#too much web design in my writing degree.

[blue-hi]

group project is gonna make me scream. it's due at 4

i'm gonna go bitch in the tags because i have to vent somewhere

[reilliane]

This is my personal obligatory post and apology for my poofing disappearance- if you're not up to read things like these, then feel free to scroll past! Have a good day/night!

—

the poofing, the poofed, and the un-poofing.

TLDR; Bad stuff happened for the entire past year, stopped college just a few months ago to learn the materials myself and market myself in the graphic design industry soon, and got a whole dose of religious epiphany that threw my life around. Wrote in a different account a few months ago to ease and destress without much expectation. Will continue to write albeit there won’t be many updates, had/have to drop original writing plans [right now focusing on a short story for Wanderer, though it doesn’t mean I won’t be able to write for others when I get the time]. May unfortunately discontinue ongoing AUs but will provide a summary for them [I think it’s only Tyranny-?] Will also open writing/art commissions soon, maybe set up a kofi account, but I won’t be ‘gatekeeping’ any content I plan to post. I’m thinking, if ever, it’d only be standalone specials or maybe nsfw [gosh I’m really saying that?] in kofi, buuut that’s just a maybe. Everything else is free to read of course <3 

A really detailed and long [I MEAN IT, MAYBE 1.3-.5K?? WC] exposition under the cut, but of course, it’s optional to read!

PS. I opened my drafts and had one or two finished works there, I will publish those soon. Get ready. Because they’re angst AHAAAAAAAAAA-

PPS. I won’t be able to respond to everyone’s sweet shucking messages in my inbox forgive me But know that I’M REALLY SO TOUCHED YALL I really didn’t think anyone would look for me that much 😭 Someone said I vanished like the avatar and it’s sending me crumpling to the floor.

ALRIGHT STORYTIME LET’S GO—first of all, I haven’t been on Tumblr for so long, nor have I interacted with anyone and coming back,, the web interface bamboozled me.

Anyway- the past year was roooough, like settling in and getting into college.

From the start, my brother and I have known of our depleting resources but couldn’t stop because of our mother’s insistence and my father’s very.. volatile attitude. Double the latter since he has cancer and has been nothing short of cranky and infuriated for the past years—knowing that the money is facing a downward slope because of his expensive medicines and learning that we’ll stop because of it would’ve,, been terribly bad and that's understating the nature of my headstrong, independent, and prideful father.

There were times when he was very somber about his state, but then mad—it was just a really bad time, but my brother and I finally convinced our mom that we had to stop for real a few months ago because money was just tight. Until now we’re hiding the fact from our dad that we stopped under the pretense that we’re only taking one course for the semester :v

We were very lost and torn.

I knew I had to go out and look for a job, but my brother would be doing the same, too—the thing was that we knew our mom couldn’t handle our dad being sick alone, so my brother opted to be the one to find work outside.

I’m learning materials and courses on my own at home, but finding a remote job without a degree is no doubt near unimaginable with how remote setups are almost nonexistent now. The time was just bleak at home, too, my father would ask for bad things to eat that would worsen his health and then blame it all on my mother when he felt body pains and repercussions—it was just BAD, that wasn't all of it, but I digress. Cancer sucks. 

Just a few days ago, I lost my uncle to the same thing, and now there’s an overall family dispute over who gets what and it feels like I’m living a kdrama fever dream [pls get me out hfasjdkfhdsaf]. I don’t recommend it if it’s not romance lmao.

Things were getting so out of hand and I also couldn’t get back into writing or socializing with everyone in my writing socials—but I still wanted to write without the expectation of being able to deliver as I used to. It was a de-stresser for me, so I opened a new account in ao3/quotev and wrote in.. November or December, I think. It was nice, I got to just type away and post and leave it at that.

I think one of the reasons why I didn’t go to Tumblr for that was because I knew I wouldn’t be able to commit to updates, and I love you guys, I didn’t want to say something and promise it’d be given but then nothing. I’ve done it back then and I just, don’t want to do that :(

Despite how heavy and dark the past year was, however, something really unexpected happened—okay here it goes.

As a child, I’ve been taught about Christian doctrine and was brought up to believe in the existence of a God. I didn’t have my heart in it though, of course not, how was I to believe something that I only knew because someone said it to me?? I did attend church out of duty and had a shallow fear of the greater being, but as an authentic believing person? Naw. 

Not until June at least.

I don’t know how to explain it rather I, out of the want to give my mother the chance to go somewhere she wanted to for Sunday, decided to join her for church. I was ready to just daze off and think about some solution to our problems, but then the sermon spoke to me—you know, that feeling when someone is passive-aggressively referring to you in a complaint or something?

It felt like that, only it felt like that message was something I was meant to hear, and boy I couldn’t believe it—neither did my mother [lol]. She told me how shocked she was when I listened throughout the what, an hour and a half of preaching that I usually just dismiss. 

It’s cliche, but my life really changed after that one simple Sunday.

All my tweeeeenty years of living, I’ve asked if God really is real and whatnot and I never got answered until July of 2023. What really cemented my belief in knowing that he is real, is when I decided to genuinely pray—then for seven consecutive days, the Bible would lead me to a page [like just randomly opening a part of the book after prayer] that answered my questions and/or convicted me of something. I'd wake up every day and an event would happen that would answer my confusion and I'd sit in the night thinking 'no way that just happened', but it did. Boy, when I tell you I thought I was going crazy.

Not to mention opportunities such as baptism and ministry suddenly popped my way when I only had the idea in my head and I kept it to myself. At first, I thought it was just a coincidence, but when it ‘popped up’ more than thrice in a single week, I knew it wasn’t. Think of it as like, the thing in fanfiction when it seemed like the universe was saying something to you. Yeah, I felt that for myself. Mindblowing.

I could go on and on about the other life-changing things that occurred, but this would be so long LOL.

But I never regret coming to faith and accepting Jesus for real that day, and although life is still dark for me these days, the burden feels light. It’s an amazing feeling. He's really changed everything.

I’m not going to force anyone these beliefs—I knew how it felt to be on the receiving end and it could get very annoying, rather I just spoke on it to say how wonderful it was to know him, and it would be nice to let others know about my side in case they'd also take the faith. Who knows?

Also, I think I understand what those people were saying now. Again, I won’t force anyone—just reminding and asking you to try if you want, because it’s amazing. Bombard me in my inbox if you’re interested, but no pushing here, because I’m a firm believer that things shouldn’t be forced if it’s not the right time yet. 

Anyway, that was my source of strength and hope to go through these days—and I believe it’s also the driving force that led me to write this out in.. in Tumblr of all places lol. If someone told me this would happen two years ago I'd laugh in their face 💀

Rather than just getting back into writing and opening my social circle again, there’s that bit in me that wants to say that religious epiphany. That said, I know how diverse everyone is in their beliefs so I’ll say it very tersely that, no, I will not be parading and pushing people to believe this and that—this space is, after all, my space for writing :)

Ah, and nor will I ramble about it like shuck lol, but I will, in private, when prompted. 

With that out of the way, back into writing—I was floored when I first opened Tumblr and saw all the notifications and messages about my disappearance and I could’ve cried, really. It touches me poor heart :sob: and I wanted to thank all of you for such caring messages—I wouldn’t be able to reply to all of them [there were many!

Like maybe more than fifteen or twenty, not even counting the direct messages] but know that I’m very- very grateful for every one of you.

I could crawl out of your screen and hug yall but I won’t because I can’t and it’d throw people off KJHFSADKJFHALJSKDFHA

Life is, again, still hard—and navigating it is still difficult, but I’m managing these days. I can no longer return to my usual days of sporadic updates and teasers lol, but I’m happy to say I will still be writing, though it won’t be my entire focus nowadays. When I open writing commissions for genshin and art commissions, it’d get me going, of course. 

I have to let go of most of my beloved works because I realized that sticking to them would take up most of my time when I need to be out there upskilling and taking initiative to start earning money to support the bills. I still wanted to write though, and in my downtime I even got to watching One Piece and writing a currently on-hold fanfiction for that in Ao3, but fuuully realized that, no, I’m no longer cut out for really long written stuff unless I commit to writing a long piece that would take weeks for it to be published. 

In the end I settled for a single character [wanderer bb] short story that I get into writing without much hassle, and make myself happy, still :) I have ideas for other characters, too, but getting them out to be posted would take longer than usual.

My other AUs, as well, since my focus is just.. God, life, expenses, work, then hobbies. I don’t guarantee finishing them [I think Tyranny? And others, like Smite/Mercy/etc.], but I have in mind to write a summary because I meant it back then when I said the plot was really finished. Sighgisghsighs

Opening art commissions, I’d do that soon—writing, too.

Maybe a kofi account, as well—but I won’t be having any posts I want to be posted to be locked behind some tip or pay. I’m thinking of only adding specials there, specials like, standalone oneshots from an AU, or an nsfw piece. Oh golly, writing that is so beyond me, I think that’s the only reason why if anything is going to be in kofi, it’d probably be the nsfw. I plan to keep this writing blog sfw, still. 

But we’ll,,, we’ll see [dying]

So yeah! That’s.. Everything. For the writing thing, I think I’ll technically just be .. here, lol, with a focus on that story with wanderer. Gone are the 7k worded oneshots, now we’re just around 1.5k unless I commit to the creation. The story is so fluffy too [not angst? Surprising] 

But again, I will write for others eventually—can’t say when, or how, or who, but I will in time. 

I have so many plans in my head about my life, and I’m glad to say going back to Tumblr is a check off the list. I have an original novel in mind, but would you all be interested in such a thing? I don’t honestly know—other than opening commissions, I also plan on a Youtube Channel, but that’s uncertain. A Webtoon for my original plot too is a maybe, buuuut those are just what-ifs. Time will tell!

Those are just my two cents and I don’t regret sharing that—you guys have been with me for so long, even if I don’t really know you all beyond that screen, you all really became a part of my life, too :”)) 

If you reached the end of this post, wow, I’m touched. I hope you all have a good day–oh wait, what do I say? Ah yes.

I wish you all a good mornight [fhkadjsfhiajhgf].

God bless yall sweet people. 

[juniebugs]

assigning marvel heroes engineering majors (1)

i tried to write this so it makes sense even if you don't know much about engineering!! this post has my headcanons for peter parker, steve rogers, tony stark, and clint barton!!

as a preface, i am very aware that most of the marvel heroes would not in fact be in school for engineering even in an alternate universe. unfortunately, my fixation on both superheroes and engineering knows no bounds.

please feel free to ask me any questions about eng or for further explanation my reasons for these picks!! i am only in one type of eng but know many people in other disciplines so hopefully i'll be able to answer :)))

Peter Parker - Mechanical & Biomedical

I truly, truly believe the correct peter parker engineering take depends on what portrayal of spiderman you are looking at. like tobey's spiderman? would not touch biomed with a pole let alone mech. ... that peter parker is so far from engineer...... i dont even know where i would put him. materials? pls send your opinions if you have them.

BUT MCU, tom holland, spiderman would definitely definitely be in mechanical & biomedical. i actually got this from an irl friend, so if you see this somehow pls say hi LMAO

mechanical is one of the most common streams of eng and, while absolutely not something i ever want to touch, is really neat. it centers around keeping things in motion (contrary to civil engineering where if something is moving you're in trouble). it applies physics in really cool ways which i imagine would be a draw to peter just on the sole basis of personal interest. mech also plays with materials as it explores elasticity, deformation, fractures, yield strength, and other materials things i have blocked out LOL. when i think of that aspect i feel like it matches really well with the designed suit, the webs, and, if you listen to the science jargon he throws around in the movies, some of his prior knowledge.

biomedical engineering is actually used by some (the insane) as a gateway into med school. it covers human anatomy and genetic engineering (radioactive spider????). i do not believe peter would do med school too (because that student debt tho) but i also can't imagine him not trying to apply what he learns to helping others. i am personally partial to applying engineering principles to physiology and i can just imagine him implementing his mechanical knowledge into making prosthetics. if i had the brain power for this degree i would love to do that.

Steve Rogers - Civil Engineering

.... listen. steve rogers would fight a war before sitting in an hour lecture about dirt. i know this and acknowledge this wholeheartedly. HOWEVER,,,, I have a friend in civil with a special interest on sustainable design and you cannot, cannot tell me that isn't steven rogers coded.

civil engineering is not architecture, like at all, which i think is a common misconception if you don't know engineering well ( totally understandable!) unfortunately, i don't think civil caters to his artistic side that well but as someone who likes art but only does it as a hobby next to eng, i think thats okay.

civil engineering is kind of the mother to environmental engineering in the sense that they both look into wastewater treatments, geology, and even environmental planning (in some cases) but civil will also go into more detail with structural components and design of buildings. you'll find civil engineers involved in every building being made and in every town council ensuring clean drinking water and working sewage systems. typically they specialize into one or the other but shhhh ignore that for this post.

what i am trying to say here is that this would give steve a shit ton of wiggle room which i think he would use to help both the environment and people. paying engineers is expensiveeee especially for qualified, capable ones. i think steve would find deep satisfaction in working either for free or for the bare minimum cost (not that you should - know your worth :) ) and i think that he would actively use his work to call out designs that endanger communities or their environments.

this man knows his local engineering ethics code and WILL call someone out.

Tony Stark - Engineering Physics

when i started writing this section i thought it was going to be the easiest but unfortunately i did in fact have to phone a friend. tony stark is THE engineer so narrowing him down to one discipline felt impossible. my friend suggested engineering physics so i went with that.

the thing is eng phys is THE engineering degree. it is wonderful because you look at almost every thing mech, elec, and comp related (will explain more below) without specializing too greatly. it is also difficult because you don't specialize. for tony stark, who did not have to go into that internship grindset mentality, it would all be net positives.

to make the suit i immediately knew tony needed to have an extremely good knowledge on BOTH electrical (circuitry, coding, wires, magnetism, fun stuff) and mechanical (explained in peter's section!!). i was considering a double major but then was stumped because i love my elec and mech friends but they have no desire to produce a new element and also... creating an arc reactor??? plus AI's??? while likely related to software, it he would have bare minimum had to have had a good computer engineering (kind of how it sounds, engineering related to building and using computers and components of computers, lots of overlap w/ elec) background.

to wield the amount of science knowledge tony stark has an be able to apply it in an engineering context he would either have to be a genius (which like canonically he is so yknow) or take every course offered to engphys students (and some).

i think as a student he would have also enjoyed that not having to specify aspect. i imagine him always in the pursuit of knowledge. yay eng physics!!!

Clint Barton - Materials Engineering

If you've read the reasonings for some of the characters above you have likely thought to yourself "wow, such clear arguments, time must have been put into this" which like yes but also no because for this decision i am going exclusively on vibes.

materials focuses on, well, materials. it looks at both composition and properties (plus how composition effects properties). my friends in matls tell me its pretty research heavy which doesn't really fit with clint, i am aware. but every person i have met from this faculty i am convinced would get along with him.

I KNOW THIS ISN'T GREAT REASONING. i think that engineering would always be second to other things or interests in his life (even when he's a student) but I think the promise of a stable job and the hypothetical applications are really interesting. matls and mech can be surprisingly similar and i think he would find more satisfaction in manipulating materials to better fit his goals than in being stuck within predefined constraints.

plus, imagine creating a new material for like the tensile strength of your bow. incredibly cool

I'm thinking i'll work on doing more of these as i find the time!! i definitely have a few ideas for other characters, i just need to figure out how to articulate my reasonings haha.

if you have any ideas or shared interest in engineering and superheroes please let me know!! i have also been recently into the bat family, as you could probably tell by my reblogs, and am thinking of doing a version with them also!!

[casualsnickers]

Month of Emmet Quick Write #10

Prompt #10: New Pokémon

Subway Master Emmet tends to work with his beloved team to battle challengers on the Battle Subway. Depot Agent Cameron has noticed that challengers have started devising ways of combating Emmet's repetitive team. But not to worry! Cameron has a suggestion: switch up the team. The only issue? His choice of viable pokémon are... questionable at best.

Read the whole thing below the cut.

“Boss Emmet. Can you pleeease stop signing papers for just one minute and listen to me?”

“If it’s about the announcement regarding the recent update to the banned legendary pokémon list outside the station, I do not want to hear it, Cameron.” Emmet did his best to ignore the depot agent as Cameron stepped forward and stood ominously over Emmet’s desk. He had been pestering Emmet the entire day, taking advantage of Ingo’s absence due to a physical therapy appointment to pester and bother the more persuasion-susceptible twin. So far, he hadn’t been winning.

“It’s not about the announcement. It’s about you.”

“A complaint?”

“No.”

            Emmet’s eyes narrowed. “The press?”

“No again.” With an exaggerated sigh, Cameron cleared Emmet’s paperwork to the left with one arm and instead plopped down his work-sanctioned tablet in the middle of the desk, the global trade system’s main page illuminated on the screen. “Discussion time! Boss. You need to switch up your team in the Battle Subway,” Cameron emphasized. “People are starting to notice patterns. They’re designing ways to throttle your team.”

“My team and I are a well-oiled engine,” Emmet casually retorted, making no move to retrieve his papers. He instead reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a spare battery, tossing it into a nearby Joltik web where a cluster of the electric type pokémon descended upon it in a mad fury. “No amount of repetition or type matchup strategies can derail us so easily. My team and I have been conducting our challengers and stopping them in their tracks for years.”

“You could use some new faces, though. Throw your challengers for a loop.” Cameron pulled up a chair and then shot Emmet a devious look, leaning back in his seat to a perilous degree. “I’ve got a few pokémon in mind that could really be an asset to the subway.”

Emmet frowned. He had known the slightly younger man for years at that point and while all of his depot agents knew Emmet’s boundaries- his sometimes-unreasonable boundaries- Cameron was the only one who pushed at them the slightest bit. In a sense, the other depot agents respected both Ingo and Emmet, but Emmet knew that a few of his employees found him to be creepy due to his way of monotonous, often lifeless way of speaking and his unrestrainable love of pokémon battles that tended to manifest in a way that almost resembled obsession. It wasn’t something he could help.

Cameron had feared both brothers when he had originally signed on to become a depot agent. But after gaining confidence in working on the lines and through working alongside each Subway Boss separately, Cameron had gotten quite used to treating his bosses as his friends. And in particular, Cameron loved to mess around with Emmet, much to the latter’s chagrin.

“Cameron.”

“C’mon, boss! I spent a lot of time thinking about this! At least look at the list I made!”

            Emmet snorted, pushing the tablet back to his employee. He had attempted to wait out Cameron’s episodes of brief hyper fixations in the past to no avail. Today would be such a day. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Emmet sighed, crossing one leg over the other as he too leaned back in his chair. “Fine. Please introduce me to your potential candidates.

            Cameron beamed. “Yes! Okay. Let me just pull up the list.” He swiped at the screen, his eyes shooting up to Emmet’s own bored stare. “I spent so much time thinking about the possible combinations and which pokémon you would probably put on your team. Did some studying. Looked at a handful of vs recorder footage of trainers getting destroyed on both the double and super double lines. Figured out what stumped them the most.” Cameron finally settled, clearing his throat. “Okay. First up: Focus Sash Smeargle with a priority on setting up entry hazards.”

“Clever. Verrry clever.” Emmet grinned, recognizing the strategy almost immediately. Smeargle was a popular pokémon in the competitive battling scene. He wouldn’t raise any eyebrows bringing a Smeargle to the Battle Subway. “Setting up is my specialty. And Smeargle is a normal type. Access to almost every move type via its typing.” Emmet considered it for a moment. “Which ability?”

“Own Tempo. No risk of confusion. Oh! And here’s another suggestion: how about Tinkaton? From the Paldea region? Fairy and steel type.” Cameron then grinned, his eyes crinklling to mere slits. His voice began to tremble with laughter. “I hear they’re really hard-hitting.”

“…Get out of my office.”

“No, no, no! Hear me out, boss! Tinkaton. Fairy and steel type. Mostly a physical attacker. Equip that baby with a Rocky Helmet and you’ve got a little bruiser on your team.” In an offhand comment, Cameron murmured, “Kinda fits the way you scare the pants off most of your challengers, boss. Tinkaton’s very infamous in the Paldea region due to how… devious they are.”

            Emmet squinted. “Intimidation is a valid tactic, Cameron.” He then smiled, still finding it amusing how the public had framed him to be the menacing twin all the time. He quite enjoyed it. “Hmm. Tinkaton use their hammers to knock Corviknights out of the sky with rocks according to the Paldea dex.” Emmet tapped one finger thoughtfully against his chin. “I will consider that combination. Give me the next one.”

“Zoroark.”

“Zoroark?”

“Zoroark. Absolutely Zoroark.” Cameron’s eyes gleamed as he began to ramble. “Illusion ability obviously. Put that sucker right in the startup position, okay? Now give it some choice specs or a life orb. Okay. Listen to me. Listen. To. Me. Nasty Plot boosted Night Daze with U-Turn for a clean switch out.”

“That sounds gimmicky,” Emmet noted. “I do not like gimmicks.” Emmet then scowled. “Gimmicks allow for cheap tricks, and I will not encourage the use of gimmicks in the Battle Subway. They are not strategies! They are imitations of strategies, and they do not make battling fun!”

“Mind games, boss! Mind games! That’s the whole point! You get to mess with the challengers! In a professional setting! Sending out a Zoroark could make a fun first impression after removing Smeargle from the forefront after it sets up hazards for the opponent.”

“It’s viable,” Emmet begrudgingly conceded. The Zoroark lineage almost always had illusion as their main ability. Emmet had seen it in use numerous times from trainers looking to get the drop on him. He had also been tricked once into buying two disguised Zoruas sandwiches from the Icirrus Station’s vending machines.”I will think about it.” Emmet looked kindly upon Cameron, smiling. “They are good suggestions. Your strategizing is getting better. Yup! Good job.”

“Thanks!” Cameron’s tablet began to shake, and he hurriedly picked it up. “I’ll find some other cool pokémon for you, boss. But for real. Switch up your team. It’ll bring some fresh air to the subway and to the challengers and besides- Ingo already switched up his team!”

            Emmet’s eyes twitched. “Ingo assembled a brand-new team in Hisui. He did not specifically construct his team to battle in the subway, nor are his Hisui pokémon used to casual battling. They are exceptions.” 

            His brother had indeed brought back strange new pokémon with him after disappearing to Hisui for an entire year. Ingo’s Hisui team consisted of common pokémon; ones that already existed in the modern day that had only needed a few trips to the pokémon center and a few vaccinations to clear for public appearances. His other pokémon however…

Emmet stiffened when a heavy weight crawled up his leg and settled into his lap, a familiar golden-yellow paw scrabbling to reach for his pen. Gently, Emmet tucked his pen away. “Shoo, Mustard. No ink for you.”

Mustard was a Sneasel, and not just the regular dark and ice variety, no. Mustard was a shiny Sneasel that had been hatched from the last pokémon Ingo had brought with him to Unova: a long extinct regional evolution of Sneasel called ‘Sneaslers’. It just so happened that Ingo’s Sneasler was both exceptionally large and exceptionally strong. Ingo had referred to the massive cat-weasel pokémon as a ‘noble’ but Emmet hadn’t quite understood the connotations behind the moniker.

“Hey! Why not recruit Mustard?” Cameron suggested.

“I am Emmet, and I would like to not end up on the news tomorrow. Ingo’s Sneasler would kill me.”

Cameron nodded almost immediately, schooling his face into a neutral expression. “She would eviscerate you.”

“Skin me.”

“Probably hang you from a cliff to dry.”

            Emmet squinted, crossing his arms. “Cold.”

“What? She would! The claws on her? She’s not even allowed to battle in the subway yet and she’s big enough to scrape her head against the cab ceiling. She could probably eat us if she wanted to. There’s no way she’d hesitate.”

“She wouldn’t hesitate for even a second. You are right.”

“Snea!” Mustard, having been listening in on the conversation, immediately climbed onto the table and grabbed onto Emmet’s hand, a pokéball clutched in its paws.

“Oh, come on, Boss Emmet! Look! Mustard’s totally down to battle, aren’t you, little guy?” Cameron reached out and playfully ruffled the shiny fur along Mustard’s head, the weasel pokémon letting out a tiny purr as it leaned into the man’s touch. “Mustard follows you around all the time even when Boss Ingo is here. It’s obvious he likes you! Let him join the team! I’m sure he’ll thrive.”

            Mustard squeaked in confirmation, playfully rolling the pokéball around on the table as if considering the notion of one day being a battling pokémon. It smiled, its fangs poking out from its mouth as it jumped back into Emmet’s lap and curled up, continuing to purr loudly.

Emmet reached down and let his fingers settle into Mustard’s soft fur. “I will… consider it.”

            Once again, Cameron’s tablet vibrated. The young man reached over to check his tablet and almost immediately, his jaw dropped. Eyes wide, Cameron squinted at the screen, practically shaking with excitement. “Oh, sweet dragons. This is gonna be so fucking rad.”

“Language,” Emmet chided.

“Boss. Boss, gimme your trainer card. I need to send you two pokémon I just got in a mystery trade. Please. Hand me your numbers. Give them to me.”

“At least take him on a date first,” Cloud snarked, having walked into the room. He took a seat in a chair near Ingo’s desk, crossing his legs. “You gonna ask him to come over to your place next, huh Cameron?”

Emmet ignored the jab. “What pokémon did you receive?”

“You’ll find out,” Cameron replied smoothly. “Just give me your trainer card.”

“Cameron’s probably gonna send you a Zubat.”

“I will flood your pc with Ratattas if you keep talking over there, Cloud” Cameron threatened. He then whipped around to stare pathetically at Emmet. “Boss, please.”

“… Okay. Fine.”

            Cameron hurried over to the station’s mobile pc station in the next room and quickly typed in Emmet’s trainer card number, rocking back-and-forth on the balls of his feet as his eyes jittered across the screen. As he worked, Emmet felt his Xtransceiver vibrate a few times on his wrist. Multiple notifications. Multiple pokémon sent to his pc from Cameron.

“Panpour-Pal, modernized,” Cloud muttered under his breath. “Wouldn’t be surprised if whatever pokémon you get ends up bricking your pc. That or it bursts into flames.”

“Can it, Cloud,” Cameron bristled.

“Win in a battle against me,” Cloud snarked back.

“Loudmouth.”

“Angry that I’m right?”

“Not in the slightest!”

            Emmet chuckled lowly, taking Cameron’s place as he inserted his trainer card and checked his pc, immediately noticing the notifications about the traded pokémon Cameron had sent him. He was immediately greeted by a pop-up screen accompanied by a long wall of text. “Dex error? Does not exist?” Emmet frowned, scrolling to check the descriptions of his newly traded pokémon. “Caaameron,” Emmet drawled angrily, irritation creeping into his voice. “The pokémon you sent me do not exist. Somehow.”

“I know! Isn’t it great?” Cameron hurriedly scooched in beside Emmet, pointing at the first one he had sent. “Got these from some trainers in the Paldea region! Did you hear? Apparently, there’s been some rush to document some foreign pokémon that appeared in this big, huge crater there. And the pokémon I just sent you? They’re examples. They’re from that crater!”

            Emmet scrolled over to the first one. “Slither Wing?” He squinted. “Bug and fighting type?” He then pulled up the description, the corners of his mouth turning upward as the image of the pokémon flickered across his screen. 

“Oh, dragons. That’s one fucked-up looking Volcarona.” From behind them, Cloud snickered, taking long drags from his energy drink. “Should’ve left that thing in whatever hole it crawled out of. Reminds me of your Archaeops though, boss.”

“Archie is perfect in every way,” Emmet grumbled back.

“It’s called a Paradox pokémon in Paldea,” Cameron cut back in. “And they’re not illegal to battle with!”

“Are they supposed to be illegal elsewhere? You’re not really selling your case here, Cam,” Cloud pointed out.

            Emmet ignored the two squabbling men, flicking over to the second one. That one he definitely recognized, feeling the muscles of his face begin to ache when he reflexively scowled at the image before him. “Iron Bundle... This is literally just a steel-wrapped Delibird.”

            Cloud whistled. “Yeah, I can’t imagine anybody battling with that thing, let alone letting it into their house. That just looks like a robot with extra steps. I wonder if it could connect to Bluetooth.”

“Give. It. A. Chance.” Cameron was practically begging at that point, clapping after each word. “Just get to know them a little! I hear that they’re cool pokémon and I think you’d do well with them, boss.” 

            At Emmet’s side, Mustard let out a curious chirp and climbed his shoulder, pointing eagerly at the array of pokémon on the pc screen. Mustard rubbed its cheek against Emmet’s face, continuing to point and squeak until Emmet eventually relented.

“Very well. I am Emmet and I will reconsider switching around my team. But. Only for a week or two. A trial period.” Emmet moved his coat back and slid the pokéballs containing his main team toward the left side of his belt- right toward his dominant left hand. He then withdrew the two paradox pokémon along with the suggested pokémon that Cameron had mentioned before. “I have one condition, though.”

“And what’s that?” Cameron asked innocently.

“Under no circumstances can either of you inform Ingo about this.”

            Cloud raised an eyebrow. “You’re gonna try and destroy him, aren’t you?”

“Try?” Emmet echoed, grinning from ear to ear. “No. I will obliterate him. Completely decommission him. That is not a threat; it is a promise! His Hisui team is strong,” Emmet alluded, monologuing more to himself than talking to Cloud or Cameron. “But! I can and will assemble a stronger team!” He then picked up Mustard and set him into the crook of one arm, settling his new partners along the right side of his pokémon belt. “And it all starts with Mustard.”

            Cameron giggled. “Hehehe. Name the Tinkaton ‘Ketchup’.”

[pollen]

Just because you've mentioned it a couple of times and I'm curious, can you talk about your career a bit? You've mentioned marketing, but did you major in 'marketing' or was it something more specific? Is what you do similar to graphic design? Just asking because I am graduating this upcoming year and am very scared career wise

yeah of course! it's long but bear with me.

i'm primarily an editor who wound up in marketing. and really it all started with what i did during undergrad. i double majored and have both an english degree and a sociology degree. i think the history minor i did is attached to my english degree.

during undergrad, i worked as a writing mentor and taught first-year composition while working closely with students to workshop their writing. i was also a teaching assistant in upper-division sociology classes about technology and healthcare. and i earned certificates in front-end web development from my university.

i was looking for editing roles and wound up interviewing for a few different positions out of college: namely a proposal coordination role at a transportation technology company, a technical editor role at a very large tech education company, and a content specialist role at a digital marketing, advertising, and PR agency in the healthcare space.

i was offered the position at the marketing agency. and that's how i ended up in marketing! i started out writing copy, developing brand voice and identity, proofreading all materials, and doing brand guardianship and management for a fortune 500 client. then i was transferred to an account management role for that fortune 500 client, which was a lot of project management mostly, as an account coordinator.

accounts was so fun at that agency. it was a lot of strategy and i loved how busy and visible the role was. i still did a lot of work with content at this point and was the primary point of contact for any fires that needed to be put out.

i got promoted to a jr account executive role and gained two accounts to manage at that point. i was too busy with my own accounts to do work for most others, so i stopped working on agency-wide content directly, but i was working on it heavily behind the scenes. i developed content operations to improve overall content quality and establish a content department, and i was managing the content developed by other editors and writers on staff, still hopping in to save content on any of the other accounts when they needed a heavy-hitter.

then i got laid off! and now i'm a freelance editor because all of the work i did was for private clients so i can't use it in a marketing portfolio, so finding work is a bit of a grind. and i have nooooo idea if this is actually what i want to do forever. i can see myself going back to school to pivot into a different field because marketing is very unpredictable and i don't really know if i want to be at a desk all day.

so i'm also feeling a bit iffy career-wise at the moment. if you ever want to talk, or to work on some pieces for your portfolio (i can write the copy!) please feel free to message me!

i wish you so much luck and love!!!

[talenlee]

A Year of Blahaj

You know I feel like I don’t talk about my work enough. Or rather that now as part of a sprawling internet presence that covers a bunch of different platforms and front ends, I don’t feel like I talk that much about the individual components of that very often. I rarely reflect on what I’ve done and how good a job I did doing it, whatever it was. Which is funny because when I’m looking for stuff to write about, it seems a pretty obvious thing to do, because I’m one of the topics I have complete control over and can’t get copyright struck over. After all, things I create, myself, are entirely and surely under my control and I don’t have to worry about things like copyright law for my own work, right?

Right?

Let’s talk about this blahaj sticker I drew.

This sticker, which you can buy at Redbubble, if you want, and if you see me at a convention you probably can buy one off me for a dollar, too. It’s a fun little sticker!

The original genesis for the Blahaj sticker was a joke I remembered making on twitter. I’m not linking the source material any more, but it was a joke I made, off-handedly, as with many one-off jokes I made on the regular. It was like many such jokes on twitter, where it was both made into an open space where anyone could see it, and also, made without much forethought. I threw it out there and off it went, and a thousand retweets and six thousands like later, I thought that it was a funny idea, and I should do something with it.

I doodled it in my notebook, then took a photo of that doodle. I sent the photo to my copy of GIMP, then used the vector pen tool to simplify the design, which is how I make most of my ‘drawing’ designs. When the drawing was done, I coloured a few versions and put it up on Redbubble for people to buy, imagining that it would be, like many of my other designs, something someone would say ‘oh I want that on a shirt’ and then never bought the shirt.

How’d that work out?

Well, one year later, here’s how it looks:

I sold 278 designs across the year. Of those, 199 of the designs sold are of Blahaj, and of those, 189 of the designs are the trans flag design of Blahaj. It’s not quite ⅔ of my sales, but pretty close. It would not be inappropriate to say that my Redbubble store sells Blahaj stickers. For perspective my next most popular designs are Cassowary and my Demon Core design, which each sold five products in a year.

This is pretty cool, I made a joke, people liked it, I drew a thing based on that joke, and people liked it, and people bought it.

Cool!

Right?

Right?

That’s it, right?

Well, no of course it’s not it, because my joke, made in a vacuum, was not made in a vacuum. Just in the same way that several hundred thousand people all made the joke ‘But Doctor, I am Dril,’ because we all love a good Pagliacci joke, I was not the first person to make a ‘friend of blahaj’ joke. Turns out somone else had, too, and that person was a trans woman with a much smaller following.

And it didn’t go viral when she did it.

I hadn’t seen it, I didn’t know about it, but the thing is, people she knew did see my tweet, and shared them and that result was getting to see, months later, some stranger – a boy, no less – being retweeted making the joke she did. She was, naturally, upset by this, and pretty reasonably, at first, thought that I had copied her.

There’s a science to how tweet virality works. Or rather, there’s a science to how tweet virality couldn’t work. If you have zero followers, your tweets won’t go viral, because the network of people around you are limited. This is a thing my classmates learned the awkward way. Back in the class, we were trying to make something digital as a product, like a podcast or a web gallery or something like that. What one group wanted to make was, as part of their marketing degree, a ‘viral tweet.’ They took a picture of one of our professors and shared it to their twitter account and then instructed the rest of the class to retweet it.

Now, this didn’t mean anything. This didn’t go anywhere, because that classroom was full of students who had exactly as many followers on twitter as were contained in that studio, minus the ones they thought were icky. This was not connecting to anyone or anything with a broad following, no way to escape the environment of the small community they had. I know that when I was sharing tweets, if I didn’t have a ‘big’ follower near me, or a chain of follows to a big follower, I wasn’t ever going to get my stuff in front of a large enough number of people.

Anyway, it’s just one of those things that twitter promises, numbers and values and the way our brains respond to them. Either way, it meant my goofy tweet, and the image associated with it, made someone feel shitty. And even if it wasn’t what actually happened, it’s still a pattern that so often happens: Someone monetising the work of trans people.

I wound up talking to her and buying her a pizza. Since falling off twitter, I don’t know what’s going on with her. I hope she’s doing okay.

But!

It did make me mindful that sure, while this is a joke I made and art I made and then art I converted into a saleable form, this is still a product that is ultimately about and for the trans community. And sometimes, the money it’s made has been useful for paying for things like food and rent, and that’s not a small matter, but sometimes it’s sold really well and I’ve had, functionally, just… well, money that I would normally spend on something like a board game or whatever.

In deference to the community that’s responsible for the joke, and that inspired the art, I gave a chunk of the Blahaj money to a queer-as-in-not-made-up-of-cis-gay-men anarchist co-op I trust. I didn’t give it to a charity with a big name, because I know those are often fraught with bad experiences for people and I didn’t want to give it to just some random ‘queer’ project because those so often are thoughtless outputs for people who can raise money. I wasn’t giving a lot so I wanted to maximise it.

Make no mistake, by the way: I was trying to buy away guilt that didn’t make sense. I know I haven’t done anything wrong, and I also think that artists getting paid for their art is good. It’s not even non-queer creators monetising queer work, because I’m a queer artist. There are a lot of justifications I could give for how I shouldn’t feel guilty.

But I do.

So, sometimes I spend this money on other people who I know have it harder than I do because of their access to things based on how their gender is valued in our society. I can’t say it’s an incredibly well reasoned moral framework and I don’t even know if it makes me feel better but I think it’s part of the story of this sticker I drew. How apparently, the ‘support’ this sticker offers, the art made for people who wanted it, is in my mind, is Just More Cis Bullshit.

Thanks for buying my sticker if you liked it.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[smartgirl1970]

Digital Essay on my Technology Literacy (Class Assignment)

Digital Essay on my Technology Literacy (Class Assignment)

In 1981 the IBM Personal Computer model 5150 was released. My parents bought one for my 11th birthday, thinking it would be a great asset for school. I used it as a glorified typewriter. You had to essentially add the programs yourself, and that was not easy to do. I was too young to understand what all the bells and whistles did, and there were not many. The World Wide Web, or WWW, was not introduced until 1989, my freshman year in college (the first go-round).

My first video gaming system was Atari. This came out in 1977. However, I didn’t get one until I was about 10 years old. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t a big gamer. I skipped right over the Nintendo era. My cousins and friends had one, but other than Leapfrog and the first Mario Brothers game, it wasn’t my thing. I wasn’t good at Pac-Man either.

I bought my first cellphone in 1992. It was a Nokia. The first phone bill came in at $289. You got something for 1000 minutes free and were charged .30 cents a minute over that. I understand that in 2023, that may not sound like a lot of money, but in 1992, it took an entire paycheck to pay it. I made $7 an hour, and that was a decent salary working at Macy’s flagship store on 34th Street in New York.

My son was born in 1996, and the world of technology opened new doors for me. I bought him a LeapPad to be used as a learning tool for reading and math. He graduated to every gaming system created from an Xbox to Nintendo. I was introduced to the World Wide Web through social media when Facebook became a thing because I had to monitor his use of this platform. By 2008, my son was in the 7th grade, and I allowed him to interact with his friends on Facebook, but his time was limited, and it was conditional upon him accepting my friend request. My acquired sons (I dislike the word step) were older than him, and they kept me in the loop about how social media worked. Facebook was great for me because it was a link to communicating with my family in New York without having to call all the time. It was great for sharing pictures. Social media has taken a turn, and in some ways its great for activism, in other ways, people are very comfortable being contrary and saying things they would say publicly.

My concern with the development of AI is how easily things can be manipulated. AI’s voice generator can create words that do not come out of someone’s mouth. I see the dangers in that with a political leader’s voice. Manipulating photos can be fun. However, it can also be used to lie about where someone is, what they are doing, and who they are doing it with. Technology is changing rapidly. There isn’t much a robot can’t do. From driving a car without human intervention to soon enough, flying an airplane. My question would be, will there be a time when life imitates art, and we are faced with an iRobot catastrophe.

My technical literacy is almost nonexistent beyond the day-to-day life of social media and basic content creation. As a creative writer, storyteller, and activist, I took this class with the hopes that I will be able to better understand the basics of web design and create more enticing visual content when I use TikTok and other platforms to display my work. I am a Global student, so my entire degree has been online. I graduate in May of 2024!

Over the last year, I have learned to use social media sites like LinkedIn to further my writing presence and create an outlet to network with like-minded people. I am a self-published author on Amazon, and I had to learn how to utilize Canva when creating my book "Journal and Manifest with Your Ancestors." So I consider that to be an incredible success since I created this journal completely on my own. I followed someone on YouTube to learn the ins and outs of utilizing KDP Amazon and Canva.

[theizzifromosaka]

Monster Prom

Monster Prom is a series of lighthearted, lightly crude dating sims where your player character of choice attempts to romance one of several popular monsters at Spooky Academy. All characters featured are adults of their species.

I only played the first two games, and at the time of writing this have not invested much in the second title. These games operate on something akin to the Rule of Cool, it can be hard to tell what can be taken at face value, which is to say they have a pretty loose canon.

Miranda Vanderblit

Miranda is a legged mermaid who comes from Royalty, an obvious homage to The Little Mermaid. Miranda is spoiled to a comical degree, it’s stated on several instances that she considers herself above eating food and has servants who do that for her.

I've already spoken about mermaids in my previous reviews so I'll address a common design element pop culture mermaids often have, and Miranda here is no exception: Fin ears. I am of the opinion that they're kinda dumb but they're not a deal breaker for me.

Miranda kinda disappoints me with her design's simplicity. She's victim to what I previously referred to as the "just paint 'em blue" fallacy, and in my opinion she's an especially tragic example. Besides the previously mentioned fin ears and what are likely representative of gills on her neck, her design isn't very fish-y. In my opinion this could have been remedied with the inclusion of a tail, maybe a dorsal fin, a scaly pattern, or even something as simple as webbing between her fingers.

Polly Geist

Polly is a ghost, a real party animal and a heavy abuser of drugs and alcohol. A consistent detail is that drugs don't actually affect her much so in order to become intoxicated she has to possess someone, get them intoxicated, and as a result get herself intoxicated. She also tells a different story every time she talks about how she died.

Ghosts are very likely the most believed in mythical being in the world, with several cultures across the world having some equivalent that all end up being categorized in the west as "ghosts". Honestly it's kinda cheating. Based off her name and her outgoing nature it's safe to say Polly is specifically supposed to be a Poltergeist, a spirit of German origin that's often blamed for unexplained rattling noises and falling objects, and in that way they're similar to Gremlins. Pop culture poltergeists often levitate and throw several objects at once, including large pieces of furniture.

Polly's got a pretty basic design too, but in my opinion it works well. The cloudy wisp her ponytail forms is reminiscent of the tail ghosts are often depicted with (does anyone know why? I can't find a solid answer) and the shade of blue that her entire body sans her sclera sort of suggest she's akin to a projection. Of course I also have to mention her MASSIVE thigh gap, a feature which I find myself hung up on. Overall good, was originally my favorite but other designs grew on me.

Vera Oberlin

Vera is a money-oriented Gorgon with little sympathy for others. She’s always scheming ways to get rich(er) quick, and most scenarios with her involve helping her get away with some scam or fraud.

The three Gorgons of Greek Mythology were the sisters Stheno, Euryale and of course the famous Medusa. While the first two were immortal, Medusa was famously slain by the hero Perseus via decapitation. The most consistent feature of the Gorgons is their head of hair made of living snakes, which Vera here of course has.

Vera is a simple design that even more than Miranda really relies on the fact that she's green, but given the only real defining visual trait of a Gorgon is their head of snakes makes this understandable. I myself at one point considered making a Gorgon OC but pretty quickly found myself constrained by the lack of flexibility. It might be early to call it but I don't think Gorgons make for very good Monster Girls.

Zoe

Zoe, formerly known as Z’Gord, Ruler of the Dark Realms, is a Lovecraft-inspired Betentacled Deity who loves writing erotic fiction about the other students at Spooky High, and her favorite fictional ships. Her worshipers often follow her around and unintentionally bother her.

H. P. Lovecraft was an influential horror author who really made Cosmic Horror a thing. I'm not too familiar with his work so I can't really comment but his influence, similar to some of his creatures (I would assume), are inescapable.

Zoe's such a refreshing break from the characters so far. She's asymmetrical, she's got mouths on her limbs and eyeballs poking out everywhere except where you would expect. I'm not sure what eye I'm supposed to look at, and I genuinely love that. As delightful as I find her appearance her personality is a bit of a mixed bag for me, she's occasionally overbearing but can also be a lot of fun, and is also one of those characters that spouts Pop Culture references, which I kinda have to be in the mood for.

Vicky Schmidt

Vicky is one of the selectable player characters, a reanimated corpse who has the same vague personality as the other player characters.

She's classified on the wiki as a "Frankenstein's Monster" Frankenstein was the REAL monster which, if I may, if she wasn't made by Victor then she can't be one of his monsters.

Her design is honestly way too similar to Frankie Stein for me to come up with very much to say about her without feeling like I'm repeating myself. Her choice in clothing is much more mundane than what Frankie might wear, and I'm not sure why, but Vicky appeals to me a lot more.

Amira Rashid

Amira is another playable character, a Fire Djinn who once again has the same horndog personality as the other player characters.

Oh boy. Djinn. Why'd they have to go and make her a Djinn? Couldn't they have called her a Fire Elemental? Alright, so Djinn are really old, they're most commonly associated with Islamic beliefs but they actually predate Islam. They're powerful beings that are in many ways comparable to demons, however they're not inherently evil. Their power is respected and feared, and there are many parts of the world where belief in their existence is common. Most Americans might be more familiar with the concept of a wish granting Genie, which is basically like a translation of the concept. Honestly I'm barely scratching the surface, there's a lot to talk about with Djinn and no offense but I don't think Amira here deserves half this review to focus on her.

Amira's a really basic design, she's just a normal human whose head is on fire. Her design doesn't really have to stand out since she'll only really be seen on the Character Select Screen and during Endings. If you're curious, I believe the elemental Djinn thing comes from Tabletop RPG's.

Dahlia Aquino

Dahlia is a side character in the first game, promoted to main love interest in the second one. She’s a demon, rival of main love interest Damien LaVey. She’s very muscular.

I'm surprised it's taken me this long to talk about Demons. The wide spread of Christianity and their frequent use in pop culture means that most people already have some familarity with the general idea of demons, but basically they're agents of evil, and are pretty poorly defined. Demonology is its whole own thing with some pretty crazy demon descriptions out there, but most media just goes for the standard horned imp look. I feel compelled to mention that during the spread of the Catholic Church's influence a common tactic they would employ to convert people is to classify pagan deities as Demons, and informing them they've been worshiping a false idol.

Dahlia is very muscular, and very tall. 'Nuff said.

The Coven (Joy, Hope and Faith)

The Coven are a Coven of witches, who despite on many occasions insisting they are individuals mostly act as a unit, at least in the first game. Joy, the leader of the Coven, gets upgraded to main love interest in the sequel and as a result gets a lot more characterization.

Witches have a few different origins, all of them kinda unfortunate. Basically, think of the term Witch as being synonymous with "someone from a non-Catholic religious group", or sometimes quite simply "woman I don't like", and that should give you a pretty good idea about the history of Witches, and put into context the Witch Resurgence we've been seeing recently. While thankfully none of these three resemble the unfortunate antisemitic caricature associated with Witches, I still feel it's worth a mention. Witches are a real thing, kinda, and as such labeling them as Monsters is probably problematic. The Coven being unpopular among the student body is potentially a reference to how they don't belong, I suppose.

Aaravi Mishra (The Slayer)

Despite only being half monster I gotta say Aaravi might be my favorite character in the first game. She gets upgraded to main character in the second game, now sharing a body with a Sentient Curse named Hex. She seems to have chilled out a lot in the second game, which I’m honestly disappointing by. In the first game it’s not immediately apparent if she’s even a student, as she’s mostly seen running around trying to kill the students. Fortunately for them, she’s terrible at it, but it doesn’t stop her from trying.

The Slayer is only half monster, and we never even learn what the other half is. Despite this her bravado is so ridiculously endearing to me I still consider her my favorite character. Kinda weird saying that my favorite character in this game with Monster Girls up the wazoo is the most human one, but that's the reality I live in.

Nobody tell Tumblr I posted this without permission, I just wanted to share this fun voice line

Violet Portobello

It’s hard to talk about Violet without also mentioning her boyfriend Tate. The two are inseparable, as doing so would likely kill one or both of them at this stage. The two are often seen rubbing their literally toxic relationship in everyone’s faces. Poor Tate is very likely an unwilling participant of this relationship, and he doesn’t seem to have much autonomy.

I know we're not supposed to like this one but if you've seen my OCs then you know what I'm about, and I gotta be true to myself. Violet is cute and fun, not cute enough for me to envy Tate at all of course but enough to say that I appreciate her inclusion in the game.

The Boys

I'm actually gonna do it this time, I'll talk briefly about the main male love interests. They stand on equal footing with the girls in this title, and are subject to the same level of fanservice.

Scott Howl

Scott is a jock, a real himbo and a self-proclaimed Good Boy. He's a werewolf with a simple lifestyle and many doglike properties.

Scott's got a pretty average design for a werewolf. Big, hairy and wild-looking. I'm not sure if the implication is that he's always partially transformed given his tail but he follows the classic trope of not remembering what he did while transformed.

Liam de Lioncourt

Liam is a vampire, a hipster and a contrarian. He hates things that are popular and sees himself as the ultimate authority when it comes to good tastes.

Liam's one of those characters whose appeals I don't really get. Like I can understand being a fan of an unlikable douche, but I'm more the kind of guy that laughs when said douche takes a pratfall.

Damien LaVey

Damien loves destruction, arson and generally anything he thinks is cool. He's a demon prince, and unlike Vera he is not afraid to get his hands dirty just because he's royalty.

Damien's design resembles one of those depictions of Satan where he has horns, a long thin tail ending in a spade and often seen holding a pitchfork. It's a fun take on the design that really imbues it with "rebellious youth" energy.

Calculester Hewlett-Packard

Voiced by Jacksepticeye, Calculester is an automaton made from a school computer and given life via a magical floppy disk. He's naïve and mostly just wants to make friends, often having to be tricked into immoral actions.

What a fun design. A '90s style computer monitor mounted on a robotic body that matches its aesthetic, with ribbon cables and what might be copper tubes poking out in places. Also have to mention his last name, that's funny.

I have unfortunately not had the pleasure of playing this game with friends but regardless this game's humor and charming characters made me a fan of it. Its cryptic, occasionally frustrating systems have to be mentioned but they're only really a problem if you start trying to hunt endings, not helped by incomplete documentation on the events meaning that no walkthrough is totally complete. this game's got a LOT of dialogue.

Monster Girl fans might have a lot of fun getting to know this cast of characters, but superficial fans might get bored after having seen a few of the endings. Monster Boy fans have just as much to gain from playing this, which is rare. Most media picks one or the other to appeal to.

Previous review:

Next review:

[hpdfag]

Hi, how are you doing?? I’m gonna be very short since I have an assignment to do for tomorrow, but I just wanted to pass by! Btw, no email yet…I just missed talking to you!! So how have your last days been, and school too?

- 🧶

hihi, im doing really well!! i got accepted into community college, and ive been doing a lot of work job hunting. my future is looking a lot less bleak than it did even just a few months ago, and its amazing to feel so. well. amazing!

school is going alright, im most worried abt math tbh ... unfortunately math is gonna continue to be the bane of my existance since i need to do up to calculus II when im doing my comp sci degree. fuckkkkk. as much as i love computers theyre like little balls of math goddamn it ... i shldve paid attention in sophomore year when they were doing geometry :agony:

in general lifes been going really well! im still maintaining my website, and my most recent project has been cleaning up the code so its less of an inline css nightmare ... and tbh it feels so much better now. the homepage's code looks like something someone would write on purpose and not a web designer's worst nightmare /silly

[transmissionsfromthebattlefield]

There's No Trains To Heaven

Things I made this semester: A just barely 19 page long historiography paper. An accompanying 7 and a half page long research proposal with 22 page long annotated bibliography because I found too many interesting sources and had too much to say about them. An 8 page long paper about seditious speech that could have been a little shorter but I had too much to say about that, too. One data research analysis report (with accompanying fun bar graph). A basically functional, entirely responsive website with 7 individual pages (which I'm still putting the final touches on). In between all of this I recorded an eleven song album of nuclear reactor core folk ditties, all by my lonesome.

T’was a good semester.

I also changed my major. Again. This summer I'd declared a second major in history to go with my studies in emerging media and technology with a minor in web design. But I wasn't too sure about the latter degree. Part of why I was clinging to EMAT was plain ol' fear, to be completely honest. Not a crippling or conscious fear, but the oft-restated assumption lingering in the back of my head: it'll make you marketable. If you get a bachelor of arts, you'll either be out of a decent job or trapped in the stressful, low-paying world of education. Get that ~science~ certificate in your life and you'll be rolling in that dough and not destute, unlike those silly B.A. kids.

Well, I don't necessarily agree with that train of thought. Having had the concept of "STEM" shoved down my throat in even middle school, I've grown critical of the importance we place on those fields specifically. As vital as technology and science are, you also have to realize that the social sciences are just as useful to, well, society. Yet such fields are looked down upon. No wonder people nowadays are barely capable of critical thought, take everything (especially media) at face value, and barely know the basic facts about their own country's past. It's because we condition kids to doze off in their classes and not take education on any level seriously, especially not the subjects associated with boring, stuffy things like reading and interpreting and thinking. Too much hard work, let's rah-rah the football team instead.

Learning history and connecting it to the present is one of the most important things you can do to become a more aware citizen, and it's time we stop pushing this culture of self-consciousness over what people think of us because of our degrees or careers and actually work on ourselves to actually get some informed participation in society. As for the career part, my workplace on campus is proof enough to me that studying history can get you a fulfilling job that lets you utilize the skills you honed and information about the wider world you picked up in your studies. It helps you connect with people and their past experiences. It helps you contextualize the world you currently live in. And by studying things objectively, it helps you become a more logical person less swayed by disgusting propagandic appeals to emotion. It just helps you become a better person. Realizing that that is the path I want to take, as opposed to sticking with a major I just wasn't fully jiving with in the name of some enigmatic ideal of making my chosen institution proud or something, is very freeing.

The web design minor is staying because I just genuinely love twiggling around with my little HTML and CSS files and applying my graphic design Skillz in that manner. On the other hand, I've picked up another minor: creative writing. I've always taken my writing abilities for granted; I'm a great writer, I'd say. But only now have I really felt empowered (to use a cheesy term for lack of a better one) to express it in a creative way - and not just in the songwriting department. I think I felt for a while that I had to suppress my "creative" side in order to appear serious to...I don't even know who I was trying to appeal to. But my brain has been firing off in too many directions lately, and has been too inspired by the world around me and my various influences to let my individual perspective linger in the background. I gotta do me.

So I went from English while enrolling --> Journalism because I was under the assumption that all the English majors were going to be Swifties --> Public Relations for a few weeks because I had no idea what I was doing --> Emerging Media and Technology with web design concentration --> History + EMAT + web design --> History major + web design minor + creative writing minor. That's a really weird and still incomplete circle, but it's fun to think about.

[mojamoza]

How To Easily Learn Coding In 2023

Introduction Learning how to code is a skill that will help you become more productive and competitive in the future. But it's not easy: many people struggle with it for years before they're able to make any useful contributions. So how do you go about learning coding? And what should you do after that? This guide will answer those questions and more! Where should you start? When you're learning to code, the first step is always the same: you have to pick a language. There are many options out there, but in my opinion it's best to start with the basics and work your way up from there. For example: if you want to learn how to write code using Visual Studio Code (a great editor for beginners), then start by setting up your text editor and installing extensions like Grammarly or keyboard shortcuts for common tasks. Once those are set up, move onto learning about how files work within VSCode—and then once that's settled down, see if there are any other resources available online that can help improve your understanding of these concepts even further! If this sounds like too much work at once (and it probably will), then consider taking advantage of local meetups where fellow developers come together every month or so; these groups usually host speakers who speak about their experiences working with specific technologies such as Ruby on Rails or ReactJS so that everyone gets something out of attending them regardless what level they currently operate at within tech fields like web development/designing websites etcetera." How can you tell if coding is for you? If you're not sure if coding is for you, there are a few things to look for. The first is that you should be able to explain what your goal is and how it will help someone else. For example, if you want to build an app that helps people find affordable restaurants in their neighborhood, then explaining this will help clarify whether or not coding is right for you. The second thing to consider when determining whether or not coding is right for someone else is whether they can explain why they want or need something like this on their own without having any specific knowledge about programming languages or technical details involved with creating software programs. Coding experts often speak of "getting into code" as being similar in nature but more difficult because it requires one person who knows exactly what needs done (the programmer) and another person who does not know anything about programming (the user). What's the difference between programming and coding? Programming is the process of writing code, while coding is the act of writing code. Programming is a higher level of abstraction than coding; it's about solving problems and making things happen, whereas coding is about making things happen. Do you have to be good at maths to learn to code? The simple answer is no. You don't have to be good at maths to learn coding, but it helps. If you're interested in tech and want to get into the industry, then going through school with a technical degree has its perks. The reason for this is because maths teaches us logical thinking skills that are invaluable when learning coding languages such as Python or JavaScript. It also teaches us how data structures work and how algorithms work together with each other so we can understand what's happening under the hood of these programs that we use every day (or night). What are the most popular languages for new coders to learn? If you want to learn coding in the year 2023, there are a few popular languages that will give you the best bang for your buck. You can use these tools alongside each other and make sure that your skillset is solid before diving into any specific language. JavaScript: This language has been around for over 15 years and it's still used by millions of people across the world every day. It's easy to learn—you don't need a degree in computer science or math to get started with JavaScript! With its popularity on mobile devices like smartphones, tablets and laptops alike, this makes JavaScript an excellent choice for beginners who want their first step into coding-based learning paths without spending too much time learning something complex like C++ or Python first (which might require some expensive courses). Python: Python is another popular programming language with many similarities with JavaScript but also some differences too - specifically regarding how they're used inside web applications versus standalone applications running on desktop computers/laptops/tablets etcetera... Are any programming languages just better than others? There are many different programming languages, and each one has its own unique strengths and weaknesses. If you're just starting out as a programmer, it's important to know what your goals will be before choosing a language. In case you want to build websites, then HTML and CSS are good options because they're both widely used across the web (and even in mobile apps). If your ultimate goal is building mobile apps, Swift or Objective-C may be more appropriate depending on what kind of platform you have available on which device(s) that user owns/owns within their household (Apple products tend to run on iOS devices only). Are there any languages I should avoid? - Avoid languages that are not in demand. - Avoid languages that are not widely used or in demand. Should I learn just one language or many? If you're interested in learning programming, it can be helpful to know multiple languages. You don't have to learn them all at the same time—you can start with one language and then add another later. Learning a second language is great because it will improve your understanding of the first one and give you exposure to other cultures and ways of thinking. It's also fun! However, if your goal is more career-oriented (e.g., becoming a software engineer), then focusing solely on learning coding won't necessarily help you get where you want fast enough; instead, taking classes or working on projects that involve both front-end design skills and backend development could help build up both sides of yourself as an individual developer Which one should I choose first? One of the most important things to consider when choosing a career path is what you want to accomplish. Do you want to be an entrepreneur or a solopreneur, or do you have other goals in mind? If so, then it's critical that your first step is determining whether coding will help achieve those goals. - If it's not something that interests you and makes sense for who you are as a person (whether it's related to work or not), then don't bother learning how to code! - Even if it does interest you but doesn't seem practical at all right now (because there aren't enough jobs available in that field), keep reading on because I've got some tips for getting started with coding even if it does seem far-fetched now—and maybe even some ideas about how we could make this happen! Do I need to be able to code for a long time before I can do anything useful? You don’t have to be a programmer for years before you can do anything useful. In fact, it is possible to learn coding and become an expert in just a few months with the right method and tools. The best way for beginners like yourself to get started is by taking classes at your local community college or university, where they will provide all of the materials necessary for learning how computers work. These classes will teach you what makes up computer programming, such as variables, functions and loops (which we will discuss later). They’ll also explain how these concepts work together so that when they apply them correctly—and they always do—your code becomes more efficient! This isn't rocket science; everyone learns differently but everyone learns at their own pace too! If someone finds something difficult then another person might find something easy but still needs extra help getting started on certain things like taking notes during lectures etcetera... What does a typical day look like for a coder in 2023? In 2023, a coder's day will be different depending on the role. Some coders are in teams, some are left to their own devices and learn as they go. Most importantly: You're always learning new things! As a general rule of thumb, you should expect to spend at least half your time on learning new skills and technologies (and maybe more). If you're working solo or with one other person, it's likely that they will also be teaching themselves as well—which means there might not be much time for actual coding until later in the week when everyone has caught up with each other’s work (or if someone needs help with something). Think about what you want to accomplish when learning how to code. The first step in learning how to code is figuring out what you want to accomplish. If it's just for fun, then maybe some introductory courses will be enough. If your goal is more career-oriented, however, then it might make sense for you take a few more classes and become proficient with your chosen languages. In either case, don't forget that there are many different types of jobs available in the tech industry today—and not all require coding skills! For example: Conclusion We hope this article has helped you to think about what your goals are for learning coding, and how you can use that information to make the best choice of language for your situation. We’d love to hear about your experience with coding if we missed anything important! If you need more help choosing a course or getting started with coding, check out our resources page. Read the full article

[corkcitylibraries]

Cork in Verse | Ana Spehar Interviews Noah Hamilton

Noah Hamilton was born in May 1987 in Waterford. He grew up in Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny and is a full-time artist.

Noah Hamilton studied Fine Art at the Limerick School of Art & Design. He graduated in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Fine Art. Noah then went on to focus on his drawing skills by undertaking a course at St. John’s College, Cork City studying Drawing (Level 5) and Web Design (Level 5).

When did you start writing? Is there a common theme, style, or structure you find yourself leaning to in your poetry?

I’ve been writing song lyrics since I was a teenager, drew comics since I was nine. Yet when I started really tapping away on the word processer it came from a certain purge, there are just some days where I'm in the mindset to write, a certain free train of thought, although when it comes to poetry, I have a few rules that relate to music theory. I focus on the rhythm of the syllables in each sentence, though every now and again I break my own rules on purpose. Usually with poetry I just type it into my phone. I went through a phase of writing haikus where you get 5 7 5 in the syllable count. It's good to consider the value of each syllable in length, it could have the value of a quaver, crotchet, have a different timing, a lot of music theory worth considering. 

As a visual artist, musician, and a writer, you express yourself in many forms. Where do you seek inspiration?

I hop between mediums just to alternate my time. One day or night I could be drawing, painting, writing, then playing music or a bit of carpentry and so on, any creative project I have a go at. I used to draw compulsively in sketchbooks for years, I still have the ones I kept since I was twelve, lots of drawings of devils and war. It freaked out my art teacher. Once, he rang my mother about it, when she saw them, she said they were quite good, but she asked me to draw something else so then I discovered music. Nirvana was my favourite band, so I drew rockstars in my teens, picked up a guitar to learn as many riffs from tabs off the internet. Art and music were the two big things in my life, why not do both? I remember that I always said to myself if I go blind, I can still play guitar, if I go deaf, I can still draw. Fast-forward to these days when engaging in a creative project, I have different themes to each medium. Innovation is crucial for my work, I always like something new to potter about with. I've learned to be okay with having creative block every now and again. I find comfort in knowing the likes of Francis Bacon went through months without lifting a brush. I like to look at the lives of artists in biographies rather than their work, good to learn from history before pursuing it as a career, though if you enjoy making art for the sheer enjoyment is a great gift in itself.

Do you show your work in progress to anyone?

I do, maybe a bit too much I think, though a painting isn't finished until it's sold. Pieces develop over time, even songs over time where I would add a middle eight here and there with more development on the subject matter.

Would you look on writing as a kind of spiritual practice?

More like an exorcism. I write away my demons, you might say. I like having a go at the Sci-Fi genre, makes it lighter and more aloof. I find it a safer place to be in, a certain detachment from real life with elements of truth involved.

What book would you recommend to our readers?

You know the real page turner for me was The Diary of Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years by Sue Townsend. I once spent all night just reading that back to back as a teenager. Actually, I haven't read all of the Adrian Mole books, I must follow up on that, though it’s quite a sad thought as Sue Townsend, rest her soul, is no longer with us. Don't tell me how it ends but I’m expecting another cliff-hanger. My main recommendation, now I'm thinking seriously, is a book that I used to play as an audiobook while sleeping. I'll be frank that I don't read as much as I should as I predominantly just binge on audiobooks these days...Ten Books on Architecture by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio. It's very fascinating with instructions on how the Roman Empire was built. It teaches you about their knowledge of building, plumbing, painting, music theory, and geology to name a few of the subjects it covers. It was revived during the Renaissance and it's illustrated by the old masters at that time. I must root out the hard copy myself to see the illustrations.

Paintbrush

A madman with a paintbrush Saying he is an artist Still a madman with a paintbrush Though people are saying he is an artist They don't think he is a madman with a paintbrush They are betting on this madman as an artist as he says himself They know a bit that he is mad A madman with a paintbrush Saying he is an artist Though a paintbrush for a madman is a good idea nonetheless.

Rural I come from rural Ireland A place of cattle and horses Not too far from me Is where they bet on courses. I know a chap who can talk to cattle But not well with women Not that different from me But worse according to other sources In one pub there is gambling A place of many vices No one judges no one Even through their mid-life crisis They may stand, sit and talk shite The barman telling them that they are right His old friend calls him a bollox Just like Jackson Pollock Country life isn't so bad The pints are cheaper with a bit of trad Next day is not so sad Back again since one was a lad This is the frontline for an troubadour No pretense and vanity For those who do will not last long This town is better than any city Men are men here and the women same Hardly ones that aren't so tame Handy with an axe and saw The land will clobber if you break its law. Take heed of it's weather It's harshness and gruff No time for nonsense Faffing or fluff.

[funkymbtifiction]

Hi, Charity! Hope you’re doing well :) So, I’m an INFP 6w7 — as far as i know — and recently I’ve received a job offer (I haven’t had the opportunity to find a proper job after I graduated because of the pandemic, so I’ve been stuck in a limbo for the past two years). The thing is, this job is focused on web design (nothing to do with my college degree, however, I’m not really excited to work in this area either) which I’m pretty good at, but it doesn’t matter because I simply don’t want to do it. It does not match with the expectations I had for my twenties so I didn’t accept it, even when my parents said that it would be good for me to finally have some money of my own (and I get their point, but it’s simply not what I want right now). I really wanted to work with writing — and that will definitely require some great effort from my part, since I’ll have to start from scratch — however, I can’t stop thinking that maybe I should’ve accepted the offer (and swallowed my feelings about it, even if that feels impossible) because, otherwise, I’ll be stuck in my “I wanna be a writer” dream forever and not actively do a thing to make it come true, since I have the tendency to start things and never finish them (I have a lot of abandoned stories that could’ve turned into something if I actually finished them). Before the pandemic I used to be a little bit bolder when it came to my life choices and I’d act more on my impulses, so I also fear that this period made me way too stuck in my comfort zone. How can I actually get motivated and step out of this loop? Thanks for all of your help!

I understand not wanting to do things, but sometimes you ought to do them just to have more work experience to stick in your portfolio. It also depends on how old you are. If you are 18, it’s not as big of a deal not to have any work or job experience when hunting for one, but when you are 30… that’s a huge red flag to employers and can mean being passed over because they assume you aren’t a “finisher.” And yes, the pandemic makes it easy to get stuck in a rut, but it won’t last forever.

You can’t take a job you have passed on, so there’s no use in second-guessing your decision.

IFPs want to make a career out of doing something they love, but it’s more realistic to find something you can ‘live with’ so you make enough money to do what you love in your free time. I know an INFP who works as a librarian; she doesn’t make much, but she can tolerate doing it and it pays for her Cosplaying and ‘attending Comic Con’ hobbies. That’s what she loves to do—that and her art, and as long as she can afford her art, she can tolerate working in a job that doesn’t mentally fulfill her, because she knows at the end of the day, she gets to go home and be creative. I recommend you find a job you can tolerate, that pays for your expenses and allows you enough free time to pursue your passions. Look at various jobs as potential stepping stones to a fulfilling career, not as being stuck forever doing something that doesn’t interest you.  

Regarding writing… what kind of writing are we talking about? Often, an IFP dreams of being a famous novelist or writing short stories, or being a journalist. But the reality is, there are a million other people like you who also want to earn a living ‘writing’ and you are all fighting over the same limited amount of work. Most of them wind up writing copy for websites, writing instruction manuals, or writing things they never get to take credit for in a business setting (advertising copy). Most of the time, stories don’t pay much. The ones that do are competitive, and you earn your stripes by being good. That requires diligence and practice.

If writing is something you want to do, do your homework. Figure out what kind of writing that is, and see if there’s a market for it. If you aren’t able to do a job that doesn’t interest you, are you going to be able to write copy or stories that don’t interest you, just because there’s a market for them? Train yourself to finish what you start and have the patience to edit it, again, and again, and again, committing to however many rewrites this one thing needs to be ‘good.’ Because it takes a lot of drafts to reach that point. You have to grab the reader in three sentences for short fiction, three paragraphs for longer fiction, or three pages for a novel.

You need to be realistic about your ambitions. Some writers do well and become famous; a lot of them do not. Success in limited fields is more about “who you know” than “your level of talent,” and those who “don’t know anybody” have less of a chance at big-time success than those who do. The Help sold a ton of copies. Why? Because the author knew a film producer; the latter bought the film rights immediately, which helped her sell the book to a publisher, and them knowing the movie was coming out helped them sell the book. But for every writer who hits the jackpot, there are many who get told, “No thanks,” or “You’ll have to publicize it.”

NFPs have to make a plan for their dreams, or they will never happen, and be realistic about the outcome – including realizing that whatever their dream is, is going to require a lot of self-discipline and hard work on their part to make it happen. We also live in a different world than we did two years ago, so we have to adjust our expectations. It sucks, and it’s deeply unfair (especially to those your age)… but that’s how it is.

You’re going to have to force yourself to go after things, not wait around for them to come to you, or use dreaming instead of doing. Think about all the things you want to do, and see, and experience, the things your 7 wing craves… and now think about whether you will get to do them, if you can’t earn any money. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we should chase after life – because it might be shorter than we think.

[chateautae]

Helloo, this might be the weirdest ask you ever got BUT let's just let it be.

So, I am 20 y/o. I am in my second year of a glorious STEM major (my butt is being kicked by plant biology;; shut the fuck up trees and other green things -other than Shrek ofc.)

I truly love what I major in. I don't think I would ever want to change it. Even though my ass is being beaten up, I wake up every day thanking God for studying biology. (Was this too nerd? Are you scared?)

HOWEVER, like many STEM majors, I am afraid of that sweet uNeMPloYmeNt. My dear university now offers 4 years of bachelor degree in digital marketing for its students. The offer will stay even after I graduate, and its fee is quite cheap. So I could continue bio and have a couple of evening classes for digital marketing. Then, voila, graduate with a double major.

The degree is about everything from e-commerce to web and app designs to cyber security to legal regulations behind companies to ICT to marketing to finance (?? what is finance ?? is it a type of bread? Qu'ils mangent de la brioche! )

I am intrigued by the programming side of this degree. I do a little bit of programming outside my own degree, and it wouldn’t hurt to take formal lectures. Also, I could grit my teeth and bear the finance side of it. I could possibly pass the classes. They don’t seem too difficult (no offence to anybody, I just became an academic creature whose parents are Hulk and Shrek )

However, I have zero interest in e-commerce and marketing. I am mostly sure that I will not enjoy it as much as I do biology. But adults don’t have to enjoy what they do, right? They just DO IT 👌🏼🥺

Considering I have terrible time management, I could just fail two degrees and in my job as well. Either way, this degree may just sit on my CV (At the same time, I have zero lab experience due to c*rona bullshi*🦠, so who knows which degree will sit on my CV 😉)

On the other hand, I am a fricking perfectionist. So I might just graduate with honours.

Nonetheless, E-commerce and digital marketing is the FUtURe of our society. And It is the reason why my head got stuck to it. I just think whether if I would regret not doing it in future. What if in future I ask myself “why the fuck didn’t you do it?” while crying between failed experiments and unpublished papers?

I could get certificates for digital marketing if I desperately need it. But a degree sounds way ✨ FULLER ✨ (Meanwhile Karl Max: 😦)

Plus, while I was writing this, two of my friends texted me and said “it’s okay, you can do it” I dunnooo, can I? should I?

I am very indecisive AS YOU CAN PROBABLY SEE. Please be a dear and give me your opinions.

Thank you so so so much for your answer. I am very sorry for dumping my life stress on you, but I see you as a supportive girl friend ( me 💘 you ) I would appreciate it if other people comment their opinions as well.

I love you all my Internet friends

Note: Mr Kim Taehyung if you are reading this: HAVE MY BABIES, PLEASE.

Note2: Dear Kim Namjoon, please fvck this stress out of my body.

*Should I just try it for a year and see if it is good for me?

** You know what,,, I am going to cry and get someone to read my tarot cards

*** My dad offered that I should flip a coin

Not a weird ask at all bubs ❤️ ugh this is such a hard thing to comment on because I can’t exactly tell you how to live your life. I completely understand the way you’re thinking, but the best thing I would say to do is weigh the pros and cons and honestly, maybe think about what you see yourself doing in your future. There’s also another idea where if you do flip a coin, usually when the coin’s in the air we already make up our mind of what we want the decision to be. Wherever your heart is loves, possibly think about what’s more important to you and what you value. It’s always better to live a life where we do something with our heart in it, because it’ll always be that much more worth it 🥺❤️

[yellowocaballero]

He’s Just Not That Into You: Web!Jon and Martin ficlet

Another ficlet written in the same universe as The Convention on Chronographer Lane/The Monster at the End of This Book. As before, you don’t need to have read that to read this. These ficlets are being written as character studies so I get a good handle on the uniqueness of the characters in this AU before I actually write something longer. Which is why they’re...like this. 

Very slight content warning for internalized fatphobia and Jon being interpreted as being a creep again. Reverse content warning for Martin’s tasty pasta. 

EDIT 2/4/2021: With the release of Sucker’s Bet, which this story was a kind of pilot study for, this story is no longer canon. However, you can still consider it a 15 page summary of that entire story. I’m sad I couldn’t keep the ‘join my spider cult’ thing but we all make sacrifices. 

Martin was in the middle of making a delicious pot of pasta when Jonathan Sims crawled in through his kitchen window.

Martin stared at Jonathan Sims, too out of it to even be surprised. Jon halted halfway through his entrance, sitting on the windowsill with one leg swung over it to rest on his floor, one leg on the fire escape above. Martin was on the sixth floor of his flat complex.

“Hullo,” Jon said, as if he was not in his window, “have you reconsidered my offer of -”

Martin threw his spoon at Jon, hitting him squarely on the forehead. Jon cursed, shocked into leaning backwards, and he accidentally topped off the window and onto the fire escape. He landed on the metal grid with a loud crash and a rattle, and the muffled sounds of his cursing echoed through the flat.

After a second to grab a new spoon and turn down the heat on the pot, Martin walked over to the window and wiggled it down again. He looked Jon dead in the eyes as he locked it, before going back to his pasta.

It was good. He should add some pesto and herbs next time.

Martin was in the middle of making a delicious pot of pasta when Jonathan Sims crawled in through his kitchen window. 

Martin stared at Jonathan Sims, too out of it to even be surprised. Jon halted halfway through his entrance, sitting on the windowsill with one leg swung over it to rest on his floor, one leg on the fire escape above. Martin was on the sixth floor of his flat complex. 

“Hullo,” Jon said, as if he was not in his window, “have you reconsidered my offer of -”

Martin threw his spoon at Jon, hitting him squarely on the forehead. Jon cursed, shocked into leaning backwards, and he accidentally topped off the window and onto the fire escape. He landed on the metal grid with a loud crash and a rattle, and the muffled sounds of his cursing echoed through the flat. 

After a second to grab a new spoon and turn down the heat on the pot, Martin walked over to the window and wiggled it down again. He looked Jon dead in the eyes as he locked it, before going back to his pasta. 

It was good. He should add some pesto and herbs next time. 

***

Martin had never really bothered to learn how to cook, but now that he was unemployed he had plenty of time. 

Now that he was unemployed, he had plenty of time for lots of things. He was finally taking up knitting again. Lots of seasons of Jane the Virgin to catch up on. His severance package from the Institute had been pretty good, not to mention the check Rosie had slipped him with a wink that she had worryingly called ‘Hazard Pay’, but this was London and even Martin could only make the money stretch so far. He spent eight hours of his day looking for jobs, touting his five year experience as a librarian and six month experience as an Archival assistant. But there was only so far you could go without a degree, and the market was shit, and really wouldn’t it just be so much easier to list a master’s in library science from some huge, anonymous university…

But Martin had the feeling that line of thought was what had put him on Jon’s radar in the first place. 

***

A week later Martin was halfway through a comforting Gilmore Girls rewatch when he heard a knock on his door. He had been fastidiously avoiding answering knocks on the door ever since Jon had pulled his first Jehovah’s Witness impression, but he had ordered a replacement washing machine part and it was arriving that day. He put his knitting down and got up, peering through the eyehole - hair not nearly long enough to be Jon, great - and opened the door. 

“Hullo,” the man said in a thick Cockney accent, not looking up from his clipboard, “I got a package here for Mr. Blackwood?”

“Yes, that’s me.” Martin held out his hands to take the little screen and sign for the package. After a second of clumsy fumbling, the man passed the package and the screen over, and Martin boredly scribbled his name. “Thanks, mate -”

But the man was gone, and Martin had realized belatedly that the man had slipped past Martin to enter his flat. He easily slid the cap off, letting his tightly curled hair cascade down to his shoulders, and propped his hands on his hips as he spun in a circle, admiring Martin’s extraordinarily boring and cramped flat. 

“Really love what you’ve done with the place!” Jonathan Sims said loudly. “Your sense of interior design is really impeccable, Martin, truly. A man’s home is his castle! Oh, is that vintage chintz? So cute.”

“Get out of my house.”

“Look at this ceramic kitten!” Jon was already in front of his mantle, carefully scrutinizing his little row of ceramic figures. They were fifty pence at the charity shops and Martin found them precious and charming, okay? “Your place has so much personality. My flat has personality too, but I’m afraid that personality just screams a propensity towards arson, so it’s much less impressive. How old is that couch, from the 70s? Very grandmother. Is it inherited?”

Yes. “No,” Martin said, resisting the urge to throttle the man as he dumped his washing machine part on the end table, “and please get out of my flat. I’ve said explicitly I don’t want you where I live -”

“Really, Martin, I’m hardly a vampire,” Jon said, having the gall to look offended as he cradled a little meowing ceramic kitten in his hand. “If I needed permission to enter dwellings I’d never go anywhere.” He paused a beat, something seeming to occur to him. “But I get a lot of permission from many different people of a variety of genders to enter their homes for sex, which I am very good at.” He paused again. “I really am very thirsty. I don’t suppose I could trouble you for a spot of tea…?”

Because Martin was British, he made the tea. But he resented every second of it. 

Jon hadn’t started stalking him immediately after he and his weirdo friends had murdered Martin’s boss, but it was pretty close. He had probably thought a week was enough time to emotionally recover from the ordeal of finding out that your boss’ boss was an immortal apocalypse cultist or whatever and that your boss was actually just a plant from a different and somehow creepier apocalypse cult inserted into your workplace to assassinate his boss. He had probably thought that a week was enough time to emotionally recover from the fact that Jonathan Sims - prickly, rude, pretentious Head Archivist with a heart of gold - was an elaborate fabrication, and that the man whom Martin had been falling for had never truly existed at all. 

A week had not been enough time. 

He didn’t even know Jon’s real name. 

“So what is your real name, anyway?” They were, unfortunately, sitting at Martin’s rinky-dink kitchen table, complete with little pock-marked burn scars in the wood and a wobbly leg. Martin had a magazine rolled up and jammed under the leg, which he was uncomfortably aware of as Jon lounged in his hard little wooden chair as if it was a thousand dollar gaming chair. The fake UPS uniform helped make him look like something other than a movie star, but it was hard to disguise the sharp and haughty features and the cold grey eyes. He had kept the ceramic cat, placing it in front of him with its little plainative face turned towards Martin. 

“What makes you think it’s not Jonathan Sims?” Jon asked archly, sipping at his PG Tips out of a chipped black mug. He made a faint face. “Sorry, is there cream for this? I hate black tea.”

“You always take your tea black,” Martin said automatically. Jon stared at him until he got it. “Of course. Right.” 

By the time he got back to the table with the sugar and cream Jon was going through his mail, with absolutely no shame whatsoever. “Bill, bill, overdue bill. You’re hurting for money, aren’t you? You know, I might know someone who’s hiring -”

“If you’re about to say a giant spider that’s going to lay eggs in my stomach and then burst out of my skin and transform me into a spider person, I have to pass.”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” Jon blatantly lied. “I just don’t think you’re hearing me out. Has anybody ever told you that you’re very unwilling to listen to new ideas?”

“When the new idea is joining a spider cult, then yes. Actually, no, because nobody’s ever asked me that before I met you.”

Jon didn’t seem to pick up on Martin’s extraordinarily pained expression, or maybe he just didn’t care. He leaned in instead, easily dropping a grotesque amount of sugar cubes into his tea. “Just consider it. Let the idea percolate in your mind. There’s a lot of benefits. No more worrying about money. No more putting in all that work to manipulate people. It’d be as easy as breathing for you. Anybody you want to like you likes you, and anybody you hate has their life ruined in days.” Something glinted with light in Jon’s grey eyes, like a spotlight shining off a raincloud. “Anybody you want to fall in love with you does so instantly. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

“All for the low, low price of selling my soul to a giant spider god,” Martin said sarcastically. Jon nodded fastidiously, as if it really was a low price. “Seriously, Jon? I have no interest in any of this. I don’t even know why you’ve singled me out to stalk. I don’t - I don’t like manipulating people, it’s not some kind of hobby -”

“Liar. You love manipulating people.” Jon sipped his tea, as if bored. “Honestly, Martin, we’re all friends here. I won’t judge. You don’t need to virtue signal. We both love manipulating people, getting what we want, putting on personas. We like to control how people see us, no matter what that perception is. You believe that ends justify the means, I believe that good means result in good ends. We’ve very similar.” Something strange entered Jon’s expression, almost entirely hidden by the tea, and for the first time Martin wondered if this was an expression Jon hadn’t meant for him to see. “You’re the only person I’ve ever met who is exactly like me. We should work together. You’re so well suited for the Mother. You’d be a treasured son. Valued, celebrated, loved. Everything you always wanted, you can have.”

Silence stretched between them. Martin let Jon think that he was thinking it over, staring into his own cup of Earl Grey and letting the slowly wafting steam fog up his glasses. Jon sipped his tea again, still posed casually yet attractively. In a brief yet stupid spurt of nostalgia Martin found himself missing the man he thought Jonathan Sims had been. 

Stupid. Loving Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist, had been as real as crushing on a love interest in a dating sim. Instead, Martin leaned in, and Jon leaned in to match him. Martin locked eyes with him, as sincerely as he possibly could. No lies, no artifice. “Stop projecting your insecurity about your own bad decisions on me,” Martin enunciated clearly, and Jon’s eyes widened in shock. “and get out of my house.”

He did, eventually. Maybe that was one of a million surprising things about Jonathan Sims, or whatever his real name was: Martin could always get him to do what he wanted eventually. 

***

Martin did not spend time thinking about Jonathan Sims, mostly because he had the feeling that this was what Jonathan Sims wanted. 

Instead, he frantically piled more and more projects and work into his free time. Ever since he was seventeen, Martin had always held down at least three jobs. His life was a never-ending rotation of a six am to three pm shift at Papa John’s, then a three pm to ten pm shift at Panera, and then stumbling home to stuff a ready meal in the microwave before doing it all over again only to work his third weekend job on the weekends. It had gotten to the point where he had paid the unemployed downstairs neighbor living on disability cheques to feed and occasionally take care of Mum because he hadn’t had time to do it himself. Martin could have have just dropped a job and scraped by on two so he could take care of Mum himself, but - well, it wasn’t hurting anybody. His neighbor had needed the cheques, right?

In comparison, the Institute had been an absolute dream. Work from nine to five, every day, then come home and crash. There had been benefits, insurance. It probably said something that even after discovering that both of his bosses had been cultists to Lovecraftian horrors who wanted to end the world or whatever, it was still the best job he ever had. He even missed it, sometimes - missed listening to Sasha and Tim joke around, missed the repetitive work, missed harmlessly and shallowly crushing on his persnickety boss who sometimes flashed a smile at him that made his heart melt. 

Fucker had known exactly what he was doing. 

That was what got Martin, even now. What had been the point? Jon had been there to infiltrate Elias’ plans for a Head Archivist, or so Sasha had confusingly explained after the fact. The skeptic, pissy act was to show himself off as an ideal candidate: willfully ignorant, psychologically vulnerable, and utterly isolated from everyone. What was the point of...of...seducing Martin?

The thought made Martin want to die. Imagine living a life where you woke up in the morning and thought to yourself, ‘Today I’m going to seduce the ugly, fat, high school dropout in my extensive long con to save/destroy the world’. It was like he was a movie star in a heist film or something, only cruel and pointless. 

Was it just to make fun of him? Martin had thought it was. But as he...interacted with Jon more and more, he got the sense that his fascination with Martin was genuine. He genuinely saw something of himself in Martin. 

Unless that was a lie too, and he just needed something from Martin. Unless Jon knew that Martin knew that he was conning him, and that there was another reason -

Martin had the terrible sense that Jon lived his life like this, always guessing and second guessing and triple guessing. It sounded...very tiring. 

He didn’t know how to explain any of this to Tim. They got together every so often for drinks - actually, Tim texted him asking to hang out, playing it all cool as if he went out and got drinks with tons of buddies all the time but was doing Martin a favor. Martin had the sense that he was hiding a deep and pervasive loneliness, but these days whenever Martin went down too deep a spiral of teasing out motivations he felt like Jon, so he quickly cut it out. 

“What’s there to get?” Tim said, throwing back his pint. “He’s an asshole who pretended to be our friend for months, and he turned out to be a total creep who leads a spider cult. You know, as happens sometimes!”

Sometimes Martin got the sense that Tim was a little bitter about what happened at the Archives. He didn’t really have a good thread on why yet, but he had the sense it was because Tim had ‘adopted’ Jon as his friend very intensely and that made him react badly to the perceived betrayal - no! No psychoanalyzing! Not today! 

“It do be like that sometimes,” Martin said wisely, peeling away the label at his shitty beer. The bar was crowded, noisy, and dim, and it was hard to hear Tim over the noise. “I don’t know, though. If that was all there was to it, he wouldn’t be showing up at my house all the time…”

“Wait, what?”

Martin explained in short order, trying not to feel embarrassed about it. Tim seemed to grow increasingly furious, and Martin found himself trailing off uncertainly near the end. 

“He’s doing the same thing to Sasha,” Tim said lowly. “Fucking freak.”

“Wait, what? He’s been bothering Sasha?” Jesus, that really was creepy. Come to think of it, Martin hadn’t seen Sasha around lately - she used to come get drinks with them right after they all got fired, but the last three invites she had begged off and said that she was ‘dealing with a lot right now’ and that she was ‘really swamped’. Martin was pretty sure that she was also unemployed, so he didn’t really know what she was swamped with, but it wasn’t any of his business. Maybe she was depressed. “Like, is he also trying to recruit her into the spider cult, or…?”

Weirdly, Martin felt a weird pang of disappointment at that. He had thought that what he and Jon had was special. 

Ha ha. As if. 

“I don’t know!” Tim cried, frustrated. He was gripping his pint glass tightly, as if he wished he was wrapping his fingers around Jon’s very slim and attractive neck instead. “First he keeps bothering Sasha, and now he keeps breaking into your house and flirting with you -”

“What!” Martin squeaked. “He’s not -”

“He’s a predator,” Tim said finally, as if he was a judge delivering a verdict. “Fucking freak. Martin, next time he drops by, I want you to call me immediately. I’ll kick his ass for you.”

“I’m a grown man, I can kick his ass by myself,” Martin said lamely, fully aware that he had never kicked an ass in his life and never would. 

“Don’t let that bully intimidate you,” Tim lectured, like the overbearing big brother Martin had always kind of secretly wanted. “He’s just a grifter, spider cult or not. Seriously, Martin, next time he bothers you call me. I have more than a few things I want to say to the bastard.”

It was heartwarming, almost. “You haven’t seen him since he killed Elias, right?”

Tim looked away, scowling. “Nope. Dunno why, if he’s hassling you two. I’m the only one with some serious questions I need to ask him, and he hasn’t even - whatever.” He looked back at Martin, forcing a great big smile. “Really, if he wants a hottie, why isn’t he knocking on my door, right? Like, come on, I’m single and ready to -”

“How’s the job hunt going, Tim!”

“I’m trying to get back into publishing, what do you think! Kill me!”

Martin liked Tim. If you had asked him four months ago if they were really friends, he would have smiled and deflected, because he was pretty sure that Tim was just that friendly to everybody. Martin always felt insecure with friendly and nice people, because he never knew if they were being friendly to him because they liked him and considered him a friend, or if they were just like that with everyone. 

But they still got drinks when they didn’t have to, and the expression of tight and barely controlled rage that flashed through his face when he thought that Sasha and Martin were in danger from Jon was real. Maybe they really were friends. 

Maybe there was something deeply buried and long since repressed in Tim that was destroying him slowly from the inside. Maybe Martin and Sasha had that too, that rot: the way Sasha would carelessly invade privacy to hack inside people’s private files without even thinking about it, the way that Martin would almost instinctively balance impression management with playing down to expectations with always dissecting people in a ruthless search for a weak point without even thinking about it. 

Maybe they were all bad people, every one of them. It felt sometimes as if Martin had a corrupt and diseased heart, that infected parts of his body with a sick necrosis. He hurt people when he didn’t want to; he said things he didn’t mean. There was something rotten and evil in Martin, and sometimes it felt as if he couldn’t help but pass it along from person to person.

Man hands on misery to man, Phillip Larkin said, it deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself. 

Well, Martin had the second part down. He was still working on the first. 

***

But Martin was right to worry, because when he woke up at seven the next morning to shamble into his living room, he flipped the light switch to see Jonathan Sims sitting on his grandma couch flipping through his meager collection of books. 

“You don’t read very much, do you?” Jon said.

“How did you get into my house.”

“Told the landlord I was the exterminator and needed to get in to spray for bugs.” Jon tossed the book on the battered coffee table - 1984 - and reclined on the sofa. “You really do have quite a bit of spiders, though. Want me to take care of that? Do you want more spiders? I can get you as many spiders as you like.”

The way he sat was purposeful, the way one of his black boots with a low heel was propped on the coffee table, the way his dark and closely cut trousers were slightly splayed, his tight black turtleneck highlighting his figure was slightly hidden by a fine white silk jacket. The small part of Martin’s mind that used to work at a dry-cleaners inanely wondered how difficult that jacket was to keep clean. Most of Martin’s mind was occupied realizing that Tim was right, and that Jon was flirting with him. 

“What do I have to say to get you to leave my house,” Martin said, instead of asking why, why, why, why. He knew why - spider cult purposes - but why -

“Lots of poetry collections, though,” Jon said, and Martin knew that he had caught him looking. He had a little half-smile: half encouraging, half shy. “You have great taste. I’m a Yeats fan too.”

Sure. “Name one Yeats poem.”

“The Stolen Child,” Jon said instantly.

Martin narrowed his eyes. “What do you like about it?”

Jon was silent. 

“Thought so.” Martin pointed at his door. “Out.”

There it was, a brief explosion, so quick that Martin might have thought he imagined it: grinding teeth, sloping eyebrows, a scowl. A flash of irritation: here one second, gone the next. “I like your poetry, though,” Jon attacked, a different angle. “Your imagery is very vivid.”

What the fuck. “You went through my diary?” Martin screeched. 

“Yes?” Jon looked slightly flummoxed. “I was doing research. People like it when you display interest in their hobbies.”

“I am making coffee,” Martin said, voice strangled, “and I am making breakfast. And if you refuse to leave, you are not saying a single word until I’ve had caffeine.”

And then Martin refused to acknowledge Jon any more. Martin quickly realized that Jon hated this very much, used to being the center of attention wherever he was, and it was an extremely effective method of making him throw himself into a kitchen chair and sulk as the coffee pot sputtered out a cup. Martin focused himself on heating up the pan and cracking a few eggs into a bowl, whisking it absentmindedly as he clenched his mobile. 

He should call Tim. He had never known Jon to get violent, but that didn’t mean anything. The guy was...he was…

He glanced back at Jon, who had his arms crossed and was frowning down at the stained wood of the kitchen table. He didn’t seem to know Martin was looking, and it occurred to Martin for the first time that this might be the authentic Jon: tired and frustrated and uncertain what he was doing wrong. 

The eggs sizzled on the frying pan, and Martin pushed them around with a spatula. “What do you like on your eggs?”

Jon looked up, surprised, before rearranging his expression into something cool and distant. “Surprise me.”

Martin served them cheesy with herbs, just for that. When Jon took a bite he looked surprised, as if he had been expecting something spiteful and received only something good in exchange. 

When he put a cup of Early Grey in front of him, with sugar congealing on the bottom and rosy brown from the cream, he looked surprised again too.

“You’re excellent at reading people,” Jon said, carefully directly after Martin had a sip of his coffee. “Mother would -”

“Do you want to make a bargain?” Martin asked. 

That caught Jon’s attention. He smiled winningly, leaning in, hair carefully arranged to fall over one shoulder in a painfully attractive way. “I could be convinced.”

“If you knock on my door at a reasonable hour, then I will let you in and we can talk or whatever. I’ll make us tea. I don’t care.”

Jon’s grin only widened, and when Martin felt a foot brush his leg he had to fight the urge to jump a foot in the air. “What’ll I do in exchange?”

“You let up on the sales pitch,” Martin said severely, and physically moved his chair further away from Jon. “And you stop lying to me. And for christ’s sake, stop pretending you’re into me.”

 Jon blinked, expression falling in shock. 

He scrambled to paste something back on, but it was as if he couldn’t decide. Martin saw him half-cycle through different expressions, different appearances: abashed, eager, flirtatious. It was as if he was frantically guessing which Jon would work best to convince Martin to do what he wanted, but he just couldn’t decide. 

Finally, he weakly asked, “What makes you think I’m not into you?”

Martin couldn’t help it: he scoffed bitterly. “Guess someone like you was never asked out as a joke in secondary. Nobody would honestly find me attractive. Everything you do is calculated, Jon, and I’m not vain enough to think the flirting is an exception. It’s obvious.”

“I’m not obvious,” Jon said, physically fighting to keep his expression from twisting into anger. It was...obvious. He eventually forced his expression into something wide-eyed and sincere, reaching out a hand to place on Martin’s arm. It was warm, but it settled oddly on Martin’s skin. Something about it didn’t feel like a human arm. “That’s just your low-self esteem talking, love. When I look at you, I see -”

“A sucker?”

Jon opened his mouth, then closed his. His hand was still on Martin’s arm. Martin didn’t know why he hadn’t shaken it off. “I see someone very kind,” Jon said, almost lamely. “I like that in a man.”

“Yeah, sure.” Martin shook his hand off - disgusted with Jon, disgusted with himself. Someone like Jon - attractive, confident, smooth - could never understand how it felt. He didn’t know why he expected him to. “I don’t know why you aren’t leaving me or Sasha alone, or why you’re trying to recruit us both into your spider cult -”

“I’m trying to recruit Sasha into my vigilante superhero team, actually.”

“Whatever. Point is, if I can’t get rid of you, I don’t want our conversations to be exhausting. These...games you’re always playing,” Martin waved his hand demonstratively as he chugged coffee with the other, “are tiring. Maybe - maybe you and I are similar, Jon. But the difference between us is that I find these games tiring. I don’t like doing it. I - what I want is a relationship where there’s no games. Where I can just be me and the other person can just be them. Don’t you want that too?”

Jon stared at him, eyes wide, almost shocked, almost hesitant, almost hopeful. 

Finally, he said, “I only trust three people.”

“I’m not asking you to trust me,” Martin, who trusted nobody, said exasperatedly. What did it say, that the leader of the spider cult trusted more people than Martin did? “I’m just asking you not to lie to me.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” Jon said, before pausing a beat. “I’d trust you if you joined my spider cult.”

“You’re shit out of luck, then. And you’re not going to convince me.” Martin took another sip of his coffee, hiding his trembling hands. “Because you can’t lie to me, Jon. Face it: I’m almost as good as you are.” He smiled wryly. “As good as someone can get without supernatural powers, anyway.”

Jon stared at him, just stared, and Martin let the moment linger in silence as he cut into his eggs. Finally, he said, “You’ll tolerate my presence if I agree to drop the act.”

“Yep.”

“I’m not sure how to drop the act,” Jon admitted, somewhat embarrassed, as if he was admitting to not knowing how to tie his shoes.

Martin rolled his eyes. “Do your best. You must have been normal at one point.”

“When I was normal,” Jon said, “nobody tolerated me at all.”

The shocking honesty made Martin almost gag on his coffee. Jon’s eyes widened again, as if he couldn’t believe what he had just said, as if he had never meant to say it. As if nobody had ever heard it at all. 

“Now that we’re actually getting somewhere,” Martin said, tactfully not touching that barrel of worms - er, spiders - with a two meter pole. “Can you please tell me your real name? Unless it was, like, wiped from your mind by your spider mom? Is this like one of those cult things were they rename you for indoctrination purposes?” Something terrible occurred to him. “Is every guy in your cult named John and every woman named Annabelle? It was just a fake name you gave to Elias, right? Right?”

Jon - whoever he was - stared at Martin, completely and utterly dumbfounded. 

Then he laughed, long and hard, hoarse and wheezing and breathy, and Martin knew that this, at least, was real. 

***

Martin: I think I’ve taken care of the Jon thing

Martin: Probably

Martin: The guy’s kinda hopeless

Tim: ya sash said that hes cool

Tim: apparently shes a vigilante now? or smth? Idk

Martin: Yeah that seems about right

Martin: At least she’s living her best life?

Tim: ya good for her honestly

Tim: ….so does Spider-Man KNOW how to use all eight of those arms ifyaknowwhatimean

Martin: WE! ARE! JUST! FRIENDS!

***

“ - so then after my father passed tragically of brain cancer, I was raised by my emotionally distant and disaffected Gran. I think she’s the one who taught me that if I ever want anything in life, I have to secure it for myself. I’ve been very independent ever since I was a child, and although my social skills have always been naturally lacking I’ve worked to compensate for that by studying the art of social interaction. I guess you could call it somewhat of a special interest of mine, I like to sit in coffeeshops with my sister Annabelle and study passerby -”

“Uh huh.”

“Did you know forty percent of Britons own pets? I think it reveals interesting things about the human psychology. The domestication of dogs has always been fascinating, of course. Did you know that all dogs are descended directly from the grey wolf? There were other wolf species at the time, but they’ve long since gone extinct.”

“Wow.”

“I know! The evolution of what we today determine as dog breeds were only created in the Victorian era. I’m sure Jonah would have had some thoughts on that, if I hadn’t fed him to my mother. Actually, few people know this, but our modern conceptualization of the wolf pack hierarchy has been thoroughly debunked. Alphas and omegas only exist in captive populations. Tell that to the werewolves, huh! Actually, I organize the weekly Avatar poker games - you can come if you’re interested, great way to make some money - and I actually did tell that to the werewolves, and they were not very happy with me -”

“Jon? I can’t hear the movie.”

“Right, right.” Jon passed Martin the popcorn. “So what’s this one about?”

Martin scooped up a handful of the popcorn without shame, feeding it in a steady stream into his mouth. “About a guy who gets turned into a fly.”

“That’s fun,” Jon said warmly. “I turned a guy into a fly once. He got stuck in a spider-web immediately and everything, it was quite entertaining.” At Martin’s horrified look, he quickly followed it up with, “Gerry had found out that he was illegally evicting tenants who were undergoing cancer treatment, asking for rent before it was due and physically intimidating the tenants and everything. He also stole one thousand dollars worth of goods from Whole Foods and everything, which is quite funny if you think about it -”

“How does someone steal a thousand dollars with of stuff from Whole Foods? It’s a grocery store.”

“I know, right!” Jon threw up his hands, accidentally sending some pieces of popcorn flying. “The rich are the true parasites, Martin! I’m speaking as an insect person!”

“Word.” 

Martin ate more popcorn, and noticed Jon carefully brush his crossed legs against Martin’s knee. 

Well, he was trying. He’d stop pretending to like Martin eventually. 

They’d get there. ;

[sodone-withlife]

many faces

here’s something that has been in the works for a few weeks that I finally got myself to finish today. I was watching some edits on YouTube (as one does) and since Aaron Hotchner lives in my head rent-free, a line about death really just hit me, so here you go: almost 4k words about Hotch and Death

All credit to the writers of GoT for the quotes (even though they seriously fucked up season 8), and the last few lines in the blurb are very inspired by Arya Stark’s storyline in GoT seasons 5 and 6. Hope you all enjoy!

warning: canonical character death

word count: 3.7k words

There is only one god, and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: not today.

- Syrio Forel (Game of Thrones s1e6)

He entered the world in the dead of night towards the start of winter, after the mother spent over twenty hours in labor. The father, passed out after too many drinks, was woken in time to hear the ear-splitting cry of the newborn. Faced with the dark eyes and dark hair that was so like his own, he could only turn away, hating the newborn’s innocence with a burning passion.

When the father gave closing statements only hours later that day, exhaustion overtook him. And so, the mother locked herself and the newborn in the nursery in fear of the vengeful phantom that alcohol made of the man who vowed to love and to cherish the woman.

Thus the next years were spent like this, the mother locking the door to the toddler’s room, reading story after story and waiting out the phantom. The innocence of youth was the only barrier protecting the toddler, one which dissipated the moment he turned four.

Their first dance was when he was eight and had collapsed in class after having spent hours struggling to breathe through the cracked ribs and move through the concussion that had been gifted to him by his father. When he woke up in the hospital, it was to the sight of both of his parents watching over him worriedly, but one’s expression was too vacant, and the other was hiding a familiar rage.

That wasn’t the last time his father put him in the hospital. It was easy to write off—who wouldn’t believe the only lawyer in town, who had done so much for his community?

Those that didn’t believe kept their mouth shut for fear of their reputation being sullied.

The little brother, young as he was, had no idea the power that he possessed. Ever since his birth, the mother’s skin remained unblemished and free from the bruising that was often there before, when she only had one child.

It was easy to play to the reputation the town had given the eldest. Silent and cold, stealing the joy out of everyone near him just as the dark of the Winter steals the light of the Summer, just as the father stole pieces of his being with every blow and every hospital visit.

He had already danced with Death many times before in his short life thus far, but now they were here to take his father away. He stood at the gravestone a few days later with a bottle of vodka he knew his father had hidden amongst his desk drawers. Now the eldest male in the household, the responsibility fell on his back and dragged him down into the depths of vodka and glass shards.

His Spring found him lying there, passed out with cuts on his arms as his mind was elsewhere, dancing with Death. She was relieved to see that they weren’t deep, and so she called her sister to help her bring him back to their house.

When he woke up with a pounding headache and throbbing arms, he saw the relief of his Spring. As she spent time with him in the days after Death took his father and reminded him of the light in the world with each dark secret he confessed, he fell in love all over again, just as the Spring coaxes the Winter into the light.

Later, he would think of the mottled red that had stained his father’s face and the unpleasantly warm, alcohol-tainted breath that washed over him as he stood in front of the wild, untamed man and took the abuse that was sent towards him as he was blamed for the man’s failures. He would think of the wide-eyed joy that his little brother explored the world with and his mother’s skin that had remained unblemished since his little brother came into the world.

He wouldn’t be touching vodka ever again.

He spent more time at her house, no matter how out of place he always felt amidst a family that was so close and open to each other, and slowly, his Spring taught him about the light of life.

They were lessons he strove to keep in the forefront of his mind in college and law school, even as he stared cheap alcohol and razor blades in the face with shaking hands. He went dancing with Death once, early in college, but he remembered her fear and worry despite the throbbing pain he felt.

He was dumping the alcohol down the drain as soon as he could and making it a habit to put his razors out of sight. He made sure she never found out about that one.

It was freeing to be in college and law school—Death did not reach him there. But soon he was graduating with a Juris Doctor degree and throwing himself into prosecuting crimes with a vengeance.

His father had once walked the same halls he was walking, and that was something he was reminded of each time he was addressed by his—his father’s—last name. Death walked in with each case, a silent spectator as he worked long hours to get offenders put away, to get justice for the victims who were sent into Death’s waiting arms far too early in life.

But it wasn’t always that easy. He knew that going in, but it didn’t take away that terrible feeling as he watched a jury buy into the misogynistic song and dance the defense put up in a rape case. As the defense uncovered some shady investigation on the police’s part and managed to get the whole case thrown out. As he watched a young man get sentenced for killing his abusive parents. As he watched an older brother get sentenced for assaulting a police officer that had assaulted his younger sister while that same police officer walked free with only his badge stripped and a year of house arrest.

Death walked the halls with him, with each case that he tried and with each new victim whose name and face he kept in the forefront of his mind. Young as he was, he was already one of the more jaded prosecutors in the office, His work ethic earned him numerous nicknames, and talk flew around about him potentially becoming the youngest district attorney in the county.

But the children…

The final straw came and went. Eight months after a serial pedophile walked free, with four years of prosecution under his belt and talk about him becoming DA, the youngest in county history—he threw it away and started over at the Academy.

A fresh start. He loved Virginia, but he fell in more love with the Pacific Northwest. The cool weather, the beauty of the temperate rainforests, and the scenic coastline were so different compared to the ghosts that haunted him back east. His and Haley’s first anniversary was a memory he would cherish forever; the picture never left his wallet

Two years of trying to solve cases before they got as bad as they were when they came across his desk in the prosecutor’s office and being part-time in the local field office SWAT unit hadn’t snuffed out the strange love he had for the region. Though he was more often calling Death to him to sweep the offenders he was hunting away, he did come close to dancing with Death a few more times—he was quite good at close quarters, but his true specialty was distance.

It was oddly comforting, though, to know that even as changes continued to happen, some things remained the same.

Only a week after his superior gave him a heads up about potential recruitment to the tactical team out in Quantico, he met David Rossi in San Francisco on a five-year-old cold case. He didn’t miss the look of surprise that appeared on the older agent’s face in reaction to his theory about the killer.

He had heard of the BAU and had listened to some of their lectures at the Academy about profiling—the confusion he felt at hearing about the years of training members of the team went through was reignited when Rossi started waxing poetic about an instinctual ability weeks later when they were at a bar after the case was declared cold.

That theory he had presented when he first met Rossi didn’t feel like an instinctual gift, and he said as much to the other agent.  Nevertheless, he and Haley were back in Virginia just months later—she was teaching at a local high school and he was the newest member of the BAU.

And so he danced, and he learned of the many faces Death had. He danced as Gideon started grooming him for leadership weeks after Rossi retired. He danced as Morgan brought his unending stubbornness and heart of gold. He danced as JJ and Garcia brought reminders of the light that was still in the world. He danced as Reid brought his own brand of uniqueness and painful reminders of his young age.

He danced with Death, who he could see peeking out from the eyes of the unsubs he and the team ended up facing off with. He danced more than he ever had, but his Spring kept him from falling into Death’s waiting arms. His Spring and the prospect of binging a child into the world together kept him going as Adrian Bale took out six agents with one bomb, sent him to the hospital for shrapnel wounds, and sent Gideon into a post-traumatic tailspin.

It was fine in the beginning; the expectation the Gideon would be returning made the long hours bearable. Six months passed, and he came back, but he didn’t return to leadership. Whispers that trickled down from up high made it clear that this designation was permanent.

They both thought they could make it work. Their child came into the world just days after he wove his web around Death and stared them down through a sniper rifle. He took a month off, and came back to face Death once more—only they were wearing the face of a man who killed multiple families.

He came close to another dance when Death wore a face that was nearly identical to his own—all that was different was their walks of life. He opened up more directly to Vincent Perotta than to anyone else that was currently on the team; Gideon could only profile, and he only explicitly told Rossi and his Spring about what his home life had been like.

Life went on, though with how often he danced with Death, it couldn’t really be considered living.

He danced, and he watched.

He watched as Elle danced with Death for the first time and was permanently changed because of his inaction.

He watched as Reid danced with Death for the first time and nearly fell into their arms because of his inaction.

He watched as Death taunted Gideon again and again until the man finally left to search for the fire that had been stolen from within him.

He watched, and he danced

He watched as his Winter darkness slowly crept towards Spring and their child, as his darkness became so oppressive that Haley finally left when he couldn’t stop himself from running to dance with Death. And when the light of Spring (not his, not anymore, she never was—) left, his darkness took over.

He watched as Death claimed Kate in an explosion of fire and debris and whirling him along in the quickest of dances, and he couldn’t help but envision his Spring in her position. He wasn’t blind, he knew how similar the two women looked, he knew what the team whispered behind his back, but it didn’t matter to him. All that mattered was the phone call he was going to have to make to Haley, who had gotten along so well with Kate but now had to face the reality of her death.

Colorado was a new hell for him, as he felt Death’s oppressive presence all over the compound that trapped two of his agents inside. When the buildings were engulfed in flames and debris, he could only sigh in relief that Death didn’t see fit to take his agents today.

When he met Death once more, they were speaking through Megan Kane. Hearing the confidence the young woman had in him, feeling the exhausted resignation she felt at her impending death…

The press got the tip just days after the SIM card was examined by the lab.

Death waits for nobody, however, and his ten-year-old demon woke up to shove onto him more responsibility and more guilt as ten people were found shot to death on the bus in Boston.

He had gotten the profile so right but still so wrong, and Death laughed in his face.

Death laughed as he was stabbed nine times and was in their clutches for thirty minutes before the doctors managed to shake him loose from their arms. They danced and they danced, and Death laughed as he found the bloody picture of Spring and the child.

And he found that he couldn’t wait to see the face Death chose to wear one more time if only to show him just how angry he was, how deeply he felt despite the mask that he put up. His team had no idea how close he was to the edge, and he didn’t let them see the depths of madness he had fallen into.

Even over twenty years out of college and he was still compulsively hiding his razors, but now he couldn’t be more glad but also more hateful for the habit.

But Death gives no respite, and nine months to the day Spring went into hiding with the child, he found himself unraveling quicker than he ever had as he was forced to listen as Spring was stolen from the world.

When the team finally got to the old house, they watched as the tenuous control he held over himself was ripped straight out of his grasp in a bloodthirsty, grief-stricken rage. His hands didn’t feel like his own, and he couldn’t place Jack into JJ’s care fast enough for fear that the hands of a killer would destroy the last precious light in his darkness.

Those same hands felt the unnatural cold that was already setting in on Spring, and his mind froze.

Should he have stopped dancing?

Could he have stopped dancing?

Would it have done anything?

Would it have saved her?

He lived only to make sure Spring lived on in their son. He couldn’t give up chasing Death, but he made sure to keep his son at the forefront of his mind, and if that meant staying behind and coordinating and the precinct, that was fine. It was a change that would have been asked of him when JJ was plucked from the team by the Pentagon, but with the whispered he’s been hearing in meetings, he couldn’t help but feel like she was walking straight into Death’s waiting arms.

There wasn’t any time to worry, however, nor was there time to marvel at the fact that he had made it this far after Spring was ripped from his weak grasp, as he soon had to send Emily away and pretend that she had been claimed by the being he was so familiar with. Barely over a year, and three women who had changed his life so drastically were all ripped from his desperate grip, and his team was barely keeping it together.

It was no longer a dance, but a chase. He chased Death, almost as if his efforts would somehow bring them back and fix everything. He closed himself off and kept chasing because otherwise he would crash and burn and take everything around him down with him.

He kept chasing, all the way to Pakistan and all the way back to face the wall of anger and betrayal that he knew was justified. He kept on going, as Beth came into his life and as Emily left to find her own equilibrium. He didn’t stop, not even when Maeve Donovan was murdered in a manner eerily similar to his own unraveling years ago, not even when he spoke to Sean for the first time in years only to lose him to the criminal justice system, but just weeks later he was given the option once more: he could fight the futile fight, or he could stop and protect his team from afar, standing guard just as he’s done for so many years now.

There was a brief moment that he wondered if he should have taken the section chief job, but just minutes later he was feeling the world tilt as his legs gave out from under him and he collapsed on the floor of the conference room, the pain in his abdomen that had been slowly burning for the past few days turning into a roaring fire that threatened to consume him from the inside out.

And how could he describe the tumultuous feelings of utter joy and desolate grief he felt when he saw Haley sitting in that dress she had worn on their first anniversary in the Pacific Northwest, the dress she wore in the picture that remained in his wallet for nearly twenty years? How could he describe the utter terror he felt when Foyet crashed their time together and shot her once again, or the renewed grief when he realized this would be the last vivid memory he would have of the Spring who had taught his Winter about the light?

But he woke up with the lingering feel of Haley’s lips on his own to see Garcia and her always brightly-colored clothing that matched her ever-optimistic outlook on life that was often a blessed reprieve from the evil that consumed their jobs, and he remembered why he stayed.

Not only to chase Death, but for the family he realized he had found along the way.

But just as life must go on, Death must as well.

Soon he was calling in favors while learning about the horror JJ had gone through during her stint with Pentagon. Soon his paranoia was reignited as he and the team tried to figure out just how deep the corruption went in that police force all the while Reid was hospitalized with a neck wound. Even as he was reminded of the dangers of the chase when he drove to his old mentor’s cabin in the middle of the night, he kept chasing, because, for all that he knew he had a family in the team, he knew it wouldn’t last.

It couldn’t last.

It was a truth he was all too intimately familiar with.

So he chased, and he chased, and he chased.

And Death laughed and taunted him, throwing him into a mental tailspin through Peter Lewis.

Perhaps that was the moment when he finally lost himself: sitting against the desk, paralyzed as his family was murdered in front of him.

Or maybe it was when he forced himself to play along to Lewis’s sick fantasy and pretend that he was going to shoot at his team.

Was it pretend, though?

Nothing felt real after that—one moment he was grounded in reality and the next he was hearing that awful growling noise right behind him and seeing that terrible Glasgow smile as the hairs on his neck stood up. But, as always, he never let the team know just how far he’s fallen, and he kept going and protecting and chasing with the whole of his being.

He threw himself into work with a vengeance when Garcia was being targeted by the darknet hit group and when Morgan and Savannah were being threatened by the vindictive Montolo Sr, knowing all too well what was at stake.

When Morgan told him about his intent to leave the bureau, he could only feel relief that Morgan wouldn’t fall down the path he himself chose to go down all those years ago, when he first realized he could never stop dancing with Death. He told him as such in that hospital room, and the two exchanged a look, one that was borne from years of respect and kinship that had formed between the two as a result of an understanding only two profoundly hurt yet fiercely protective beings could have.

But life goes on, the moment broke, and he went back to chasing, only to be stopped right in his tracks by Death once again when Metro SWAT stormed his apartment and arrested him at gunpoint right in front of his son. Now, Death wore the faces of all of those who swore revenge against him and tried to break his will.

They very early succeeded, too—it was the closest he felt to unraveling since that terrible day seven years ago, but he knew he couldn’t without taking the whole team down with him. He couldn’t let the seams burst open.

Not yet.

Not until he found out Peter Lewis escaped.

Not until he found out Peter Lewis was baiting his team while working to fulfill a vendetta against him.

Not until he found out the Peter Lewis had watched Jack at one of his soccer games, and not until he found out that Peter Lewis had stalked Jack to his school.

So he planned, he made calls, and he wrote letters to the team and his family.

One night, Aaron Hotchner left those letters on his office desk alongside his resignation letter and credentials, the one thing that truly defined him for nearly twenty years.

Without it, he was no one.

One night, after tucking his son into bed, no one slipped out of his apartment with both of his service weapons and a sparsely packed bag and disappeared into the night, one goal in mind.

Hunt.

I know death. He’s got many faces. I look forward to seeing this one.

- Arya Stark (Game of Thrones s8e2)