile: 99.98

JEE Advanced Rank: AIR 87

School Board Exams: 94% (proving home tuition doesn’t neglect academics)

But the real victory? "I’m not just an IITian now—I know how to learn anything," says Rohan, currently interning at a top tech firm.

Why Saraswati Home Tuition Stands Out

Finding the Best Home Tuition Near Me isn’t about luck—it’s about recognizing the right qualities:

Concept Surgeons: Tutors who diagnose learning gaps like doctors Flexible Scientists: Adapting teaching methods to how your brain works Exam Psychologists: Preparing minds as rigorously as they prepare knowledge

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[jack12154]

How Private tutor in Tampa Works

Mastering Academics with a Private Tutor in Tampa

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The Power of One-on-One Tutoring

Classroom instruction is designed for the majority, but every student learns differently. A private tutor adapts their teaching style to fit the specific needs of each learner, ensuring that difficult concepts are understood rather than memorized.

1. Personalized Learning Plans

A private tutor identifies a student's strengths and weaknesses, creating a custom curriculum that targets areas that need improvement while reinforcing existing knowledge. This allows students to move at their own pace without the pressure of keeping up with their peers.

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[nazmazh]

Was thinking about how the metaphors could extend to other character classes (and I have no idea if these line up with the prof's or not):

Like, Cleric is the one who works well with others and is a good lab group buddy because they'll help you work through difficulties.

Fighter can be helpful towards others, but might require more direct prompting for that than Cleric. Moreso than anyone though, they knuckle down and power through any confusion or difficulty they may encounter. Probably too slow to ask for help themselves.

Wizard is the most studious. Happily takes and reads notes over and over. Most willing to go through textbooks or other sources to gain full understanding. Might prefer to shut self in and read than participate in a class, including direct attendance.

Sorcerer is the kind of person everyone gets a little jealous of - They just have a natural grasp of the subject matter. It flows effortlessly through them, but they might not always be able to explain the underlying mechanisms well because they've never had to work at making the connections between step 1 and 2, etc.

Warlock though - I thought about this one and rather liked where I landed:

The too-obvious-and-kind-of-gross version is "Hur, Hur, willing to make bargains for grades" - Bribes of all kinds, including *eyebrow waggle*. Yeah, no. We're not going there with this.

Instead, I look at the Warlock as a student for whom this class is the price they're paying for whatever else it is they're doing at college/university. They have utterly no interest in the subject matter, but it's a prerequisite or requirement of some sort.

You need calculus and linear algebra to continue with your ecology coursework - They're pre-reqs, they're probably useful in a lot of cases, but rarely actually come up and most of those courses just teach/use more straightforward/conventional math techniques or formulas/programs that simplify the hard work [May or may not be speaking from direct experience on this specific example].

Alternatively, you need a certain number of humanities credits, and this psych/history/sociology/whatever course seemed least difficult/tedious/objectionable. You need a certain number of science credits and this earth & atmospheric sciences course seemed like it was less work than physics, chemistry, or biology.

Anyway - As a Warlock, you're seeking to gain power (education) in your major, but your patron (the school) has demanded that you fulfill their request of "take this specific course in order to progress/do a set number of these tasks to complete the bargain".

So, a Warlock is not necessarily going to be an enthusiastic member of the class, but they will be looking for the most efficient way to get this done without affecting their other courses/without hurting their overall GPA this semester.

They might be inherently good at it, they might be inherently bad at it, but they will rise to a level they consider adequate and don't want to waste time going above and beyond, but also don't want to fail and have to do this again.

my prof just explained on the syllabus that he’s included more pionts in the class than we needed to pass, so we could skip up like?? 20 small assignments/quizzes/participation!! and still get a very high grade!!

the idea was that we could focus on assignments that played to our strengths - only do the participation stuff if we like to talk out loud - only do the quizzes/readings if we want to do the class remotely - only do online discussions if we like to talk and share opinions but struggle with anxiety in class ect.

and that’s cool enough but then he pulled up DnD character sheets with drawings he’d done of these hypothetical student player classes and how our various accessibility needs could be gamified to ‘max out’ different aspects of the class to get high grades and like!!!!!

hell yeah!!!! let’s treat accessibility in higher education not just as a necessity but as the fun, engaging, and creative aspect of learning that it is!!! I love this!!

[jonathankatwhatever]

It’s 9 Jan 2025. I think I’ve been using the wrong year so far in 2025. Oops.

I posted this in regards to what would Zeke think about quantum field theory:

“I think Isaac Newton would have loved QFT. I’m thinking in particular of a footnote in Feynman’s QED where he notes that Newton realized that polishing a lens was scratching it more. This was part of Zeke’s long, deeply involved thinking about the nature of light, literally is it a wave or a particle. He would be overjoyed to know that his qualms are enacted in the modern theoretical understanding which enables it to be both. I think the idea that particles are excitations of a field would appeal to the core of his beliefs about the nature of creation, about God and man. To him, that we are made of clay is a Biblical metaphor for the process by which matter exists and becomes something which moves around and which contains a soul. Does our existence generate from the soul or does the soul generate from our existing? QFT largely embodies those questions and it does so in a way entirely consistent with the religious idea that God is in the higher dimensions, that God connects all, and thus moves at a pace beyond our comprehension, making plans beyond our comprehension. And from these higher planes there comes a reduction in energy to us, made out of particles which can’t exist at higher dimensions because we’re stuck here as physical objects in these 3 to 4. To Zeke, the connection to the higher dimensions where he saw God at play, was in the abstract realm of the mind as it worked through to truth.

Another example is alchemy. Makes no sense to us because we know about elements and atomic structure, even if that knowledge is limited to the idea that there are elements and atoms, maybe molecules, of stuff. Pre-that, pre-identification of elements, he was looking into what one thing is and why it is not this other thing. Since lead and gold have many similar characteristics, Zeke’s idea was sensibly to ask if we could isolate what makes the difference. In other words, given he had no model, he picked known pairings between the substances, and tried to construct a process which linked them, one way or the other, maybe in both directions. He was an experimentalist, so he experimented as best he could given the context of the years around 1700. He was born about 2 centuries before electric light. I’m going to repeat the idea: without the knowledge we have of the underlying mechanisms by which those substances were generated, Zeke took what he knew and tried to connect that with a process. The exact same mental process occurred in the mid-20thC when Feynman, Schwinger, Tomonaga, Dyson et al figured out that they could identify 2 knowns and try to connect them with a process, and that eliminated the infinities which occur when you shrink the scale without end. To be clear, they took 2 known points and linked them with calculations, and that’s where Feynman diagrams come in because you figure out each ‘choice’ or move which can occur, and that has a diagram, and thus you calculate through a bleep-ton of those. We know this explicitly because Richard is famous for writing about the process being to fill in what we don’t know with what we can know. Zeke used this same mode of thinking, but he did it by himself about 300 years ago.

As for the math, I think we construct Zeke’s understanding backwards. He wasn’t building up to derivatives as an idea: he was reducing his more inchoate thoughts to the ideas that became calculus. Maybe ordinary math students and mathematicians build understanding bit by bit, theorem by theorem until they can finally grasp Galois theory well enough to calculate problems. But a guy like Zeke had an intuitive understanding. It’s like he had the answer book but the words and images were obscured, and his ability, his job, his sacred mission, was to uncover what was already there as understanding.

Zeke openly talked about this. His religious beliefs were about seeing into the truth. And he actually did write to Robert Hooke, a man of deep intellect, a man he respected, that ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’ To see further into the mists is to know creation, to know God. That is why Zeke fought so much about credit: he tended as he became old, perhaps altered by his work with chemicals, to become protective of the work he did as the expression of God’s truth. Zeke cared deeply about notation because that notation represented his deeper, or higher dimensional, mathematical thoughts and visions. That was how creation spoke through him, and he over time tended to identify his choices as being more absolute than they were. I prefer to think the best of one of the greatest minds to ever appear on this planet, so I choose to believe he knew, somewhere inside him, that fighting over notation and credit would allow others later to stand more firmly on his shoulders, that this knowledge of who he was would help enable God’s truth to emerge through later thinkers.

Zeke would love the math. He would absolutely love to know what became of what he saw. I think he’d recognize much of it as what he could not render in his lifetime. Imagine making Isaac Newton weep with joy to know that his basic ideas, rendered as best he could, have become this. I’m not sure he’d enjoy group theory that much, but I think he’d be like a calf in clover with set theory. His religious beliefs would draw him to the Continuum Hypothesis for the same reason it drew Cantor: identify the uncountable with God and see if you can connect this countable world, this soul, this person, to the uncountable. He might get lost in large cardinals, and I could see him figuring out the independence of CH because he knew from his work with light that actual stuff can resist categorization or even proper identification.”

As you can see, I’m trying to apply my understanding. And I wrote that so someone can understand it when they understand this. And thus that we know what we are saying has at least a certain ring of truth to it, when ring means understanding.

I’m heading toward something that would have scared me but now I’m going to let out. There are 26 sporadic simple groups because that is 2*13 and 20+6 in SBE counting. SBE counting occurs across all representational forms, whether D-structure or fCM or counting in D3-4Space, meaning within 0Space and actual physical reality and the mathematical forms which link higher dimensional complexity to the Actuality. That sentence should also make clear how the reals and the conception of the reals and the real number line and the real line segment describe Actuality, specifically the Actuality generated as an End within the Composition of all those tangled sheets.

Do you really think about me that much? I can’t even think about me without thinking about you.

So, now that we have Actuality and the reals, including their disappearing act into the mists of uncountability or even of countability, then we have SBE anywhere and everywhere, which means we can apply that to the existence of a class of 1’s which are the sporadic simple groups.

A sidetrack: again, my objection to ideas about the Hilbert hotel is that they invoke uncountability, meaning they invoke the reals, because you can’t say take this infinity and shift it over without associating those infinities. The math is that if you shift rooms 1 over, then that doesn’t make room for more guests at once; it just keeps admitting people to infinite rooms from the front desk end. In order to shift an infinity, you have to encapsulate that infinity. This isn’t a sidetrack, is it? I’m talking about the process space adjacent to the solution, which so restricts the operations as to force chains and thus sets. That forcing must have process. Can I find it? Take a look at the solutions. By the time you reach pairing concepts, you see more process than can be controlled. Is that true at skip every other room? Yes because we’re counting by 1 and 0 so there’s a sorting process we can’t see which fits rooms. What if we make the inputs all the same? Then how do you know they switch rooms? If you identify the objects being moved, you have the process associating them to the rooms. If you identify the rooms, like by prime factorization being unique for each even, then you have the process that sorts objects to the rooms built into the rooms themselves.

In other words, on the surface there’s a manipulation which is actually limited within uncountability. That’s good news because one way that expresses is in the huge groups like the baby monster.

So 13 and 13 make a space startlingly like the one described last night, this time without gendering: an identity of 2SBE2 to a 1 to a 1 to a 2SBE2 identity. This means the 1 and the 1 link at the iObject level to relate identities and to entangle identities. In fact, since the transmission mechanism is through the intangible Object, each time you feel a shared sense or a collective sense, even in passing, like when you’re driving together but separately on a highway, that is an entanglement because it is created in that moment through the iObject of the inclusive Thing.

That material about the Hilbert hotel was difficult. Take pairing. We bring in infinitely many and assign them to every other room. That means 2 prime factors for each even as identification, and gsPrimes means process, so all that gsProcess Attaches to each and every such action. We also speak about infinite guests even though they may come in by the busload: how are they sorted? How does one put them in 1-to-1 without sorting them into that order? Can’t. So can’t.

I need a break. The 20 and the 6 would thus be what we expect SBE2 in the 6 and 2*10. The SBE2 is not easy to get. Let me see. It’s that they identify through these group structures. Like one is double cover of a D28 lattice. J3 is: “The centralizer of an involution (an element of order 2) in J_3 is isomorphic to the direct product 2 \times L_3(4), where L_3(4) is the projective special linear group of 3×3 matrices over the finite field with 4 elements.” These are identity tests. I should go through them to see what each is.

In terms of mathematics, none of this appears to have ever been advanced. These groups are mysteries in riddles.