#// I DID THESE IN 4 HOURS YESTERDAY NIGHT I WAS SPEEDRUNNING!!!!!!!!!

[concealeddarkness13]

Fire and Steel (Speedrunning Therapy) Part 7

Content warning for forced medical procedures. I’m riding this wave of motivation to write this until it goes away. So, here’s the next part! This one also features writing from @drabbleitout, from the perspective of the TB characters! I say when it is her writing, and when it is my writing. About 7,800 words

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Tagging: @ratracechronicler, @maple-writes, @pen-of-roses, @drabbleitout, and @for-fuchs-sake!

(This section is written by @drabbleitout)

Garnet was always on the other end of calls like this. People reporting loved ones missing, apartments or homes broken into, explaining that invasive, alien feeling of someone else having been in your private space or the sobbing fear of the wellbeing of a loved one. He sat on the couch as an officer rattled off the usual questions. “I’m telling you I’m sure. It was those Auditor bastards.”

“Garnet,” she was young, from one of the nearby precincts, but it was clear in her tone this wasn’t the first time she’d dealt with this sort of thing. “We know you don’t like them, why would you think—?”

“Because of her prosthetics. I’m sure of it, okay?”

“They have no record of human testing.”

“Just look into it, okay?” He glared up at her, worrying his hands. After a moment she nodded, going back to making notes on her tablet. Turning, he looked back at Beau who was seated at the bar, shoulders fallen, head heavy, allowing the technician to access the port on his neck and retrieve memories from the night before. He looked scattered, leaning to the side where they’d used the diffuser to attach his mobility system, leaving the entire right side unresponsive. Judging by what little charge he had, they’d come early in the night, meaning he’d lied there hours before Garnet found him.

Useless. You’re fucking useless. That little voice hissed from the corner of his mind. He had to tear his stare away from Beau.

He was easily distracted as the towering form of Ives emerged through the door. His hair hung messily in his face, mouth opening as if he needed to breathe, clearly having to cool his systems as if he’d ran all the way there —and it dawned on Garnet he probably did. He’d heard over the scanners. He’d pieced it together. Scanning the room he noticed Beau, slipping past detectives studying the broken door lock and starting towards him.

And then he noticed Garnet.

Averting sharply, he marched over to the couch. “How did you let this happen?” Was the first thing out of his mouth. The first thing in three years he’d ever said directly to him. Garnet almost couldn’t believe it, watching the widen intensity of Ives stare narrow into a searing glare. “You saw what happened yesterday at the station. You know they had an interest in her. How could you be so stupid to let this happen?”

“I didn’t let it happen.” Garnet snarled, pressing himself up to his feet, hating that he still lacked a few inches in comparison.

“Well, you certainly didn’t stop it.” Ives growled. And for all of Garnet’s searing rage he knew Ives was right. That was the worst part, he was right.

The technicians finished with Beau, helping him regain control of his right side and heading for the door.

“If you’ve done this to spite me, congratulations Lieutenant, you’ve won. You’ve done it.”

“Hold the fuck up! You think I let them come and take her just to piss you off?” Garnet stepped closer, glaring up into his searing icy stare. “That I would let anyone hurt her because of you? How fucking egocentric are you?” He stabbed a finger into Ives’ chest, close enough now as if daring him to get physical. “I don’t give a fuck about you, and I don’t know why you’re pretending like you care about her. You’ll fucking ditch her in a few years like you did everyone else.”

Ives’ glare wrinkled as if he’d been struck somewhere, but never pulled away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Clearly,” Garnet nodded, “because you never think of anyone else. You up and left your entire family. Ryker, Valletta, me, all of us. You rather go play soldier with breaching. Just can’t get rid of that based programming, can you?” It was Ives’ turn to step in, backing Garnet to the couch threatening to shove him over it.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“The fuck I don’t.”

“Stop, stop, stop,” Beau whimpered, pulling at Ives trying to create space between them.

“You don’t give a shit about Chess, you just want new attention!”

“Don’t pleasure yourself by assuming you know anything about me,” Ives moved as if he may lift a threatening hand, Beau taking the opportunity to slip between him and Garnet, pushing them apart. “You accepted full responsibility when you brought her into your home. What happened was your fault!”

“I know you fucking asshole! I know! You think I don’t feel fucking terrible about that!”

“Do you ever feel, Lieutenant? I’ve yet to see you care for anyone. Why wouldn’t you dismiss Chess, you do everyone else.”

“Ives, it was me!” He barked wedging himself in place, trying not to choke on his words. “I was the one who was there and let it happen. If you’re going to be angry at anyone, be angry at me. Garnet didn’t know. He wasn’t there.”

“Beau,” Garnet hissed, grabbing his shoulder.

“I was there. I was right there and I let them take her.” He pointed at the floor where their bed had been. “I didn’t hear them come in or sense them, not until it was too late. Garnet was in the other room, sleeping. He didn’t know.” Beau’s voice shook, the warning of a critical charge level blinking in his HUD. “Garnet would never want anything to happen to her I know you care a lot about Chess, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t.”

The intensity never left Ives’ stare, flickering up to Garnet before easing back a step. Detectives at the door stopped to watch, scrambling to go back to their work as Ives spotted them. “It wasn’t your fault,” Ives said with great difficulty, even if he meant it. “Either of you.”

Garnet scoffed, helping Beau take a seat on the couch. “You just came from one of their labs, you didn’t see her?”

“I didn’t know I should be looking for her there,” Ives growled.

“She could be at any of them,” Beau weakly said, touching his throat at the strange wheezing noise. Heat tarnished.

“Alright, let’s hear it,” the gruff voice turned them all to the door finding Detective Khan entering. He was half shrugged into a sports coat, sweatshirt on underneath looking as if he’d just rolled out of bed. He scratched his bald head, giving the room a quick swivel before turning back to them. “Well, go on? What happened?”

“The hell are you doing here?” Garnet grumbled.

“I heard a call that a Mediator’s apartment had been broken into and someone was reported missing. Might have low key hoped it was you, Lieutenant,” he joked grimly. “Seriously, cut the shit. What happened?”

“Auditors came in, in the middle of the night. Around two, maybe?” Beau struggled to recall. Everything felt blurry and scrambled. He was trying not to cry at the memory of Chess’ cries, the way she’d looked at him as they drug her away. “They’re interested in her type of prosthetics.”

“It’s a long story.” Ives quickly added.

“I’m a detective, Ives, long stories are kinda my thing.”

“She’s got some foreign prosthetics, not from here. Auditors are interested in the technology.” Garnet rushed through it, “They’ve probably taken her back to a lab.” Khan glanced between them.

“You got proof it’s Auditors?”

“Not enough time to go into it, but yeah. Clock’s tickin’, Khan.”

“Doesn’t stop either,” he shrugged. “Alright, I’m gonna have to get details later, but I’ll take your word for it given your… backgrounds. We need to narrow down which lab. It couldn’t be far, they wouldn’t have moved her to HQ but not too far from it either. You,” he pointed at Ives, “Come with me back to the office, explain on the way. You two, get cleaned up and head in. We’ll talk more once you’re there. Get him some batteries or something, he looks like he might be a fire hazard at this point.” He gave Beau a pat on the head. “Let’s move, boys.”

* (Now back to Chess’s POV)

I…I was slumped in a chair. I opened my eyes to a sterile white room. Three different bastards were flitting around the room, looking at all the fucking monitors with numbers and charts and all that medical shit. I clenched my jaw to keep myself from cussing them all out.

One of the Auditors, a woman with a tight bun, pulled down something hanging from the ceiling, looking like a wide cylinder. She put that over my chest. “What’s your age?” she muttered, not looking at me.

I glared at her. “Fuck you.”

A voice spoke over a speaker. “Told you Maverick, she doesn’t talk.” I glanced around for escape routes, but there was nothing. Only cameras pointed at me from every corner of the room.

“Suit yourself.” She shrugged and brought over a cart that had all the fucking medical torture tools. “Go ahead and run scans, I’ll check the teeth.” She grasped my jaw with a gloved hand, and I tried to bite at her, but she got a good leverage and forced my jaw open a little. The pressure she put on my jaw hurt so badly that tears blurred my vision. “Open or I’ll use force.”

“Don’t forget, we’ve got IV5 just down the hall,” the voice said over the speaker.

Shit. I huffed out some smoke from my nose, but I opened my jaw willingly.

The bastard also known as Maverick brought a mirror into my mouth, looking for a long time. “Mid twenties,” she said, saying other things that I didn’t understand. “What’s the temperature reading we’ve got on the lungs?”

“500, 260 Celsius,” one of the other bastards called. “This is insane. It’s like a furnace in there. But we’re looking at biological tissue. And you should see this DNA. I’ve never seen combinations like this.”

I started shaking at their words. I was always going to be an experiment. “This is gonna be fun then, isn’t it?” Maverick said, finally letting go of my face. “Want to tell us what you know? What country did you get these from?”

I kept glaring at her. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does if you know what’s good for you. This could be a type of weapon they’re developing. There could be war on the rise.”

One of the other bastards looked at me. “Maybe we should start producing more of the IV5’s bring them back in case we need to deploy them. Guess we don’t need any more test runs in the Mediator services.” Fuck.

“I’m sure we could convert the B0’s too. That one would probably make a good spy if we could filter out the empathy,” another bastard chimed in. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Let’s worry about what we can find here first,” Maverick said. “We need to find out how her body is housing the fire like this. Figure out what’s going on in her DNA, take more samples if we have to. I want everything looked over before we get a Doctor involved. When they see we have a human subject they’re going to flip unless we have a good case.”

“Human,” one of them added mockingly with air quotes.

“Either way, we need to prove our case,” Maverick continued. “Good catch, Steve.”

The person over the speaker chuckled. “What can I say? I have an eye for precious gems.” So, he probably was the person I had punched.

“Can you imagine if we could figure out how to get this into Synthetics?” She grabbed my head again and turned it both ways as she grabbed a pair of scissors. Fuck, what was she going to do? And what were they going to do to Ives and Beau? “Programmable units that could harness fire? We’d lead the way in artic exploration or warfare. What else could we get, water? Earth? Can you imagine being able to stop an earthquake?”

“Or cause one.”

Maverick didn’t respond, just pulling at the collar of Beau’s hoodie. I watched in horror as she cut down the center and then the sleeves as well. She pulled it off of me and threw it away. I stared at the bin, and that was the last straw.

I started sobbing. “I’m not from this fucking planet! You don’t need to worry about any fucking wars because of me! I don’t even fucking know how I got here!”

“Bingo, got us an E.T.” one of them cheered. “Told you, not human.”

“Got that on record, Steven?”

“Yep.”

“So we’ve got some alien tech here. At least that’s something we know what to do with, right?” Maverick chuckled. “Oh cut the act, no one believes the tears.”

I couldn’t fucking stop. They were going to hurt Beau and Ives. They were going to use them for wars. And it was all my fault. I couldn’t even try to fix it, or they’d still get hurt. One of the others muttered as I continued. “B0 does that same thing sometimes, drives me up a friggin’ wall. Like, we get it, you can play charades.”

Maverick held my head back and still as I kept sobbing. She cut pieces of my hair off, putting them into a bag and sealing it. She then grabbed my hair and pulled it up on top of my head before she undid the cuffs. But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t do anything or they’d hurt Ives and Beau.

She wasn’t looking at me. “Ok, if you want to send in the gurney. I’m moving her to room 445C for scans and testing.” The doors opened with a shriek, and I flinched. Other bastards rolled up a table to the chair. “I’m so glad we can just make the Synths get up here if we need them to. I’m not about all this struggling.”

Two bastards lifted me out of the chair and onto the table, cuffing my prosthetic arm to the table. I didn’t struggle, just trying to stop sobbing. I squeezed my eyes shut, and more tears streaked down my cheeks as the pushed me down to lie down on the table. I flinched when cold scissors touched my skin, and I opened my eyes to see them cutting the right collar and sleeve of my shirt and the left side of the shorts. Beau’s clothes were so ruined. It was all my fault. I should have kept my old clothes on.

They strapped me down once I lay down on the table, and they rolled me out of the room. The lights in this fucking building were bright and hurt my eyes, and I squinted against them, starting to get a headache from all the crying and brightness and exhaustion. It took forever, but they finally brought me to another room, where there were other things hanging from the ceiling. I had no idea what I was even looking at.

Maverick pulled one of them down, and that one held some ring-like fixtures that could go around my arm. “Alright, we’re starting some scans.” She pulled the edge of the table so that my prosthetic arm was brought up perpendicular to my body. I couldn’t move it. She stepped away, but looked back at me. “I wouldn’t struggle too much. Once this gets to going you really don’t want it coming in contact with your skin.”

She left, and I stared at the machine as the lights dimmed and it started moving around my arm. It came dangerously close to my skin, and tears slipped down my cheeks as I tried to stay as still as I could. Even once the machine was done, no one came back.

*

Time passed in a blur of tests and pain and periods of silence where I didn’t have anything to think about except how terrible I was for putting Ives and Beau in danger. I didn’t know how long it had been since I had been captured, but I refused to eat or drink as much as I could. They would probably drug the food and water.

The lights were blinding me, but I had nothing else to look at. I didn’t want to move. But then movement appeared on the edge of my vision, and I looked over slightly to see someone else I hadn’t seen before. He was older, with short, dark hair and glasses. He stared at me, and he looked worried. Why would he look worried? What was the point of pretending?

He said something, but I couldn’t understand. He leaned away, speaking to someone else, and the lights dimmed a moment later. I blinked as he sat down next to me with a huff, getting closer to me.

“You must be Chess,” he whispered, sounding kind. Why the fuck were they doing this? There was no way I’d believe that someone would be kind now. “I know you’re probably feeling terrible at the moment. I hear you haven’t been eating.”

I would never eat. They totally drugged the food, and I wasn’t about to compromise myself even more than I already had. I snarled. “Fuck you.” I hated how weak and raspy my voice sounded.

“That’s understandable. I take no offense to it. Please, don’t be afraid. I’m not here to test or prod. I’m supposed to just be surveying. Seeing the work, so to speak.” He was still a damn bastard. “Although I know you have absolutely no reason to trust me.” He leaned back to grab a tablet from the counter near me, propping it in his lap to look over it. “I also know you have no reason to trust me, but you seriously should eat something.” He frowned, looking up at me as he scooted to be in line with my head. He held up the tablet for me to see, but it all looked like nonsense. He pointed at the top right corner that read: ‘Subject Title/Model’ where it was filled with question marks. What the fuck did that matter to me? Why was he showing me this?

“Ives told me about you. Not, well, not about this. But I heard the others using him to threaten you into complying.” He leaned closer to whisper. “Ives was released days ago. He isn’t here. They can’t hurt him or Beau. They’re actually very low level engineers, they don’t speak for the company or make any decisions. I promise you, neither of them are in any danger.”

Fuck that. I couldn’t believe that. I coughed weakly, releasing a little bit of smoke. “You’re just…trying to make me more compliant. I won’t eat anything they give me.”

“I know you can’t believe me. I don’t blame you for that. And I won’t ask you to do that and I’m not here to force feed you either.”

He glanced at the door and hesitated before continuing. “I work closely with Beau and Ives. I do examinations at Station Six. I’ve met Ryker and Garnet, and Ives told me you’ve met them too. I admit, there aren’t many who are compassionate in this line of work, and this is far from ethical. I’m going to get word to them you’re here, and get them to you.” He moved back, putting the tablet back on the counter. He then grabbed another tool and used it to actually loosen the cuff on my wrist. I blinked and stared at him, but I couldn’t just believe what he said.

“I’m sorry I can’t do much more right away. And even if you don’t believe me, I want you to know I’m going to get a message to them. As soon as I leave this room. But I wanted to see if there’s anything I can get you in the meantime?”

I just shook my head, staring at him. What was the point of all this? Why would they do this?

“I cannot apologize enough for what’s happened, and I promise you there will be consequences for this.” He pulled out what looked like a pouched drink as he whispered. There it was. The reason they wanted me to believe him. So they could get me to have their fucking drugged drink. “I won’t make you, but will you at the very least drink this?” He opened it, and I started to snarl, but he then drank some of it, and I clearly saw him swallow. What? “It’s electrolytes, just to give you energy. Just so they won’t force you to eat. If they see your levels going too low, they will. This should buy you enough time until I can get someone here.

“Again, you have no reason to trust me. But I swear to you, I’m getting you help.” He offered the drink, and, I stared.

Damnit. But he drank it, and he had swallowed. And I was nauseous from hunger, but I could probably have a drink at least. And getting force-fed sounded worse. “Fine.” I leaned forward as best I could to take sips. And it felt so nice to my dry mouth.

He smiled. “Not too much too quickly. You don’t want to be ill. Hopefully this will give you a little more strength, just to hold on a little bit longer.” I drank as much as I could before I felt too nauseous. He nodded and stood up. “Let me act quickly. I’ll be back with help.” He pushed the stool back in place and left. I stared after him, just hoping I hadn’t made a terrible mistake to trust him.

* (Writing from @drabbleitout)

Another night with nothing. Another night Garnet wasn’t sleeping. Beau tried making dinner, not nearly as accustomed to it, bringing it into the bedroom where Garnet worked over his laptop and tablet. He didn’t stop. Between shifts, sometimes even on shift, and nearly all night long. He’d only pause for a cigarette or if his body involuntarily dropped him into sleep while in the middle of his research.

Ives fared no better.

It was the most discussion Beau had seen between them since his activation. Emails, messages, texts of swapping information, digital threads in search of a lead as if they were their own detective department. Beau would catch up to their updates only to fall behind in his attempt to keep them both up and running.

It was midnight when he finally gave up, locking up, pulling the curtains to, going back into the bedroom. Expectedly, Garnet was still working, food only half touched on the nightstand. “Jaime, we need a break,” he whispered, unheard. Beau moved closer, stepping around to plug in Garnet’s phone to charge, putting away the tablet that wasn’t currently glued to his hand and cutting out the table light.

“Hey,” Garnet finally peeled his stair away from the screen, squinting.

“That’s enough,” Beau whispered, sitting on the edge of the bed. “You’ve done enough today.”

“It’s enough when we find her. We’ve got it down to two. We’ve almost got it. We’ve almost… figured out…” he went quiet as Beau cupped his face in his hands, thumbs petting his cheeks.

“Please?” Beau whispered, “You’re wearing yourself out. Even if you found out tonight, you’re in no condition to go out. I saw the way you were driving today. You need rest.”

“I can’t.” Garnet hissed, pulling his face free to turn back to his laptop.

“You can. You have to.” Beau reached for the screen, stopping as Garnet caught his wrist. “Garnet, you barely get sleep on a good day, you’ve had less that eight hours since it happened. You’ve done enough.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“You need to sleep—”

“I can’t! I have to figure this out. It’s been nearly a week. You know what Khan said they could have moved her somewhere. You know how this works. Just like any other kidnapping, but they’ve got money and resources. They could be anywhere. If we don’t find her—” Beau scooted closer, pulling him into his shoulder.

Garnet froze, as tense as an overtuned piano string. His heart was racing, thoughts scattered, his electromagnetic field practically jittering in Beau’s scanners. The light from the laptop skewed across the wall, fallen from his lap onto the bed. Garnet didn’t reach for it. His breath jumped, catching. It wasn’t until wet warmth soaked into the shoulder of Beau’s shirt did he realize Garnet was crying.

Beau leaned their heads together, carefully petting over his coily hair, over and again. “You’ve done enough, Jaime… it’s enough.”

“No,” he croaked, shaking as his arms wrapped around Beau. He ducked his face into his neck, trying to hide from the creaking sobs, fingers winding into his shirt. “I should’ve heard. I should’ve heard them.”

“I know it doesn’t feel like it, but it’s okay. You were sleeping. You didn’t expect them to come here.”

“I saw a car in the parking lot,” Garnet sniffled, difficult for him to speak as he shook with sobs. “At the station. I didn’t listen to my gut. I should’ve listened!” Beau blindly reached behind him, closing the laptop and moving it aside before rocking to the side, pulling Garnet down to the bed.

“We’re going to find her,” Beau whispered. “We’ll find her,” over and over like a mantra, soothing a hand across Garnet’s back. He stayed that way as Garnet fell asleep, and even still as he slept. Never going into stasis. Never moving. Watching the black sky wake into a sickly grey and steel blue, syncing to Garnet’s phone to screen calls and notifications, shutting off his alarm before it could blare out. He notified Ryker that they’d be late, giving him an extra hour of sleep before giving in to wake him.

*

He was still exhausted as they went into the station, bombarded by Ives in the parking lot as he waited at the back door. Just as he had every morning. He never went to his own apartment anymore, staying in the barracks, working at the station.

“Khan wants to see us,” Ives said, following them in. “Right away.”

“The fuck? Why didn’t you call me?”

“He just notified me. I thought it had something to do with you when you didn’t show. But he wouldn’t disclose any information.” Beau followed them, concerned with Kahn calling them in. They traveled upstairs to the detective offices, Garnet pushing Khan’s door open to stop.

“I think we have her,” Khan announced.

Beau could no longer stand, sliding down the door jamb to sit in the floor.

“Hey Doc, it’s Garnet,” his voice was thick, knee bouncing as he fought to hold himself together. “You gotta –a status report? How’s she doing?”

“Physically not terrible,” he breathed into the phone, shuffling clear that he was trying to stay out of sight, wherever he was. “She’s a bit weak, refusing food and fluids. Still quick with the tongue, that’s for sure. So far it’s just been studies. I can’t say it hasn’t been… traumatic. But there’s been no cutting or surgery of any kind.”

“Do you have the location?” Ives pressed.

“I’m sending it over now. There’s a shift change at eight. I can probably get into security, get the doors and everything open for you if you’ve got a team to come down here.” Beau barely heard the rest, eyes watering with the overwhelming news. Of course, he hadn’t stopped thinking they would find her. It had only been the last few days the thought of not finding her alive began to root it’s way into him. But now they had hope. They had a chance.

"We'll be on our way." Khan announced.

*

Beau was the only one with enough common sense to drive. Given clearance from Khan, the three of them were allowed to move in on the lab with five other officers in wait behind them. Yew cleared them through the gate, relaying which cameras were clear. Any that weren’t, Ives took little time to cut and repeat their feed, giving them a clear entrance.

“I’m on point,” he said with little room to argue. Garnet nodded without another word.

“Shift change has been delayed, but there’s no time to wait,” Yew came over the comms. “They’ve started a procedure without any clearance. You need to move in now." Beau screeched to the curb, all of them piling out in full riot gear, making movements awkward and slow for Beau. He hurried after them, already hacking at the pad of the door.

Without warning Ives staggered, a shrieking round flying into the side of the building from somewhere unknown. TLN splattered on the wall, dark and shimmering, leaking from Ives’ side. He turned in search of the gunman, almost growling as he turned for the door and kicked it at the brace bar causing it to fold inward with a horrific shriek. With rifle raised he shoved inside, Garnet checking the parking lot for the shooter as he pressed Beau inside, following shortly.

Auditors stopped as they stepped out into the hall, reeling back into their rooms. "You need to go up two floors. Take a right from the stairwell. Third door on your left." Yew informed. Ives took off in a sprint, Garnet struggling to keep up with them as they hurried for the closest stairwell. Beau and Ives effortlessly took two stairs at a time, Garnet fighting for air as the lack of sleep and meals came bearing down on him.

"You're interfering with city jurisdiction. If you do not stand down I will have no choice but to fire." Ives announced, rifle to his shoulder, threatening any of the Auditors that tried to step out in his way. Beau drew his shock pistol, covering him as they inched down the hallway. The room in question opened, releasing an Auditor in medical gear, spilling screams into the hall.

Chess' screams.

Ives gave no second warning. He fired on the three Auditors, stun bullets sending them convulsing to the floor. He considered drawing his firearm as well, wanting to pull real bullets through them, but heeded the warnings in his HUD as he stepped over them towards the door. The Auditor in medical scrubs stammered at his approach, making a sad effort to block the door. Ives grabbed them by their collar, and slung them with all his force down the hall. He backed away from the door, taking three long strides and throwing all of his weight, shoulder first, into it.

It flew off its track, crashing into the far wall of the room.

* (Back to Chess’s POV!)

The bastards had just walked in and quickly brought out medical tools and hooked me up to machines. They just pushed an oxygen mask on me, and I tried not to start crying all over again. I had to obey, just in case Beau and Ives could be hurt.

They didn’t even bother to give me some kind of sedation before they grabbed some heavy duty tools and started prying at my prosthetic arm. Oh fuck. Instant pain burned up my arm, and I screamed and tried to cower away from them, but they just held me down as one of them kept prying at my arm. And I kept screaming, starting to cough up smoke as tears leaked from my eyes.

And then...they were gone. First the people who were holding me down and then the person who was prying at my arm. I barely registered that as I kept sobbing and coughing up smoke, but then someone else moved into view…and they were a cop with a helmet on, hiding their features. Fuck. I tried to cower away from them as they took the oxygen mask away from my face, until they spoke and I froze.

“Chess? Chess, l-little one, I’m here.”

I blinked and remembered and stared, starting to cry worse. I tried to take deep breaths. “Ives,” I croaked.

He tore his helmet off, and there he was. I saw him. He gasped in breaths as well, looking me over. And…he started crying. He tore the straps away from me. “It’s me. I’m here. I’ve got you.” I cried worse. He was here. I…I was safe. I hadn’t hurt him because of my presence. He was ok. He scooped me up gently, and I clung to him, still sobbing.

“I’m taking you home,” he said softly, and I believed him. I…I was safe. He held me close as he walked me out of the building, and I held onto him tighter.

I kept sobbing. “I’m…I’m sorry. They threatened you and Beau. And I couldn’t…I couldn’t do what you asked. I couldn’t put my safety over yours. I had to cooperate. I couldn’t let you get hurt.”

“Please, stop apologizing,” he wheezed. “You did nothing wrong. It isn’t your fault. You did everything you could and you did such a good job. I’m the one who’s sorry. I wasn’t careful that day, I should have stood watch to make sure no one would see you. I put you at risk and I got you hurt. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I shook my head, about to argue that it was all my fault. That I had put him in danger by punching the Auditor and I should have done better in not letting them see me. But Ives stiffened, and I blinked and looked up at him. He looked panicked as he looked down and over at me. “I have to get you out.” He sounded unsteady as he rushed out of the building. I barely noticed how nice it was to be in the sun again as I started panicking all over again. What had I done? Was Ives getting hurt for coming to rescue me?

He set me down, but I held onto him. “Get in the car,” he begged, and his voice sounded weird. He clawed at the handle of the police car Garnet and Beau used. “Please, get in the car.”

I would not leave him. Not again! I would protect him! I started sobbing all over again. I held his hands tightly. “No. I won’t. I’m not leaving you. What’s going on?” I looked around for anyone, and Beau and Garnet were leaving the building too. “Please! Something’s wrong!”

Ives tried to push me away. “Get-“ He stumbled, one hand catching the roof of the car so he wouldn’t fall. He wrenched his head aside, and I stared. I had done this. It was all my fault. He was here, and something was happening because of this!

“Ives? Ives, what is it?” Beau walked closer cautiously.

“In-fected.” Ives’s voice was scratchy, and he pulled away from me, getting stiff and not moving. I screamed a sob as I walked closer to Ives. There had to be something I could do!

“Chess.” Garnet sounded worried. “Chess, come here. Slowly come over here.”

But…but everything had just been fine! I couldn’t leave Ives now! Not when he had just saved me! I couldn’t do that! “What did I do? Did I hurt him? I’m sorry!”

Garnet edged over to me and eased a hand around my arm, trying to pull me away gently, and I tried to resist, but I was too weak. “No, it wasn’t you kid. This wasn’t you. You didn’t hurt him.” But it was my fault! A loud gunshot sparked off the roof of the car, and I cowered. This was all my fault. “Beau, take a step back. A few steps back, Bud.”

Beau didn’t move. “Ives,” he whispered.

Garnet reached for his radio. “1-65 to dispatch. I need a tech out to my location now.” He brought his hand to his ear. “Yew, we got a situation. One of these guerilla fucks are out here firing infection rounds. They got Ives—Beau, I said back up. Now!”

I stared as Ives started moving again, having jerking movements as he turned to Beau. His…his eyes. There was no whites to his eyes or blue color, just lenses that were red. I froze. I couldn’t move. Ives was hurt.

Ives lunged at Beau and tackled him to the ground, and Garnet scooped me up and ran for the car. “Shit, shit, shit.” He opened the door. “Do what he says, get in the car.”

I was useless. There was nothing I could do to help. So, I just got in the car and watched as I tried to get myself to stop sobbing.

Beau pushed back Ives from slamming him against the wall. Ives grabbed for Beau’s neck instead, succeeding in wrapping his hand around Beau’s throat as Beau called for Garnet.

“Don’t look, kid.” Garnet turned me away, and I flinched and squeezed my eyes shut as gunshots rang out. Ives…Ives was going to die, and it was all my fault. But then Garnet cursed, and I had to look again as Ives rushed the car. Garnet slammed the car door closed, but Ives still grabbed him and slammed him on the hood of the car. No! I couldn’t lose any of them! I started punching the glass window with my prosthetic, trying to get out and help, but I was too weak. I coughed up smoke, tears still streaking down my cheeks. I couldn’t let them get hurt!

I vaguely saw Garnet punch Ives and narrowly avoided getting hit himself. He punched Ives again, but Ives caught sight of me and froze, staring. I froze too. This wasn’t Ives. It wasn’t his fault. Why? Why did this happen? Why did he have to get hurt? I deserved it more!

“Beau, get in the car and drive!” Garnet punched Ives again and tried to get him in a headlock, but Ives just pulled Garnet with him before pulling him off and throwing him. Ives walked closer, and I couldn’t do anything but stare.

Beau screamed something, but I barely heard it, just staring at Ives. He didn’t do anything, just stared back. A sob wracked my body. “Please. You said we’d go to the beach together.” My voice came out small and broken.

Ives stumbled, falling to a knee. I gasped and moved closer to the window. Maybe…maybe he was fighting back? A pained expression came to his face, and he looked up at me with a blue eye. He was still there! I…I had to help him somehow! I started punching at the window again. I had to get out and help him!

"Ḃ̴̯e̸͉͌a̸͕͆u̴̖͌,̶̉ͅ ̴̈͜s̵̟̓h̴̩̕ű̷̼t̷̼͐ ̶̹͝m̴̦͘ė̵͚ ̸̲̎ḍ̵̒ó̷̦w̴̲̿n̴͕͛.̸͕̈́" He had such a mechanical voice, but I could tell he was in pain. I had to help!

He bowed his head and stood again. His eyes were back to red as he smashed through the window and grabbed me by the throat, squeezing too tightly. I gasped, tears streaking down my cheeks as I stared at him. I tried to scrabble at his hand, but he knocked away my left arm and grabbed my prosthetic arm tightly by the wrist. I cried out as a sharp pain shot up my arm.

I just kept staring at him, trying to gasping in a breath. “I…I can’t…” I can’t fight you.

Darkness threatened to overtake me, but Beau jumped at Ives’s head, catching a leg across Ives’s face, throwing his weight, which got Ives to let go. I collapsed in the seat, gasping for breath and coughing up smoke. I just curled up, trying to regain my breath and not pay attention to anything. They…they would probably have to kill him to stop him. And I couldn’t fight him.

I heard some gunshots, but I didn’t look up. It was all so overwhelming, and I squeezed my eyes shut and held my head. I was useless.

Glass broke from a window near me. “Chess? Chess??” I looked up to see Garnet, and I just sobbed worse, unable to get any words out. He looked back outside the car. “Beau, duck!” Some other gun went off, and Garnet turned back to me.

I could hear the doctor who had seen me before. “Get Ives into repair, now. Lieutenant, how is Chess?”

Garnet picked me up, and I sobbed into his shoulder, unable to speak. “You okay? Can you look at me? Can you breathe?”

I just nodded. “I’m…” But then I looked up and panicked all over again. Ives was passed out on the ground, and there were fucking Auditors surrounding him! They were going to hurt him because I tried to escape! I tore myself out of Garnet’s grip and ran for Ives. “You fuckers aren’t taking Ives!”

The doctor tried to block me. “Please, Chess, please. We need to take him in. He’s been infected and if we don’t hurry he could infect Beau, or hurt someone worse. You’ve seen what can happen. We have to get him quarantined.”

I snarled at him. “Like they took me in?!” I ran around him and charged the Auditors, clenching my fists, fully ready to punch any of them who got in my way. But they backed away, so I was able to get to Ives, and I stood protectively over him, glaring at anyone who got close.

They just stared at me, not moving, but Beau walked up and touched my shoulder and nodded. I looked over at him, starting to sob all over again. I wouldn’t actually be able to stop the Auditors. They’d take Ives and hurt him. “Please. They can’t take him.”

“It’s okay.” Garnet spoke. Beau must have not been able to speak. “They’re the only ones who can help him, Chess.” Beau nodded. “Dr. Yew is going to help him.”

Even Beau and Garnet were saying they weren’t going to hurt him. I…had to trust them. I slumped and moved away, my body shaking with silent sobs. “I’m…I’m sorry.”

Beau hugged me tightly, and I hugged him back. My tears were finally drying up. Beau was unsteady on his feet, and I wasn’t much better, but I tried to help steady him.

Garnet walked over and helped steady both of us. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “How do you feel? You wanna sit down?”

They were doing something near Ives in the background, and I made sure to keep my eyes away from that. “I might need to sit down. I’m fucking exhausted, and I haven’t had any food the whole time. But…I’m fine. What about you?” I looked over at Beau, and, oh fuck. He was so hurt. Was that from trying to stop Ives? “I’m…I’m sorry, Beau. I didn’t even notice… What can I do to help?”

Beau shook his head as he leaned on the car with a thin smile. “He says he’ll be alright,” Garnet said. “We wanna make sure you’re alright. You’re probably dehydrated, probably can’t get you any solids for a bit.” He glanced over, and I looked too, to see an ambulance pulling up. I tensed. Would I have to go to the hospital? “I’m not a doctor, Chess, but you probably need to get checked out by a medic. And I know -I know with what you just went through. But you got roughed up back there.”

I nodded. I felt like shit, so he probably was right. “I’ll go. I just…might panic a little. Is there any way you could come with me? I don’t wanna be alone right now.” I could barely believe I was free again. And Garnet and Beau and Ives and the others cared so much about me as to help me.

“Absolutely.” Garnet grinned. “Might’ve broken my hand.” Beau leaned over and picked up something that I only now noticed was part of his arm. Shit. “Beau says he’s going to catch a ride back with someone for Mikki to look him over. She should be able to fix it, uh, without an Auditor’s help.”

I just felt more nauseous. It was because of me that he had even gotten hurt. Beau smiled and opened his mouth, but it was just static and clicking that came out. He shrugged, and Garnet spoke. “He’ll come meet us after. Oh, and bring Niner.”

I nodded and hugged Beau tightly. “Be safe. And I’d better see you soon, or my righteous fury will burn all the bad guys down.” I smiled shakily as I pulled back and looked back at Garnet. “Thank you so much.” I hugged him tightly too. I…I loved hugs. “I was…so scared.”

He chuckled, patting my back. “You’re one tough gal. You had every right to be scared. I…” He took a breath. “I was scared too, kid. I’m glad you’re okay.”

There was a jingle, and I looked up to see people coming out of the ambulance in medical uniforms. Garnet waved at them. “We need a ride to the hospital. I’m going with her, so, go ahead and call us both in.” He reached out to Beau, brushing over his head and pulling him close to press a kiss to his forehead. “Be careful, bud. Call me when you’re done.” He stepped back and led me to the ambulance.

I had to focus to take try to take less unsteady steps, and I took Garnet’s hand as we walked. I…I didn’t want to think about what happened for a bit, so I glanced over at Garnet, a smile pulling at my lips. “What’s going on between you and Beau? I saw that kiss.”

“Adrenalin makes me emotional.” He chuckled. “And, uh, and I worry about him. Why, you want one? They’re free today. Usually run you twenty bucks.” He signaled to the medic in the ambulance and helped me step into the ambulance.

I laughed, wincing a little at how weak it sounded. “I wouldn’t mind it. It looked nice.” It was nice to talk about normal things again. But then I saw the gurney that the medic was gesturing to, and I started shaking. I didn’t want to get strapped down again. I swallowed hard and looked back at Garnet. “But also, you look exhausted too. Were you getting enough sleep?”

“I’m never getting enough sleep.” He went slow, but he helped me sit on the gurney. He kept hold of my hand the whole time, and when I sat back, he leaned over and kissed my forehead too, and I almost burst into tears again from the gentle touch. He sat down next to me, still holding my hand, as he looked up at the medic. “Hey doc.”

“Third time this month, Garnet.” The medic shook her head. “You robbin’ cradles now?”

“Nah, this is my little sister. She’s been through it, so be nice. Not a fan of needles, runs in the family.”

“Good deal.” She turned to me. “You alright if I close the doors or you need a second, honey?”

I took a deep breath and squeezed Garnet’s hand. I would be ok as long as he was with me. “I’m good with you closing the doors.”

“You got this.” He winked, running a thumb across my knuckles. “We’re gonna be okay.”

[duskstars]

familiar faces

[secretgamergirl]

The Workification of Games

I like games. Quite a bit. Play them constantly. Used to review them for a living. I make them. I’m perpetually tempted to maybe stream them for a new living. But there’s so many times where I look at the stack of new games I haven’t started in on, or ones I’m presently in the middle of, and I just start groaning, because there’s this whole sense of obligation and drudgery and that’s not actually fun, so I avoid playing them. And we kinda need to talk about that.

We’ve had games that are secretly jobs for as long as we’ve had games that aren’t designed to be played in a single sitting, really. At the dawn of time, there was just arcade games. Classic arcade games had no real sense of progress to them. There’s a sense of ADVANCEMENT. You can get better at playing Centipede, and clear more boards, and see more palette swaps, but there’s no real end goal to it, and when you step away from the machine, you know you’re starting over from the beginning the next time you play. The only way there can be any sort of obligation is if you have some personal challenge you set for yourself, like getting to the top of the high score chart at your local arcade maybe. And that’s not something that takes constant effort, that’s just having one really good game one day.

Then later, we got relatively long-form console games. Super Mario Bros. has 32 levels. There’s an implicit goal that you need to plow through all 32 of those levels and save the princess. But still, like the personal high score challenge, any given time you sit down, either you complete the game, or you don’t. Next time you’re starting fresh. You’re taking that challenge on your own terms, whenever you want to, and while learning the game is kind of a thing, there’s no sense that you’re falling behind if you take a break for a while.

Later still, we got the first wave of games that are meant to take more than a sitting. Dragon Quest, Zelda, Metroid, Ultima. There’s still some end goal you’re working towards, but now the expectation is you aren’t just going to sit down and make it or not. You’re going to play the game a while, have some sense you’ve made some progress by gathering stuff or leveling up or whatever, get your password/save the game, and come back to keep chipping away. And hey, at the time, that was novel and cool and kinda made you feel good that you’re always advancing instead of starting from scratch.

RPGs then became kind of a thing. They got longer and more involved. There was a stretch where basically, every 5 years, the amount of time you had to sink into a single RPG to see the ending doubled, until they turned into these 80+ hour Commitments. It isn’t “today I think I’m going to sit down and play Xenogears before dinner.” It’s “this month I’m going to spend like 4 hours between getting home and making dinner playing Xenogears, should be finished by the 30th or so.” And hey, whoops! That’s a job now! In my own personal experience, that was literally a job. I spent some time reviewing games professionally. I was being paid by the article, and seeing the game through before reviewing it was a policy at that outlet, so, yeah. I had to sit down with these big 80 hour epics and slog through them, getting in as many hours as I could each day, just like some people had to go stand behind a counter flipping hamburgers or sit at a desk making phone calls. A full on job.

Now granted, at the time, it was mainly just RPGs that did that, and most people didn’t literally play them for a living. So OK you have your one big PROJECT of a game to slowly chip through and then everything else you’re playing is relatively light. Only relatively though, because hey, RPGs were the first genre to really get LONG, and took it to the greatest extremes, but damn near ALL games in the mid-90s could be counted on to have some main story-progression mode too long to be played in a single sitting, with save files to maintain your progress. And that PROGRESSION creep never went away. Super Mario Odyssey has somewhere around 1000 moons for you to go find before you can say you’re done. That’s a pretty sizeable commitment to plug away at.

And really, even around the late 90s, things were getting pretty bad. Game production started really picking up steam, so it went from “hey like 5 really great games came out this year” to “wow, there are 5 games coming out this month alone I want to play” and all of them are some sort of time commitment. So if that’s how you spend your time, not only is this game you’re playing making the demand that you sink 20-100 hours into it, there’s a stack of games piling up behind it and more on the way. You need to stay on the daily grind or you’ll fall behind and the unplayed stack is going to start getting taller. Gotta keep your head down and work towards that ending if you want to stay on top of new releases and not skip anything.

And then MMOs happened. WOW are those ever obligating! You’re not just buying a game, you’re paying for a subscription. And that means, really, any time you’re NOT spending playing the game, well that’s just throwing your money away. And the games want you to stay subscribed, so they have every incentive to keep you from ever feeling like you’re done, but still want you to feel like you’re getting somewhere. So we’ve got the slow slow grind of leveling up, like once every couple hours you sit there. And the long long quest chains. And the random loot drop based stuff to stall you out and buy more time to add more long quest chains. And oh, the SOCIAL obligations! You’ll have more fun and make more progress if you have a group! But everyone has other obligations in life, so this six hour block from 8 to 2 AM every night, you simply have to be logged in. Can’t do this raid without our best healer. It’s literally a job, but you pay for the privilege!

And that mindset spread. And people started actually researching howto take advantage of human psychology to make everyone feel even more obligated. Gotta have that PLAYER RETENTION. If you aren’t being incentivized to log in every day (here’s your daily log-in bonus!) you might drift away and start something else. You’re not going to stick around for any DLC or in-game purchases or whatever, where people make the real money. Better make it feel like you’re punished if you don’t maintain some minimum daily commitment, really.

And again. This started with RPGs, but it’s just everywhere now. Even games that should be light breezy things, where you just sit down for an hour, play a match, and you’re done, those come with daily log-in rewards and experience bars and stuff you need to unlock just as a matter of course. Can’t just sit down and shoot robots for an hour to relax, you have to be MAKING PROGRESS and working towards unlocking stuff. Gotta be a job. Gotta make it a commitment.

It’s awful. It’s draining. It keeps you from ever really relaxing and having fun, and developers have no real incentive at all to stop doing it, so it’s on us to start identifying it and saying no, and highlighting the games that don’t suck you in like that and you can just have fun.

The one game lately that devours the most of my time right now is Risk of Rain 2. Risk of Rain 2 is pretty damn great. There’s SOME sense of “there is progress still to be made here!” in the form of achievements/challenges left for me to tick off. A LITTLE of that is good, arguably. It rationalizes me playing it still if I can’t fully shake that weird urge to be “productive” with my leisure time, rather than “wasting it” on a game where I’m not advancing or unlocking anything, but the fundamental structure of it is this very arcade-y, somewhat rogue-adjacent game.

If I sit down and play Risk of Rain 2 for an hour, I’m not pushing any sort of progress bar up one damn bit. I’m just in the moment, playing me a quick run. I might have some goal I’m trying to hit with that run. Some little side challenge for an achievement, but whether I actually pull that off is really just going to come down to luck, and I know this probably isn’t going to be the run where I do it. If I do, cool. If I don’t, I’m still having this really intense frenetic little hour here where there’s the excitement of whether I’m going to do great or die quick and start from the beginning again. It’s like the old arcade experience. All I’m working towards is mastery so I can have some bragging rights, but really, I’m going to be as “far into finishing the game” after today’s little session as I was yesterday. Or a week ago. I’d say “or a month before that” but nah there was a big recent patch and I unlocked Acrid that day. Still, it’s just a fun, for its own sake, non-obligatory time. And I can play it with friends if I want to. But nobody falls behind if I play without them in any sense, just, hey, I have company to talk to tonight while I run around shooting space lizards.

And maybe Risk of Rain 2 is not your thing. You like slower paced games, maybe an old school feel? Well then might I suggest you look into the wide wonderful world of randomizers? Whatever your favorite game was 20-30 years ago, odds are surprisingly good that some entrepreneuring hacker in the last 3 years or so has gone and made either a quick little downloadable program, or a website, where you can take that old game, scramble it around, and get a fresh little remixed experience out of it. And this is all an offshoot from the speedrunning community too, so even i that game of yours used to be a big 20+ hour commitment the first time around, NOW there’s randomizer settings to trim out the fat and turn it into something where you’re basically guaranteed to be able to finish the whole thing in like 2-4 hours tops. If this is your first introduction to the concept, here, have a random let’s play to give you an idea how these things go. You get this nice mix of the comfortable and familiar, while still doing something new and exciting for the first time. There’s really no sense of long term obligation since it’s a single sitting thing. And if you finish or you feel stuck, cool, flush that ROM, generate a new one, and you can do it again.

There’s also something just very freeing about just going back to some old game that at one point DID have a big ol’ progress bar to fill up, but you did it and now you can play it without any real goal anymore. The Saints Row games are particularly great for this, because they have a little option to go replay old missions you’ve already done, and a lot of customizability options. So just, hey, load your old save up, give your character a fancy new makeover, switch to a wackier voice, and replay whatever part of the game you remember most fondly. Or crank the radio and drive around exploring the city. Whatever. Relax and enjoy it, it’s a game. It’s fun and relaxing.

As for everything else? All those JOBS you’ve accidentally installed on your hard drive or on your phone or on a shelf in a nice little row of cases? You need to think, really think. “Is this something I’m really enthused about the idea of PLAYING, or is this something I’m looking forward to being DONE WITH?” I mean, not all games that are jobs are miserable and unrewarding. I will crack open an Etrian Odyssey or something like a lobster and suck the meat out of every leg, drawing those maps and finishing those floors in such rough shape I barely make it back to town and have a good time doing it, and that’s fine. But I am SURE right this minute there’s at least one game that you’re playing because you want the closure of saying”hey, I played all the way through Metal Zone 6. Credits rolled.” Or there’s that one where you’re just logging in every day to “do your dailies.” Or some awful thing on your phone where you’re waiting for your action points to fill back up because there’s an Event going this weekend and it’s your only chance for that gacha pull that’ll give you the big boobed princess in her winter vacation alt costume or whatever.

And those are all terrible reasons to be playing a game! Screw it! Quit that soul sucking job! Uninstall it, take it off your mind, enjoy all the extra free time you just opened by doing something you actually enjoy! Real life doesn’t have some completion percentage and if it did, 100%ing every damn game in the world wouldn’t count towards 100%. Those things are just randomly generated side content that don’t count for progression. Which.... OK this is honestly the worst metaphor I could possibly be using, but the point is, games should be fun, not jobs. Don’t work jobs for no reason. That’s just an awful thing to do.

[svetlanabelikova]

Journaling IV

content warning:

bodily functions 

weight talk

time for another update:

i had my super fun X-ray on monday (9.29.19) morning. it was weird. i stood on a weird platform, in a surgical gown, and had 3 dudes stand around and tell me weird ways to twist and bend my body so they could take the best pictures of my insides all while having to drink poison that had the consistency of chalk dissolved in white glue. it was wild. the assistant was nice. he stood around with me and we just talked a bit. he was awkward,,, i was awkward. it was both better and worse than the CT scan i got last year. worse by which, back then i just laid on a rolling table with a warm blanket on me and a pillow under my knees. i was alone in the room and the technician just told me what to do through a speaker system from the next room, or the machine talked to me through a little robot face on a screen whereas this was 3 strange men and i felt naked in that stupid surgical gown. i was glad i decided to wear leggings and they let me keep them on but still. i had to take off my bra (even tho it is a sports bra but whatever) and all my earrings, which i never take out, as well as the ring i’ve worn every second for the last like, 10 years. this ring means a lot to me in what it is, what it represents and what it carries so that didn’t help.  it was better in that i didn’t have to drink as much poison as last time. for the CT scan, they were looking more at my lower GI, so i had to drink 2 bottles worth of barium: 1 bottle 1 hour before my appointment, half a bottle half an hour before and the last half i had to chug right before i went in. they were trying to map out my entire GI system whereas this was watching my upper GI work in real time.  first i had to stand up and drink the thick barium mixture (and also basically medical grade Alke-seltzer to blow me up like a balloon animal-- and then i was told i had to just old my burps in or it would ruin the pictures so that was cool), which as i mentioned, was not great. i was never the kid in class that ate glue (i liked to pour it on my hand, let it dry then pretend to be shedding like a snake), but if i had to liken it to something, that would be it. it was so heavy in the cup, it was wild. but it wasn’t smooth like glue, it was gritty. there was no flavor to it other than you know, chemical-y. i had to gather a mouthful, fill my cheeks like a little gerbil, wait for the machine to get into place and the doctor to trigger the program by which he would say “ok swallow” and the machine would track the barium down my esophagus. i did that a couple times then they casually said “ok, turn around and look at the table behind you.” which i did, it was a lovely table. “now we are going to tip the table back and you will be laying on your stomach.” excuseth me?! they wouldn’t even let me get off the table while it tranformer-transformed into a bed, no i just had to ride that shit like it was a rodeo. it was upsetting, my vertigo went absolutely batshit and the fact that by this point, my stomach went ‘well hang on.... you haven’t given me anything in about 11 hours so i thought this was food but this is poison anD YOU ARE ON A ROLLERCOASTER?!’ and decided the time to rebel was at hand. i was so close to barfing, im not kidding. the assistant was handing me a pillow and he could see my face lose color as i nervously began to giggle and he grabbed the little barf bag. i was so close to forcing this assistant to have to re-sterilize this stupid table/bed but i kept it together and also i had literally nothing in my stomach other than poison so that was probably helpful. the last thing i ate was a couple spoonfuls of tuna out of the can and a hardboiled egg at like 2pm the day before.  next we come to a super fun moment which i will gloss over because it was the crowning weird moment of the day: while laying on my stomach and drinking from a cup of poison, i had to swallow a mouthful of said poison, hold my breath and then bare down, so they could look for hernias. i wish not to elaborate further i just would like to thank my personal goddess that i didn’t let anything slip out either end. after that, i was pretty much done. the bed *transformer noise* returned to an upright platform and the machine coffin lid was removed so i could get down. i all but ran back to the dressing room and got my jewelry and clothing back on. we had to drive home an hour and the entire time i was covered in a sheen of cold sweats, gripping my barf bag, but was fine. later than night i was less so. yesterday (10.2.19) i met again with rupinder. she went over all 4 tests i went through over the past 2 weeks: the blood tests- were all good. my vitamins levels are great, my iron is good, my blood sugars wonderful. the only things of note were as i mentioned, my b1 levels were high but it was b/c i take biotin vitamins and my white blood cells count was flagged as high, but i let her know that i happened to get sick with a headcold literally the day after i got my blood drawn. also my blood sugars showed that i am not pre-diabetic which is great. i am not even pre- pre-diabetic yet, just on the cusp which is great for someone with a family history and who has never really bothered with watching my sugar intake. urine & stool test- good. my body is absorbing vitamins and minerals just the way that it should and also i am not on any drugs *ok hand emoji* floroscopy test-  i have a very small hital hernia, but it is so small and has been of so little impact i a) have not noticed it at all and b) it has basically done no real damage yet. everything else looks great. i have some indication of acid reflux but it is either old scars or so mild it is happening and i don’t notice it. i do have to share my favorite line from the doctor’s notes from the floroscopy though:  "The visualized stomach, duodenum and proximal small bowel are grossly unremarkable." that is possibly the meanest thing a doctor has ever said to me: grossly unremarkable. he couldn’t have just said ‘normal’ or ‘nothing of note’, no he had to come from my whole life about my disgustingly boring bowels.  anyways, we talked about that for a bit and then did some math. during our first meeting she said she wanted me to lose 50lbs before surgery, but she recalculated along with all the new information from all these tests and gave me a new weight goal. rather than getting to 300lbs even , she has raise it to 315lbs. so from the original 50 lbs i needed to lose, now it is only like 29lbs. she cut it nearly in half and also told me that i will not have to wait the full 7 months originally required by the program. basically, i have to just hit 315 lbs, make an appointment with her, she will bring in the surgeon once she verifies my weight and then we will set the surgery 6 weeks from that date. 6 weeks. that’s it. it has been 2 weeks since i first met her and i’ve already lost like 5 or 6lbs. i could be at my goal weight before or by thanksgiving and be set up to have surgery at the beginning of 2020. i know that is still 2 and 1/2 months out but, that is so much sooner than the original 7 months.  i have a few more things i have to do before then of course. i need to get an EKG to check my heart, make sure there is not arrhythmia or anything, and i need another x-ray of my chest and lungs, mostly to check in on that spot on my lung (which i saw on the floroscopy x-rays. it is actually pretty dark and right near my heart,,,, which is worrying and my anxiety will definitely remember this) in case i need a biopsy or anything. also i have to see a dietitian and a therapist. but i can take those hurdles a little at a time rather than speedrunning it like i have been for the last 2 weeks.  just need to keep on course, keep the faith that this is the right choice even if it is the hardest thing i’ve ever done in my fucking life, and keep my eyes on the prize.              

[kaorei-endgame]

Ranking of Resident Evil save room themes?

I got my first latte of the season, it’s chilly enough to wear pants indoors, #Streamtober started yesterday. LET’S DO THIS, NICK. >:O 

17. Resident Evil 6 Chapter Ends, All Characters: Back to the cabbage patch. None of you are valid, with your Netflix Original knock-off of some ABC knock-off of 24-ass soundtrack. Go suck a giraffe’s dick with an Ada clone, Jake Muller.

16. Resident Evil, Deadly Silence: What is this Resident Evil for Babiez? Nintendogz+ResidentEvilz? Imagine listening to this on the crappy DS speakers. Wasn’t there something creepy about Jill’s costume in this game, like you could tear pieces of it off, or am I just conjuring fall memories and combining them with how they went out of the way to add boob bounce to the REmake 15 years after the fact, and now Jill’s boobs on PS4 undulate languidly beneath her shirt like a pair of Dragon Quest Slimes yearning to be free. This track: aural despair, unleavened. A way to quickly induce nausea in dogs who have eaten chocolate or raisins.

15. Resident Evil 6, Ada Chapter End: Well, okay, this one is all right. The first fifteen seconds feel like a HiFi version of a track from those Playstation 1 top-down shooters where you played a murder clown or a pyro guy escaping a space prison where you were held for crimes you definitely DID commit. The little background jog kicks in soon after and look, I’m a soft sell for ululation, what can I say.** But it just all just serves to stir memories like embers finally gone to smolder beneath the fireplace ash, stoking them after all these years, reminding me what a weird psycho they turned Ada into in this game. I like reflecting on how people got so mad about there not being co-op in Ada’s campaign that Capcom patched in a partner but his name is like “TeamMate” or “Buddy” and he has no lines of dialogue and is never addressed in the story in any way and thus is either a figment of Ada’s imagination or he’s a real dude who’s just pretty quiet and ultimately drowned on that sub? Well, I guess life’s tough if you’re the (potentially imagination) friend of an ex-spy turned pod person.

**(i contacted my musician friend, Kylie, who confirmed that ululation  was the term i was thinking of, lest i second guess myself. at the same time, i’ll post her text here lest i misrepresent her words “Yeah, ululate as a technical term is vibrato using the tongue, so that would be wrong, but ululate as a descriptor refers to a sound that has a very pronounced waver between tones to it.” cool! i’ve often wondered if that’s the most accurate way to describe it. thanks Kylie!! :D)

14. Resident Evil Revelations 2: Claire gets the best costumes probably across the whole series and yet it feels like she’s gotten the least love of all the main cast. I never really got it, she looks good in denim, whether jacket or pant, and her Revelations 2 blazer does her all the favors. But now they’re remaking RE2 and they turned her face into this weird porcelain Precious Moments dol—MY BELOVED DAUGHTER. MY MOIRA. I SWEAR I’LL FIND YOU. FOR THE SAKE OF JBLL I WILL AVENGE YOU AND THE OTHER ONE.

13. Resident Evil 0: What’s with all the shivery whiney stuff. Like your younger sibling running nails down the chalkboard of your spine, like how the speed run of this game hinges on juggling an evasive bat with 5 out of the 6 flame rounds on hand, so try. Neither relaxing nor scary. Do I hear something like a bongo in the distance? That is the clarion call of Becky Chamber’s goose booty coming home to roost.

12. Resident Evil 7: I had a dream last night about this game. If you have phobias about glass and/or mouths and/or wasp genitals, I would skip this paragraph. I was in the house where you have to run away from the mom with the disgusting wasp hive vagina. Also—unrelated and yet somehow related, as dreams always are—I had opened a beer bottle in such a way that the stem broke. I had decided to drink it anyway and now, as I progressed through the house, I found that there seemed to be endless small slivers of glass in my mouth that I had to repeatedly spit out lest they cut me. When I woke up, my jaw was clenched to the point of soreness. Welcome to the family, I guess. Otherwise this save room music reminds me of the game itself: mostly dull and barely there.

11. Resident Evil Revelations: Item Box Music, only Save Room Adjcanet. Can’t disassociate this from the “swish-swish-swish-SHUCK” sound effects of navigating menus to equip Charge Shot 2 to my Shotgun. Not as pleasing or as integrated into my bone marrow as  the Resident Evil 3 equivalent, but I have probably played this game through thirteen or fourteen times at this point. Life is short and yet the strings of fate tug us the directions they will.

10. Resident Evil 5: Again, this is menu music. No save rooms at all in this game. Anyway I have no inherent memory of this song because I’m sure I’ve talked over it while upgrading my M92FS to 100 bullet capacity 110% of the times I’ve played this game. Exempted from higher echelon of rankings on these technicalities, but still A POOR PERFORMANCE INDEED for Not The Best Resident Evil Yet Paradoxically The One That’s Given Me The Most Joy In My life.

9. Resident Evil, Dead Aim

: Wow I almost can’t believe I don’t remember this despite playing this game enough to write a speedrun guide for it. Well, that was the style at the time. As was a bloated zombie corpse boss, I suppose (long before Left 4 Dead, those copy cats), whose weak spot was its exposed brain which, halfway through the fight when you’d done enough damage, would pop out and dance a sprightly jig on its brainstem every time you shot it. With the whisper of wind and rain and single intermittent synth I feel like I’m living in a cyberpunk future and not a game whose protagonist’s “””cajun””” accent is as questionable as its presentation of the antagonist’s gender.

8. Resident Evil, Umbrella Chronicles

: Hey now, weird bit of the creepy-freaky bass here kind of does put you in a certain headspace, but it’s not the headspace i remember of this game, which was basically unplayable in co-op for the final 3rd because a failed QTE would result in a hunter slicing away half your health. Good for an Into the Breach playlist to keep you focused on the action and stop you from trying to play it while also binging a Netflix show about werewolves that you didn’t really like anyway, and splitting your attention between visual mediums is just getting Good Pilots Killed.

7. Resident Evil 2: Ominous. Maybe TOO Ominous at points. Aren’t save rooms about being safe? I guess we could argue that because the save room reflects the lacuna of safety  BING BONG piano is the Try Hard version of video game music asking “you scurred yet?” Perhaps a novice mistake from a first-time director who would go on to do so many great things (well, RE2 among them, no lie). In a way, this fits with Rookie Cop Leon S. Kennedy, and anyway it’s so over the top I’m kind of okay with it. Most innervating when first heard on your way to equip a cowgirl costume for fast-firing six-shooter action. Guns suck, and cowboys too, but both are okay if we experience them in the abstract sense. This is what culture teaches us. Fan the trigger.

6. Resident Evil 4: A surprisingly gentle one, considering the series turn towards action from which it would never recover. I am transported to the early minutes of a horror movie where the audience knows something the protagonist doesn’t about the terror that’s about to befall them while they blithely pick up a desiccated nudie mag in an old shed on a haunted property they inherited from their estranged uncle, more focused on the “ballistics” before them than the axe murderer crouched in the shadows of disused farm equipment behind.

5. Resident Evil 3, Nemesis: More languid riff on 2. Strings get you shivery, and no more than a single BONG per two measures proves that save room music is as much about the notes you DON’T play. Two bongs to scare, but one bong to keep you on your toes, disallowing you from getting *too* relaxed by the soothing bleeps and bloops as you combine the 3 Gunpowder As you just found to make sure you have enough ammo to pistol-juke the so-called unkillable Nemesis. You’re not coward, but that doesn’t make you brave. Discretion is the better part of valor, they say, but that’s not taking into account that non-discretiony valor rewards you directly with a faster-firing pistol with critical headshots. :3

4. Resident Evil 1, Vanilla: Gentle, plucky strings make you question your memory, more familiar with later revisions than you are this one. How often was I in this place? Or does its primacy belie its immediacy? If I went to the strange, pointless closet around the corner from this medicine save room, would I find a broken shotgun I expect there, a round of magnum ammo, or simply the ghost of discarded aspirations masking as memories. I recall a time when it felt like time was enough, but then again, this was back when anything sub-three hours would get you the infinite rocket launcher, regardless of how many First Aid Sprays you used.

3. Resident Evil 1, REmake: High fidelity version of RE1’s gentle strings remind you of simpler times when your worst fears were zombies resurrecting into scarier, faster zombies with claws. What we wouldn’t give to go back to those days, and maybe tell ourselves not to take out so much student debt. Listening to this sends a pulse of gentle energy through my shoulder blades that makes me think “relaxation,” though I’m not sure my body understands the meaning of the word. A respite in trying eras, there is no association with the tension of shaving 15 minutes off your time to be competitive. “Safe Heaven,” they call it; a theme for a place that is not our own, but should be.

2. Resident Evil 1, Director’s Cut: Wow I did not expect music box chimes and tones stirs something ancestral in my blood. I’ve played the Director’s Cut far more times than the original RE1 and this is like coming home to a big house where I enjoyed an idyllic childhood, but I now know every box is filled with the creepy knife doll from Onimusha. Though these senations are foreign to me, something about them inspires a thirst for a homeland I never knew.

1. Resident Evil Code Veronica: The absolute chillest. In life, paths may wind, but the ultimate  The strings are tickling your spine. You’re so relaxed you feel like oiling your ponytail, and you could even take a nap in Steve Burnside’s arms without reflexively gagging. When you hear this, you are at peace, and the world seems like a place that can be kind. Truly, the Code is Veronica.

and don’t forget to vote in our poll on whether or not we’re playing Claire A or Leon A tonight!

[carolynpetit]

Dragster, Destiny 2, and the Pursuit of the Human Element

I watch an awful lot of Twitch, let me tell ya. And yeah, I know that to some degree it’s a substitute for the flesh-and-blood connections I don’t have in my real life, and that more often than not, I might rather go out for a drink with good friends on a Friday night (or a Tuesday night, for that matter) than stay in and watch people play games on the internet.

And yet, that’s not to say the connection between viewers and streamers, or between viewers and other viewers, can’t be real in some way. It definitely can. If a person is real onstream, you get to know them in a way, after spending hours and hours watching them play games. Lately, there are nights when I’d much rather watch someone else play a video game than play one myself, because I already spend way too much time alone and because I need to feel some sense of connection with other people.

What do I mean when I talk about a streamer being real? I mean that Twitch is as much about personalities as it is about games. Probably more. I’m not going to watch someone I can’t stand streaming a game I love, but I will gladly watch a streamer I love playing a game I can’t stand. A lot of streamers, you can tell it’s a persona they’re putting on. They have a shtick. Maybe they have lots of bells and whistles, tons of giveaways or other things that make their stream feel like a drive-time radio show. I wish them success, but these are not the streamers for me. I like those people who make you feel like you’re there in the room with them, casually hanging out on their couch. Just you and them and their genuine experience of the game they’re playing.

I mainly watch speedrunners, for a number of reasons. Because they have clear goals that I understand and that I can get invested in seeing them accomplish. Because they approach games in an entirely different way from how I and most players approach them, and that approach often reveals fascinating things about the inner workings of a game that I’d never know otherwise. I also watch them because there’s a fair amount of failure and suffering involved, which I can relate to; I know what it is to suffer through a game, and I know that victory can be all the sweeter because of what a struggle it was to get there.

There’s something particularly compelling to me about speedrunning when a game that I really care about comes back to life, like Super Mario Bros. did last year with the discovery of a viable--extremely difficult, but viable--way for human beings to pull off the flagpole glitch, allowing a fraction of a second to be shaved off of the existing world record. 

I watched a speedrunner named darbian play for hours and hours, night after night in pursuit of a new world record. That meant playing through the entire game with incredible precision. One tiny mistake and he might as well reset. Sometimes he’d get very close, only for something to go wrong in the home stretch. It was a heartbreaking ordeal. at times. Even now, re-watching the world record run, I still get a little nervous as it approaches its conclusion, just like I did when watching it live. 

At 4:49, darbian says, “Please, please, please-please-please,” which mirrored my own thoughts exactly. And when he finally got there, and his reaction was so joyous and so real, I shared in his jubilation.

That was a five-minute run. I never expected a five-second run to become just as captivating to me. But then Dragster came along.

Actually, Dragster’s been around for nearly my whole life. Released for the Atari 2600 by Activision in 1980, it’s a demanding, ruthless game that plays out in a matter of seconds. The goal is to propel the dragster to the end of the track as quickly as possible. Doing so requires shifting gears at just the right moments and using the clutch intermittently to prevent the engine from being pushed too hard. Push it too hard, and the engine gets BLOWN, which was the source of infinite double entendres in darbian’s chat while he aimed to become the first person on record to get a time of 5.57 on actual console hardware.

But let’s back up a second. Or, rather, .06 of a second. Isn’t the world record for Dragster 5.51? According to Twin Galaxies it is. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Todd Rogers’ 5.51 in Dragster is the longest-enduring video game world record in history.

Do you know why that is? Why nobody has been able to match it or beat it in all this time?

Because 5.51 is not possible. It literally can’t be done; the game is coded in such a way as to make that time unachievable. Omnigamer has figured this out and documented his research on YouTube. Here, he explains how research for a book he’s working on that covers the history of speedrunning brought him to Dragster in the first place, and how he determined that the 5.51 is impossible.

Todd Rogers, unsurprisingly, takes issue with Omnigamer’s methods and makes it sound as if Omni and others haven’t been exhaustive in their exploration of the game’s code and what the limits within it are. In a piece by Kotaku’s Heather Alexandra about the Dragster dispute, Rogers says, “If he’s basing his spreadsheets and his shifting on one particular pattern, then that’s pretty ignorant and closed-minded, because you’re not factoring in the human element of how the game would respond.”

The human element. Oh, what a joke that became in Twitch chats during Dragster runs. This magical notion that somehow, with a person’s hands on the joystick, things become possible that are otherwise impossible. It’s a nice idea, but that’s not what the human element actually is. At least I don’t think so. 

Todd makes it sound like getting the mythical 5.51 was fairly simple. He has attributed the time to a straightforward trick: “[I] engage the clutch at the count down and rev up my engine in the red just before the count of zero. Once the timer reaches zero, I pop my clutch and I’m already in second gear.” Yeah, no. Even getting the 5.57 requires a series of near-frame-perfect inputs. Darbian spent hours and hours playing Dragster, night after night, ultimately racking up 50 5.61s (the next-best possible time) without getting a single 5.57 (which can be done, with tremendous skill and some significant luck), much less a 5.54 or a 5.51 (which can’t). Do you know how many Dragster attempts you can squeeze into two or three hours? A lot.

Fittingly, Omnigamer himself was the first person to get the 5.57, on an emulator. Darbian wanted to be the first to get it on console. Last night, finally, he did it.

That makes me feel alive. You want to know what the human element is in games? It’s in the look on darbian’s face as he played the game thousands of times, striving for the 5.57. It’s in the exultation you can see and hear when he finally gets it. It’s why I and so many other people watch Twitch. Because a game without a player is nothing, but a game with a player? Now that can really be something.

***

[This section has spoilers for the end of Destiny 2′s campaign.]

The human element is also often why I play games myself. Lately I’ve been looking for it in Destiny 2. Something, anything that seems real.

I know that Destiny 2 is a game you’re meant to play with others. You and your friends are supposed to bring your own humanity to the game, and I went about it all wrong by spending most of my time with the game alone. Fine. Take this as you will, then; if you’d like, take it as the thoughts of one player who played Destiny 2 wrong.

The truth is that I don’t like what Destiny 2 does to me. How it uses expertly crafted reward loops and presents all these manageable goals to keep me wanting to come back for more. This is cold, calculating stuff that’s designed to create an addictive experience, and in my book, that’s not a good thing. I don’t like how my mind drifts to the fact that if i just complete three public events on Nessus I’ll get some gear and maybe see my Star Wars action figure’s power level inch up a number or two. How I close my eyes and see Destiny 2 enemies dying in a shower of glimmer and ammo and engrams and think that if I just go play for another 15 minutes, I can reap the rewards myself.

In games like The Witcher 3, if I get a new sword or better armor, I’m grateful for it because of what it might enable me to do. The thing pulling me back is my love of the world and its people; my desire to spend more time with Yennefer, or to smell the salty air of Skellige. Destiny 2 and similar games flip this around. I don’t get better stuff so I can do the harder things. I do the harder things so I can get better stuff. And unlike games such as The Witcher 3 or Breath of the Wild, I never feel firmly rooted in Destiny’s places. I feel insulated, somehow. I know I’m not actually wearing Master Chief’s Mjolnir armor, but it sure feels like I am.

But oh man, what stuff Destiny has. It’s hard not to fetishize some of it, it’s all so strange and beautiful. I examined a friend yesterday who was wearing a helmet called the Crown of Tempests and the damn thing nearly took my breath away. I find myself coveting these things, these bizarre, nonexistent things, and I don’t like it.

I also object to the game’s hollow attempts at philosophizing. As I was making the introspective journey of the soul to get my kickass voidwalker subclass, a phantom of light spouted bullshit masquerading as wisdom. “You will fear nothing and nothing will not fear you,” he said. What a horrible way to think about life. 

I know my character is “human,” or was, but now I’m something else, as lifeless as I am deathless. Sure, so many heroes in games say nothing. So many of them are blank slates onto which we are meant to project ourselves. But why is it that I feel like Link and Samus are defined by their actions, while my guardian is defined by whatever she’s wearing and whatever gun she’s holding in her hand?

Yet there was a fleeting moment toward the end when I felt that Destiny 2 came closer than it ever has to achieving the potential of this kind of multiplayer online shooter. At the start of the campaign’s climactic mission, I was surrounded by other players as we all pushed our way into the city. This was far more exciting than any public event I’d ever participated in. This had momentum. We were moving, making our way forward through enemy resistance. I felt like part of something much larger than myself.

Then, in the end, the Traveler actually does something. It responds. It fights back. The Traveler, which should be this transcendent, undefinable thing, this mysterious being of technology and spirituality, in the first game was nothing more than a matte painting, a convenient explanation for why you get to do space-magic and why you never die. Here, in the end, it acts. 

After that battle, you return to the tower for the first time since the game’s beginning. But it’s different now. Plot events have taken place that have had an impact on the world. Change has actually happened, which, in Destiny, was surprising and remarkable to me. It ain’t much, but the new tower is so much better than the last. Yes, more human, for one thing. I love that it has a noodle shop where you can see people just sitting outside, enjoying their meals. There’s a warmth to the space, like a pleasant summer night. The Traveler looms much closer above, damaged from its part in the struggle. And below, the city is so much nearer, the illumination of its buildings stretching out beneath you.

Both above and below, you are closer to the light.

[soysaucevictim]

Poofed again. 4 days of stuff under read more.

-

Feb. 14:

I initially woke up early today. But due to a flooding-related road closure, I didn’t get picked up this morning. It’s been raining on and off. And one of the run-offs for flooding near my backyard has been at an unnerving water level. :S

I spent a few hours after that on Twitter talking about that, before recouping on some sleep.

Mostly been spending my time on the usual noise, but I did get in my exercise.

First, today’s DD. 30 cross reach sit-ups with EC. This definitely got pretty tough in the later half. But I enjoyed myself again! :D

Second, Day 5 of the FCP. Holy shit. That was so many damn jumping jacks today. Even after deliberately slowing my pace down to something more sustainable. Got a bit of that ETD again. I love jacks... but coming down from that load & the runner's high had me worried about that again... but I’m trying to talk myself down from that place. :S

Third, Day 5 of the TYTC. Not much to say  that’s different from yesterday, here. Waited a bit longer to do this though, so I was a bit more steady on my feet.

Got entirely distracted by idle games most of that night and wound up getting to bed at like... 6AM. orz

-

Feb. 15:

Was made to get up before noon, with expectation to playing some cards with the fam again. So I spent a few doing that after waking up.

Then made the fam some stuffed green bell peppers for dinner. Was certainly a small enterprise. Still need to address the dishes from that, but I did get in my exercise.

First, today’s DD. 80 back kicks with EC. An enjoyable exercise made that much tougher with all the recruited muscle groups being QUITE sore. My glutes, quads, and hamstrings are feeling that, one! :,D

Second, Day 6 of the FCP. Forgot I needed to catch up and thought it was going to be an active rest day, rectified that with this one. Despite being sore as hell, I appreciated that this one wasn’t as aerobic - especially given how intense yesterday was. Very manageable, that said I probably could’ve minded my form a bit more.

Last, Day 6 of the TYTC. Pleasant work.

Same deal as the day before, except managing to get to bed at like 4AM. One of the things I was up for was watching a Dateline production about the Witch Fire (oof).

-

Feb. 16:

Got up before noon today. Washed my hair. Got a free large iced coffee for my birthday. Probably shouldn’t’ve drank the whole thing so fast, because I wound up feeling overfull after my tasty Thai lunch for the day.

Was too groggy to really remain awake, so I took a nap for a few hours. Got up again at like 7PM.

As far as exercise went, I only did the day’s DD. 3′ seated leg raises with EC. The last 30" or so were quite the willpower game, but it was a fun challenge for my birthday! Counted 178 reps by the end, very close to 1/sec. :D

After doing some dishes and feeding the dog... I got distracted. It wound up getting very late. But tried to get the rest of my exercise in... was NOT feeling it. Too exhausted and out of it.

Attempted sleeping too but I was too restless and dealing with a headache. Against better judgement, I decided to marathon Adam Ruins Everything as a distraction. Stayed up till like noon the next day, before actually sleeping...

-

Feb. 17:

Got up proper at about 5PM. Ate some Chinese food way too fast and got too groggy to really stay fully awake. Was watching/listening to a FF9 speedrun while lying in bed some more.

Couple hours later, did my exercise.

First, Day 7 of the FCP. Mostly static planks. Let me just say, I was glad it was ONLY 3 sets today. I deliberately made my jumping jacks’ “active rest“ as slow as possible - because the main course was pretty damn brutal. Especially by about the midpoint. By the last set, I modified the side elbow planks a touch, by letting the higher foot wrap forward and contact ground as a loose brace (not fully out forward).

I did try to see if breathing through my mouth would at all prevent more ETD (because I worried if the strain would trigger it again)... gleaned that tip from online forums, so maybe it worked today (not at all scientific of me)? *Shrugs.*

Second, Day 7 of the TYTC.

Last, today’s DD. 2′ flutter kicks without EC. After some pretty intense plank work - I felt EC would be overdoing it. Split it into 2 sets of 1', with a total of 308 reps. :P

Eh... not going to meditate this time around. It’s now getting too late to bother. Same old distractions.