#were so close to being done with data processing

[midnight-mourning]

L'appel de la Mer

🐟🐟Midnight's DCA MerMay Day 5🐟🐟

i will get caught up, it may seem impossible rn, BUT I WILL GET CAUGHT UP-

anyway, please enjoy this silly little thing

Prompt: Hello, hello, dear! Here is a little request: Kraken Sun and Kraken Moon hear the beautiful singing of Mermaid Y/N, and the boys decide to court them to win their affections, wishing for Y/N to become their mate. Y/N is cold at first, but softens as they see how adorable and silly the charming Krakens are, such darling gentlemen that truly mean their words of love. Y/N accepts their courtship, singing for the boys, while Sun and Moon brush Y/N's hair.

DCFPU prompt used: Seashell(s)

Word Count: 1982

Story will be posted to ao3 soon!

🌊🎣🌊🎣🌊🎣🌊🎣🌊🎣🌊🎣🌊🎣🌊🎣🌊

The warm sun feels soothing against the chill of the water lapping below you. It's only in rare moments like this do you truly get to enjoy moments such as these. Best not to take it for granted. You shift slightly, scales sliding against the rock, and sigh, face nuzzling into it for good measure. 

Usually at this time of day you'd be busy with a flutter of activity. Though not willingly mind you. Sailors passing through, mers approaching with gifts and trinkets galore. All of them with the same thing on their mind; you. Or rather, having you for themselves. 

It hadn't been intentional, if anything it was anything but. You just simply enjoyed singing. It made you happy, made you feel fulfilled in your long, otherwise uneventful life. Singing was your outlet for joy, but in so many cases, it had become nothing but a burden. 

Anymore, you rarely sang. Finding that by avoiding it you avoided any and all unwanted attention. It made you sad, disheartened even, but you were better off for it in the long run! At least, that's what you told yourself. 

Nevertheless, you could at least enjoy this moment of peace for what it was worth. In fact, you almost want to fall asleep, all cozy and warm. Like laying near an underwater vent. 

Almost unknowingly, out of control, you start to hum to yourself a sort of lullaby. That hum grows into soft mumbling, trailing into singing before you know it. 

It's sleepy and jagged, but it's soothing to you as you feel yourself begin to drift off from your own song. 

"So you're the source of all that lovely music."

You spoke far too soon. 

Annoyed, you pretend to not hear whoever it is that's stumbled upon you now. Based on the singular voice it must be another mer and not a passing ship. Good and bad. Less to deal with, but harder to slip away from. You'll play this out and see how it goes. 

The second mer is a surprise. 

"I don't think they can hear your praise, Moon. Can't you see they're resting?"

A chuckle. "Resting yes, but asleep? Far from it. I think I'm simply being ignored."

"You're saying that as if you don't deserve it. You are interrupting their midday nap after all."

"If I recall correctly, coming up to the surface to see them had been your idea, Sun."

You scowl against the rock as they continue to bicker back and forth. When it delves into a full argument you make a noise of displeasure. But just as you're about to look up and say something you're hit with a sudden wave of water, shocking you fully awake and nearly knocking you off the rock. 

Sputtering, you look up and open your mouth to share a few choice words, only to be stunned into silence by the sight in front of you. 

Currently having it out with each other are two mers that are much larger than you. One blue, the other yellow. One with fins surrounding its head, the other with a cap-like structure. Both have several large tentacles for their bottom halves, and both are utilizing said tentacles to fight against the other. 

Kraken mers. 

Your favorite. 

You shake off your initial surprise and go back to being displeased at having your sunbathing interrupted by not just one, but two mers. And if they think you're going to let them get by with it just because you're a bit intimidated they are sorely mistaken. 

"Hey." You yell, though it does nothing. You try again, louder. "Hey!"

Still nothing, another large wave splashes against you, now completely ruining the warmth of your rock. Angry now, you look around for something to throw, picking up a nearby lose chunk of stone. You gather your strength and hurl the chunk in their general direction. 

It happens to be timed just right to hit the yellow one on the forehead. It startles him at most, but he stops what he's doing--holding the blue mer down in the water--to look at you.

"What was that for?" He pouts, the other mer snickering in the background. 

You scoff, then shake your head, feeling completely enraged for a moment. You raise to your full height possible on the rock, lifting your hands up in disbelief. "You've ruined my rock, that's what! Coming up here and bothering me while I'm trying to enjoy the nice weather, do you have any idea how long I've waited for a day of peace and relaxation?"

As you go on, you see them both cower at your words which, internally, gives you a bit of a power trip but in turn you lose your train of thought. "So, if you don't mind, I'd like to finish my nap in quiet. Thank you very much." You twist around, laying on your back now and ignoring the feeling of cool dampness against your skin and scales. 

For a minute or so, there is relative silence all around you, and your anger slowly begins to leech away. In fact, you feel your frown slip into a serene smile as the sun starts to evaporate away the water from your skin. 

A quiet ripple to your left catches your ear. 

"We're terribly sorry, sweet thing. I'm afraid we got a bit caught up in the moment."

"Yes, very sorry. Didn't mean to be a bother."

You feel your frown return, though a bit softer.

"It's fine. Though I suppose now you have something to say, don't you?" Your eyes remain closed. You're already prepared for the usual spiel, you hope they'll be quick. 

There's a splash again. "Actually, a gift. Though plenty of words if you'd like them."

"Multiple gifts at that if you'll allow."

You crack an eye open. It’s been some time since you’ve received gifts for your singing. 

Sure enough, you find the yellow mer is holding a sparkly seashell out to you. When you turn your head to the right, you see the blue mer is also holding a shell of his own. And while never participating much yourself, you know the rules around courting. You're just genuinely taken aback by what is occurring. 

Sure, you know your singing attracted mers to you, and you'd been asked for your hand on more than one occasion as a result, but very few had ever taken the actual steps to prove it. You were flattered for a brief moment, and then highly suspicious. Maybe your sleepy singing had been better than you thought. 

You keep your expression neutral. "I appreciate the gesture, but I cannot accept."

"Are they not pretty enough?" The yellow one asks. 

"We can find better options. Say the word and we'll find exactly what you like."

You're not used to this. The... genuinity in their tones, but you let it go, you're overthinking it. 

Still, you'll give a bit of sympathy, considering the slight fear you still hold of them. 

"How about a couple names?" You ask. "You don't even know mine and here you are wanting to court me like it's nothing." You can't help the bitterness which boils under the surface of your words. 

The two krakens look between each other, as if realizing something. Profusely, they apologize. Surprising you even further. 

Yellow puts a hand. To his chest, bowing slightly. "If you'll allow us a chance to amend our blunder, my name is Sun."

"Moon." States the blue one. "And yours, pretty pearl?"

You tell them yours, blunt. To the point. They seem bothered by it. 

"We'll find better options to present to you." Moon nods, seeming already determined to prove himself. 

Sun agrees. "Just give us some time, sweet. But hopefully these will be a suitable start."

Before you can protest, they gently set the shells down and dive back under the water. You get another wave sent your way in the process. 

You give up on sunbathing. 

Sun and Moon however, don't give up on you. To your eventual amazement and utter confusion. 

They each bring you shells, stones, and sea glass galore. Snacks and meals of shellfish, kelp or heaping piles of fish. Coral and pearls and quite literally anything they can find. Very pretty things however, you won't deny. All of it you know meant to be offerings for the ability to court you. 

At first you just rejected them because you didn't believe either mer held any sincerity with their gifts. Their sweet words or declarations and promises. It was far too unbelievable. All just the same as it always was. Surely they would grow tired, or your unintentional enchantment would wear off soon enough, right? You haven't even been singing lately!

Now though, now you were beginning to doubt yourself. Because of the conversations you had. Their poetic words met by your cold but wry banter. The days spent following you around, the nights spent watching the stars, offering you both companionship and assistance--when you desired it. Another baffling fact of the matter was that they kept their distance when you asked for it. Most never offered you such a courtesy. 

Both had their own traits that made them 'tolerable'. Though you'd be lying if you said they were just tolerable at this point. Slowly you'd warmed up to at least consider Sun and Moon your friends. 

Moon with how he'd cheekily tease you while he flirts. Sun with his wide-smiled compliments that after a while began to make you blush. They'd really started to grow on you. But it's not until one day, while sitting in their cave--which always had an open-invite for you--that it hits you. 

You're quietly humming to yourself as you sort through today's offerings, having become a bit of a game between the three of you by this point. Meanwhile behind you, the two of them fuss over your hair, both with each other and with the mess you've left them with to manage. To your credit, when you have enough trinkets given to you, at least some of them are going to wind up in your hair. How else were you supposed to enjoy them? 

Regardless, it's in that moment, that split second, realization rolls over you. You're singing. Quietly, barely much at all, but still singing nonetheless. You haven't done that in months. Not unless you were assured absolute and utter privacy. 

It was a combination of hoping Sun and Moon would finally grow bored, and developed into a fear that this friendship you'd foster would end up nothing but a farce. But now, you were finally comfortable enough to be around them to do it. To hum, to sing, to simply be you. Without the worry that it would be taken at face-value. 

"I accept." You blurt out then, astonished. 

You feel one set of hands stop their movement. The other continues without pause. 

"What."

"Hmm?" 

"Do you mean it?" Moon presses, bending down to meet your gaze. 

You nod, smiling and then laughing. "I do, yes."

"You do what, Sweetfin?" Sun asks absentmindedly, still not connecting things. 

You tilt your head back to see him. "Accept your offer to court me. If it's still available, that is?"

"Of course Starlight, now look forward again so I can—" Sun stops, shaking his head. "Truly?!"

He scoops you up, hugging you tightly as you laugh again. "I already said yes!"

Thus, after a bout of affection-filled confirmations, you find yourself back to being pampered, with the two mers back to bickering over your hair. Sun wanting to take the proper time to brush it out, and Moon urging him to move quicker so they weave in their favorite shells and such to proudly display your new status as partners. 

And for the first time in a long time, you sing without a care in the world. 

Well, maybe two. 

🌊🎣🌊🎣🌊🎣🌊🎣🌊🎣🌊🎣🌊🎣🌊🎣🌊

Thank you @amarynthian-chronicles for the lovely idea! I had much fun writing these three and their silly dynamics ^^

Tag list (if you would like added, simply say so!):

@scarletcowboy @beemyhuneybee @fishm0ther @deviouscrackers @elsajoyagent8 @luckyyyduckyyy @zenkaiankoku @jogimote @local-shrub @milosmantis @robinette-green @everlightreader @sinister-sincerely @starredeclipse @dangerva @juukai @crystalmagpie447 @mothgutz236 @lizyxml @divinit3a @amarynthian-chronicles @crystalfay @that-one-unknown-artist @rosescarletful @buzzy-bee @hazelthebat @nightriverart @mr-munchies

[marvelwitchergilmore]

Calm After The Storm

Summary: Tyler Owens x Fe!Reader -> Tyler checks in on you after a tough tornado.

Disclaimer: Mostly fluff, little angst, Tyler dries Reader's hair, love confessions, kisses. Not Proof Read.

Even after two separate showers, silence, blasted music, and two hours spent alone trying to comprehend everything that had just happened, your ears were still ringing. 

Nobody had seen it coming. 

An EF-5 had hit the town out of nowhere. All the data had shown it being an EF-2 at the most, then the wind just seemed to keep building and building until it had destroyed everything and everyone in its path. 

Thankfully, the motel you and the other wranglers had been staying at was just outside of the town, so where you’d spent the night was okay. But for others…their homes had been torn from the ground completely. 

You, Tyler and the others had stuck around for as long as you could until Tyler called it a day. There was a huge Costco two towns over. You’d all go there in the morning and resupply before coming back. Until then, you all needed time to recover. 

Tyler had kept his eye on you. From the minute the tornado had started to grow, he saw the fear in your eyes. You managed to keep it together for everyone else. You always seemed to have that superpower. Put on a front for everyone else because if you panicked, then it would only make them worse. But not with him. 

From day one he’d seen right through it. 

In all honesty, he’d been there himself. Before he started bull riding professionally, he built up that same strength. “You don’t face your fears, you ride ‘em.” That’s what he told people when they asked if he was scared. 

He’d be stupid if he wasn’t scared. But that didn’t mean he had to hide from the things that scared him. 

And you definitely didn’t hide. 

Not at first, at least. He could already hear the excuse you’d give the others. You were tired, you had to update the rest of the data, you wanted to get a headstart, you’d fallen asleep and forgot to set an alarm. Whatever you told the team, they’d believe you. It was all plausible. And you would eventually get around to processing all the data by the next day. 

But Tyler saw the truth. You had a tendency to keep a distance from the rest of the team after a hard chase. And part of him didn’t blame you. He’d done the same once or twice over the years, just needing a little space for a while. 

But this wasn’t the time to be left alone. You needed someone. Whether you wanted to talk about it or not, you needed someone. At least to share a breathing space. 

So, after three hours of giving you space, hearing your shower switch on and off next door at least three times, he grabbed a spare shirt and knocked on your door. You didn’t come to the door. He heard your voice, but it was barely audible through the door. 

He waited a minute before trying the handle. The door clicked open right away and he popped his head inside. You were sitting by the wooden vanity on the opposite side of the room. You were dressed in some fresh clothes, but between the lack of heating in your room and your freshly washed hair, Tyler could see the goosebumps across your skin. 

“Hey, mind if I come in?”

You shook your head lightly before looking at your hands. “No, come on in.”

He nodded and entered before closing the door behind him. “You don’t have to say anything. We don’t have to speak.” He gripped the shirt in his hands a little tighter as he made his way over to you, his eyes going from the floor and up to you in the mirror. “But I don’t want you to be alone.”

“Okay.” 

Again, your voice was quiet. Tyler could see the mask falling and shattering on the floor right in front of him. 

You didn’t continue speaking, so Tyler took the lead. “I brought you one of my jackets. They’re a little thicker so…”

He watched you for a minute. You didn’t move until he got to the very back of you. “Come here.”

Taking your hand and helping you stand, Tyler gave you a brief smile. He shook his jacket open before holding it out for you. You turned around and he helped glide it up your arms and over your shoulders. 

Carefully, he untucked your hair as you turned around before he buttoned it up. 

“Thanks,” you said, quietly. 

Tyler smiled. “Looks better on you than me, anyway.” 

He fixed the collar, your eyes finally meeting his green ones. Then his thumb brushed at the ends of your hair. 

“You got a hairdryer?”

You were a little confused. “Yeah, but I can let it air-dry.” you let out a small laugh. “Don’t think I’ve got the energy to hold one up right now.”

Tyler shook his head. “You’ll catch a cold. Here, sit down.”

“Tyler, you don’t-”

“It’s a hairdryer. I think I know how to work one.”

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

Tyler smiled and nodded his head. “I know. But I’m not having you get sick on me now, Sweetheart. Sit down.”

You did as he said and watched as he moved across to your bathroom and found the hairdryer in a cupboard under the sink. You watched as he unravelled the cord, rounded you and crouched by your side to plug it in. 

“Heat protectant?”

You went to reach for it, but Tyler beat you to it. “Just relax.”

You smiled. And so did he. 

Laying the dryer on the desk for a moment, he sprayed the protectant across your hair, as well as under before running a brush through your hair to get rid of the knots. Each time he hit one, he’d grab a small fistfull of hair before holding it loose against your scalp to avoid pulling on your hair too much. 

Then he started the hairdryer. 

Running your hair through his hands as he did so, you felt yourself leaning into his touch and slowly falling asleep in your seat. Maybe you’d start asking him to do it more often. 

Eventually the hair dryer stopped and Tyler picked the brush up again and where you’d still find knots when you’ve brushed it, Tyler found none. The brush ran smoothly through your hair. 

“There.”

Tyler placed the brush down before sitting on the bench beside you, his back to the mirror. “Thank you. You know, you might have missed your calling as a hairdresser.”

He chuckled. “Thanks.” Then he looked at you. “How are you feeling?”

You sighed a little, “I don’t know. I didn’t even see it coming.”

“None of us did.” 

“I can’t even bring myself to look at the data,” you admitted to him. “I can’t step outside because I feel like the minute I do, everyone is gonna realise it was my fault. That’s if they haven’t realised it already. I missed something.”

Tyler shook his head and took hold of your hand. “It’s not your fault. Y/n, none of us saw that coming. And you didn’t miss anything. We all saw those numbers and we all took the chance. This job is only part science. The rest is part religion. Faith. Chance. Whatever you want to call it. We can rely on the data but sometimes Mother Nature decides to throw us a curveball.”

Tyler placed his hand against your cheek and tilted your head to look at him. “Nobody saw that coming today. And none of this is your fault.”

“Tyler, I was so scared. I thought…”

He nodded, his heart breaking as he saw the tears in your eyes and the shake in your voice. Pulling you into his shoulder, he wrapped his arms around you and just held you. One of his hands held the back of your head, smoothing your hair down. 

“We’re not going anywhere. You won’t lose us. You won’t lose me.”

Your fingertips dug into him a little harder at his last statement before your arms came up his body and you hugged him around his shoulders and neck. 

“I promise.” In his promise, he held you a little tighter, too. 

Less than six hours ago, a moment flashed across his mind as he went from looking at you across from the field to the building tornado. If neither of you ran fast enough, someone would have been lost in the tornado. 

“Sweetheart…” Tyler’s voice whispered softly as he moved his head back a little to look at you.

When you finally did look at him, he wiped the tears from your eyes and tried the already fallen ones from your cheek. “I promise.”

With his eyes on you, you saw the truth in his eyes. You both knew the dangers that came with your jobs, but he meant it. He meant his promise. So you nodded. 

You believed him whole-heartedly. 

And he nodded back, brushing the hair from your face before cupping your cheek once more and pressing a light kiss to your other. 

But as he pulled back, an idea flashed across his mind and it seemed to flash across yours, too. Because half a second later, his lips were pressing a light kiss to your own. Your hand gripped to his shirt a little tighter as you made a small noise with your mouth as he went to pull away. 

You weren’t ready to stop the kiss, because once you did, you didn’t know where you and Tyler would be. 

So, with you still in his hug, he held you tighter as he kissed you. By the time you’d both broken the kiss, you could still feel his kiss on your lips and his arms around you. 

You’d left an imprint on each other to last a lifetime. 

“We should get some sleep.” Tyler told you as his thumb traced your temple. 

“Stay with me?”

Tyler nodded before resting his forehead against yours. “Always.”

“Good.”

He leaned forward and peppered a soft kiss to your lips before standing, and bringing you with him. He helped you into bed first before switching off your bedside lamp, leaving his side on. Finally, rounding the bed, you heard the buckle of his belt before the fabric of his jeans fell down his legs, leaving him in his t-shirt and boxers. Leaving his jeans folded over the back of a chair, he climbed into bed beside you before pulling you into his side and switching the final lamp off. 

As you took a deep breath in, your senses were filled with Tyler and Tyler alone. From his shirt that you were wearing, to the man himself who held you in his arms, you finally realised something. 

The ringing had stopped in your ears and it had as much from the moment Tyler’s voice had rang through your room. 

With his arms around you, you nuzzled into his side finally letting your eyes close and letting yourself relax under his touch as his lips pressed a kiss to your head. “Sweetheart?”

“Hm?”

Tyler hesitated for a moment before speaking, hoping you were still awake enough to hear him. “I love you.”

In the silence, you shuffled around a little until you were looking at him. You had a thousand questions, but they could go unanswered for now, because despite the questions, you already had your answer. 

“I love you, too.”

With his gaze on you, you felt your cheeks heat. You were glad the room was shrouded in darkness, but with his hand that came to hold your face, you were sure even if he couldn’t see it, he could definitely feel your blush. 

His thumb brushed across your cheek for a moment before he pulled you up by his bicep and held you against his body as he kissed you once again. It peppered out, until eventually you rested your head against his chest, hearing his quickened but steady heartbeat. 

That was how you fell asleep, and he kept his promise. Because when you woke up, you were still in his arms, his fingers flexing across your hip when you readjusted yourself at his side. 

[tacticaldiary]

Reader joining 141 for a mission and Simon is not having it and is pissed at price for calling them and all of the other guys are confused about why ghost is so upset till they find out reader is his wife after the mission

Maybe reader got hurt and ghost goes off on price

The Price Of A Secret

Pairing: Simon 'Ghost' Riley x Reader

Genre: Hurt/Comfort

"People get injured on the job, Ghost." Gaz tries to defuse the situation. "She's alive-"

"This is different." He grits out.

"And why's that?"

"Because that's my wife!" He hisses, slamming his fist onto the table. It strikes them harder than if he were to have yelled it at them.

A/N: It's 2:45am and I have no energy to proofread caution advised-

Masterlist

The moment the picture of the intelligence officer joining them flashes on the screen, Ghost puts his foot down.

"She's not coming."

Everyone in the room pauses, Price staring at Ghost mid sentence. It's the usual 141, and then it's her. Sitting there with a mildly frustrated look, refusing to look at him because she should have known he'd try to pull some shit like this.

"Why not?" Price folds his arm, narrowing his eyes. "Is there an issue, Lieutenant?"

She was supposed to work from the inside, drawing out data and cracking through defences that they then passed on to people like the 141. An integral part of the process of running the whole task force, but not once was she involved in hands-on field work.

It's not that she's incompetent. No, not at all. Ghost would have his head bit off if he even remotely implied that because it simply isn't true. She got the top scores in almost every part of her training exercises, and yet she chose the intelligence part of the military to serve in. His wife was as competent as they got.

His wife.

"This is a covert operation, the fewer people the better." That's what he goes with. Not because his heart picks up at the thought of her being anywhere near what they deal with every day.

"I won't have the range I need to retrieve the data from their servers if I'm not close to them." She speaks up, and their eyes meet from across the room.

His determined, hers resolute.

Sometimes he really hated that she was so fucking stubborn. It had been the same stubbornness that cracked down the iron grip he'd had on the walls in his mind and around his heart, but if that stubbornness was what got her killed Simon would give up this joy in a heartbeat.

He'd do it for her if it meant she kept on living.

"This isn't up for discussion, Ghost." Price states, "She's part of this operation on my authority."

"Price-"

"End of discussion. You settle whatever you have going on outside this room." And fuck, he can't refute a direct order like that, can he?

Ghost sees her release a long exhale, and he knows he won't share such a relief until this damn operation was over and done with.

                                  · · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Her body is so limp it scares the ever-loving shit out of him.

Ghost grips her so tight it's as if he himself is the only thing tethering her soul to her body, boots thumping hard against the muddy ground as they retreat back to their extraction point, data successfully retrieved.

Successfully, not smoothly.

The plan was simple. They'd flank the building while she camped out near the edge of the woods, retrieving the intel they needed. A couple of fuckers slipped out of the building and went straight for her.

Ghost's stomach turns when he remembers how he found the scene. She wasn't answering through her comms, but he knew he wasn't able to leave his position until the building was secure.

Waiting felt like an eternity, he could feel Soap send troubled glances in his direction at the way Ghost was unusually silent and more brutal than.

When the building was finally secure, they'd gone to reunite with her position and found three men dead, bloody seeping into the ground in a crimson mess. The last one standing hovered over her unconscious form, over his wife with a knife raised ready to slit her thought.

The only thought Ghost had as he ripped the man away with his hands was that he was going to take the one good thing in his life away, and he would not let that happen. Not her. Not like this.

"Bleeding wound to the head, unconscious but still breathing!" Gaz called out while Ghost shoved the man's own knife into his throat. Tossing the gurgling body aside like a ragdoll, he's immediately by her side, assessing before carefully lifting her up in his arms.

It's the most emotion Ghost has ever expressed in front of the others, but he couldn't give a fuck about the looks or the questions right now. Her heartbeat against him settled him the slightest bit with the reassurance that she was alive.

Angry does not begin to describe what itches under Ghost's skin as they scramble into their exfil airship.

"Medic!" He barks the second they lift off. Setting her down, he brushes the bloody strands of her hair away from her face.

Despite the urge to stay by her side, the medic gingerly requests for him to take a step back so he could work. Ghost obliges but his eyes never leave her face.

He's painfully aware of his wedding ring pressing against his chest, strung onto a chain long enough to be tucked under his uniform. A matching one to her own.

Nobody speaks.

Perhaps they recognise the anger washing off of Ghost in waves, because if they'd just bloody listened to him, she wouldn't be laying there with a head wound.

The atmosphere is heavy and sombre. Even Soap keeps his mouth shut, too confused by the outward, uncharacteristic way Ghost was acting to make fun of it.

It's only when the medic announces she's stable that the suffocating knot in Ghost's chest loosens. There's audible relief from everyone in the place.

"Bloody hell." Price breathes, and something in Ghost snaps.

"I told you to dismiss her from the op." He says coldly, turning to the man.

"We got what we needed, son." He sighs, deep and tired, and part of Ghost understands that this was their life. But he's too worked up to care.

"At a fucking cost."

"People get injured on the job, Ghost." Gaz tries to defuse the situation. "She's alive, that's all that matters. Nothing permanent, yeah?" He glances at the medic, who confirms with a nod before slipping away.

"This is different." Ghost grits out.

"Why's that?"

"Because that's my wife!" He hisses, slamming his fist onto the metallic walls. It strikes them harder than if he were to have yelled it at them.

How long had it taken for Ghost-...no, for Simon to let someone crack open his defences until he was coaxed out and allowed himself to love again? Four years they've been married, and four years he's kept it a secret.

It's not that he doesn't trust his team. He trusts them with his life, would lay his own down for Johnny, Gaz, and Price any day.

But this? This was bigger than him, she was the most precious thing that had ever happened to him, and the safest way to preserve that was the keep it on a need-to-know basis.

She'd agreed with him, of course. In that soft, patient way she always has with him. She'd seen the paranoia in him, recognised that he needed this one thing for himself, and she'd been more than happy to oblige.

What was outside validation about her relationship worth when she got to crawl into his arms at the end of the day? Be granted the pleasure that comes with being loved by someone as protective, intelligent, and sharp as Simon Riley? She adores all of him, even the jagged pieces that cut into her from time to time, because he's always there to take care of her afterwards.

"She's my wife." He repeats quieter, sitting back down. Exhaustion lines the slope of his shoulder's dark circles well present under his mask.

"You're married." Soap is the first to speak, incredulously. "You? Ghost? You're married?" His eyes flicker down to Ghost's left hand, and then to Gaz and Price who look equally as surprised. "I mean, congratulations?" He trails off, knowing it's not really the situation to celebrate.

"Thanks." A tired, small voice has everyone's attention back onto the figure on the bed. Ghost is on his feet in moments, by her bedside. "It'll be five years in...what, a month?" She cracks an eye open, giving Simon a tired, smile.

"Two months." He corrects with a mutter, and Johnny looks like he might just collapse. "Sitrep?"

"We're not on the field anymore." She groans, pushing herself to sit up. Ghost's hands fly to her immediately, helping her sit up. At his blank, insistent stare, she relents with a deep sigh. "My head's killing me but other than that just a few scrapes and bruises." Her hand travels down to grab his at her shoulder, squeezing briefly.

"I'm alright." Her voice turns into something soft and reassuring, and it's only then that a quiet, shuddering breath comes out of Simon's lungs. "I think I'll sit to working from the inside though." She jokes weakly. "Leave the dirtier work to you brutes."

It lightens the mood as intended, eliciting a snort from Gaz. "Yes, ma'am."

He'd make sure she got checked out properly when they landed, but for now he takes his place sitting beside her. The others fall into a hushed conversation after a while, but he makes no move to join them.

A warm hand intertwines with his, hidden beneath the bulk of their combined gear.

"I'm alright, Simon." She mumbles, just loud enough for him to hear.

Simon squeezes her hand in response. "Fucking hell, love." He breathes.

And it's enough to convey everything he's thinking. Humming, she tips her head against his shoulder and lets her eyes slip shut. The warmth of his body, even through the tang of copper is enough of a familiar comfort to drain the tension from her body.

She's fast asleep against his shoulder a minute later, and the devil himself couldn't make Simon move lest he wake her now.

He wasn't a publicly affectionate person by any means...but he trusted his team enough for this right now.

Letting his own head press against the metal wall behind them, his eyes shift to meet Price's. A softer, knowing look from the Captain is all he needs to hook his chin over her head and turn his attention outside the small window.

And if he counts her breathing while she sleeps for his own peace of mind? Well, that's no one's business but his.

Reblog, Like and Comment!

(10/09/2023)

[eyelessfaces]

just in case

poe dameron x reader

summary: while fiddling with bb–8's memory, you stumble onto an audio message– poe's prerecorded goodbyes.

based on @ivystoryweaver's headcanon on this post! thank you for allowing me to write something about it!

warnings: angst, mentions of death and war

tags: gn!reader, hurt/comfort, fluff, kissing, poe being an absolute sap

word count: 2.6k

masterlist | taglist | ao3

updates blog: @eyelessupdates

He can’t help the fond smile growing over his face at the sight of you, deeply focused on the repair project in front of you before his knuckles hit against the doorframe a couple times, catching your attention. 

Your gaze meets Poe’s as he steps into your workshop, your expression of concentration quickly giving way to an easy smile when you see him, closely followed by BB–8. 

Poe greets you with a kiss, his hand lingering at your side when he pulls away. 

“What’s bringing you here, handsome?” you ask, shifting to put away the tool you still have in hand. “Hey Beebs,” you smile as you glance down at the droid that greets you back. 

Poe gazes down at his droid, his look shifting back at you. “Could you take a look at him whenever you got the time?” he asks, a small, defeated sigh escaping his mouth. 

“What’s up?” you question, crossing your arms and raising an eyebrow at him. It hadn’t been that long since you last checked up on the droid.

“I think there’s something up with his memory, he’s been acting a little forgetful lately” Poe explains; you can see the concern in his eyes, can hear the worry in his voice.

“Okay, I’ll see what I can do.” Poe nods, pinching his lips into a quiet smile as he looks down at the droid. “Hey, you don’t have to worry'' you reassure him, resting a hand over his arm. “It’s nothing too serious usually. Nothing I can’t fix.” He nods again, knowing he can trust you with this, knowing you're as good at this as he is at flying. 

“I’ll take care of him as soon as I’m done with that” you point back to the mess of scavenged parts resting over your workbench.

“Thank you sweetheart,” he says, cupping the back of your head and leaning in to leave a quick kiss on your forehead. “I’d stay with you and tell you about my day, but I have my last meeting of the day in about less than five minutes.” he shrugs, starting to walk backwards to exit the room.

“Sure, don’t worry.” you smile. “Come over when you’re done” 

As promised, the minute you’re done repairing the project you were working on, you lower your workbench to BB-8’s level, letting him roll onto the surface before you adjust it to your level so you can examine him. 

“Hey buddy. memory issues huh?” you coo, grabbing your tools, gathering everything you need to check up on him. He responds with upset beeps, his upper part sagging in defeat. 

“That's okay. Happens to the best of us,” you reassure him, setting to work on diagnosing the problem. “So since it seems to be a memory issue, I’m gonna have to look through your data” you explain, opening his access panels. 

It doesn’t take long for you to identify the issue: a few corrupted memory files. It’s a relief to see it's nothing severe, just a bit of corrupted data that needs to be cleaned and restructured. “Hah, found the problem,” you say, beginning the delicate process of correcting the corrupted files. “Looks like some of your memory files got a bit jumbled. Should be fine once we get that sorted out, there shouldn’t be any problem.” you explain. “You know, Poe always gets so worried about you.” you say, trying to keep the droid calm as your fingers work through the wires and circuits. BB–8 emits a series of grateful beeps, and you smile, focusing back on the task at hand. 

As you work on fixing him, BB–8 chirps curiously, his dome turning to watch you. You explain each step in simple terms, trying to distract him and make it the least stressful possible for him. “I’m working through your memory module. Some of these files are corrupted, so I’m cleaning them up and re-organizing everything. Just like tidying up a messy room.”

BB-8 responds with a relieved series of beeps, and you chuckle. “Yeah, I know it’s not fun for you to have me mess with your memory stuff, but I’ll have you be back to your old self in no time.” 

As you carefully rework BB–8’s memory files, you fumble slightly with a delicate wire, causing a brief short circuit – the droid jerks and beeps erratically before suddenly playing a vocal message. You reach to stop it, assuming it’s a manufactured error message you’ve triggered, but you freeze when you recognize Poe’s voice. “Hey baby,” Poe’s voice crackles through BB–8’s speakers, startling you. You frown, confused, ready to stop the audio message. “If you’re hearing this, it’s probably because something happened and I’m not around anymore.” Your heart properly skips a beat. “I’m sorry I’m leaving you like this,” he sighs softly. “Damn it’s weird talking like this when I’m still here,” he chuckles. You step back, driven by morbid curiosity, firmly intending to listen to the rest of it. 

“But you know, with everything that’s been happening lately and that’s gonna happen, you never know what’s next.” 

He sounds tired. You bite down onto your lip, a soft frown forming over your face and your gaze lost as the recording continues. “I could die in two weeks or in twenty years from the moment I’m recording this, so it’s pretty strange. I just… I love you so much. I wanted you to hear it from me one last time.” 

Your lips curl into a weak smile, tears welling up in your eyes. It’s stupid. He’s still here. It’s just a recording in case he dies.

But somehow, you can’t help it. Not with the prospect that you could listen to it again one day, in the context it was intended to be listened to.

“You’ve always been supportive of my bullshit, no matter what, and you were always there for me no matter how stupid I got, so it’s only fair I thank you one last time. I really hope we got to enjoy our time together” 

You pause the audio message, running your hand over your face, sighing deeply. You want to stop there and not listen to the entirety of it, on one hand because you aren't even supposed to hear it or know of its existence in the first place, and most of all because you’re not sure you can handle it – but your curiosity gets the best of you, and you let it go on.

“It’s stupid that I want to cry, because I’m still here” he chuckles. “You know, I’m recording this because I couldn’t sleep.” he declares. You can hear the soft strain in his voice, you can imagine him and his tired eyes, his hair slightly mussed from tossing and turning like he always does when he’s restless.

He sighs deeply before he speaks again. “I uh… Today’s mission went awful. I could have died and I didn’t even tell you” his voice drops with the weight of his words, he pauses for a second, and the knot inside your throat tightens.  

“You’re sleeping in the next room. You know, you looked so peaceful when I got out of bed that I didn't want to bother you by kissing your forehead, but I did it anyway because I remembered I might not be able to do it forever”

You can’t help it, it’s over for you. Tears roll down your cheeks on their own, the back of your hand suppressing your sniffles and the soft laugh you huff out at his way of always saying things that will get you.

BB-8’s upper part shifts, and he emits a soft, sympathetic whirr, trying to console you.

“I’ve left this message with BB-8 because I know he’s always with you if he’s not with me. Take care of him for me, will you? And take care of yourself. You’re stronger than you know, and you’ll get through this. I love you. So much. More than you know. Which is why I’m gonna cut the recording and get back to bed to hold you tight while I can” 

Your heart tightens inside your chest. You slowly shake your head, tears forced out of you when your eyes fall shut.

“Alright, okay, bye sweetheart. I love you.” 

The recording cuts, ending with a click, leaving you in a stunned silence. BB turns to you, beeping sadly, and you give him a weak smile before wiping the tears over your cheeks with the tips of your fingers. 

You huff out a heavy breath, one that you didn’t even realize was smothering your chest, and force yourself to finish taking care of BB–8 despite everything. 

You’re still sobbing when Poe comes in again. 

He finds you, full on tearing up, not even hiding it – which he finds strange, because you usually turn around and pretend to look for something to quickly dry your tears, and proceed to poorly try to deny you’ve been crying just to avoid worrying him. 

And the context he’s facing quickly leads him to assume something is wrong with BB-8, something you couldn’t manage to fix and now blame yourself for – BB–8 is quick to deny with appalled beeps, so Poe really doesn’t have any idea what he’s dealing with. 

When you pull him near and hug him tight, gripping his hair, longing to be as close to him as possible, he’s still as confused, but he’s swift to take action and hold you even tighter.

His embrace is warm, comforting, his touch delicate as his hand appeasingly rubs over your shoulder, and you progressively manage to calm down and quiet your sobs. “What’s going on babe” he quietly asks, trying to not pounce on you. His fingers carefully lift your chin up, taking care of clearing the tears from your face, his eyes searching yours intensely as he waits for your answer.

You sigh softly, your breath still ragged from sobbing. “I was working on Beebs and I found your…” you pause, realizing you’re not even sure what to call it. You're not even sure you want to say it out loud, to say it's a goodbye message. “I found your recording– I didn't mean to, it just–”

“Oh,” his face drops in saddened surprise, immediately understanding what you’re talking about. “Oh baby” he sighs, shaking his head as he pulls you back into his arms. You weren't supposed to know about this, even less hear it fully, not until he died, that is. “I didn’t want to scare or worry you. I’m sorry you had to hear that– it was just… a precaution.” he murmurs as you cling to him, the remnants of your tears dampening his shirt.

“I know,” you whisper, your voice weak and muffled against his chest. “I just– It was hard to hear. I don’t want to think about losing you”

“I don’t want to think about leaving you either,” he says softly, pulling back just enough to look at your face again. His thumb brushes away the last of your tears when you look at him, his gaze over you filled with a mix of sorrow and unwavering love that you manage to feel just by looking into his dark, warm eyes. “But I need you to know how much you mean to me, no matter what happens”

“Poe,” you scoff-whine. “I know. You’re pretty transparent about it already” you grin. 

When he’s not saying it explicitly, he always has a hand on you, always at least leaves a kiss over your cheek or forehead when he’s not full-on kissing you, and always makes sure to bring you back those jogan fruit cakes you like from Coruscant when he has to go there, and just the way he looks at you has you aware that he loves you, so he really doesn’t need to do that much, but he’s Poe Dameron, so it’s a prerogative.

“I happen to be a very romantic man” he jokes, smiling when he sees you chuckle and shake your head the way you do when he pulls stupid lines. “I just wanted you to hear it from me one last time sweetheart.”

“You and your dramatic flair” you tease lightly, gripping onto his jacket as you let out a soft groan. “You couldn’t just leave a normal message, could you?”

“You know, subtlety isn’t my strong suit” he grins, pressing a soft kiss to your temple. “But seriously, I’m sorry you had to hear it like this. It was meant for dramatic times, not when I was about to ask you if you wanted to get dinner off base like now.”

You snort up a laugh, your arms wrapping around his neck. “You do owe me dinner after that.” 

“I know, right?” he scoffs, an amused smile over his face. “And it means I get to spend more of my alive time with you, so–” he teases, his fingers gently rubbing your back. “Stop that, it’s not funny” you frown, playfully hitting his chest with the back of your hand. “–Plenty of time to remind you that I love you” his hand squeezes yours gently.

You pull him closer, pressing your lips to his in a kiss that is both tender and intense, slow at first but deepening when the fear, the relief, the overwhelming love you feel for him step at the front of your mind. His hand moves from your hip to cup your face, his thumb caressing the skin of your cheeks rough from the tears.

When you break apart, your foreheads are still linked, his fingers gently tracing your face, your breaths mingling. “I’m joking about this, but I promise I’ll do my best for you to not have to listen to this recording again anytime soon.” 

“Mh, hope ‘anytime soon’ means a few decades at least”

“I promise. I love you too much to leave you like this. And I know I’ll look sexy when my hair turns gray” he adds with a playful smile.

You laugh, the sound breaking the lingering tension and bringing a sense of normalcy back. “Oh, definitely” you grin, raking your fingers through his curls. “Most handsome silver fox in the galaxy.” 

Poe smiles, kissing you again, softly. You can very clearly feel BB–8’s presence when you pull away, his needy beeps attesting of his need for attention.

“Yeah, alright buddy” you sigh, turning back to the droid to finish up his repair.

“So he’s okay?” Poe asks, approaching the workbench. 

“He’s all fine, good as new” you smile. “Hey, try running a diagnostic”

The droid runs his internal check, beeping happily once he’s done and everything seems to be alright.

“See?” you turn to Poe. “All good.” you grin at him, glad to have something concrete to smile about after that emotional rollercoaster you went through.  

“Thank you, really. I knew you’d fix him up” Poe declares, smiling as he watches BB roll off the workbench and onto the floor, navigating around your feet. “And I was serious about that dinner, by the way,” he says, watching you putting away your tools and tidying up your workbench. “We could both use a break.”

“Yeah,” you agree, scoffing. 

Poe’s hand finds yours as you turn the light off and leave the workshop, your fingers tangling as you walk through the corridors of the base, finding your way out. 

“Hey,” Poe calls, pulling you closer as you walk. You hum, looking at him, noticing the slight hint of worry in his eyes. “You really think I’d look hot with gray hair?”

You scoff, shaking your head. “Absolutely baby”

A content smile grows over his face, and he nods. “Cool.”

—

any and every comment/reblog is greatly appreciated!!

star wars taglist:

@lockleysgrl @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction @alexxavicry @mystinky-butt @anightshift

@whatthefishh @dameronshandholder @campingwiththecharmings @mintgreen24 @spider-starry

@jakecockley @cocodiem @spxctorsslxt @friedwings @luxisluxurious

@stvnnie @dowbastan @il0vebeingdelulu @hammerhead96 @pigeonmama

[mesetacadre]

hi, i hope you dont mind me asking this question! i often come across lists of reading recommendations for communists, and they are usually focused entirely on communist theory. which is important and im already on that, but i wonder if you also have recs for learning about history? especially the history of the soviet union, but also other past and present socialist states. i sometimes find myself reading theory and understanding the concepts in a vacuum, but with very little understanding of the historical context they were written in, if that makes any sense. and id like to get a basic grasp of the history of various socialist projects that isnt just the typical western "the ussr was evil!!!!" thing

Hi, historical context is indeed very important for works of theory, especially if it's more than a hundred years old. Lenin's What is to be Done, for example, is very conditioned by its historical context of Russia still being predominantly feudal, with only a timid appearance of the proletariat in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and therefore the very first trade unions, which he talks about. The understanding of these texts is amplified, and quite often enabled by knowing at least the basic historical context. Below I'll list the historical works I've read (and others) with some commentary, but I encourage anyone who has something to add to do so, since I am as of only recently getting more into historiography.

Anything by Anna Louise Strong (I've read The Soviets Expected it (1941) and In North Korea (1941), there's also The New Lithuania (1941), The Stalin Era (1956) and When Serfs Stood Up in Tibet (1959) for example). Her works, which I'd consider primary sources since they are written from her own experience witnessing events and talking to a lot of people, are extremely useful if you wish to form an idea about how some aspects of socialist states worked. The limitation of her works also resides in this specificity and closeness, these are not works that present a broad view of long processes, but a slice of the present with the sufficient historical context. They are still very, very good.

The Open Veins of Latin America (Spanish versrion), by Eduardo Galeno (1971). This one is focused on the history of imperialism in Latin America, how it evolved from the moment the first Spanish foot touched ground to the time it was written in (It talks about Allende before he was assassinated but after achieving power, for example). Perhaps it's not exactly what you're looking for, but it contains very important general context for any social movement that has happened since 1492 to 1971

The Triumph of Evil, by Austin Murphy (2002). I have mixed feelings about this book. While it insists on this weird narrative of absolute evil, which IMO takes away a lot of value from the overall points made, it is an astonishingly in-depth analysis of the economic performance and general merit of socialist systems against their capitalist counterparts. Most of the book is dedicated to comparing the GDR to the FRG, and both the economic and social data it exposes was very eye-opening to me when I read it about 2 years ago. If you can wade through the moralism (especially the beginning of the introduction), it's a gem. I've posted pictures of its very detailed index under the cut :)

Blackshirts and Reds, Michael Parenti (1997). Despite the very real criticisms levied against this book, like its mischaracterization of China, it is still a landmark work. Synthetically, it exposes the relationship between fascism, capitalism and communism.

Red Star Over the Third World, Vijay Prashad (2019); The Russian Revolution: A View from the Third World, Walter Rodney (2018). I'm lumping these two together (full disclosure, as of writing I'm about four fifths of the way through RSOtTW) because they deal with the same topic, Prashad being influenced by Rodney as well. Like both titles imply, they deal with the effects the October revolution had on the exploited peoples of the world, which is a perspective that's often lost. Through this, they (at least Prashad) also talk about the early USSR and how it functioned. For example, up until reading Red Star, I hadn't even heard of the 1920 Congress of The Toilers of the East in Baku, or the Congress of the Women of the East.

From here on I'll link works that I haven't (yet) read, but I have seen enough trusted people talk about them to include them

How to Cast a God into Hell: The Khrushchev Report, by Domenico Losurdo (2008). This one talks about how the period of Stalin was twisted and exaggerated through destalinization.

Devils in Amber, by Philips Bonoski (1992). This is about the Baltics and their historical trajectory from before WW1 to the destruction of the USSR (I'm not very sure on those two limits, perhaps they fluctuate a bit, but it definitely covers from WW1 to the 60s)

Socialism Betrayed, by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny (2004). This one deals with the process leading up to and the destruction of the USSR itself.

The Jakarta Method, Vincent Bevins (2020). This is about the methods the US used in the second half of the 20th century to stamp out, prevent, or otherwise sabotage communist movements and other democratic anti-imperialist movements.

I know some of these aren't specifically about socialist states, which is what you asked, but the history of its opposition is just as important to understand because it always exists as a condition to these countries' development and policies chosen.

[three-realms-archive]

Just a Study

Content Warning: Spoilers for Lesson 40 of Nightbringer! Everything above the cut is spoiler-free!

The wise sorcerer watches his dear apprentice sleep peacefully, unaware of their close friend and mentor doing what he does best. Studying.

His eyes analyse the rise and fall of their chest, tracing his gaze over and across the parabolas that make up the shape of their sleeping form. The small chuckles that escape him when you snore and snort are sounds that you will never get to hear. The soft, unprecedented flushes of crimson across his cheeks when you nuzzle your forehead deeper into the crook of his neck is a sight you will never get to see. Yet your sounds, sights and touch… Solomon knows all of it. He knows the mean, median and mode of the number of hours you sleep at night; and he spends the midnight hours flipping through tomes dedicated to understanding love. To Solomon, this was all a study, really.

A study on how it would have been, if he had taken the time to know his fellow, human classmate from the get-go. How it would have been if he had taken you under his wing sooner - if he had won the race for your heart against the Seven Avatars of Sin. The data was there, in the form of the pact marks etched into your skin - placed there like perfect puzzle pieces. And no matter how much his brain wanted to process that data differently, the results and conclusion would remain unchanged.

To conduct a study, one must try to match the conditions of the experiment to the assumptions of the theory. Solomon knew this, and so he had strived to make Coctyus Hall your new House of Lamentation. He had lived with you - had eaten with you - had even slept beside you. He knew that you (more often that he liked) had shared a bed with each of the brothers before - so he had done that, too. He had taken your trip to the past as an opportunity to replicate the theory with ease, piecing together a domestic life with you that felt like bliss.

The perfect study.

It was meant to be the perfect study. For him and you.

So why?

Why did it hurt so bad, returning to the original timeline; and seeing how… easily, you fell back into your own life?

Why did it hurt, seeing you live, eat and sometimes even sleep alongside the brothers again?

Why did it hurt, sleeping beside you in your old room, when he had already shared a bed with you many times now? It hurt being with you, in this bed made for one, the pillows and blankets and your shifting form taking up room and pushing him out. Telling him that he didn’t belong next to you.

… The wise sorcerer watches his dear apprentice sleep; studying. He presses his lips gently to your temple and savours the familiar warmth that greets him, fondly. He selfishly, childishly, hooks an arm and a leg around you; entangling himself in you as you had done many times before with him. He easily finds your hand through touch alone under a blanket colder than the one you used to share; struggling to intertwine his fingers with yours properly. But he grips your hand like a lifeline when he manages to. He’s got the lines of your palm and the creases of the skin of your wrists memorised. With a small, shaky breath, Solomon uses his thumb to trace over them again, and again, and again. Studying.

It was just a study, right? A ‘what if’.

Just a study, with a simple title.

What if, for a while, he pretended you loved him?

A study compares the theoretical with the experimental. Compares the ideal with harsh, painful, hurtful reality.

You belonged with the brothers. They were your ideal.

… And his brief, domestic, blissful experiment with you was now over.

(i had started writing this before seeing that angest was ruling the poll, lol. but yayyyyyy i wanna start writing angst and romance with the characters i haven’t touched on yet, so have an angst solomon, set after lesson 40 of nightbringer)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Demon-haunted computers are back, baby

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

As a science fiction writer, I am professionally irritated by a lot of sf movies. Not only do those writers get paid a lot more than I do, they insist on including things like "self-destruct" buttons on the bridges of their starships.

Look, I get it. When the evil empire is closing in on your flagship with its secret transdimensional technology, it's important that you keep those secrets out of the emperor's hand. An irrevocable self-destruct switch there on the bridge gets the job done! (It has to be irrevocable, otherwise the baddies'll just swarm the bridge and toggle it off).

But c'mon. If there's a facility built into your spaceship that causes it to explode no matter what the people on the bridge do, that is also a pretty big security risk! What if the bad guy figures out how to hijack the measure that – by design – the people who depend on the spaceship as a matter of life and death can't detect or override?

I mean, sure, you can try to simplify that self-destruct system to make it easier to audit and assure yourself that it doesn't have any bugs in it, but remember Schneier's Law: anyone can design a security system that works so well that they themselves can't think of a flaw in it. That doesn't mean you've made a security system that works – only that you've made a security system that works on people stupider than you.

I know it's weird to be worried about realism in movies that pretend we will ever find a practical means to visit other star systems and shuttle back and forth between them (which we are very, very unlikely to do):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

But this kind of foolishness galls me. It galls me even more when it happens in the real world of technology design, which is why I've spent the past quarter-century being very cross about Digital Rights Management in general, and trusted computing in particular.

It all starts in 2002, when a team from Microsoft visited our offices at EFF to tell us about this new thing they'd dreamed up called "trusted computing":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons-devil

The big idea was to stick a second computer inside your computer, a very secure little co-processor, that you couldn't access directly, let alone reprogram or interfere with. As far as this "trusted platform module" was concerned, you were the enemy. The "trust" in trusted computing was about other people being able to trust your computer, even if they didn't trust you.

So that little TPM would do all kinds of cute tricks. It could observe and produce a cryptographically signed manifest of the entire boot-chain of your computer, which was meant to be an unforgeable certificate attesting to which kind of computer you were running and what software you were running on it. That meant that programs on other computers could decide whether to talk to your computer based on whether they agreed with your choices about which code to run.

This process, called "remote attestation," is generally billed as a way to identify and block computers that have been compromised by malware, or to identify gamers who are running cheats and refuse to play with them. But inevitably it turns into a way to refuse service to computers that have privacy blockers turned on, or are running stream-ripping software, or whose owners are blocking ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

After all, a system that treats the device's owner as an adversary is a natural ally for the owner's other, human adversaries. The rubric for treating the owner as an adversary focuses on the way that users can be fooled by bad people with bad programs. If your computer gets taken over by malicious software, that malware might intercept queries from your antivirus program and send it false data that lulls it into thinking your computer is fine, even as your private data is being plundered and your system is being used to launch malware attacks on others.

These separate, non-user-accessible, non-updateable secure systems serve a nubs of certainty, a remote fortress that observes and faithfully reports on the interior workings of your computer. This separate system can't be user-modifiable or field-updateable, because then malicious software could impersonate the user and disable the security chip.

It's true that compromised computers are a real and terrifying problem. Your computer is privy to your most intimate secrets and an attacker who can turn it against you can harm you in untold ways. But the widespread redesign of out computers to treat us as their enemies gives rise to a range of completely predictable and – I would argue – even worse harms. Building computers that treat their owners as untrusted parties is a system that works well, but fails badly.

First of all, there are the ways that trusted computing is designed to hurt you. The most reliable way to enshittify something is to supply it over a computer that runs programs you can't alter, and that rats you out to third parties if you run counter-programs that disenshittify the service you're using. That's how we get inkjet printers that refuse to use perfectly good third-party ink and cars that refuse to accept perfectly good engine repairs if they are performed by third-party mechanics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

It's how we get cursed devices and appliances, from the juicer that won't squeeze third-party juice to the insulin pump that won't connect to a third-party continuous glucose monitor:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

But trusted computing doesn't just create an opaque veil between your computer and the programs you use to inspect and control it. Trusted computing creates a no-go zone where programs can change their behavior based on whether they think they're being observed.

The most prominent example of this is Dieselgate, where auto manufacturers murdered hundreds of people by gimmicking their cars to emit illegal amount of NOX. Key to Dieselgate was a program that sought to determine whether it was being observed by regulators (it checked for the telltale signs of the standard test-suite) and changed its behavior to color within the lines.

Software that is seeking to harm the owner of the device that's running it must be able to detect when it is being run inside a simulation, a test-suite, a virtual machine, or any other hallucinatory virtual world. Just as Descartes couldn't know whether anything was real until he assured himself that he could trust his senses, malware is always questing to discover whether it is running in the real universe, or in a simulation created by a wicked god:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/28/descartes-was-an-optimist/#uh-oh

That's why mobile malware uses clever gambits like periodically checking for readings from your device's accelerometer, on the theory that a virtual mobile phone running on a security researcher's test bench won't have the fidelity to generate plausible jiggles to match the real data that comes from a phone in your pocket:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/01/google-play-malware-used-phones-motion-sensors-to-conceal-itself/

Sometimes this backfires in absolutely delightful ways. When the Wannacry ransomware was holding the world hostage, the security researcher Marcus Hutchins noticed that its code made reference to a very weird website: iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com. Hutchins stood up a website at that address and every Wannacry-infection in the world went instantly dormant:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#the-matrix

It turns out that Wannacry's authors were using that ferkakte URL the same way that mobile malware authors were using accelerometer readings – to fulfill Descartes' imperative to distinguish the Matrix from reality. The malware authors knew that security researchers often ran malicious code inside sandboxes that answered every network query with fake data in hopes of eliciting responses that could be analyzed for weaknesses. So the Wannacry worm would periodically poll this nonexistent website and, if it got an answer, it would assume that it was being monitored by a security researcher and it would retreat to an encrypted blob, ceasing to operate lest it give intelligence to the enemy. When Hutchins put a webserver up at iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com, every Wannacry instance in the world was instantly convinced that it was running on an enemy's simulator and withdrew into sulky hibernation.

The arms race to distinguish simulation from reality is critical and the stakes only get higher by the day. Malware abounds, even as our devices grow more intimately woven through our lives. We put our bodies into computers – cars, buildings – and computers inside our bodies. We absolutely want our computers to be able to faithfully convey what's going on inside them.

But we keep running as hard as we can in the opposite direction, leaning harder into secure computing models built on subsystems in our computers that treat us as the threat. Take UEFI, the ubiquitous security system that observes your computer's boot process, halting it if it sees something it doesn't approve of. On the one hand, this has made installing GNU/Linux and other alternative OSes vastly harder across a wide variety of devices. This means that when a vendor end-of-lifes a gadget, no one can make an alternative OS for it, so off the landfill it goes.

It doesn't help that UEFI – and other trusted computing modules – are covered by Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which makes it a felony to publish information that can bypass or weaken the system. The threat of a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine means that UEFI and other trusted computing systems are understudied, leaving them festering with longstanding bugs:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/09/free-sample/#que-viva

Here's where it gets really bad. If an attacker can get inside UEFI, they can run malicious software that – by design – no program running on our computers can detect or block. That badware is running in "Ring -1" – a zone of privilege that overrides the operating system itself.

Here's the bad news: UEFI malware has already been detected in the wild:

https://securelist.com/cosmicstrand-uefi-firmware-rootkit/106973/

And here's the worst news: researchers have just identified another exploitable UEFI bug, dubbed Pixiefail:

https://blog.quarkslab.com/pixiefail-nine-vulnerabilities-in-tianocores-edk-ii-ipv6-network-stack.html

Writing in Ars Technica, Dan Goodin breaks down Pixiefail, describing how anyone on the same LAN as a vulnerable computer can infect its firmware:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/01/new-uefi-vulnerabilities-send-firmware-devs-across-an-entire-ecosystem-scrambling/

That vulnerability extends to computers in a data-center where the attacker has a cloud computing instance. PXE – the system that Pixiefail attacks – isn't widely used in home or office environments, but it's very common in data-centers.

Again, once a computer is exploited with Pixiefail, software running on that computer can't detect or delete the Pixiefail code. When the compromised computer is queried by the operating system, Pixiefail undetectably lies to the OS. "Hey, OS, does this drive have a file called 'pixiefail?'" "Nope." "Hey, OS, are you running a process called 'pixiefail?'" "Nope."

This is a self-destruct switch that's been compromised by the enemy, and which no one on the bridge can de-activate – by design. It's not the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last.

There are models for helping your computer bust out of the Matrix. Back in 2016, Edward Snowden and bunnie Huang prototyped and published source code and schematics for an "introspection engine":

https://assets.pubpub.org/aacpjrja/AgainstTheLaw-CounteringLawfulAbusesofDigitalSurveillance.pdf

This is a single-board computer that lives in an ultraslim shim that you slide between your iPhone's mainboard and its case, leaving a ribbon cable poking out of the SIM slot. This connects to a case that has its own OLED display. The board has leads that physically contact each of the network interfaces on the phone, conveying any data they transit to the screen so that you can observe the data your phone is sending without having to trust your phone.

(I liked this gadget so much that I included it as a major plot point in my 2020 novel Attack Surface, the third book in the Little Brother series):

https://craphound.com/attacksurface/

We don't have to cede control over our devices in order to secure them. Indeed, we can't ever secure them unless we can control them. Self-destruct switches don't belong on the bridge of your spaceship, and trusted computing modules don't belong in your devices.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/17/descartes-delenda-est/#self-destruct-sequence-initiated

Image: Mike (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/stillwellmike/15676883261/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[keelt9]

WINTER TRIANGLE - PT.II

> The multicolor lights in her eyes are the only thing he needs to know it, know it is true. <

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

PT.I // Main Masterlist

"Y/N?" Mary  appears in the door of her office with regretful eyes.

Y/N expects the last days before her vacation starts, the only reason for being in the office would be to just let the pending things get done and just an act of presence. But she didn't, because problems with a satellite forced her to practically live all the week in the facilities. 

She never knew how important a sandwich could be.

Y/N raises her finger with her sandwich on the other hand. "No, no, please don't."

Every time she enters her office slash bedroom, it's because one more time the system pushes them out, so it's time to begin, again.

"Sorry, but again, we're out of line." Y/N closed her eyes and put her hands over her mouth. At this rate she even started to question herself if she would be free for Monday morning.

When Joe arrives at the facilities that Monday morning, he can easily see all the fuss and stress of a week, people coming with large piles of papers, computers and tablets in their hands as vivid gestures go to the screen or each other. 

Y/N replied just 5 times per day and phone calls were way out of questions, she practically isolated herself and the team in a room covered with computers, screens and small table where their vital items are; a coffee machine and tons of sweet things.

Y/N boss appreciates Joe, so the few times he appears around there the only thing that makes people turn their eyes to him it's the fact he looks tanner and with bright clothes, than them.

"OHHHH! I get it." Y/N pushed the chair of Ethan, another engineer. "Fuck! We had it in front of our eyes."

She types, writes, calls, and coordinates around there as the one who is out of the planet, until all comprehend what she's trying to do. 5 minutes later and cramped muscles, all the red lights on the big screen at their left, one by one switch on green light and the data starts to rain like deluge.

"OMG!" All scream high five one to the other as the loud screams get through the door to the hallways where Joe is patiently waiting sitting in a chair.

Final adjustment and 20 minutes later, a group of 7 persons coming out with darker circles under their eyes, messy clothes, hairs toss in every possible direction, and a coffee scene that hits you hard in your nose.

At the end with a messy ponytail, sweater over her shoulders, jeans and tiger slippers, a tablet in her hands, Y/N came out making Joe's heart squeeze, she looked so defeated. By the time she raises her eyes, she smiles softly to Joe who has tender eyes and arms open, making her tilt her head as she smirks.

One by one Y/N's teams greet Joe, a simple hi, for keep walking, all craving one thing, a proper meal, a bed and 12 hours of sleep.

"Don't!" Y/N raises her hand avoiding Joe hugs her. "I haven't taken a shower in two days, I stink to coffee and processed sugar and I..." Joe rolls his eyes, pulling the hand up, making her crash against his chest. "JOE!"

Joe couldn't care less. "I love you even if you stink to a cheap soap." Y/N laughs hitting Joe back. "Let's go home, all right?"

Y/N nods letting her shoulders down as breathes Joe perfume, for her, she's already at home.

The moment she touched Joe's car she fell asleep, the only moments when she woke up was when Joe grabbed her hand on the car, when he carried her out of it, helped her to take a shower and put her in bed. 

By the time she woke up, it's 10:30 pm. She has slept more than 10 hours, running downstairs as she realizes Joe put on one of his shirts and shorts: they crash in the last step; Joe has his headphones and his eyes are stuck to his phone.

"Whoa, slowly, where are you going?" Y/N grabs Joe's arms avoiding to fall. 

"Sorry, it's just I thought you..." He clicks his tongue.

"Cancel? I was going upstairs to put you in the car." Y/N lift her eyebrows. "Our flight leaves in 3 hours."

"Joe..." He kissed her forehead.

"I water your plants, did the laundry, went to pick up your car, clean a little bit, and our suitcases are already in the car." Y/N giggles putting her arms around his neck. "You had a multitasking boyfriend."

She kisses his lips in a long kiss. "I'm sorry for being absent this week."

Joe put his hands around her waist. "I'm sharing you with the universe... Just from time to time."

Y/N smiles as she hides her face in Joe's neck, for her this is the perfect place.

Joe had a smirk from the moment they arrived at the airport, he makes her use headphones all the time and avoid seeing the destination; she only knew she had to get up, sit or walk because Joe doesn't leave her hand.

By the time they sit, Joe covers the screen of the airplane to avoid being able to see the route and the time, she's smarter as hell, give her one clue and she could find it out in a blink.

 >Sleep, if you need anything, write to me.

Joe writes in a piece of paper, after she reads it and looks at him he winks at her, he definitely wants this to be a surprise.

Her tiredness was his best allied, she only woke up one time for going to the restroom and went back to sleep, the soft movement of the attendant wakes her up, as she points it's time to put the belts, they'll be lading in 10 minutes. 

Before the big banner of "Welcome to..." appears in front of their eyes Joe puts dark sunglasses over her eyes.

"Are you kidding?" Y/N laughs as she notices the only thing she could see is shadows from people and things. 

"No, now, don't you dare to drop my hand or you could fall or stumble." Joe said, tingling their fingers giving a soft peck in her hand. 

"You're a freak Joe." He laughs, making her walk stuck to his side.

"I take that as a compliment."

Joe didn't lie in saying the only thing she needed to do is wait until they arrived at the place where they will spend two weeks far away from their daily life. The moment Joe closes the door of the passenger seat from the car he rented, he takes out the sunglasses and the headphones; she blinks a couple of times.

Snow falling is the first thing she notices and big trees cover in snow; that's why he makes her wear thermic clothes. 

"Alaska." She points to Joe face who switched to straight mouth and done eyes.

"Do you actually believe I did all of that just to bring you to Alaska?" Y/N laughs leaning for giving him a soft peck. 

"I need to take a guess." Joe kisses her again. "Now, can I know where the hell I am?"

Joe shakes his head as the engine starts. "We're not there."

"Oh no." Joe nods as she notices the blindfold in front of her. 

"Oh yes, so please Mrs. I-found-any-place-in-the-world-in-a-blink, put it on." Y/N gets done her head as she grabs the blind folded; Joe glances at her, finally grabbing her hand when she had put it on. 

"Happy?" She laid back on the seat. 

"Very much." Joe giggles. "Another 25 minutes and you'll know it."

It only took her another 10 minutes and a little bit of cheating claiming she had itchy eyes to recognise her surroundings; she's never been there but she's seen her all her life through photographs.

Tromsø, Norway.

The strange but antique style of houses is what she's in love with it, the sky in a clear blue, snow in every corner makes everything cover in a white veil. 

All the photos she could have in her bedroom since she was kid to the few that remain are about that place.

“Could you park just for a second?” Joe lifted his eyebrow, concerned that she could be dizzy. 

The second he parked, Y/N released the locks and came out in a blink.

“Hey! Love!” Joe screams when she closes the door immediately trying to take out the seatbelt that looks glued.

Joe noticed she left her big coat inside the car. “Fuck!”

Outside Y/N is delightful for the incredible view she had, massive mountains that are covered in snow making you feel tiny but protected, to the other side the village in brilliant colours like lively sparkles.

By the time she could feel Joe at her back she turns around pulling him by his jacket, pressing her lips to his in a consuming kiss. He grabs her by the waist pulling her closer fighting to keep warm.

She slips slowly, due the cold their lips take time to split. 

“Have I ever told you how amazing you are?” She lifted her tiptoes to hug him around his neck. 

Joe giggles as he carefully puts the jacket over her shoulders. “Not that frequently I believe.” 

Y/N laughs kissing his cheek. “Joe, you're the most amazing human being in the world.”

Joe contains her wide open smile. “Yeah, kind of good to know it.”

He gives her a quick peck. “Now let's go, I have a lot of things planned.”

He lifts her in a tender kiss.

Is this a dream come true? For Y/N it is. 

They spent the day walking around, talking, hugging and kissing like they’re actually on another planet, just a few glances to them for the loud laughs but nothing else.

Joe lost count of how many photos he took from her when she's looking at him or are enchanted for something she saw. 

As the night approaches Y/N isn’t able to take her eyes from the sky covered in stars as they walk to the next surprise of Joe.

“Watch out.” Joe pulls her soft before her face crashes with a tree. “Jesus! At this rate you have a body full of bruises.” 

Y/N laughs tingling her finger with his. “And it’s day one.” Joe laughs, kissing her temple.

Y/N breathes in enjoying the freezing weather but with one of his hands around her she feels warm and cozy.

“You know, we believe there are some places around the world where you can almost feel you can touch a star.” Joe nods. “A few ones, where more than one event combines in one single night, turning that place millions of times better.”

“Really?” Joe said putting her hand in his pocket, before letting her and taking out the car key.

“Yeah but, it’s almost hard to know when or where it could happen.” Y/N giggling about the fact Joe keeps with that touch, putting her hand in his pocket on a cold day avoiding her hand getting cold after he let her go. 

“It must be a unique moment, right?” He opened the door for her.

“Are you joking? I'm dying to see just two events together.” Joe laughs, losing his thoughts in the star he has for himself. “What?”

Joe shakes his head, kissing her lips. “I love you.” Y/N tilt her head, feel so complete. 

They drove another 5 minutes arriving at a few cottages surrounded by mountains that make you feel the most microscopic thing in the world. 

“Here.” Joe lifts the blind fold, making her roll her eyes.

“Again?” Y/N lead back her head, Joe nods and waits for her put it the blindfold 

“Stunning.” He stole her a kiss when she had it.

He walked with her on a piggy ride until they couldn’t hear a sound.

“Are we lost?” Y/N joked with Joe when he put her on the snowy ground. 

“Ha ha ha, you’re hilarious.” Joe's voice sounds sneaky and nervous. 

“Are you ok?” Y/N asks, searching in darkness, his hands.

Joe feels freak out and nervous as hell, fighting for his voice doesn’t break every word. He carefully takes the blindfold of her eyes.

She blinks a couple of times getting used to the soft light, holding his hands. By the time she finally opens her eyes, she goes to the ground, in front of her two big mountains covered in snow with sparkling stars around, like it couldn’t be more perfect the pink purple aurora borealis that seems to move or stay still over your head is to die for. 

Y/N jumps to Joe as he catches her but he turns around so she can see the last thing. Her hiss makes him giggle as she untangle her arms and legs around him for walking like she actually could get it closer.

At her back the three brilliant stars that form a triangle, her favorite constellation, the “Winter Triangle.”

For more than 10 minutes, Y/N observes the sky, finding it hard to believe she's actually seeing such beautiful things in one single night. Joe on the other hand after a full session of photos of her and the sky, he stops just observing her so delighted, unable to speak or move. 

It was hard work, and of course he has a lot of help to get this but it’s totally worth it.

Y/N finally was able to go to the ground, she extended her hand for Joe to take it and kissed it, as he wiped her tears of happiness.

“This is… woah!” She said putting his arm around her neck as he pressed her against him. “I don’t think there are actually words for telling you how much this means to me.” 

Joe smiles proudly and gets down his sight of seeing her, with crystal eyes full of love. “Thank you Joe, thank you so much.” 

Joe kisses his lips softly, whispering. “I love you.”

As her sight went back to the sky.

“Can I tell you something?” Joe pushes her softly, rolling his eyes, both of them know this is such a silly question, of course she can. 

Y/N close her eyes and squeeze Joe's hand around her neck. “I actually thought you’re going to propose to me.” 

Joe smiles seeing her so conflicted, so he grabs her face between his hands. “This is your dream, live it, I don’t want things to get twisted and you stop treasure this moment like you should be.” 

Y/N opened her eyes, seeing Joe so full of love and adoration screaming in every corner of his face. 

“A moment you shared with me.” She stole him a kiss. “Sorry, I…”

“We have a lifetime for that.” Joe winks at her and makes her chuckle as her eyes open. “Oh please, don’t look at me like you haven’t thought about it.”

Joe turns her around and hugs her for she can keep watching the stars but avoiding getting cold. “This is for life Y/N.”

She smiles, grabbing his hands around her waist. “For life.” 

After all, maybe Joe wasn’t that wrong; between his socks a black velvet box is hiding ready to make the big appearance.

[druidwolf21]

I've never made an ask (in this case a request) before on Tumblr, I'm pretty new. But I've been with Corax brainrot for the last couple of weeks and Idk if you could write something on the goth primarch + f!reader? In serious need of some inspo to start writing my own fics that come from those mind worms I've been having around Goth Big Bird. Smut, fluff, whatever is easier for you, I'm not here to inconvenience. If he isn't your forte either, feel free to ignore my curious ass and move on <3

@janothertrash

Firstly yes yes yes please write if you're comfortable! And if/when you do please tag me!

Secondly of course I would love to write for you! No inconvenience at all, always feel free to ask!

Here ya go, I hope you like it!

Corvus corax/ F reader

Content warning for sexy times

Pretty thing

"my lord, I have completed the weapons acquisition form 32d as you requested, it's being processed now"

Corvus looked from his work towards the voice.

You stood just before his desk, soft swathes of raven guard black fitted your figure a little too well, showing every curve. He drank in your figure, from your boots, eyes following the slender outline of your waist, your breasts, slowly rising and falling asleep you breathed, his gaze lingered for a moment, before finally rising to your face.

Such a delicate little thing. He thought

"good, that saves me a job" he waved a large hand towards a data slate "there is a further request for a munitions drop"

"Of course, my lord" you walked around to the slate and reached out to take it. Your fingers brushed across the back of his hand as you gathered up the information.

Corvus felt his breath hitch in his throat at the touch and he felt his pulse quicken, you'd been here a matter of days and since then his focus has been lost to the wind.

Every time you entered his office, every step down the corridor, your voice as you directed serfs and servitors, all of it echoes deep inside him, waking something primal.

"my lord?". You asked softly

His dark eye met yours as a look of soft concern creased your face.

"Are you well? Forgive me, but you have seemed distracted, can I get you anything?"

You tentatively reached out, touching his hand deliberately this time, delicate, as if scared to break him.

Corvus felt his heart hammer in his chest.

This is ridiculous, I have faced soldiers, monster, heretics, so why...why is my heart pounding?

"my lord corax?" You had lent closer to him, you were so so close. He could smell your perfume, smell the drying ink and parchment on your hands, feel your breath on his skin

The world spun and you squeaked in surprise, suddenly finding yourself set on the desk, paperwork and slates pushed to the floor with a loud clatter. Your thighs spread across the cool wood, a large hand placed either side of your legs as you stared up at the dark eyes of your Primark. Eyes like obsidian started into yours, unblinking as his black hair tumbled around his shoulders.

A moment of silence settled between you, punctuated only by heavy breathing.

"Lord cor.."

Your words were silenced as he lurched forward and pressed his lips to yours, his hand grasping the back of your head, pulling you to him.

You sat stunned as he finally pulled back. He blinked at you, as if suddenly realising what he'd done.

"my apologies, I don't know what came over me" he muttered, moving to step away from the desk.

You clutched at his arm and pulled him back to you, a hand wrapping into his raven hair as you kissed him, he stiffened, before relaxing into the touch, returning your gentle touch with a firm grip on your thigh. You felt his tongue trace across your lip and you moaned softly as he deepened the kiss.

"I am distracted" he muttered as he moved his lips to your neck, peppering soft kisses and bites along your exposed skin. "You have been nothing but a distraction" his hand kneaded your thigh before moving upwards.

He looked at you, and you stared back, eyes heavy and you sucked in air. You nodded slightly, chest heaving and you moaned as his fingers found their mark.

"so wet already" he muttered , gently circling his fingers "you wanted this all along didn't you"

He pressed a finger inside you, slowly moving in and out, as you arched into him, begging for more.

He felt his own arousal growing as he fingered in and out of you, you were so warm, so wet. Desperate for his attention.

You moaned as he sped up slightly, head throw back you feel warmth rising in your stomach, before you finally peak, legs shaking slightly and blood flushing your cheeks.

Corvus hummed low, pulling his fingers back and bringing them to his lips, gazing down at you hungrily. You lay flat against the desk, your face a gentle pink and body trembling slightly.

He ran his tongue over his fingers as you watched, before reaching for you and pulling your dress off roughly over your head.

He stepped away and reached for his own trousers and shirt pulling them off and throwing them to the side and standing before the desk.

You hungrily eyes his figure, eyes trailing down his broad scared chest, down his stomach, finally resting on his dick, twitch slightly as he prowled back towards you.

"I'm going to take you, make you mine, every single thing I've wanted to do to you.." he trailed off, pulling you to the edge of the desk

He rubbed the tip of his cock against your wet core, slowing dragging it back and forth and smiled as you groaned.

He leant over you, Arms either side of your head and he stared you down hungrily.

"say you want it"

"wh..what?"

"tell me you want me to fuck you, tell me you want me to ruin you"

'my lord, please, I need you inside me" you whispered, breathless as you feel him rubbing up against you.

"say my name"

"corvus"

You gasped as he finally entered you, stretching you to your limit as he slid in, inch by inch. You clawed at his arms and shoulders as he finally bottomed out.

Corvus gently stroked your face, checking you were ok, before he began thrusting in and out of you.

You thought you were going mad, his dick filled you up as he fucked you, over and over. His calused hands holding your thighs up as he pounded into you to stop you from sliding across the desk.

Your cried out his name as you came, corvus fucking you through it and moaning as he felt you tighten around him.

"throne, you were made for me" he growls, his hips slapping into your thighs as he fucks you silly. He grasps a breast and squeezes, toying with your nipple and you cry out again.

"c..corvus!" You grapple onto him like your drowning, nails dragging furrows across his shoulders.

He picks you up, hands gripping your ass as he bounces you in his cock, grunting as he feels you shuddering and twitching, his thrusts becoming erratic as he edges closer.

You press your head into his chest, panting "please" you beg 'i want it... Inside"

Corvus couldn't take it

He growled as he came inside you, pumping into you as he finished, breath shuddering in his chest and he clutched you to him, his dick still twitching inside you as you gulped for air.

He held you for a moment, before pulling out and setting you back on his desk, he struggled to hide a proud smile as he looked at you, flushed and panting, his cum dripping from you as you struggled to sit up.

You smiled up at him sweetly and his heart skipped a beat again, he stepped around the desk and picked up his black cloak, draping it around your shoulders it almost swallowed you.

He ran a hand through his black silken hair and sighed, taking seat in front of you. A million thoughts ran through his head.

Was this a mistake? Was this fair, did you even want this?

He looked away and spoke softly

"you do not need to stay, if this is not something you desire, I do not wish to"

You reached out from under the midnight cloth and gently cupped his face, bringing his gaze to yours

"my lord" you said, the voice as sweet as honey "if it pleases you, I would like to stay by your side"

Corvus smiled gently and pulled into into a gentle embrace, pressing his lips to the crown of your head

"it would please me... But maybe we should clothe you, before going anywhere else"

@cosmic-cryptid-from-beyond @lemon-russ @beckyninja

[gilmorenights]

Ok now that I’ve had time to actually process chapter 27 of and they were roommates I can actually talk about it coherently (aka gush about my favorite parts) so spoilers ahead if you haven’t read it yet!!

First and foremost, Hugo’s character arc was done so fucking well. Seriously, it’s one of the best versions of Hugo I’ve read and I think about it on a daily basis. Comparing Hugo in chapter one to Hugo in the newest one, it’s amazing to see how far he’s come and how much he’s changed. Him helping out with this entire dance for an entirely selfless reason just really cemented that. Also the fact that when Varian asked him about it, he didn’t shoot back with some snarky reply like he could’ve, he told the truth. Again, he’s come so far and being able to watch him change little by little is such an amazing thing to read.

THE DECODED NOTES? DUDE. The fact that the one thing that kept him going this whole time- the one thing that had him keeping everyone else, Varian specifically, at arm’s length- is something he doesn’t even need to worry about anymore? The fact that he’s spent so long scrambling to secure his destiny, believing that at any moment, it could just be ripped away, just to learn that he doesn’t need to worry about it disappearing anymore? Absolute fucking perfection. The whole monologue about Hugo finally being able to live without being in constant survival mode was so beautiful and well written and ughhhhh I can’t. “Now that was all over. The Storybook saw him. Needs were as good as met. So, what. did. Hugo. want?” AND THEN THE PART A LITTLE FURTHER DOWN WHERE HE REALIZES HE WANTS VARIAN IN HIS LIFE OMFG IM DEAD/vpos

Varian accidentally spam texting Hugo out of worry that he wouldn’t know where the dance had been moved to was literally so sweet, like bro was freaking tf out but honestly? Valid, I would’ve done the same thing.

THEIR OUTFITS HELLO? GODDAMN YALL WEREN’T MESSING AROUND THIS CHAPTER I WASN’T EXPECTING TO BE BLESSED WITH ART BUT HOLY SHITTTT! The colors, the outfits, the expressions, the details, everything just aowjsosjsbksissj

Varian allowing himself to crush on Hugo without shoving it down or pushing it away was so adorable and well deserved after being in denial for so long 👏👏 and he’s so flustered and completely lost when it comes to matters of the heart. The way he just kept rambling when asking Hugo to dance just for Hugo to be like “I’m barely hearing you, wanna dance?” Was so fucking funny to me. I also loved that Varian thinks of his crush like an experiment and how he was gathering data and evidence to analyze how Hugo feels about him. Idk there’s just something about Varian reverting to science, something familiar, when he’s in an unfamiliar situation that is so special and dear to me.

AND THE SCENE WHERE THE LIGHTS CUT OUT AND HUGO WAS FREAKING OUT THINKING THEY GOT CAUGHT AND HE AND VARIAN WERE TRYING TO FIND EACH OTHER WAS LITERALLY SO GOOD I CANT. The povs switching back and forth while they were searching for each other was so suspenseful and added so much to the moment overall, it was one of my top 3 moments of the chapter.

Another top three moment? Hugo and Varian working together to make the bubble lights. I am a sucker for these two working together because they’re such fucking geniuses, they’re the definition of “great minds think alike”. This moment was another amazing example of character development for both of them because it shows how comfortable they are working together and how they’re close/familiar enough with each other to be on the same page. Not only that, but the little part where Hugo asks if Varian’s sure the chemicals won’t blow up the glove and Varian replies “I’m 85% sure it won’t blow up the whole thing.” And Hugo locks the mixture in? TRUST. IT SHOWS THAT HE TRUSTS VARIAN FULLY AND AGH I CANT BE NORMAL ABOUT THIS

Varian. Confessed. Not only did he confess, he said I LOVE YOU??? I think a part of my soul left my body when I read that cuz WHAT??? OH MY GOSH??? YOU CANT JUST DO THAT TO A GIRL WITHOUT WARNING (all jokes of course and like I said in my other post, vibrating out of my skin just thinking about it). That being said, I’m terrified for the next chapter because Hugo is a wild card and there’s a big part of me that feels like he’s going to run or avoid it or mess it up somehow (please let me be wrong)

Uhhhh ok now that all of my yapping is out of the way here’s a small list of other things I loved with little to no explanation

Ashlynn coming out as a rebel, I LOVE YOU GIRL

Farrah doing everybody’s outfits

People complimenting Varian’s alchemy, he needed that validation

THE SLOW DANCING

THE KNUCKLE KISS OMFG HUGO!!!

Hugo not even having to say his “it’s not hard to hold things over your head” joke for Varian to understand

Varian slamming the door open when he returned to the dorm 😭

Hugo questioning whether or not Donella is right after worrying about what she said for so long

Hugo crying because he’s upset for Varian instead of being happy for himself (more phenomenal character development)

The lore, the lore, the LORE. THE LORE IS SO FUCKING COOL

Anyway that’s it thank you all for coming to my (too long) yap session and @dreadpirateurania13 I hope you know how phenomenal your writing is and that I think about this fic every day 🙏

[panic-flavored]

I keep imagining some robotnik superior showing up unexpectedly in his lab and being like "🤨...Wait there are three mermai... *stone kills him*

I plan on writing a fic about this eventually, but I've been short on time lately 😭 Long story short, Robotnik moves Stone to an underwater lab he's been building to save him from being un-alived by the government, and at roughly the same time they find out Stone is pregnant. So fortunately the merfamily is totally safe! Here's a blurb from the WIP of that fic, since it probably won't be posted for a while:

---

The words echo off the lifeless conference room walls and rattle around unpleasantly in Robotnik’s brain. They are not words Robotnik wants to hear, and if he’s being honest, some time ago he’d forgotten that he’d ever have to hear them in the first place.

“Doctor?” Commander Walters offers Robotnik an appropriately concerned frown. “Did you hear me?”

Robotnik clears his throat, refocusing. “No, uh- no. I must have spaced out. Say that one more time for me.” He heard him loud and clear, of course, but he wants to pick through it one more time, see if there are any loopholes or contradictions he can take advantage of to be found in the words.

“Oh, sure… I understand, I’m sure you’ve been working around the clock lately.” Commander Walters says. “I said that if you’ve acquired all the data you can from the living specimen, it’s time to turn him over to the autopsy team. It’s still your project of course, so you can be as involved as you’d like to be going forward. But after six months of research, I think it’s safe to say we can–” here, Walters does that annoying rotating motion with both of his pointer fingers, “--wrap it up.”

Robotnik feels a little bit sick. Furious, mostly, but the sour heaviness in his guts is close to making him gag. Has it been six months already? Back then, this plan didn’t bother Robotnik in the slightest. When he first stormed into the biology lab to assert himself as the project leader, he didn’t care how injured and malnourished Stone was - Stone wasn’t Stone back then, he was the ‘specimen’. Robotnik hadn’t chewed out the pitiful scientists over their subpar treatment of Stone because he’d worried about Stone’s safety, it was because they’d compromised the scientific process. There was no sense in researching a living subject if that subject was too weak and sick to move, after all.

Obviously Robotnik’s opinion had changed rather quickly. He’d been told that the ‘merman’ wasn’t intelligent, wasn’t sentient. That he was mindless and violent. Fools. Almost as soon as Robotnik dismissed the rest of the team, it became apparent none of that was true. Stone quickly proved himself to be highly intelligent, learning ASL almost as fast as Robotnik once had. He was complex, loyal, and terribly interesting. He saw the world so differently than anyone Robotnik had ever met. 

This is a very wordy way of saying that Robotnik fell in love, even if he hated framing it in such a simplistic, childish way.

Stone fell first, to be fair. He’d marked Robotnik, he claimed him, they were mates and now Robotnik is hearing another person say that Stone needs to be killed and torn open soon. It all seems so surreal. 

“You can’t just put a time limit on science, Commander,” Robotnik says icily. “Six months is nothing. I haven’t even had ample time to study his metabolic rate yet, it’s vastly different from a humans–” “Six months was your estimation, not mine,” Walters counters. “When you took over the project, that was your projected timeframe.”

Robotnik inwardly kicks himself. He originally gave himself six months to ensure he had a comfortable cushion of time, but he’d been positive four months is all it would take to collect all the necessary data before passing Stone off to another team. 

“Well if it hadn’t taken two months for the creature to fully recover from what those amateurs did to it before I arrived, I would have been done by now!” Robotnik growls. It hadn’t taken two months for Stone to recover, but it seemed a believable amount of time to a person who isn’t personally familiar with how quickly merpeople heal. “Why do you think I’ve been ‘working around the clock’, Commander? Making up for lost time!”

Walters frowns in consideration, rubbing a knuckle thoughtfully against his stubbly chin. “Ah yes, I remember reading about that in your initial reports. I hadn’t considered how much that may have set you back. In that case, I’ll give you another two months to finish your research, Doctor. Does that sound fair?”

It takes Robotnik less than a second to run the numbers, the estimations and impromptu simulations - yes, he could certainly finish his work in two months. Not the work Walters was expecting him to finish, obviously. Something much, much more important. “Two months sounds more than fair, Commander.”

[sirfrogsworth]

This post has really been a big lesson in science communication.

Like, yeah, the lack of detail from being far away is a needed variable to create the illusion. But why do we still see it as small once we know it is big? I'm trying to go beyond the technical and into the psychological and some people just don't want to take that journey with me so they just default to "he is wrong about this".

I think I did a little better with my addition where I showed the horse from below. And maybe if that was in the original post I wouldn't have gotten so many of these skeptical comments.

I was trying to make a bigger point about how past experiences inform your present visual perception. At a very young age we are blasted with imagery. Thousands of images per day. Our brain builds a library of visual experiences to help us understand what we are seeing at any given time.

Again, up to 90% of our visual perception is our brain using past experiences to build what we see. And by "see" I don't mean the raw data collected by our eyeballs. I mean the finished visual product our mind constructs for us.

If our brains had to process the entirety of our raw visual input they would literally overheat.

This is not a perfect analog, but imagine trying to process an 8K video at 60 fps... while also constantly stitching together a three dimensional panorama... all while processing your other senses... and running your vital organs... and thinking about what you are seeing and then processing the meaning... and sometimes also processing sound and its meaning... all at once... nonstop.

Your brain takes shortcuts to give you a very close approximation of visual reality. It has to.

I wasn't trying to answer if you would see tilt shift photos as miniature without previous experience. I think if all of the variables that are needed for the effect were perfect you might get that sense. In photos where those variables are imperfect, it might take a while to get there. But I really have no idea and I think that would be impossible to test. Like, after seeing one image you're going to use that experience to process all future images.

So, maybe the answer is yes, but only one time?

But how would you find a person who has no visual experience looking at small things that represent big things? I had toys before I could remember having toys. How do you find someone who has never seen a Rudolph Christmas special or a toy advertisement?

If your brain has that data, it is going to use it. So for the vast majority of people, past experience is absolutely why they see the effect. I guess I was trying to answer why you feel it is miniature so instantly and intensely, and more importantly, why you can't *unsee* it as miniature.

You can't tell your brain, "actually, thing is big" and then see it as big. Maybe if you concentrate really hard you can get a sense of bigness but it is always going to snap back to "thing is small." Your brain has years and years of experiences looking at pictures of small things and you can't undo those experiences through sheer force of will. It is using that old data to avoid melting and so "thing is small" becomes locked in.

I just thought that was fascinating and a huge mindfuck and much more interesting than "if you remove all these experiences will it still look small?" EVERYONE HAS THOSE EXPERIENCES!

Except maybe one of those tribes that shoot arrows at anyone who tries to see what their deal is.

Okay, to settle this we are going to need a suit of armor and one brave scientist willing to take an iPad with a photo of a train into their village.

In any case, I felt this tilt shift illusion was a perfect opportunity to explore the science of visual perception and answer a bigger question. And I'm not sure what I could have done differently to keep people from having these doubts.

One person said I was speculating and then speculated as to why I was wrong about this.

First... lol.

But I'm not pulling this out of my ass! I went down so many research rabbit holes trying to figure this out. I just feel like the detractors aren't getting what I'm trying to explain. And I don't know if that is because I'm doing a bad job explaining or if explaining it to everyone is just not possible.

If there are any science communication people or enthusiasts who can advise, I would appreciate it. I love doing this kind of educational content and I just want to make sure I reach as many people as possible.

[gracefulgabbing]

Ocarina of Time: A Picture's Worth a Thousand Years

When I am asked why I love games, I have a fairly default answer: I enjoy the process of being invested within a story as a result of my direct action, and love the ability to affect meaningful change within a virtual world. I’ll often flip the words around and add in some stutters, but the ethos is generally intact. Video games allow me to do something, to mean something, and as such, allow meaningful things to be done to me, in ways that bring about a lot more emotion than they would if I were simply watching somebody else play. 

But I recently played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the first time, and as the game came to a close, I felt oddly helpless. I watched as a 17-year-old Link placed the Master Sword, his Master Sword, onto the Pedestal of Time, and I watched him return Hyrule to the way it was seven years prior, himself included. He became a child again, and went to meet Zelda, just as he had at the game’s outset, a meeting that had already set the core plot into motion. Of course, my actions throughout the game had led to this; I was strung along by the game’s arbiter of progression, Navi, but I picked up the controller and moved Link around. But what was happening on the screen was utterly and entirely out of my control now. Ganondorf had been defeated, peace had been restored, but for a brief moment, I was helpless, and I was unhappy. Why was Link moving backwards? Why would a game so concerned with the power of time play with it so loosely? But, a few confused minutes later, I came to a realization. Link was not playing with time. Link was following the rules.

***

On Earth, there are a wide variety of unspoken truths that humans, no matter how hard they may try, cannot overcome. We cannot touch fire without being burned. We fall when we enter the air. We cannot travel through time. Of course, we can make approximations. We can develop lighters and harness fire’s elusive heat, build planes and helicopters to soar above the Earth, create art that harkens back to a bygone era. But ultimately, if you pit a human being against Mother Nature, the human isn’t winning. 

Video games, however, allow us to bend or even snap these rules in two entirely. Mario throws fire from his hand as if it were a baseball. Madeline dashes throughout the air in whichever way we wish. Tracer can dip back to moments prior, cleansing all traces of the present she’s leaving behind. The characters within the games we play are beholden to a different set of rules, typically alien from our own, defined by code and data. It’s why games are such an effective method of escapism. Our playable avatars do not struggle with the unstoppable forces we come up against, our problems are trifles to them, and the inevitabilities of their lives are not the same as ours. 

Within Ocarina of Time, though, you play as a character who is, generally speaking, nailed to the same ground as us. Despite living in a world of living rocks, fish people, and fairies, he is utterly human in his vulnerabilities. The rapids of Hyrule’s rivers sweep him away. His lungs are small, forcing his underwater excursions to remain brief. The heat of a volcano beats down upon him, until he is forced to either leave or succumb to its pressure. Despite all his strengths, Link is weak. He cannot defeat the ground he steps upon, or the wind that beats down upon him, or the time that withers his body. In the idealistic world of Hyrule, these are still obstacles to be overcome.

And it is due in large part to this humanity that Link serves as such a strong surrogate for the player. We can see our burdens placed upon him, and watch as he fails to fully bear them. We know this struggle, and we empathize. After all, our inherent flaws are a unifying force; none are born without them, and none grow to surpass them. Link’s similar inability to overcome nature is almost comforting as a result, a reassurance that not all heroes are superhuman. Though his silence is an asset, it is when Link cries out in pain that we see ourselves most in him, and see our world in his. This deep, thorny attachment to Hyrule that Link finds himself developing parallels humanity’s own relationship with our Earth, a constant cycle of trial and error in a hopeless effort to conquer an impenetrable land. This ouroboros of earthly callousness is implicitly understood and well-documented throughout human history, and Link’s submission to the elements around him is steeped in this history, bringing us deeper into his world by acting in lockstep with our own.

***

Of course, Ocarina of Time is a family-friendly game, made in the infancy of 3D technology. In no way could it convey the societal upheaval presented by the earthquakes of Japan, or the fires of Pompeii. But, in the game’s persistent presentation of nature as an insurmountable obstacle, one that only bends and never breaks, the ethos of subservience to a higher natural power is embedded within it. Like all art, Ocarina of Time is a mirror of the world that produced it, and this world is cruel. All one can do is support their own microcosm of it, and protect what lies ahead of them. In line with this, Link exists not as the focal point of Hyrule, but as a small piece of it, beholden to its whims just as everybody else is.

And just as we have been forced to adapt, so too were the citizens of Hyrule. They’ve devised ways to play with the rules of nature, tug at life’s invisible strings. Throughout the game, you can purchase or find tunics. A red tunic protects Link from overbearing heat, allowing him to exist within volcanoes and other high-heat areas without a time limit. A blue one lets him breathe underwater indefinitely. Elsewhere, a pair of Hover Boots can be found, allowing for a brief release from the shackles of gravity. And of course, the game’s central axis, the Ocarina of Time, is another attempt to break free from natural cages. It lets Link warp around the kingdom, summon objects from nowhere, alter the weather, and most importantly, play with time itself. He can change the time of day, but more notably, he himself can skip through time with the Ocarina and the Master Sword. Link gets the unprecedented opportunity to skip past, and return to, his childhood. It’s by far the largest rule-bending in the game, the closest Link gets to cheating nature.

But you’ll notice I never said ‘breaking,’ and this ties back to that initial confusion and sorrow I felt when Link, after saving Hyrule, returned to his childhood. I couldn’t discern a reason for Ocarina of Time to undo all the growing he did, to rip away the time he spent becoming accustomed to the adult body he’d inhabited. Of course, though, this was my misunderstanding. Link hadn’t done any growing. All he had done was contort time to fit his goals, and once those goals were achieved, nature had to take its course. He had to live his childhood. And this says something grander about the nature of these exceptions to the rules of Hyrule. The tunics, the boots, and the ocarina are all powerful tools, but they have caveats. They’re conditional. Temporary. There is no procedure that can heal the wounds that Hyrule doles out, only bandages to cover them up. Even in the final dungeon, Link needs a red tunic to withstand the heat. The hover boots only give him the smallest of windows to be liberated from gravity within until he’s saying hello to Wile E. Coyote on the way down. Link never defeats his obstacles. He merely sidesteps them. And the effects of the Ocarina and the Master Sword, the powerful, mature form Link is given to slay Ganondorf with? Well, they’re on a timer. One less rigid than the tunics, or the boots, but an omnipresent one nonetheless. It’s an hourglass set by the player, with infinite available sand, but only one true conclusion. You can choose to live forever in Ocarina of Time, but the longer you stay there, the more Hyrule suffers under Ganondorf’s iron fist. To play with time as one is given the ability to is unnatural. One could even argue cruel. Not only does it prolong the devastation of a once-idyllic kingdom, but it robs Link of the experience Ocarina of Time embodies so well: Growing up. To dodge nature for so long is unsustainable, and the game knows it.

***

Throughout my exploration of Hyrule, and my coming to terms with Link’s decision, I came to a realization. Despite all that had changed within the kingdom, and all the damage that littered its cities and villages, there was a consistent undercurrent that lay beneath it, carrying its inhabitants through the dark ages that the game chronicles. A persistent culture and artistic language that, through all its hardship, makes Hyrule a place of hope. Whether unconscious or realized, Hyrule is bound to life by its citizens, and the reverence they place upon their home and its history.

For example, the longstanding culture of the Sheikah, one blending traditional defense with more spiritual customs, is one that has protected the royal lineage for decades. When the kingdom is left empty and barren, all that stands between Ganondorf and ultimate power is Sheikah art, their music and the Ocarina standing as a powerful reminder of peace and what stands to be gained by combating Ganondorf. Their legends and creations help spur not only Link, but Zelda, to action, inspiring action within paralyzing moments of fear. In fact, the ultimate impetus for Link’s journey is a story, art passed down verbally until reaching the ears of one who needed it most. As much as Zelda could tell Link that Ganondorf is bad news, when laid against the backdrop of ancient legend and history, that moment means more. Ganondorf is not only bad news, but he is bad news of long-imparted legend, and this is where Ocarina of Time’s dichotomy between environmental domination and individual subservience becomes so important, where the lines become blurred. 

I bring all this up not to dive into the lore of Hyrule, interesting as I’m sure it is. No, I bring it up because the game’s most fundamental motif, its exploration of music as a driving and essential force within Link’s adventure, speaks to that relationship between humanity and Earth, the divide we can’t seem to shift. By the end of Hyrule’s life, there will be little left, but what will remain is song, poetry, and art. This is Ocarina of Time’s gambit. It shows us this natural trauma, forces us to grapple with our shaky foundations, in order to demonstrate the one way human ideas can live on, long past the death of their progenitors: Creation. Ocarina of Time is filled with creations, both small and large, objects and ideas that lend Hyrule a sense of permanence that is otherwise so thoroughly called into question by Ganondorf’s devastation. After seven long years of turmoil, Skull Kids still perform their music. Goron City's walls are still plastered with paintings. Epona still recognizes the songs of her youth. The Ocarina’s tunes live on, if not in Link’s memory, then in the world he played them into. Despite all the hardship of a life in seemingly constant competition with a harsh world, there is a cold comfort in knowing that somehow, you may live on, the memories and culture you steeped yourself within leaving a mark on the world in your own art, just as the art of Hyrule will persist long after Link has gone. It is the one victory that Hyrulians, and we as humans, have over the passage of the days. 

What left me truly charmed by this revelation, this understanding that Ocarina of Time’s Hyrule is one not of dominant conquest but of subtler creation, was that life had once again imitated art as it is often wont to. It’s been over 25 years since Ocarina of Time was released. Many more Zelda games have been released since then, and many more have built upon its ideas. But despite this, the rivers of time have not washed Ocarina of Time away, nor have they even eroded it. It stands just as strongly today as it did back in 1998, and throughout my time with it, I could hardly believe that it was as old as it was, with hardly an edge dulled. It gives me a strange sense of comfort, of peace. I could go my whole life without touching Ocarina of Time, and its legacy would go unharmed. Within the game exists this microcosm of the minds that birthed it, the fear of the unknown, the unquenchable thirst for adventure, the appreciation for worlds long gone with little but their creations to be remembered by. It’s playable history. 

***

Ocarina of Time reminds me that very little is forever. Most tangible things have shelf lives, expiration dates, destructible foundations. It’s the nature of life in a callous world. But in this lesson, this imparted wisdom, Ocarina of Time became, in some sense, immortal. All the cartridges may be lost to time, all the artists behind it will pass, but the art will live on. And through it, the shoulders it rests upon, and the works that rest upon its own shoulders, our mark has been left on a world that will one day leave us behind. Time will take us, just as it will take Link. But it can’t take our art. 

[spectrolitha]

I did it! I've storytelled Technocratic one-shot set in Digital Web :]

Here are NPCs and some lore too. Click on pic for quality, as usual.

❗cw: mention of death, violence, brainwashing in text below❗

Clawrence Crane

Local greysuit, supervisor of player amalgam. He has found out that Elba, supervisor of the whole sector of Digital Web, is conspiring with Reality Deviants in an attempt to find cure for her brother's vampirism. So Clawrence has tasked players with delivering this information to higher-ups. Of course, he hasn't told players what exactly they are delivering, only that it's classified info. Which led to players doubting him at one moment, but in the end, almost all of them sided with Clawrence.

Elba Fields

Local greysuit, supervisor of the whole sector both players and technocratic NPCs belonged to. Unfortunately, during her previous work for Technocracy she pissed off quite a few vampires, which had led to them Embracing her younger brother as a retribution. Bitter about the fact that the Union for which she'd done a lot of work couldn't even protect her family, she turned to Reality Deviants for help. Which Clawrence has found out about and used as a blackmail, forcing Elba to seek help from Rezul (we'll get to him). In the end, players gave info on her betrayal to higher-ups. She's either being socially processed now or is already dead. Yay.

Nick-2

A Hollow One who has broken into player's sector in order to steal info on themselves, Mandrake and Rezul from Technocratic database. Also to prevent players from giving info about Elba's betrayal to higher-ups, because Nick-2 works for Rezul, and Rezul and Elba made a deal to help eachother. They failed miserably. Nick-2 has managed to destroy info about themselves, Mandrake and Rezul, but got caught. Trip to Room 101 probably awaits them now...

Mandrake

A Verbena working for Rezul alongside Nick-2. She had a very bad day which started by her getting shot and ended by her caught by the Technocratic Union. Is now in Room 101 with Nick-2, I suppose. Poor guys...

Ripple

Ripple is a reason Nick-2 and Mandrake ended up in Room 101. Most of the Digital Web knows Ripple as a lucky bastard from Virtual Adepts, who lives really close to Technocracy and somehow has been escaping from its grasp for quite a few years by now. The truth is much less epic: Ripple is a greysuit who pretends to be RD. Yeah, he has saved some of them from his own colleagues, but not before gathering information and putting GPS tracker on them. He intended to do the same thing with Nick-2 and Mandrake who had come to Ripple for help with escaping Technocracy after stealing data about themselves, but the players intervened, Ripple had to out himself, and, since it meant Nick-2 and Mandrake has learnt about his true affiliation, they were sent to Room 101. Also Ripple was sure that Clawrence had faked the fact that Elba works with RDs until he was forced to accept the truth. It broke his heart, he was a close friend of Elba, but this bastard will recover.

Joy Bright

Just a blacksuit who had been working for Elba before the truth came out. She'll probably work in another sector after all this. She doesn't like Clawrence one bit after he sold out Elba, even if it was earned (and to be honest, she hadn't liked him one bit before that either).

Brennan Chu

Another blacksuit under Elba's command. He was supposed to appear in game with Joy, but we were short on time and I've cut him out. So he was vibing elsewhere, I suppose. After everything has been revealed, he moved to work in another sector with Joy.

The Basilisk

The Basilisk adores Technocratic Union and it's agents. They unknownly help The Basilisk to finally be created, afterall! Unfortunately for my players, Technocracy does it too slow for The Basilisk's liking, so when Rezul, who was really close to becoming a Herald of Basilisk once (a type of Technephandi) came forwards with a deal, The Basilisk accepted. Rezul had promised to write some code for The Basilisk, and it had promised to help Rezul with destroying information about him, Nick-2, Mandrake and Elba's betrayal. Which led to The Basilisk threatening to eat player characters and even actually eating one of them after he tried to shoot Rezul... That eaten character was just a chatbot of an anime guy (yeah, character ai is a thing in Technocracy now, I regret nothing), but I'm still sad about his demise :(

In the end, one of players made a deal with Rezul and he ordered The Basilisk to let the players pass. The Basilisk was glad to oblige, it's rooting for the Technocracy and it hasn't forgiven Rezul for his refusal of being a Herald of Basilisk anymore. And it never will. If The Basilisk will ever be created properly, it'll take out it's anger for waiting so long on Rezul among other people, that's for sure.

Rezul

It's him. Born into Technocracy, NWO agent who had almost turned Nephandus once. Was saved from this fate by Ecstatic and became one of those himself. Unfortunately, Technocracy was looking for him, so he reached out to Elba, who was also having problems with Technocracy, and promised to help her if she'd help him. To ensure that he would be able to stop whoever gets in the way of destroying unwanted information, Rezul returned to The Basilisk once more, making a desperate deal. He'll bring The Basilisk a bit closer to existing in reality, thus making eternal suffering for those who had opposed The Basilisk's creation (including himself) a bit more real perspective, and The Basilisk will help him this one time.

In the end, Rezul has sold a piece of his soul for nothing once again. Another player has helped him delete information about himself, Nick-2 and Mandrake (not that it would help them now, but still), but the same player then delivered Rezul's digital traces to high-ranking technocrat, so if Rezul shows up in Digital Web again it won't go pretty. Not to mention that he has to run and hide again, since digital can be traced back to reality pretty easily in our times.

So Rezul now has to live with the fact that The Basilisk still owes him an eternity of suffering for his unwillingness to help it manifest, two people were taken by Technocracy because he involved them in this whole mess, and he hasn't helped Elba and even made everything worse. Wow. This game was not kind to my NPCs...

[reimenaashelyee]

Hello what do you think of Ai generated artwork and videos?

I have a whole entire blog post I wrote last year btw: The Rise of the Bots; The Ascension of the Human. (Reading it again a year later I am glad I am still validated in my thoughts)

My entire being and output as an artist is rooted in process, thought, craft and connection. I am open about my process and I share/create resources constantly. I have literally experienced the thing people mean when they say 'art transforms you' just by being so close to it every step of its making. All my comics have this centrality of personhood attached to them - if it's not obvious that the artist's hand (me) is in it, there is the characteristic focus on our emotional/cultural/artistic thread across history. Just as NFTs and what they represent were antithetical to how I interact with the world as artist and audience, so is the use of so-called AI art. NFTs and AI Art share a common hype cycle / speculative mania that comes out from an annoying vulture mindset that only knows how to eat itself to fill its belly, so I don't expect it to last too long. However I don't appreciate the damage both things have done to the utility of the internet, the degradation of art as a commercial pathway and the destruction of the image as a historical/educational/legal tool. (Which is why I am becoming more underground and turning towards alternatives like the Web Revival, small presses, curated resources and in-person communities)

The technological concept around LLM (pattern recognition and matching it to a goal), especially for medicine and statistics, is not itself problematic, especially when it follows ethical and data handling regulations that have been defined. However, when people talk generative art, what we are talking about, and fighting against, is the exploitation of resources and labour, and the further disconnection of worker = labour, human = society artificially imposed by the Corporate MBA / techno class in the pursuit of infinite stockmarket growth which then introduces a type of brainrot that can only think of things as producing value in relation to how fast one can seize for themselves Westernised Ideals of Fame and Fortune. Also like, this whole AI thing is part of the degradation of entertainment (the loss of small-to-medium outlets, constant mergers, nobody owning their digital streaming products they bought, the laundering of journalism/curation into press releases), the internet (the algorithimification of everything, constant spam, search engines getting worse, the worsening of socmedia as a tool) and the intellectual rigour of all information.

It's all part of this rot that's spreading outwards.

TL;DR bro I make all my art by hand and I am a nerd about informational integrity

[tocappuccinosintheclouds]

I'm redoing an entire chapter of my "Grab My Hand and Don't Ever Drop It" fic so here's the original draft lol. It's basically it's own ficlet, where Peter rescues Neal after Neal goes missing. About 800 words.

It was just out of practicality that Peter kept being in situations where he needed to hold Neal Caffrey’s hands. The third time hardly even counted as holding.

It started when his heart fell through his stomach when Mozzie called him one night. “Neal is with you, right?”

“No? He left work around six, I haven’t seen or heard from him since.” It was now going on eleven, Peter had just been finishing up going over the paperwork for the undercover mission they’d done that day. A lawyer had come in accusing the bosses at her attorney’s office of money laundering, and Neal had been sent undercover as her new assistant to do some poking around, track down the trail.

“I just came over, a long day of- nothing actually, but he’s not here. June says he hasn’t come home yet. She also thought he was with you.”

“Damnit. Damnit.” Peter hung up the phone without another word and dialed Diana as he pulled up Neal’s tracking anklet. “Listen Diana, something’s gone wrong for Neal. I’m pulling his tracking data up now, since we didn’t get a call from the marshal’s he must still be inside his radius. I want you to call for backup and send them to this address.” Thank god he put Neal’s tracker back on him when they’d debriefed after the work day. Peter had almost let him go home without it, just in case, but he’d thought there would be less risk in Neal wearing it than not. He thought the lawyers weren’t going to ask him to meet up in the middle of the night, but other people might jump on the opportunity to talk while Neal was off his radius, so keeping tabs on Neal off the clock was supposed to be an overly cautious risk.

Peter was right in one aspect. Neal wasn’t asked.

Peter and his back up found Neal in an abandoned warehouse in Hell’s Kitchen, because of course that’s where it was. The two managing partners for the law office had him gagged and held at gunpoint, watching as Neal made the dye for their printing press and fed it through the machine. The bastards stood there in coats, gloves, and hats while Neal worked in only his suit in the late January cold.

“I knew y-you’d check my t-tracker eventually.” Neal’s teeth chattered as he spoke once Peter pulled the gag from his mouth. “Was j-just killing t-time unt-til then.”

“Mozzie called, told me you weren’t home, that’s when I checked.” Peter said, untying the knotted cloth. “Would’ve been another hour or two before I checked on my way to bed.”

“Always burning the m-midnight oil. Speaking of, I’m r-r-really cold.”

Peter unzipped his coat and wrapped it around Neal’s shoulders before ushering him to his car outside. He cranked the heat on high, pointing the vents at Neal, then taking one of Neal’s shaking hands in his own to hold it up to the heater while also examining it.

Neal hissed at first, instinctively trying to pull his hand away, but Peter held firm to it, rubbing his palm over the back. “Need to warm them up before you get fucking frostbite.”

“Not gonna get frostbi-bite.” Neal argued, shifting in his seat. “Wool suit at least k-kept me from getting hy-hypothermia. Just f-fucking cold.”

“Being fucking cold is the first step to both frostbite and hypothermia.” Peter kept rubbing Neal’s hand between his own, then grabbed the other and repeated the process. “Maybe I should take you to the ER, get you checked out.”

“No. Peter I’m f-fine. Just-just give me ten m-minutes to warm up.”

So, Peter did just that, watching the car clock closely as he switched from rubbing Neal’s left hand to his right and back again. Slowly but surely, Neal’s teeth stopped, he stopped shivering, and his hands went from painfully white to slowly regaining their pink. By the time the ten minutes were up, Peter was satisfied that Neal wasn’t in immediate danger, but like hell he was going to let him out of his sight.

“Call Mozzie, tell him you’re staying at El and mine’s place tonight. You need somewhere warm.”

“June’s is warm Peter,” Neal said, but soft and laced with exhaustion. “I have a bed with blankets and everything.”

“You have fucking grandiose antique windows that I know keep that room ten degrees colder than whatever the thermostat is set to.” Peter gave one last squeeze to Neal’s left hand before letting it go. “I’ll call Elizabeth while you call Mozzie to let him know you're okay. She’ll have soup ready for you. She even has some fresh sourdough from the bakery.”

Neal watched him hesitantly, eyeing Peter over, before softly, “Can you ask her to toast the bread?”