#( probably the bug episode. was fuCKING DISGUSTING )

[starcraftt]

my mother continuously saying that supernatural is too gory for me. 🫶🫶🫶

[luxury-nightmare]

inspired by nerdymixedpan on tiktok

Ranking Magnus fears by How likely I am to serve them/how freaked out I am by them (including the Extinction because I will never forget about my underrated king)

1, The Eye

How freaked out am I by it? 3/10. My sister will come barging into my room uninvited anyway so the fear of being watched doesn’t really freak me out.

How likely am I to serve it?

7/10. I listened to 200 episodes of gay people suffering. What do you think

2, The Lonely

5/10 the person who I took this idea from said it best. This is schrodinger's fear. Cause on one hand, I like being alone. I spend most of my time huddled up in my room. But on the other hand, the enjoyment mostly comes from being awful at social situations and accidentally hurting peoples feelings when I talk to them

8/10 I said it already. I already isolate myself give me the banish powers. Gentle voiced old man I’m coming for your crown.

3, The Spiral

5/10 not exactly. Honestly the thought of me being crazy is probably not my greatest fear, it’s more the system for mentally ill people. I once let a couple things slip and was taken to a mental hospital, and the only thing I could think is “is there something wrong with me?” which, in my humble opinion, is not something someone struggling with mental illness should be thinking in a place that’s supposed to help them

5/10 would I be a good spiral avatar? No. Would I leap at the chance? Absolutely. I wanna see door wife and fuckhands mcmike

4, The Stranger

6/10 I do not fuck with uncanny valley shit. 4/10 I am a theater kid, so this could be right up my alley, but all the avatars are glorified theater kids so I think I’ll pass

5, The Desolation

2/10 I was scared of fire as a kid, but that’s the extent of my fear towards it.

4/10 Fire is pretty, I like setting things on fire, and Agnes is hot (pun intended) but that’s pretty much it

6, The Corruption

5/10 sickness and illness freak me out, but I’m chill with bugs. 2/10 no

7, The Vast

6/10 I went through a huge nihilism phase in middle school so that would factor into it. Honestly having an astronomy class is not going to help with this. But lately it’s less “nothing matters” and more “nothing matters so you can fuck up as much as you need”

8/10 enjoy sky blue motherfuckers!

8, The Buried

6/10 honestly this is a new one. I like to be in small spaces, but I cannot handle caves. I think I can blame Pastra’s Ted the caver video and the lost johns cave episode for this. But also, if we think about The Buried as The Vast opposite and pulled from its more metaphorical aspects (I know the show doesn’t do this very often but bear with me) the fear that everyone depends on you and if you fuck up even slightly everyone will hate you forever? Yeah that’s me

4/10 has we ever met a buried avatar? I have no point of reference. Four out of ten

9, The Web

4/10 this is a tricky one. I’m chill with spiders but the manipulation part for me comes not from the fear that I’m being manipulated, more the fear that I’m being manipulative. That I’m tricking people into caring about me and doing what I want when I really just need to tough it out (would this feed into The Spiral? Not really, right?)

7/10 Spiders, killer aesthetic, breaking the fourth wall. Let me in.

10, The Flesh

9/10 no. No no. No no. No gross. Gross gross gross. Have you seen the episode where the guy hammers all the meat to his apartment and it’s starts to rot through the ceiling? Gross get it away from me.

0/10 no Jared I am not joining your cottagecore lesbian garden leave me alone

11, The Hunt

2/10 I feel like this one should freak me out more than it does. I live in the mountains, surrounded by wild animals, and I have terrible stamina. But honestly? It’s like Jon said. It’s natural. If I don’t bother them they don’t bother me.

3/10 I have terrible stamina. I would make a terrible hunt avatar

12, The Slaughter

5/10 I have strong feelings about war. But there less fear and more disgust, anger, and sadness.

2/10 although it would be nice to go apeshit once and a while, this is a hard no.

13, The Dark

1/10 dude I vibe with the dark. It doesn’t freak me out at all.

9/10 I am practically nocturnal. My sona is the embodiment of darkness incarnate. Hard yes. Give me the shadow powers

14, The End

6/10 honestly this feat comes from less from death itself and more what comes after, and my family’s reaction. The idea of nonexistence is terrifying and maybe there’s something worse. I watched a Scp video, I forgot the specific number, but it was an idea of what happens after death. Essentially, you stay conscious, but you cannot move, trapped in your own body feeling every slow pain of rot or cremation as your atoms split apart over millennium. So yeah, death itself is fine but everything after is scary

8/10 I’ve always had a fascination with death, not actual people dying, but the pomp and glamour we give death. Graveyards and funerals and death gods and all that jazz. Gothic stuff. Also The End is technically the only fear that can win in the long run. The End will come for us all.

15, The Extinction

7/10 Watch the news and you’ll understand what i mean. I was like 5 when I first learned about climate change and I promptly put that in a box in the back of my brain and tried to forget it ever existed.

10/10 dude this isn’t even about the killer aesthetic, this is just cause it’s criminally underrated. Extinction my fear I will be your avatar since no one else will be. Also dude it would be so easy, just send some random people inflammatory news articles, push some people into a hell dimension, and you’re done! Also if any of the other fears complete a ritual, that’s a whole ass free buffet!

TL:DR: Extinction is underrated and Hello jon. apologies for the deception, but i wanted to make sure you started reading, so i thought it best not to announce myself. I'm assuming youre alone; you always did prefer to read your statements in private. I wouldnt try to stop reading; there's every likelihood you'll just hurt your self. So just listen. Now, shall we turn the page and try again?

[flameshadowconjuring]

I am currently rewatching and rereading Parasyte. I'm really glad that I watched the anime before I picked up the manga when I first came across the story. Otherwise, I would have enjoyed the anime a lot less. The anime, in the first episode alone, made three changes I really dislike.

The first is one that happens a lot in TV which I hate, which is where the first episode shows scenes in non-chronological order. It is just unnecessarily confusing. The original showed them in sequence and I see no reason to deviate from it. Its not like the original took too long to get to the gory stuff that grips attention.

The second is that they added an accidental boob grab. I must have excised it from my memory, because it caught me completely off guard. It adds nothing to the plot or the dynamic between the characters and just makes the show more awkward to recommend to non-weebs since it is in an early scene of the first fucking episode. I think my initial opinion of the show would have been lower if I had been introduced to it via the first episode rather than midway through.

The third is adding a 'zero to hero' plot. Shinichi in the original manga was just an ordinary dude. He wasn't scared of bugs, and he wasn't awkward around Murano. They even gave him glasses in the anime to up his Peter Parkeriness. They must have thought 'oh no, our protagonist is not a loser, he won't be relatable to our audience!'. Fuck off, that is insulting. Okay, look, I get it. They probably added it because that way there is more of a contrast between the before and after in his character arc. Put I think they missed the point. Parasyte is not a story about a loser boy becoming an awesome action hero. It is a story about an ordinary high schooler thrust into a dangerous situation, losing both his ordinary life as well as his humanity, only to regain both by the end of the story, but having grown through the trials he overcame in between. In the manga, the initial scenes with him focus on how Migi disrupts his ordinary life. Migi morphs into various things which Shinichi has to hide, including a giant Phallus while he is in a restaurant! Its pretty funny actually, and sadly missing from the anime. The manga already has the main character go through enough change (its probably the best part of the story). It didn't need more.

I don't really mind them changing the setting to contemporary modern day rather than the nineties when the original manga was written, though I do think that it is a bit unnecessary.

I do actually like the anime. The animation, music (dubstep is cool) and voice acting are all great. Well, except for that one shot of really bad CG they used for random students walking to the school.

Also, Migi is just the cutest little psychopath. I luv it. Speaking of, diversity win! The cold-blooded alien parasite, by virtue of having no apparent capacity to reproduce or interest in human values, is nonbinary! Migi and its relationship to its host Shinichi is definitely the best part of the series for me. Its a fascinating situation, where a very rational but completely amoral alien and a conscientious human have to share a body and cooperate despite their differences. What I find very endearing about Migi is that it is actually very reasonable and always wishes to work together with its host when possible. All of the evil aliens in the story are actually very cooperative in nature, which I really like. Smart villains are great.

One final remark: Its funny how my view on the body horror in the story has changed. When I first saw some scene or ad for the anime, I was convinced I would never watch a show that disgusting. When a friend of mine was watching it though, I actually really got into it, and basically watched it in spite of the gross body horror. At some point, I watched it because (but not only because) of the body horror. Tastes change, huh.

[iamapoopmuffin]

Powerpuff Girls episodes explained badly

Monkey See, Doggy Do: Everyone is a dog and/or naked.

Mommy Fearest: The girls try to turn some lady they just met into their step-mother and regret it immediately.

Insect Inside: Bugs are gross. Or are they?

Powerpuff Bluff: Cosplay for crime reasons. And to look cute.

Octi Evil: Bubbles trusts in her plush toy when it suddenly starts talking to her like one of those imaginary friends that tells you to burn things. It goes as well as you'd expect.

Geshundfight: There's too many people on this earth, we need a new plague.

Buttercrush: 1 1/2 year old develops crush on 17 year old who uses her crush to manipulate the shit out of her.

Fuzzy Logic: You don't touch another man's banjo. Ever.

Boogie Frights: An endless disco party ends in Bubbles turning off her targeting computer and blowing up the Death Disco Star

Abracadaver: Zombie magician comes to town and does zombie magician stuff.

Telephonies: Crank calls lead to the one moment in the entire cartoon my family constantly quotes, literally any time anyone says 'him' in any context. Also we learn how HIM stays so fit!

Tough Love: HIM farts on the entire city and it makes everyone hate the Powerpuff Girls.

Major Competition: Pretty much the exact kind of thing I'd expect Jeff Bennett to voice comes to town, kicks a puppy and gets praised.

Mr. Mojo's Rising: Mojo reveals he is both the Professor's former pet and the technical other parent of the Powerpuff Girls.

Paste Makes Waste: Be careful who you bully in kindergarten because they might eat a radioactive fly and become giant glue monsters.

Ice Sore: It's a hot summer's day and gee whiz, Blossom sure blows!

Bubblevicious: Bubbles is hardcore.

The Bare Facts: Your typical 'no-one's account is fully accurate as they piece together the story' story, but with crayon drawlings and a naked old dude.

Cat Man Do: Evil cat possesses the professor and does evil cat things.

Impeach Fuzz: Fuzzy becomes the perfect mayor. Crime is down 100%, the Powerpuff Girls now get called to catch pigs.

Just Another Manic Mojo: Mojo Jojo's morning routine ft. annoying children.

Mime For A Change: Clown steps into oncoming traffic, gets covered in bleach, causes an environmental disaster and ruins everything.

The Rowdyruff Boys: Rule 63 the episode.

Uh Oh Dynamo: Kaiju vs murder robot. The city loses.

Stuck Up, Up And Away: Spoiled brat tries to buy superpowers, like Batman.

Schoolhouse Rocked: Teenagers who were abandoned in a dump before ever going to school meet a truant officer who becomes the first person to ever care about them, then go to school and get expelled on the very first day.

Collect Her: This is you, you obsessed freaks.

Supper Villain: Man gets sick of pancakes for breakfast and lives out secret supervillain fantasies. (Second most quoted line of the show in my family is here.)

Birthday Bash: Happy birthday, here's some death. Also why the hell is a 5 year old girl in a prison where every single other inmate is a grown man?

Too Pooped To Puff: When completely exhausted from their constant hero work, the girls tell the city to put a toaster in a bathtub full of water.

Beat Your Greens: These kids are so reluctant to eat the only good green vegetable that vegetable aliens arrive to teach them to stop being pussies.

Down n' Dirty: Buttercup refuses to bathe and it's fucking disgusting.

Dream Scheme: In The Sand Man you play as Sophie Grundler, a girl suffering from insomnia. Exhausted and unable to sleep, Sophie wanders into town to discover everyone else has fallen into an eternal sleep. Wait, wrong sand man-

You Snooze You Lose: Mojo falls asleep, loses some schematics and goes completely batshit insane. Then the girls eat gum that was in Junior's mouth earlier. Then probably get sick from Amoeba Boys germs again.

Slave The Day: Billy, who we thought was dead, pledges allegiance to the girls and Blossom yells at him.

Los Dos Mojos: Bubbles is Mojo now. But twice as hardcore.

A Very Special Blossom: Blossom turns to a life of crime.

Daylight Savings: Actual consequences to these small children having to go out at all hours to fight crime.

Mo Job: Mojo and Princess build a gun and shoot children with it.

Pet Feud: The Professor genetically engineers a neopet that eats everything.

Imaginary Fiend: A child's imagination is a dangerous weapon. And may tell the child to set the school on fire.

Cootie Gras: A kid who never bathes decides to play kiss chase. When that grosses people out, he gets used as a dangerous weapon.

The Powerpuff Girls Best Rainy Day Adventure Ever: The Powerpuff Girls play The Powerpuff Girls.

Just Desserts: Man's supervillain fantasy is adopted by his entire family.

Twisted Sister: The girls create a new sister who is severely disabled and then promptly dies.

Cover Up: Security Blankie the episode

Speed Demon: Back To The Future but scarier.

Mojo Jonesin': Mojo deals crack to toddlers

Something's A Ms.: Sedusa has sex with the Mayor so she can steal shit.

Slumbering With The Enemy: Mojo goes on RuPaul's Drag Race and infiltrates a child's sleepover.

Fallen Arches: Old People Fight Club!

The Mane Event: Blossom gets a new haircut and gets bullied. I like her hair like that though.

Town And Out: The Utoniums move to a new town with real world consequences for senseless property damage.

Child Fearing: Mojo babysits and regrets every decision that led him to that moment in life.

Criss Cross Crisis: Mandatory body swap story from hell.

Bubblevision: Bubbles has sudden sight loss issues and gets ripped to shreds for it. Also there are ants.

Bought And Scold: Princess' dad buys the city and she legalises everything, then gets robbed.

Gettin' Twiggy With It: Neglected trailer park kid abuses a hamster.

Cop Out: American Police officer attempts to kill three children. Nobody is surprised.

Three Girls And A Monster: Well, they aren't adopting it, but they aren't murdering it either.

Monkey See, Doggy Two: Everyone's a dog again except the girls, so they can beat the shit out of things still.

Jewel Of The Aisle: Cereal mascot tries to rob diamond.

Super Zeroes: Cosplay 2 electric boogaloo. Also who the hell trusted Blossom with a car?

Candy Is Dandy: What happens when you introduce sugar to children who aren't allowed sugar.

Catastrophe: Don't shove cats up your arse.

Hot Air Buffoon: The Mayor goes into the sky and punches people.

Ploys R' Us: The Professor sleep steals and the girls profit from it.

The Headsucker's Moxy: BRAINS BRAINS IT'S ALRIGHT, I'LL EAT THEIR BRAINS TIL THEY'RE ZOMBIFIED

Equal Fights: The Powerpuff Girls get brainwashed by a TERF.

Powerprof.: Embarrassing dad becomes superhero just to spend time with embarrassed children.

Moral Decay: Buttercup steals teeth and sells them on the black market.

Meet The Beat Alls: Mojo, Fuzzy, Princess and HIM form a band and live in a yellow submarine.

Him Diddle Riddle: HIM canonically has the power to end the entire world with a flick of his wrist but instead spends his time making the girls solve riddles to inconvenience them for shits, giggles and not having customers Karen their way out of paying for flapjacks.

Film Flam: Fake director tries to take advantage of impressionable young girls and it takes their dad in drag to stop him.

All Chalked Up: Butterfly HIM teaches Bubbles art therapy and then brings the therapy to life.

Get Back Jojo: Back To The Future again

Members Only: Big manly men have their masculinity threatened by little girls, then a giant dick joke from space voiced by Mr Krabs kills everyone.

Nano Of The North: Tiny robots eat your clothes

Stray Bullet: Squirrel with huge nuts becomes super squirrel after small child force feeds him chemicals

Forced Kin: Mojo has beef with some shiny silver dude

Knock It Off: Dexter's estranged uncle or something comes to town, makes a shittonne of artificial children to sell for profit and many of the children die.

Helter Shelter: Bubbles kidnaps a baby whale

Power Lunch: Teenagers with terrible diet have stomach issues.

Superfriends: New kid in town falls victim to peer pressure.

Keen On Keane: Girls, seriously, have you not learned your lesson about setting your dad up on dates with random women yet?

Not So Awesome Blossom: Blossom has an anxiety attack and loses all self confidence.

Power-Noia: The girls eat cheese before bed and have weird nightmares.

Monstra-City: Segregation is right.

Shut The Pup Up: The girls consider beating a dog to death.

Toast Of The Town: Babysitting an old guy who wants toast.

Divide And Conquer: A glorified maths lesson featuring amoebas.

Burglar Alarmed: The girls try to silently deal with a burglar because daddy is tired.

Shotgun Wedding: Fuzzy tries to marry Professor Utonium, then has sex with a pile of mud.

Save Mojo: Vegans ruin everything.

Substitute Creature: Ms Keane is sick and the girls learn they're racist against green people.

The Boys Are Back In Town: Oh yeah rule 63 is back and spikier.

Pee Pee G's: Mojo breaks into the girls' house and pisses on their bed. He faces absolutely no consequences for this.

Boy Toys: Boys don't like girls, boys like cars and weapons.

Seed No Evil: Frozen caveman steals sunflower seeds. This one feels like a really shit fever dream.

City Of Clipsville: The show runners take the absolute piss out of every fanfic writer in the fandom.

Lying Around The House: A lie gains sentience and fucks shit up.

Bubble Boy: Bubbles steals Boomer's clothes, identity and family.

A Documentary: Guy stalks children and tries to record videos of them.

Girls Gone Mild: Karens ruin everything. Again.

See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey: Jack Black a gnome creates communism through the power of music

Curses: The girls learn how to swear.

Bang For Your Buck: Kids compete in a life or death struggle to earn enough money for ice cream.

Silent Treatment: Silent movie kidnaps man and steals his voice.

Sweet 'n' Sour: Plushies rob entire city and get away with it because they're cute. Also they hate children.

Prime Mates: Brainless monkey ruins everything. Just like Twitter.

Coupe D'Etat: Sentient car is a homewrecker.

Makes Zen To Me: Buttercup joins a peace cult.

Say Uncle: The girls adopt a sasquatch and Utonium does not recognise his own brother.

Reeking Havoc: How do you fight a giant fart? Asking for a friend.

Live & Let Dynamo: Kaiju Robot is back and is committing crimes for fun.

Mo' Linguish: Mojo teaches a class at an adult education centre. Sadly it is not street dancing for self defence.

Oops, I Did It Again: Normal little girl AU

A Made Up Story: In which makeup is evil

Little Miss Interprets: Bubbles ruins a surprise party

Night Mayor: Another weird cheese dream but this time it's the Mayor dreaming about having relations with pickles

Custody Battle: HIM and Mojo have a messy custody battle in the middle of Townsville and both lose.

City Of Nutsville: Bubbles swallows a bee and squirrels kill everyone.

Aspirations: Sedusa takes advantage of a group of teenagers who have been abandoned by their mothers and also never gotten laid while also turning them into criminal masterminds.

That's Not My Baby: The girls find an abandoned baby and decide caring for it will convince their dad they're ready for a hamster

Simian Says: Mojo takes over the show

Sun Scream: PSA: Wear sunscreen.

City Of Frownsville: Man with terrible depression develops machine that cures his depression by giving it to everyone else

West In Pieces: Back To The Future 3, the wild west one

Crazy Mixed Up Puffs: Oh god they've fused

Mizzen In Action: Pirates of the Caribbean but less interesting

Roughing It Up: The Professor takes his kids on a camping trip and becomes rival dads with Fuzzy

What's The Big Idea?: The girls are made giant and it's a whole mess.

Nuthin' Special: Buttercup has no unique abilities. Any she had before are no longer unique.

Neighbour Hood: Children's TV show demands money.

I See A Funny Cartoon In Your Future: Gypsy and goose steal things along to a terrible rhyming narration.

Octi-Gone: Bubbles holds a fancy dinner party hostage to solve the mystery of the murder of her plushie, the one that told her to burn things.

[adorawasright]

i've talked about this show on my main blog and how it always bugged me the way they romanticized abuse because it was a girl doing to a boy...

and that one show is pucca. yeah. pucca. (putting this under the cut if you don't want to read me ranting about a show no one really thinks about nowadays lmao)

i was the biggest pucca fan as a kid, i still have some merch with me. like i have some good childhood memories. i loved the shorts when they aired on jetix, and i was very enthusiastic for the full series they made in 2007/08. like i still love most of the characters to this day, like garu (i had a little crush on him lol), tobe and his ninja goons, abyo... they were all so funny and memorable.

but the main character, pucca? i just can't like her anymore. YES, i'm very aware she's a kid. she's like 10. i get it. i don't want horrible things happening to her or anything.

but honestly, even when i was a kid, younger than pucca even, it always bothered me how garu was the punchbag in most episodes. and the worst part is, he was always pucca's victim. at least the 2007/08 pucca cartoon romanticized stalking. pucca does the absolute worst things to get garu's attention, usually by kissing him without his consent or even outright kidnapping him, even though garu in this series never showed that he liked pucca back. EVER. if that ever happened, it was never the real garu, or he would be under some magical effect. all garu wanted was to be a ninja and go fishing or whatever. once he even preferred GOING TO JAIL than to be with pucca.

still, the show tries to shove down your throat that pucca and garu were meant to be and all the other characters encourage pucca to keep pursuing garu. none of the adults, not even pucca's uncles/guardians, try to tell her that like. kissing your crush without their consent is wrong. they just think it's cute. because she's a little girl.

to this day, when i see ppl talking about this show, they still romanticize pucca and garu's relationship. and it's really fucked up. like i know i saw through it when i was younger, but it concerns me that other kids probably didn't have the same realization, and the new fans won't either. i very rarely find people calling out the issues with pucca, and when they do, they will always be harassed by a legion of fans saying "it's just a kids show". one person even assumed i hated kids for some goddamn reason.

i know it might seem random mentioning pucca here, since it's very different from spop (pucca is definitely not on catra's level), but the fans always use the same arguments, that it's a kids show and we don't understand "true love". also because the abuser here is a girl, and to many people, women can never be abusers. (unless you're Evil and "ugly" like shadow weaver tho)

no yeah, i think pucca is in a very similar state as spop. no one thinks there's anything wrong with the main pairings. even though pucca is like, a decade older than spop, i find the fandoms very similar. they simply gloss over abuse because both pucca and spop do not take the abuse seriously. garu and adora are treated like jokes, or prizes to be earned by pucca and catra.

it's pretty disgusting.

[thehotelpod]

DOUBLE STUFF OCTOBER IS ALMOST OVER LETS TALK HOTEL EN ESPAÑOL

All the way back way back when we were just doing Theatre of Tomorrow I had a dream of doing our show in Spanish. Our resources, skill level, experience, and the complexity of ToT made that dream so out of reach it was just something fun to talk about.

"What if!"

Well when I decided to join Bloody Disgusting, I knew with the resources, experience, and the simplicity of the Hotel's production that maybe, just maybe, we could pull it off. And I was sure this show would sound fucking incredible in Spanish. It's a perfect fit.

I'll spare you the boring and gory corporate details (it's mostly me in emails, phone calls, and video meetings explaining, arguing, fussing, and doing my best not to swear for months and months) but when the dust settled and the clouds parted out stepped-

Guillermo Ruiz de Santiago. A hero.

Memo is the Veronica in Mexico. He produces, runs the socials, figures out translation, and does all the casting. (I was involved, I heard the auditions and stuff but the buck stops with Memo.) None of this happens without him, and he understood the project and was very excited to bring it to the Spanish speaking audiences everywhere.

I am blown away that this show exists. I can hardly believe my luck. It's everything I hoped it would be and more. It sounds incredible. Ginette Zavala, Alex Villalobos, and Edgar Cañas are wonderful as the Staff (and Alex and Memo recently got married!) and I am doing everything I can to get season 2 and 3 and on and on produced as well. We're almost at 10,000 downloads and listened to on three continents across 6 countries! Holy cow! is that right? yeah, okay wow.

If you haven't yet, listen to the first episode here (then listen to all the rest then tell a bunch of other people to do that too)

How bout that artwork? I knew for MMMMMMMMMMONTHS that I was going to reach out to @parasitic-saint to do the art for this. It did an incredible job with The Ranch postcard and of course I had commissioned some guest art based on some OTHER guest art it had already posted--look, the art speaks for itself:

I stared at this on my phone for the rest of the afternoon when I first got it. What can I say about it that your already faster beating heart can't tell you better? (but look at the line work on his tie!!!!)

Let's take a look at the rest!

(this one might be my favorite)

Now i reaaaaaalllly probably shouldn't post these high rez images here bc techincally they are Patron perks for our Hotel en español tier, but we only have one patron at that tier and she already has her stuff sooooo please...please look at these. Look how stunning these pieces are. I can't...I can't even do a commentary post like I did for Izzy's, my brain short circuits looking at these. The detail, the color, the angles. Oh my god. The folds?? In the poster??? immaculate. You can see we didn't have the official logo when it made the first few. They also all have title and episode number included because we had worked out a lot of the bugs already.

The dimension's it put in the pieces are incredible. You can almost reach your hand in and grab Botones.

Getting to hire Parasitic Saint as the official Hotel en español artist (and yes you will see more of Rat's art as we produce future seasons!!) is as exciting as getting to have the show at all.

It's a labor of love and I hope you all love it as much as I do.

[daedalusdavinci]

10) I have never been this sick before I'm sorry did I, haha this is so weird, but did I confess my love for you? f- four times? yeah? haha oh, superbats

listen. as someone who has been entirely out of my mind on medication for the past two days, i felt like i understand exactly what to do with this prompt. and yet. and yet. i still went off the rails with it. this is not as superbat as i wanted it to be but duke is there and i feel like tha tmakes up for it

id link the prompt list this is from but i lost it. sorry. i ptu off answering this for too long

Alfred said it was the flu. Not Ivy's newest batch of toxin, or Tetch's mind control, or the lasting effects of a JLA fight gone wrong, or even a stomach bug from eating Tim's latest feeble attempt at cooking while desperately trying to practice to impress his boyfriend. It was just the plain old flu. And Bruce had never felt worse.

Alfred said it probably wouldn't have been half as bad if he hadn't gone out to patrol in the snow, multiple times, even after being warned not to. Damian said it probably wouldn't have been half as bad if he hadn't insisted on testing those antitoxins on himself recently. Jason said he'd slipped a viral strand of zombie DNA into his coffee grounds the last time he swung by, and it was only after Cass pointed out the coffee grounds also would've poisoned half the house that he realized Jason was most certainly just fucking with him. Duke said he should probably run the tests just in case, because the freezing batcave would certainly do him a lot of good, and somehow that entirely reasonable suggestion just wound up making Alfred more frustrated than ever.

And then Alfred did the unthinkable.

He called in the cavalry.

There were few things more humiliating than being babysat by the man of steel in his own home. Objectively, Bruce could understand why Alfred had called Clark; Clark was responsible, kind, reasonable, already familiar with the Manor, and very good at fielding both Bruce and his kids. He also had the physical strength to literally stand his ground with Bruce, when needed. But Bruce was half-out of his mind with the flu and even through the fogginess of his own miserable stupidity, he had just enough awareness to know that it was beyond embarrassing for Clark to see him like this.

He was sleepy and disgusting, useless beyond any injury he'd ever sustained, even his mind rendered weak in the face of the sickness. He was sweaty all the time, and half the time he could barely think past the sensory nightmare of being sick, all of his routines shattered and his own bed so nasty it made his skin crawl. Words felt impossible most of the time, until it was easier to communicate with Cass than anyone else. When he did speak, it was barely more than incoherent mumbles, and usually about The Gray Ghost, which was the only thing he could bring himself to focus on for more than ten seconds at a time. His memory came and went, and being sick turned into a montage of Gray Ghost episodes and beloved faces, with Clark's featuring most heavily.

When his fever finally broke, he felt desperate to be out of bed and gain some semblance of humanity back. It was humiliating to constantly be guided back to bed like he was frail, or to lie around in a shivering, sweaty mess while Clark tried simultaneously to keep him distracted and pretend not to notice. He needed a shower, and food, and goddamn it, even some sunlight would be welcome. More than anything, he needed to not be in his damn room for ten seconds.

Perhaps taking pity on him, Clark agreed to it, deeming that he was at least well enough that he could probably make it down the stairs without falling over. The world felt a lot less hateful after a shower, and even bundled up in a miserable huddle of blankets, unable to smell the fresh pancakes through his congestion, it felt good to sit in the kitchen and breathe fresher air, out of the cramped darkness of his own room. His coffee was warm in his hands, and for a while, he just closed his eyes, listening to the rush of the gas stove and the scrape of Clark's spatula against the pan.

"Hey, looks like the jailbird's flown the coop. Or are we finally posting bail?" Duke's voice was light as it drifted into the room, shoes scuffing on the floor. It wasn't the same heaviness as the Signal's boots, so he was in his civvies. Not here on bat business.

"He wanted a change of scenery," Clark explained. His footsteps were steady, the tap of a plate as it touched down in front of Bruce soft. His fingers brushed through Bruce's hair, combing it back out of his face. "He's doing better today. His morning report says he's still got the shakes, and his congestion is pretty bad, but there were barely any typos this time, and it was actually coherent." Bruce didn't miss the teasing tone in his voice, and he scowled.

"Wow. Does that mean the spelling error "love you" era has come to an end at last?" Duke's voice sounded from closer to the stove, no doubt stealing pancakes from the remaining pile.

Bruce could hear the grin in Clark's voice. "I overestimated on the pancake batter. Help yourself."

"Sweet."

Clark kissed the top of Bruce's head, giving his shoulder a squeeze before he returned to the stove. "Eat, Bruce. You're only going to feel more shaky if you don't eat anything."

Bruce sighed, taking one long, last sip from his coffee before he set it down and forced himself to open his eyes. Clark hadn't given him a ton of food, probably knowing he wouldn't be able to finish it, but the pancakes looked golden and warm enough that he allowed himself to unfurl from his blankets, reaching for the fork. Clark and Duke's chatter fell into fuzzy, comfortable background as he ate, and he had to admit, it was nice. It was always nice knowing one of his kids was close by and safe, and it was good to listen without any real expectation of having to participate himself.

After a while, his phone buzzed in his pocket. There was a text from Duke that said, "How are you holding up, big guy?"

The string of texts before the most recent one were disturbingly incoherent. He could remember some- his rant about The Gray Ghost most clearly, from when Duke had dropped in to check on him and infodumping to Clark had turned into infodumping to Duke- but a lot were lost to the fog entirely. There was a pattern to them, though; Duke, checking in, or sending him pictures, keeping him updated, and Bruce responding with some variation of "I'm ok, tell lckar to let me uot," or "Thank yuo, loev you."

A quick look at his other recent contacts revealed a similar pattern. Jason had blocked him two days ago after Bruce had texted him the same check-in message ten times in one day. Cass had started texting him pictures all the time. Barbara had gently informed him she was locking him out of his emails and social media for his own good. Diana had delightedly texted him back that she loved him too. Bruce did not want to even look at he and Clark's history.

He texted Duke back, "I know they're saving screenshots of me. Make them delete them, immediately."

Duke's laughter was loud and warm. "It is way too late for that, B."

[becauseimanicequeen]

RANDOM THOUGHTS: Manner of Death ep. 12 (rewatch)

(These are my random thoughts from my rewatch on the 31st of March - 1st of April 2024)

Since my rewatches may contain spoilers, I’m putting my random thoughts after the “Read More” link.

I’m going into this episode expecting more twists and suspense. And Tan and Bun moments, of course, and That and Sorn moments because I love them. I would also like a cactus comeback (it’s still at the other house though, right?). Also, I can’t remember if it’s in this episode that Inspector M gets shot or if it’s in the next one, but it might happen in this one. Let’s see.

I understand Jane’s outburst. Sitting there having to hear these disgusting assholes talk about which girl to rape next and then compare her to Jane, I can definitely understand her reaction. However, the smart thing would’ve been to expose them in secret, not reveal her goal to the whole party. But if she was more careful we wouldn’t have MOD. So, don’t listen to me.

The bitch said she would tell the truth and yet she started with a lie. Another corrupt person trying to control the story with their made-up version.

Por touched a sore spot right there when threatening Rung about her spa and her shady business.

The way Bun fucking kicked Tan off him when Sorn and That came into the room will never not make me cackle.

Sorn: “Mr. Tan, why are you lying on the floor?” Because Bun sent him there. With his foot.

Sorn is so adorable. Everyone else knows what is going on with everyone else (Tan and Bun knows what’s going on between That and Sorn and That knows what’s going on between Tan and Bun), but Sorn knows nothing. He’s so innocent and fucking adorable.

Don’t go to that judge for help! He’s the worst one of them all.

Nam is finally rescued.

That book is important! It holds the key to all the evidence.

A CACTUS COMEBACK! How I’ve missed their (plant) baby.

The cactus had the SD card taped to it! That’s why I’ve always had a diffuse memory of whether it was bugged or not. It wasn’t bugged, it had the evidence taped to it. I’ll probably forget that in time for my next rewatch of this series, though.

Bun calling Tan a flamingo will never not be funny.

And there we have the key to all the evidence. At least Jane was smart enough to store the evidence in more than one place. Especially since the SD card will be destroyed very soon.

Btw, the “My dear sis” password is so heartbreaking.

Nam pretending not to remember anything is so mean, though.

Poor Nam. I said it before, and I’ll say it again. She’s a victim of sexual assault and she’s surrounded by men. Sure, Sorn and That are her friends and she trusts Bun. But, still. At least Fai should’ve been in there. She was a psychologist too, right?

Oh, no, Inspector M. I know he’ll survive, but it still pains me to see him shot. And by no one other than his partner.

See, you should not have trusted the judge.

Only Tan would get horny in a situation like that. I don’t blame him, though. Bun is right on top of him.

Look at these assholes threatening Oat. Leave him the fuck alone. His only crime is being cute as fuck.

Look at the commander and Gun being all “worried” about Inspector M. Disgusting.

Another episode with some great highlights. More clues were revealed, more twists were twisting, Inspector M was betrayed by his partner, Nam was finally rescued, Sorn was cute, Bun was funny, Tan was horny, and now they’re on the run again. And, let’s not forget that the cactus made a comeback! I’m happy.

[billerak]

So I recently finished The Magnus Archives and it seems to be a light fixation (not hyperfixation quite yet but it could become one with time, probably after I inevitably re-listen to the whole show), which means I must somehow talk about it.

Of course, the main thing I've been thinking about is actually the fears. So I've decided I'm gonna rank them exclusively on a scale of "do not vibe" to "kinda vibe."

None of them are true vibes, of course. That's the point. But you know. Purely personal preferences too, of course.

So, let us begin.

15) The Corruption/The Crawling Rot Yeah I do 100% do NOT vibe with this shit. I hate filth and sickness and while I don't hate bugs I do hate it if they get into my goddamn food. The stories of The Corruption always fucking sicken me.

14) The Desolation/The Lightless Flame I... don't like the idea of burning alive. That's about it really. Nevermind all the other horrible things this particular fear represents. Don't think it would take me, though: Don't have a lot of connections or things to live for. If anything I'd maybe become an acolyte? Hypothetically speaking I would love to commit some arson against people (on minecraft).

13) The Buried/Too Close I Cannot Breathe If this was just claustrophobia it'd probably be higher up. I kinda like enclosed spaces, and I've liked the few times in my life I've been underground. That being said, fuck the asphyxiation part of this. Or the actually being trapped part. Swallowing dirt or mud flowing into your lungs or being trapped in a box that keeps you like a contortionist? Fuck right off mate.

12) The Slaughter/Butchery I have some experience with gratuitous violence. I wouldn't want to experience it again. Also, From the River to the Sea. Fuck Israel and zionists.

11) The Spiral/It Is Not What It Is So, episode 100 kinda seems to imply having ADHD actually makes you more resistant to the spiral, which I find funny cuz I have it, but... yeah, the idea of my mind lying to me is actually very present in my life. Also, The Distortion was The Backrooms before it was popular.

10) The Stranger/I Do Not Know You Kinda keeping in line with the previous one, I do tend to stay away from strangers and I've always found mannequins to be creepy. I feel like the uncanny valley is why I've hated 3d games trying to be realistic for so long. Nevermind that I care a lot about my identity. The part where they take who you are from you is... among the most psychologically scary things in the show. This could be a bit higher on the list if not for the part where they take your skin and stick you in wax.

9) The Eye/It Knows You We all have secrets we don't want found out, and I am actually a bit paranoid myself. Probably has to do with my self esteem issues. I hate knowing that there's probably nobody judging me as harsh as I do myself, and yet... Yeah, it's a doozy. Hot take tho: I find the eye statements to be mostly underwhelming? I don't think they ever fully manage to grasp the fear of being judged.

8) The Flesh/Viscera I find this one scary because I find it appealing. I find the idea of shaping my body with something like the boneturner to be something I'd fall into with my strange sense of identity. Also the first appearance of this fear lives rent free on my mind, though I think the reason it's scary is how disgusting it is? And that could probably fall closer to the rot?

7)The End/Death Fun fact: I made my peace with death when I was like... 12. I laid in bed one night, realizing the inevitability of my own mortality, and I cried for a while about it. Then I realized... if I can't do anything about it, then why stress over it? We all die. Of course, I don't want to die. I don't want my loved ones to die. It's something I am kind of afraid of, but it's not something I despise, so it gets the middle spot on this list.

6) The Extinction/The Terrible Change We live in a generation where this fear will probably come to be. That's the scariest part of it, I think. I don't expect I'll live to see my 40's tbh. Whether it's global warming or a nuke that takes me (or unrelated health issues), I am certain humanity will end by its own hand, and it's sad. Probably won't get to mars either. (certainly not with the long rat)

5) The Web/The Spider I'm not afraid of spiders, but I hate manipulation. That being said the way it's presented in the show is not that scary. Either it's a spider controlling you to torture you, or you're part of a scheme so big you don't even realize it 'till the end. Maybe I don't find it that scary because I've never been subject to the type of manipulation others have.

4) The Hunt/The Everchase I don't like the idea of being hunted or hunting, don't get me wrong... But I also don't find it particularly scary. Police brutality is a bitch. ACAB. I guess it makes more sense for animals to be scared of it tho. Not a lot of thoughts on this one, save to say the hunt statement in season 5 was probably my favorite? Idk I really liked it.

3)The Dark/Forever Blind I'm still kinda scared of the dark, but mostly because I'm afraid I'll step on something and it'll hurt. I stopped believing in ghosts many years ago and weird sounds in my house are about on the same level of scariness whether it's light or dark. Really, the only thing that doesn't push this farther up the list is that I don't like the idea of becoming blind. The kids episode during season 5 was fucked up tho.

2) The Vast This was kind of in the run to be 1, but they do mention they get hungry a few times during the statements about the Vast so I don't like that. Honestly, I find none of the fears this manifests as that scary. Whether it be the sky, the ocean, or the void of space. Also I grow excited when I think about the insignificance of human life in the scale of things, rather than fearful.

1) The Lonely/Forsaken I'm an introvert. Do I need to say much more? Ofc I have family and friends and stuff, and I love discussing things with people... but The Lonely's stories never seemed that bad to me. I figure if I were to get taken by it (I wouldn't, ofc, as it's not something I'm particularly afraid of) I'd be far better off than most people. Yes, I know, kinda funny that the 3 that went on the daedalus are the ones I found least scary lmao.

Took like an hour to write this, but... yeah, I think I needed to get my thoughts out there. Don't take most of the middle spots too seriously tho, they can probably be interchangable depending on my mood. Only top and bottom 3 are fixed in place.

[self-loathing-angel-of-thursday2]

Beautiful Spouse’s Rewatch Thoughts SPN 07x05 Shut Up, Dr. Phil

“Punish his ass Karen! If I could DJ, I’d make a song about it”

“Punish his ass Karen!” “at punishing ass, Karen” laughter

“HI Ken” “How did I know it was going to be Dean fkn Winchester?” “You’re taking the wrong drugs before bed, dude. Holy shit” “That would have been the flattest fkn shit ever.” “They drink a lot. He just drank 2-3 shots in one sitting. Thats a third of the glass.” “They did that scene at least twice. Dean says you stink. Jared probably farted. Then they probably laughed” “Go shower man, come on” “That’s a lot of bug spray or whatever the fuck he bought” “Did they have customers in the front?” “They have this burnt shit hanging down and people are doing the books” “He says it’s not American, but what if it’s South American. Still American” “Fkn A. We’re eating and this guy is taking a piss” “I don’t remember this one” “I don’t know about that, but if you defeat the safety on those things, you can do a lot of damage” “100 psi” “Sure” “Idk. I don’t use nail guns” “Screws are better for most things except efficiency” “Or being discrete like brad nails” “I mean I guess the compressor could have had air in it if it was filled up. You could probably get 20 shots out” “Oh, he’s going to AA - the Art Auction” “Except when you have an angel to fix your problems, you don’t really have problems do you?” “Is he a botany aficionado? He doesn’t think a plant is supposed to look like that and then makes fun of Sam? I don’t know how they’re related but sure” “Why the hell would you say all of that?” “I mean if you talk about it enough you’d shorten it” “Whoever did the sound design for this episode did a damned good job” “His hair is always fucked but that’s nobody’s fault” “A whole ass closet and the necklaces are next to the shoes? Makes going through your closet easy I guess” “You could just pee in the plants. Or use a dog. Easy way to kill plants” “Running a little oil there bud” “Pretty odd music for snooping around someone’s house” “You gotta have more reliable means of communication” Hey it’s Cordelia from Buffy

“How did you not see him through the giant ass window?” “This would never work in the future. Everyone has cameras all over their shit” “She must really like chocolate” “Fuck that’s disgusting” “yeah that makes sense but pretty effective it turns out” “This feels so Daytime TV” “Like the framing and how serious this guy is trying to be” “The fuck” “He must know about her abilities” “Helloooo” “Do we ever learn why Dean hates witches so much?”

“Kinda cool effect” “This acting is interesting” “The fuck?” “The paintings are still fucked up” “Is this their attempt to sprinkle the overarching plot line over a few episodes?” “The fuck is happening?” “oh yeah they’re witches. They live forever” “oh fuck that noise” “Those bees are so fkn fake” “Fkn yellow jackets” “Why is basketball the theme of the room? That’s so weird” “That was a quick draw there” “The fuck?” “He’s maybe not such bad of a dude.” “Take what you can get when you don’t have an angel around right?” “He didn’t look stung by bees earlier” “These guys are so shitty at talking to each other. It takes a whole ass job to talk, but the job takes like a week. It’s watching two siblings bitch at each other for a week”

[archer3-13]

episode 3:

no major notes on plot differences again, instead characterization notes have been the biggest source of commentary for me on this.

the rapport this episode builds between satoshi and kasumi feels a lot more natural then i remember it feeling in the english version. kasumis obviously not impressed with this cocksure often clueless kid fretting over the danger he puts his pokemon into, well satoshi is understandably put out by kasumi being mean to caterpie due to her fear of bugs despite caterpie clearly having a fondness for kasumi and satoshi trying to bridge the gap between them. it gels naturally with satoshi becoming more aware of his lack of indepth knowledge on pokemon this episode and kasumi coming to understand that well satoshis clueless on a lot of things he cares deeply for his pokemon and is willing to put himself on the line to protect them.

LOOK OUT ASH ITS A PIGEON [pidgeotto]!

Also, in the grand tradition of the original pokemon anime and its weird implications pigeon introduces itself by eating a regular ass worm. like that one episode where they show regular ass fish, regular animals do indeed exist in the early pokemon anime. and pigeon makes disgusting noodle slurping sounds as it eats.

musashi, kojiro and nyarth continue to have a more intimidating air about them nor do they say blasting off again. that said, we are still in early days here so theres hasn't been much attention placed on their antics yet.

which is all to say that i have a feeling they were originally workshopped to be more competent intimidating villains [for a kids show with a clear comedic bent to it] who probably showed up on a more infrequent basis [or hell, were just the starter platter of goons meant to not be longterm carry throughs], with something changing that direction as things went on.

the gunk in pikachus eyes preventing it from fighting is still weird as fuck i gotta say

trancell [metapod] is more adorable then i remember it especially when satoshi carries it in his backpack.

for some reason i felt like watching the first episodes of pokemon subbed, what with the pokemon anime officially switching off from ash as the protagonist. it was gonna be advance originally cause gen3s my jam as far as pokemon goes but haruka [may] was grating on me enough to put that on a distant possibly never lit backburner.

some context for those curious on where i sit with the pokemon anime:

watched a little bit of the first seasons in kanto growing up but ive mostly seen the movies all things considered.

movie 3 is easily the best of the movies i've seen, movie 2 has sad lugia noises, and well i know jackshit about the numbers of the movies the latios/latias movie and the deyoxes movie hold a strong place in my heart in part cause of those three and raquyaza being some of my fave pokemon/legendaries

with all that said, i've never been a fan of ash himself as he always felt rather obnoxious to me and his voice grates in english. misty and brock sadly do not fare much better for me

never paid much attention to the anime as things got along as it wasn't for me, but from what little i have seen im definitely in the camp that thinks it was a mistake to keep ash around for so god damn long. at most i can see keeping him around for jotoh but when things hit hoenn they shoulda swapped in a new protag

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 28

(Masterpost) (Canary’s Pinboard) 

Warning: Spoilers for all 50 Episodes!

Yunmeng Jiang Debate Club

The episode starts with the big breakup between Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian. Jiang Cheng is understandably not ok with WWX’s “raise my friend from the dead” agenda, and less-understandably not ok with his “save these helpless people including that girl you like” agenda. There is some tense back and forth, including a brief guest appearance by Wen Qing,

Jiang Cheng's arguments, outlined:

Necromancy is not cool

The bonds of friendship end when there is a risk of trouble for our clan

We will be squashed like a bug by the other clans if we piss them off 

*Yaz kicks in on the soundtrack*

Nations stand against him, he's your brother Been a long time, been a long time now I'll get to you somehow, yeah

(Move out) Don't mess around (Move out) You bring me down (Move out!) How you get about it Don't make a sound, just move out!

Wei Wuxian's counter-arguments, outlined:

Necromancy is, actually, hella cool

The bonds of friendship transcend, like, everything

*cracks knuckles* *flexes shoulders* *spins flute*

(More after the cut!)

Wei Wuxian kind of naively thinks that if they just ignore everyone, everyone will chill and leave him and the Wens alone. Jiang Cheng speaks some truth to him about how the world works, which could be a good thing for WWX if it wasn't followed with the utterly terrible advice to just, you know, completely surrender to the Jins.

Jiang Cheng is the guy in the writing workshop who is great at clearly articulating the problems with your story, while always suggesting atrocious, unbearable ways to fix your story.

Great taste in accessories, though

Jiang Cheng explains that family extermination of anyone named Wen has been decided on, basically. This is pretty common in Xianxia and Wuxia stories; it’s why the hero of so many stories is a peasant who turns out to be the last survivor of the previous dynasty.  Jiang Cheng isn’t here to change the ways of his genre, so he wants Wei Wuxian and all the Jiangs to get the fuck out of the way and let it happen.

Jiang Cheng decides to settle things himself by finishing killing Wen Ning, but he discovers that Zidian can't get through Wei Wuxian's resentful rope work. That boy has a future in tying somebody up. 

Wei Wuxian’s turkey timer pops and he is officially done. He tells Jiang Cheng "abandon me" and says he’ll leave the Jiang Clan. This isn’t because he’s mad at Jiang Cheng, or disgusted by his choices, although he probably is; it’s because this is the only way he can see to protect the Jiang Clan and the Dafan Wens at the same time.  

And then he hits right at Jiang Cheng's heart, telling him that he would do all this for anybody, not just for the Wen sibs. It's not about debt, for him; it's about justice, and protecting the weak. This sentiment is as hurtful to Jiang Cheng as it would be thrilling to Lan Wangji. 

Jiang Cheng goes off, predictably, telling Wei Wuxian how much he sucks and that everything is his fault because he wants to be a hero. Heroism has no place in Jiang Cheng’s clan full of martial arts sword fighting dudes who run around with magic weapons hunting monsters for a living. 

Each brother hurts the other as a way to soothe their own pain, it seems. They decide to have a duel in the morning, to make it look like a real defection. Which...it is.

Empty Larder Days

That evening, Wen Qing gives her dinner to A-Yuan, who is understandably still hungry after his one piece of fruit. Wei Wuxian shows up with enough fruit for everyone, and makes a point of being super light-hearted with Wen Qing, whose heart is very obviously heavy.

Here I just want to point out that Wei Wuxian can't cook, but he CAN successfully forage in an extremely haunted orchard at night, so he has the important skills.

There are some nice little moments with the Yiling Wens that show us how kind they are to each other. Uh, that dude is massaging his companion, not punching her. 

They all talk about plans for planting food, and how things will be better later. A-Yuan gives Wei Wuxian his second piece of fruit to eat, while Wen Qing goes into the cave, getting ready to have A Talk with Wei Wuxian.

Wen Qing won't eat and is just generally super sad. She tells Wei Wuxian he should go back to Lotus Pier, and leave the Wens to die. She says that it's ok as long as she and Wen Ning are together. 

Wei Wuxian uses his power of deliberate obtuseness to reject her offer, pretending that she’s upset because he ate the last piece of fruit.

Stay Up All Night

Everyone spends a restless night.  Jiang Cheng has comb flashbacks; when he left the burial mounds earlier in the day, Wen Qing met him to return his comb of yearning and to tell him that he sucks. 

It's worth noting that this means she kept that dang thing with her through her time as a captive and while she was wandering around starving. 

It’s a tragic missed opportunity for both of them; Jiang Cheng’s fierceness and Wen Qing’s backbone, combined with both being super comfortable wielding physical violence, would make them a formidable pair. Unfortunately the one thing they really have in common is absolute devotion to their own people, which means they can never be devoted to each other.

Wen Qing goes to sit with Wen Ning while he bakes. He gets restless too, overwhelmed by pain, but Wei Wuxian settles him down by playing the Lan Clan's Song of Cleansing. This is the same song Lan Wangji played to heal him after he fought Wen Ruohan, and it’s the same song that Jin Guangyao will corrupt to kill Nie Mingjue. Lan Clan musical cultivation for the win...sometimes! 

The First Rule of Fight Club is Don’t Stab Me In The Liver

In the morning, Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng fight.  Wei Wuxian looks like he’s playing and Jiang Cheng looks like he’s fighting his very hardest. At one point in his barrage of talismans, Wei Wuxian throws a paperman at Jiang Cheng. 

Cheeky bastard.  

This is our first time seeing Wei Wuxian put up a force shield with his flute against a sword-pointy attack. Note for those who care: the sword attacks in Xianxia are half physical, half spiritual energy, so when someone is pointing a sword at you, they are actually hitting you with spiritual energy. Or trying to, in the case of anyone vs. Yiling Flute Man.

The battle ends when Jiang Cheng stabs Wei Wuxian in the gut. Wei Wuxian says JC didn't need to be so ruthless, and JC doesn't answer him, just grips his own broken left arm. Jiang Cheng always hits harder than he needs to, maybe because when he fights Wei Wuxian, he’s always on the back foot. 

JC stomps back down the mountain to where his disciples are waiting, not a horse in sight. Are these like Zelda:BOTW horses, who run away if you don't register them at a stable? 

Jiang Cheng declares that Wei Wuxian is officially an asshole, and dramatically throws away his cape to make the point. Or maybe that was Wei Wuxian's cape and he's just returning it.

Ow

Later, Wei Wuxian will try to pretend he's not hideously injured while Wen Qing looks worried and takes away his potatoes.

Not Lotus Pier

Back at Jinlintai, Jiang Yanli is sleeping in the middle of the day, having a super on-the-nose dream about Wei Wuxian cheerfully sailing a boat right by the doc at Lotus Pier and Jiang Cheng looking dead-eyed after him, not trying to stop him.

Jiang Yanli comes out of her room to find that Jin Zixuan, the big dork, has planted a lotus pond for her in Jinlintai, even getting mud on himself in the process. They have a depressing love declaration scene, in which Jin Zixuan asks her to settle for him even though he can't make her happy, and she accepts. 

It's not as bad as it sounds because she genuinely loves him but she’s all out of joy, after so much trauma. Sometimes I need to be reminded that this show is really fucking sad, I guess. 

Just Passing Through

Fast forward...a couple of weeks, I guess? Lan Wangji is chilling in Yiling, listening to the teahouse storyteller and other patrons talk shit about the Yiling Patriarch. Lan Wangji is super grumpy listening to what they're saying even though the official storyteller is basically telling the truth, albeit dwelling on the gruesome parts. 

I should put a gif of the storyteller and the crowd here, but we’d all rather look at Lan Wangji drinking tea, right? Look, you can see his leg! 

The crowd gets all hepped up saying that Wei Wuxian should be killed, and Lan Wangji abandons his usual reserve and cuts loose with some expressive body language and his strongest murder glare. 

Then he leaves the teahouse to go have a series of memeable interactions.

First with the thirsty ladies of Yiling,

Then with future son A-Yuan,

Then with the advice dads of Yiling,

and finally with thirsty future co-dad Wei Wuxian.

So soon after Jiang Cheng refused to support Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji, pillar of rule-following, is here to just...be kind to him for a little while. Lan Wangji is still struggling to reconcile everything he is trying to be, but in this moment he is entirely about Wei Wuxian. Both of them stand still for a few breaths while the world moves around them; Wei Wuxian’s smile keeps moving and changing, because that’s who he is, even in stillness. 

Although Wei Wuxian doesn't know it, Lan Wangji signals his new rulebreaking attitude to the audience by calmly lying when Wei Wuxian asks him why he's here.

Asking is Asking, Buying is Buying

Wei Wuxian bonds with A-Yuan about both being too poor to buy toys; Lan Wangji bonds with A-Yuan by being rich enough to buy him whatever he wants. 

He also theatrically catches Wei Wuxian's eye while doing it, which might be a reproach for tempting the kid with things he can't have, but might just be a sugar-daddy flex. 

His generosity is rewarded by A-Yuan’s devotion and by Wei Wuxian’s epic open-legged invitation sprawl.

It’s easy to see the first part of the toy interaction as Wei Wuxian being a little callous and a lot practical; his accidental Yiling Wei-Wen clan is super, super poor, and he is busting his ass to keep starvation away. But. Why does he tell A-Yuan to look at the toys? Why does he pick one up to play with it, instead of simply turning away? 

There’s a lesson here, and a parallel, I think. He is teaching A-Yuan to take joy in moments, in beauty, in playthings, whether he can keep them or not. Wei Wuxian enjoys every meal and every cup of wine to the utmost; loves every friend wholeheartedly, and lives joyfully even at death’s literal door. He doesn’t let the certainty of loss, separation, hunger, keep him from devouring every good thing that comes his way. 

In this moment, the gift he can’t afford to give himself is Lan Wangji. But he’s going to enjoy every second they have together today. 

And so is Lan Wangji.

Soundtrack: Situation by Yaz, Up All Night by Talking Heads, Consider Yourself from Oliver! The Musical

[dodo-begone]

Beware the Beast

Pairing: Yandere!Philza x Reader

Request: Maybe some yandere!philza headcanons? You don’t have to!

Word Count: 2k

Warning: yandere, swearing, talk about kidnapping, depression (kinda detailed on that aspect)

A/n: I accidentally turned this into a story- i really need to stop doing that. But I just couldn't resist! Also sorry if Phil is OOC. And this isn't proofread. We die like men here. Can be perceived as platonic or romantic.

This man has lived many years, lost so many loved ones. He’s getting tired of this cycle. It’s truly exhausting. You start to care about the world less. After a while, you start to see too many similarities in things, making it hard to look at. So he starts to close his heart to others. It’s just easier that way, for both parties. Saves him from the heartbreak and them from… well, him. He also stops caring for himself. After all, he’s literally immortal. Nothing can kill this man, so neglecting some self care routines every once in a while wouldn’t hurt…

But this becomes such a bad habit of his. He barely cares for himself after a while. It’s hard to find the energy when it isn’t going to matter in the end. Nothing matters anyways. Every action will always prove fruitless in the end. So what’s the point in doing something so... small if it takes this much energy? If a past version of himself saw Phil now, they’d be disgusted. Telling him to just get up and care for himself. Come on, you’re immortal. Nothing can kill you. Just do this.

He’s a mess when you two meet. His platinum-blonde hair was mostly neat, a little shaggy. It was obvious that he just got himself cleaned up a bit. One can only do so much about deep eyebags, dull hair, and lifeless eyes on such short notice.

You were introduced to him through Ghostbur. Phil was overjoyed that Ghostbur was making more friends. Though much less pleased when Ghostbur insisted that he’d bring his new friend over to meet Phil. Oh come on Phil, you’d just love them. They’re so nice! What tortured Philza more than his first interaction with you? His conversations with Ghostbur about you. He’d just prattle on about things you and him did, about how much fun you two had and how nice you were. Always nice.

And you were nice, an absolute sweetheart. But much too perky for Philza’s liking. You two had been chatting for quite a while when Ghostbur silently leaves you two together. Well, you’re chatting. Phil is just listening to you, hoping that you’d leave at any moment. Some topics were brought up; they were mostly some small icebreakers to get acquainted more.

When your past was brought up, you’d always paint this fucking picture-perfect past. So peaceful. God, the envy he had of you, of the peace you experienced in your life- He felt bad for it, honestly, he did. But he just wished he could’ve had even a fraction of the prosperity you spoke about. For someone living in the DSMP, you had a relatively easy and steady life. No war, no major or sudden loss or anything of that sort. A perfect life.

After that, you just kept coming back. Why? Why are you coming back? Are you here to taunt him for the life he lived? For the life he’ll never have? Is some god sending you as a punishment? A living example of everything he gave up, had to leave behind. That’s what he believed, anyways.

That was far from your intentions. You saw how he was in your first meeting; jumpy yet dissociating from reality. An oppressive, glum aura seemed to just emanate him. So downtrodden and dead inside, yet so obviously alive on the outside. It hurt to see him like that, as you went through something similar. You had no idea how long he’d been like that, but you decided that you’d help him in any way that you could.

You tried to make it a daily thing. Everyday you’d go to Phil’s house around midday to afternoon. You two would talk for a bit, but you’d couldn’t help sprinkling your questions in. Have you eaten yet, mr. Philza? Have you had water today, mr. Philza? Have you preened your feathers, mr. Philza? Have you bathed today, mr. Philza?

Your questions irked Phil. Everyday, without fail, you’d come and talk to him. It’d be small talk at first; what the weather was up to that day, some light politics, Tubbo’s new adopted son. Small. Yet you’d always bring up his self care. He was a fcking grown man. He could take care of himself. What’s worse? You’d pester him to care for himself in that instant if he even showed a small sign of negligence. And you’d stay the entire time, making sure he did everything. And then you’d always add “mr. Philza” on the end. It was a sign of respect, yet it upset him so much. But he couldn’t exactly pinpoint what it was.

Though it was annoying, it got him in the habit of caring for himself. It was only to stop your pesting! That’s the reasoning. The only reason. It wasn’t because you’re congratulating and giving him treats when he remembered to care for himself. Or you petting his wings… Those were only bonuses! He swears!

It becomes more steady as time goes on; you go and visit Phil, you talk with Phil and see if he’s caring for himself, and if he was, you’d reveal a delicious treat from within your enderchest. You two would talk while munching on the food, having fun sharing what your pasts were like. Well, more like yours. Phil didn’t really talk about his.

But he still seems so cold, disinterested. Even with how long you’ve been going over for. Like he’s only listening to what you’re telling him. If he’s even listening. And seeing how he interacted with others like Techno and Ranboo, it really disheartened you. He was so much more lively with them, more natural. Loud laughing and silly little antics. It only took a few small, insignificant depression episodes for your self doubt to finally debilitate you. Though it only really affected your contact with Phil; he was a big insecurity of yours.

So you start to distance yourself. You were hurting and saw yourself as a bother to Philza. It would’ve been better if you just didn’t try to talk to him anymore. He’d be so much happier without you bugging him all the time. All of this sudden, open time gives you much more empty hours. There was nothing to do. So you did what you could; you went out to make or strengthen friendships. It was so nice. You never realized how everyone on the smp was so nice. Maybe they weren’t as bad as Phil was making them all out to be…

Philza was upset the first day you weren’t there. You were such a steady element of his day. You were like the very air he breathed; it was extremely hard to live without you. He never noticed before how much he needed you. Yes, he knew that he really enjoyed you, saw that you were a pillar, a constant in his life. He came to enjoy your visits, but hadn’t realized how dependent he became because of them. It was day three when Phil started to worry about you. Why hadn’t you come to talk with him, like usual? He’s taking care of himself, just for you, just like you kept insisting he do. And he made you some cake.

He knew he was acting odd, lovesick even. His love for you was toxic, extremely so. It wasn’t healthy, yet he couldn’t care less anymore. You were like his nicotine to a smoker; he couldn't live without you being in his life. His everyday life. So after some debating, he finally went out to look for you.

Traversing the nether wasn’t too bad, but still a tedious walk. He was stuck in his mind the entire trip there, wondering where you could be and what you could be doing. Maybe you got caught up in making something. A redstone project? That’d be pretty cool. Or maybe moving? No, if you were, you’d have told him. But that didn’t stop him from speeding up just a wee bit. Just to make sure you were actually still on the smp.

His mind was racing, thinking of any possibility of what you were doing. And his mind eventually hit something that absolutely terrified him; you could be sick, injured, or dying. It felt like the world just fucking stopped. This was a sudden loss of contact and you still hadn’t come to talk with him. So that… that means there’s a high probability of you being in danger.

He ran the rest of the way to the main part of the smp. When he came out of the portal, he frantically looked around for any sign of you. For your house. Then it hit him; he had no idea where you lived. You only mentioned it being cold where you lived, just like where he lived. So that most likely meant Snowchester. He started running toward the cold nation

On his way to Snowchester, he observed his surroundings. A little bit. He had to get to you, keep his eye on the prize. And he was glad that he looked around. There you were, on another part of the prime path.

He was overjoyed to see you, especially doing so well. Soon he came to a stop. Just floored by the fact you were there, in front of him. Frantically he tried to view you as best he could, looking for any sign of injury or illness.

Now he couldn’t come across as clingy or desperate. That wasn’t how you knew him. You know him as Philza; the kind but a mild social recluse. Not really going out to others unless he needed something or he was needed.

So he walked over to you, trying his best to look nonchalant. Like he wasn’t just desperately searching for you a moment ago. He called out to you and guess what happened? You started to walk away. He was stunned. Did you just ignore him? No, you must not have heard him. It was kinda windy out at the moment.

Logically he did the best option, following you. He had no clue where your destination could be. You were going to a different area of the smp than he had been. My how the smp changed since the destruction of L’manberg. He knew it changed, but it seemed so much bigger than what you described.

He didn’t exactly pay attention to where you were indirectly leading him. That was until a flash of movement caught his attention. Snapping out of it, he looked to see what could’ve been going on. Who could’ve been there. And what he saw before him was a terrible sight.

Quackity stood by your side, animatedly chatting with you. Phil was confused as to why you were talking to Quackity of all people. You two recently talked about how Quackity was problematic and arrogant. If you knew that, then why were you talking to him?

Awkwardly he watched you. Not within earshot, but where he could keep an eye on you and Quackity. And Quackity was looking at Phil too. His eyes spoke volumes; Quackity wasn’t pleased that Phil was there. Boy was that sentiment shared. It was tense between the two, yet you still seemed oblivious to what was going on.

Then Quackity said something, putting his hand on your shoulder and leading you somewhere else. But gave one last look at Phil, one that just spoke “fuck off”. Phil wished he could’ve told Quackity the same. To get him away for you.

Quackity’s action sparked a thought in him. A reason as to why you hadn’t come to talk to Phil; Quackity must’ve kidnapped you! Yes, that’s why you hadn’t come. It makes so much sense. Quackity knows you and most likely knows you talk to Phil.

With how easily you tell Phil of the people you’re talking to, he doubts that the behavior would just change. But that’s what must’ve gotten you in so much trouble; you were too trusting, too kind-hearted. You gave Quackity a chance and he was stealing you away, imprisoning you. You needn’t worry dear, he’ll rescue you from that foul man.

[myshredda]

*shuffles papers *leans on desk very business like

I am not exaggerating when I say I have been thinking about this over my last 10 hr work shift, so now I’m making it your problem too. <3

So from my understanding, the trio don’t have any kind of air conditioning (this assumption coming from the open windows during summertime/ letting in wind through said window). Now imagine an unusually hot day. Everybody’s burning up. Duck feels like he’s being rotisseried. Red is so beyond hot he’s cold a nice side effect of heat exhaustion. Yellow’s hot too, but doesn’t really mind (I swear kids don’t care how hot it is, he’s also not covered in fur/yarn or feathers). They’re all chillin together, probably with the tv going, oblivious to one another. Red dose something that gets duck’s attention and he’s just like, "hey stop that." Doesn’t get a response. Tells yellow to kick him or something and tells him to stop. Yellow then proceeds to watch someone with borderline heat exhaustion and pure heat exhaustion bicker, and by some twist of fate it’s yellow that knows the signs and how to deal with it. So now it’s the baby of the family’s turn to baby his family.

Also, side note. Do you think red would pant if he got too hot? Like a dog? Also also, if this turned into anything would you be interested?

Seeing as they live in England I think it would be most logical to assume they don't have A/C because British people really don't us A/C culturally. (Which is crazy to me, also the fact that british people don't put screens in their windows like do you WANT 7000 bugs in your house???) BUT I DIGRESS

I love the thought of Yellow being the one to take care of the clump for once! Red would be incredibly susceptible to heat exhaustion due to the whole 'being a giant, fuzzy lump of felt-fur and yarn' thing, and Duck wouldn't be much better off.

I think Yellow being smart enough to figure out they've gone into heat exhaustion from all the PBS/Children's programming he watches (I'm sure there'd be an episode about that sort of thing on a real kids show that's aiming for informational as apposed to whatever the fuck DHMSI has going on) so he's like doling out wet flannels and cold water and generally enjoying himself playing nursemaid while Red and Duck bitch and moan about the heat.

I feel like Red could pant! I've already written him as being able to sweat so idk if it would actually help him cool off but I think the imagery of Red's tongue all lolled out as he pants disgusting Duck so much he's nearly catatonic with rage to be very funny

[hansolmates]

me time (m)

summary; the first time virgin!mc meets her mans (but she doesn’t know it yet) pairing; jungkook x virgin!mc genre/warnings; fluff, college!au, boarding house!au, based on the virgin!oc discourse, female masturbation (thanks to the pretty bridgertons), a lil sad and longing at the end w/c; 1.3k a/n; y’all really brought manhater!mc and virgin!mc to life! this couldn’t be done without all of your fabulous input and support. obviously the virginverse is freeform at this point—think of this more as a prequel for these two. set in freshman year of college, when they’re just acquaintances. (do you guys think of cher from clueless when u think virgin!mc? very outgoing n’cute but also very innocent?) anyway, happy valentine’s day i hope you and your boo (whether digital or in-person) get your me/we time💖

Your wooden lap desk is toppled to the side. Good thing the space between the mattress and floor is small, your pink monstera-shaped rug softening the blow when your water bottle, pencils and laptop fall to the floor. In the back of your head you know everything is fine because the last episode of Bridgerton is still playing, an orchestral version of Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next continuing on as if nothing’s astray. 

Yet you’re nothing but astray, forgotten about the episode and writhing against your too-small twin as you let yourself cum for the umpeeth time. 

You’ve lost track at this point (how couldn't you? Bridgerton is hot) but from the way your hair mats to your face like a second skin and your pussy feels spent and battered, it’s been awhile. This should be your new Valentine’s Day tradition, fucking yourself until you pass out on your vibrator. 

“Ah, ah fu—uck, yyyes!” 

The sheets are sopping. The grey cotton fabric does nothing to hide your juices that seep from your bare cunt to the mattress. Flinging your silicone toy to the side, you pull your hair up and out of your face. 

Water, you need water. Maybe a cup of green tea with a dollop of honey. Sugar always helps the immediate low after a good couple of rounds. 

However, you’ll never get used to the feeling of cleaning up yourself. The feeling that you’ve done something completely lewd all on your own, no one to assure you the things you’re doing are weird. It’s okay though. You love to be alone, it takes a lot for you to feel lonely. 

You slip on a pair of dolphin-cut shorts, too tiny that they are drowned beneath your emerald green slip dress. Quickly opening the door to your room, you’re met with absolute silence. White walls containing empty rooms and a living room without a soul. Just like you’re expecting in a college boardhouse on Valentine’s Day. 

What you’re not expecting however, is Jeon Jungkook staring at you the second you crack your door open. 

“If you’re screaming that loud, your partner must be doing a good job.” 

Jungkook lives on the other side of the boarding house, therefore you’ve never really interacted with him. Excluding the landlord there’s only five other tenants, a group large enough that you’ve never had to have one-on-one with him. 

You really didn’t think anyone would be in the house on Valentine’s, especially Jungkook. He’s an absolute cutie pie, even though you don’t know anything about him. The only thing you really know is that his sparkly brown eyes are to die for, they remind you of coffee milk tea, a craving you only indulge in at the end of finals season. 

To your surprise, Jungkook looks like he hasn’t gone out all weekend. Him, single? As if! Yet you can’t justify any reasoning behind him being home if did have a girlfriend or boyfriend. His dark hair is fluffy and freshly showered, and you can’t ignore the smell of linens from his soft sweats and long navy hoodie. 

Normally, you’d be quiet during Me Time. You’ve perfected the art, stuffing your mouth with your pillow or playing action movies to muffle out the sound. You thought you were in the clear. The thought of Jungkook overhearing you turns you on a little, makes the dampness between your panties even more evident, but you keep that self-indulgent secret to yourself. 

“Oh, well,” you curl your lips in a smirk, closing the door behind you so he doesn’t see that your room is actually very much devoid of life, “she’s very powerful.” 

She, meaning your favorite vibrator in your entire world. It has ten settings and a heating mechanism. More importantly, it’s rechargeable. You don’t know how you’d survive freshman year otherwise. 

“Okay, TMI,” despite the fact Jungkook’s blushing he’s chuckling, holding a hand out for you in the narrow hallway, “after you.” 

You quickly slip past him, walking into the shared kitchenette. Bare feet slapping against the hardwood, your eyes immediately gravitate toward the upper cabinet. Jungkook is following you, presumably to get his own late night snack. When you lift your arms to reach your mug, you feel a little bit of cool air brush against the uppers of your thighs. It’s a nightgown, a pretty satin slip  that falls over your curves and leaves much to the imagination. A couple more centimeters to get your mug and you’ll be definitely flashing Jungkook. 

“Um,” you practically hear the twisted face he’s making. 

“Sorry—I’m sorry!” you blurt, waving your fingers to catch the handle of your mug, “I’m really not trying to flash you—please don’t fill a harassment report! I just can’t reach my mug.” 

“No, that’s my mug.” 

“What, no! I’ve been drinking from this mug all year!” 

“You’ve been drinking from my mug?” Jungkook is affronted, walking past you to easily grab the mug you’ve been struggling to reach for the past minute. He flexes the bottom part of the mug in your face, where his initials are painted in black. “This is my mug, my parents put my handprint on it when I was a year old.”  

It’s then you notice on the lower shelf, there’s an identical mug. This mug has been buried all the way in the back, dust collecting on the rim. It also has a baby handprint on it, although upon closer inspection it’s smaller and in a more faded shade of black. That’s your mug. 

“Oh, Jungkook,” you feel your heart fall all the way to your ass, feeling guilty, “I’m so sorry. I’ve washed it and everything, if it makes you feel any better.” 

He frowns, holding the white porcelain between his hands. A litany of ideas run through your brain. Is he disgusted by using the same mug as you? Have you potentially ruined a prized family treasure? 

Thrusting the mug into your chest he says, “Make me a hot chocolate and we’re even.” 

You smile a little, eager to please. You quickly get to work, simmering the pan with warm milk and melting chopped chocolate. You rinse your mug with some hot water, letting it sit next to his awaiting mug. For a bit of flair you add a capful of vanilla extract, all while Jungkook watches you with mild awe. The smell of sweet late night confections fill the kitchen, a fitting theme for a Valentine’s night. 

“You’re not burning the milk,” Jungkook murmurs more to himself than you, watching as you pour the hot chocolate in cups without spilling a drop. 

Jungkook is known to burn things in the house. The only thing he doesn’t burn is ramen, and that’s purely due to survival skills. 

“What can I say, I’m an expert,” you wink, handing him his mug and you holding yours. 

With matching mugs, the two of you take your first sips of the melty beverage. You lean against the stove facing him, while he faces you against the marble island. Jungkook smiles and a bit of cocoa touches his petal pink lips. He says it’s perfect and you smile into your cup, absolutely swelling with pride. 

Jungkook’s probably working on his photos. He always says his editing bug is itchy at night. While in passing you’ve said you’d love to see his work, however that gesture of kindness never really amounted to anything. Maybe tonight’s the night. You like art, you’d love to be a little more educated with it. Just as you’re about to ask and strike up some conversation, Jungkook beats you to it. 

“Well, hope you and your partner have a good Valentine’s,” Jungkook holds his cup in salute, walking back into his room, “just keep it down.” 

Oh well. You sigh to yourself, letting Jungkook walk away without a fight or a retort. After all, it was you who implied you were sneaking in a bed partner tonight. Sinking your eyes into the brown liquid, you fall into a lull. The creamy liquid swirls in your grasp, making your muddied reflection ripple away. 

You love to be alone, but it takes someone like Jeon Jungkook to remind you that life gets a little lonely. 

[tundrainafrica]

Title: Lovebug (14/14)

Summary:

“It might be a bug.”

“A bug?”

“Sometimes the developers of this application make mistakes. This is our first time meeting I’m sure so…Isn’t it a bit weird that we just met for the first time and it rings like this? And for two strangers to coincidentally ring each other’s alarms?“

Levi is the developer of the Love Alarm App and Hange is married to Zeke.

Link to cross-postings: AO3

Other Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Notes: I know I usually post on Wednesdays but I'll be on the road on Wednesday and if I don't get this out soon, I'll probably end up dropping it next week or smthg so here it is. Two days early. I hope you enjoy :D

Is this all that there is to life? A glaring question that came unexpectedly, in between reading through codes for his nth freelance project the past few years.

In response, Levi closed his eyes, sat back and reflected. A part of him may have been asking that question for a while and slowly, Levi started to understand why he was asked that in the first place.

A few minutes ago, he had been strangely happy to see his code compiling at the first try. And just a few hours ago, he had been enthusiastic at running a debugger through a code and finding a few typos to fix.

Happiness. That was happiness right?

That part of him continued to nag. It soured that 'happiness,' leaving a burning dissatisfaction inside him. You’ve experienced better moments, happier moments.

Then Levi got fed up. He reached into the back of his mind, he remembered, then something stopped him from reminiscing for a while longer.

Something strange. Something buried.

He hadn’t allowed himself to feel much since he first moved into that new city. He had allowed the novelty and the business to carry him through his first months. But the novelty of a new beginning never lasted long.

Too shaken to even bother applying for a new job, Levi opted to work freelance. Consequently, his only companions were the four walls of his studio apartment and the occasional voices from next door.

There was only so much which could stimulate interest. His mind continued to search for them and naturally, time continued to move along with it. Routine and episodes of ennui seemed to last infinities in the moment. But in retrospect, it felt like they all happened too fast.

He had made sense of time in milestones, milestones worth ten times the refreshing feeling of running a debugger through code or the fleeting euphoria of compiling codes at the first try.

Is that all that there is to life? Eventually, he made sense of that strange voice. There was reason to that question.

That day was another milestone. If it wasn't for his nagging mind, he could have missed it.

It was a blustery autumn day in late October, the weather similar to the last view he had of his home five years ago. Shifting his gaze from the window of his present apartment, he took a quick look at the calendar and it was like a dam had ended up spilling open inside him.

The five year mark was a bittersweet milestone, five years since he left home. The fifth year rang more loudly than every year before that. Maybe because five was such a perfect number, or perhaps because he had been keeping something in for a while.

He felt a release. Then a reprieve from the monotony, a reprieve from the five years avoiding his old life. Levi found himself opening his browser tab, typing the words ‘love alarm’ on the search box and deleting it a second later.

An aimless and useless sequence of movements. He didn’t need a quick google search to know how it was doing.

The love alarm had become a household name even all the way in his side of the world. With his very human need to go out, whether it be for groceries, shopping or just some fresh air, Levi couldn’t completely ignore it. With the right decisions, Levi could choose not to give so much as a side glance at the people walking, heads bent down, staring at the number of hearts on their application.

When he went out though, even with his music at full blast, he would hear the familiar alarm as he walked through crowds.

At first, it had left a pang in his chest, a brief bout of nausea, perhaps disgust or embarrassment at his old life.

It had been five years since he first arrived though and it turned out, time did heal.

Levi looked through the wikipedia page of the love alarm and he found, it hurt more like a raw scar than a stab in his chest or a crushing weight. The nausea, the pang in his chest that plagued him years before were weak if almost nonexistent.

Curiosity took over.

He took his phone from the side of his desk and downloaded the application again. The name Jaeger was under the title screen and right next to it were the words ‘All rights reserved.”

Would would have felt like an ache in the chest years ago, felt more like a mosquito bite. Levi was just slightly annoyed. It did nothing to stop him though from registering again and looking through the application interface.

Nothing much had changed. There were some slight changes to the skin of the registration page, a change in the name of the company at the bottom. Levi purposely touched the activate button rapidly and found he had crashed the application.

That was one bug that he never got to fix. He turned his phone to the side, noting the way the screen glitched as it adjusted to the landscape orientation of the phone. Another bug Levi never got to fix.

Then he wondered who the developer on the other end had been to have never even caught it.

Biometrics registered, Levi activated the alarm to find no hearts. He couldn’t help but entertain that slight disappointment. Of course no hearts would have appeared though. He hadn’t even interacted with his neighbors.

It would have been creepy it rang. Letting out a sardonic laugh just loud enough for himself, he leaned back on the chair and stared at the ceiling, forcing his thoughts back to whatever coding freelance project he’d been dealing with a few minutes ago.

Work came in freelance projects. They were enough for rent, for savings and some capacity to eat out occasionally.

A simple yet comfortable life. But is that all that there is to life? That voice continued to tear into his work related thoughts. Levi gave in to the nagging thought again. He started scrolling through wikipedia articles detailing use, detailing acquisition history, he found another key word under related articles, more interesting than ‘love alarm.’

Mood Alarm.

It sent a strange shiver through the back of his neck. Levi rolled his shoulders, relieving the tension that came with the last few eons of reflection. He let out a whistle, opened the new article and scrolled down towards references.

There were lists of articles.

Partner of Zeke Jaeger and freshly minted PhD graduate Doctor Hange Zoe release Mood Alarm.

Doctor Hange Zoe. Something inside him was fighting for control. He couldn’t bring himself to click the link. At the same time though, there was this curiosity inside him that he couldn’t seem to get to the bottom of.

Under the link to the article was the official website.

At the front page, there was a boring and overly professional introduction Levi didn’t bother to read

Below them, everything else had been interesting enough to give more than a second long glance.

The list of functionalities. The color codes. Then newly launched dashboard functionalities, almost a carbon copy of the plan Levi had sent years back.

“Fucking hell, you actually did it,” Levi muttered. He couldn’t help but just allow the smile that tugged at his lips some control. Excitement had him searching for the application on the play store, downloading it and methodically going through the same registration process as the love alarm.

It didn’t look much like the mood alarm Levi had worked on years ago. He saw hints of it though and worked from there to admire it.

The front end had been cleaned up. The font chosen fit the silver-to-white gradient of the application. When Levi clicked ‘activate,’ the screen loaded.

The colors mixed against one another for a second, an aesthetic choice of animation that Levi couldn’t help but be amused with.

Red. Yellow. Blue. Purple. Green. Orange.

The colors continued to mix. Then some disappeared as if they had lost themselves in some colorful war.

Then it was only blue and yellow. The two colors danced against one another for a few seconds longer before they disappeared too. More specifically, they bundled against one another.

Green. It took him at least five seconds to get that reading.

He didn’t have to look at the guide on the website to know what it meant.

Sad happy? Or happy sad? Whatever that feeling was, Levi felt no need to introspect, or maybe he had been too lazy to.

It had been a while since he had even let himself feel something. The green on his screen, the feeling that accompanied it, seemed more like an old friend he hadn’t talked to a while.

If he had any ability at introspection, maybe it had already rusted. Still, he let those emotions inside him, that yellow and that blue do their work.

They had him turning off the mood alarm, then turning off the love alarm. Something inside him still hesitated to delete the applications. Then it had him considering the space on his phone for just a second.

He downloaded another app that night. A familiar app with a flame, then another one with a bee. Only months into his new life in a new city with a new job, Levi was already bored— and if he had to admit it—terribly, terribly lonely.

And maybe the best way to cure it was to spend the whole night swiping.

***

Finding a companion wasn’t as easy as desperation and a few second long rush of confidence made it out to be.

Perhaps, online dating was a rash idea, an uncharacteristic move.

Didn't he reject Petra years ago? How could he date anyone else? Petra… How is she… With nothing much to do but wait for his date, he found himself texting Petra as he waited in the cafe.

He sent a few thank you messages at her well wishes. They exchanged brief updates and Petra’s own updates dragged on for longer.

Her life was more eventful than his.

Petra had started dating Oluo. She had found someone who loved her, just as much as she loved him. Keeping a correspondence with her only highlighted points for reflection for Levi. The more he reflected, the more questions came up. The more he reflected, the more complicated the questions became.

He was lonely but could he be picky? At the same time, did he even have the heart to put anyone through the shitty experience of a half hearted courtship?

Hange’s words echoed in his head, not in any specific string, a few parts in words, a few parts in phrases.

Considering the circumstances… Love is a choice.

When he let her words echo through him, he managed to grip a presence long gone. A presence and a relationship, he clarified, that had never been his in the first place.

He never did completely brush away the guilt that accompanied every passing thought of Hange. There was this strange acceptance though that appended it, and it had him a little more discerning, a little more prudent.

If he couldn’t have her, he could always just keep her close in his own personal way.

“Have you heard of the love alarm?”

How long had she been there? How long had she been talking?

Right, Levi was on a date. She had said words before that question and Levi could have sworn they had exchanged greetings even before that.

“In passing,” Levi said. He manifested some reality from the words, as if a firm response was enough to forget decades worth of overtime and testing.

“It’s this application we can use to test compatibility… So at least we know if this could work.”

Levi listened with some fake intent as she explained how the love alarm worked. He made sure to nod at points where her tone had gone a little higher or louder.

“What do you think?” There was some finality to her voice, an expectant look on her face.

Levi hummed in thought.. “I don’t believe in using an app to check compatibility. What about when we consider circumstances? Get to know each other… Then decide if it could work?”

She looked at her phone for a second, then back at Levi, her brows furrowed in confusion.

Levi shook his head. “Sorry, I just don’t believe in things like the love alarm, it seems just like horoscopes or Myer Briggs to me. Compatibility, relationships, they’re just gonna be choices we make anyway.” He found himself guiltily looking away as he said those last points.

The pout that played at his date’s lips was evidence enough, there probably wouldn’t be a second date. “It’s not like our love alarm’s would have rung anyway,” she said.

It had been a while since Levi dated though and he started to realize, maybe his filter and his social skills had rusted just a bit.

***

Love is a choice.

It looked like he might have been the only one to believe that. He had managed to piss off countless other dates with his own ‘love is a choice’ schtick.

And he had been dating semi regularly for the past year already. Yet, nothing was coming up fruitful.

How the hell did Hange even manage to get married? Or maybe Hange had just been the exception. He then concluded, Hange just had too many other loveable qualities which could make anyone want to snap her up early on.

The more he entertained the thought of Hange, the heavier his own chest became. Then he stopped entertaining her then the cycle would start again, a very vicious cycle.

It just so happened that sometimes the thought of ‘Hange’ manifested as some domineering thought. ‘Love is a choice’ and the strange sensation that came with his whole body protesting, rebelling in their own little way worked hand in hand.

He was confused and consequently desperate enough to open the mood alarm for some inkling of comprehension. He would focus on the way the colors switched among one another, disappearing, always revealing a yellow and a light blue dancing between one another then always ending with a light blue.

Sometimes he was blue. Sometimes he was green.

Ane he continued to check. After all, he mood alarm had become a beautiful and constant companion. He had deleted the love alarm but kept the mood alarm close.

“What do you think of the love alarm?”

How many people are gonna ask about that fucking application?

Zeke had just been a little too good at marketing. It was the nth time someone had broken the ice of a first date with that fucking question and Levi regretted not making a drinking game out of it. Maybe he would have been able to drink enough to forget that cursed product.

“Are you okay?” his new date asked.

He had spent the past few minutes too silent, not thinking. “Nifa…” That was her name right? He cleared his throat. “I’m fine.”

She looked as nervous as he did, or even more nervous. That part was comforting at least. In a way, her demeanor seemed a little more pleasant, more genuinely curious than wary. “I asked just a second ago, have you ever used that love alarm?” she said in response.

Levi followed the same script. "In passing."

“Would you like to try it out? Just to make sure we’re on the same page, relationship wise.”

“I’d rather we relied on circumstances and compatibility to make the choice for us. Get to know each other maybe…” When it came to suggestions, Levi had revised his script just a bit. Too many people got offended by his invalidating horoscopes and Myer Briggs type for some weird reason. “Like get to know each other, like…” Levi trailed off for a second, allowing himself a pregnant pause. ”... Elizabeth and Darcy?”

Nifa had cocked her head to the side curiously, thought for a long second and smiled just a bit wider. “You read Pride and Prejudice?”

Levi nodded subtly. “A while back,.”

She paused for a second, seeming deep in thought. “Well… Now that I think about it, you might be right,” Nifa said. “This compatibility thing… Your idea of love. I think it makes sense.”

“Really? You think so?”

“Yeah, why?” Nifa asked.

Levi dropped his shoulders in relief, the weight of at least a hundred failed dates fell off his shoulders. “I’ve been dating for years and I feel like you’re the only one who actually said that.”

Nifa didn’t reply immediately and the longer Levi sat there, the more clearly he saw her face. Surprise morphed into something that seemed more like pity. Then, the chronic pang in his chest came back.

A first love did that to people maybe? A painful first love lost had that special power to maybe just twist his own philosophies, to make him almost disgusted at his own creations and the way it had challenged his own convictions.

Are you scared? Levi thought to himself. He couldn’t be too sure how he was handling himself in front of Nifa. He looked down at his hands, opening and closing them a few times and if he looked closely, he could almost feel those uncomfortable twinges in his wrist that came from years of coding.

“I’m willing to put the time into it if you are.” Nifa’s voice was more gentle and it flowed as if she had sensed the stiffness in his voice.

Levi didn’t respond immediately and suddenly their little corner of the crowded cafe was eerily silent. There was a melancholy that had blanketed their little corner despite the Saturday afternoon crowd.

Nifa seemed like she was trying to break away from it with some light conversation. “Hey, have you heard of the mood alarm?”

“The mood alarm?” Levi let that half smile creep up his lips, just high enough to be more invisible than obvious. Three words from a stranger and his emotions were reduced to a mess.

He once again felt that twinge again at his rests and that sleepless night, and her. He was remembering her in his office through sleepy exhausted eyes, with a cocktail dress and a sandwich bag in one hand.

There was also something amusing and painfully ironic about hearing his own brainchild, from someone so casually, as if it had turned into some household name while he wasn’t looking.

The conversation was getting painful, painfully interesting and the masochist in Levi was gripping him and pulling him back to reality. “Like the love alarm…” Levi added.

“Well, they’re products from the Jaeger corporation… You know the Jaeger family right?” Nifa added.

Levi could only be thankful he hadn’t been sipping at his tea then. He probably could have choked. How could he ever forget Zeke Jaeger?

He might have gotten a lot better at hiding his own disgust or Nifa could have been too deep in thought. She continued to talk. “They bought Love Alarm a few years back.”

“I know the Jaeger family,” Levi said.

“So you know about their eldest son, the heir of the Jaeger corporation… And his partner?”

Levi took a sip of tea, not bothering to respond.

Nifa may have taken that as a ‘no.’“His partner was working towards a PhD in psychology and apparently that was her final project. The codes for the mood alarm are very similar to the love alarm apparently."

“Oh?” Levi asked, feigning interest.

Soon, it turned into something genuine. Nifa was offering new information. “She got the PhD a few years ago and soon after that, the application was launched. And now they’re launching a solution for hospitals.”

“What kind of solution?” Levi asked.

“Wait, have you ever used the mood alarm? Or do you know how it works?” Nifa asked. “Anyway, I realized I ended up digressing here… The point I was trying to make is, the one who developed the mood alarm was able to prove that whatever measurements they use for the love alarm, are related to emotions. And what if, understanding how we feel when we work towards a relationship is a better determinant of whether the relationship could work?”

Levi nodded quickly, an attempt to be polite. At that point though, he wasn’t too interested in the point she had been trying to make “I’m familiar with the application and how it works. But you mentioned something about a solution for hospitals…” He didn’t think it was worth lying. He didn’t need a long winded explanation of the alarm he made. He needed an explanation of what Hange had been making."

Nifa didn’t seem to get the message. “So, the application will determine your emotions for you--- I have one right now and we could use it over time to articulate how we feel.” She pulled out her phone and dropped it on the table. “I think analyzing our own emotions would do a better job than relying on how the love alarm processes the emotions.”

There was something surreal about seeing a user explain it to him, as if they knew it more than him.

For a while, he couldn’t help but just entertain the possibility that in her own way, Nifa may have known more. With someone explaining and demonstrating, he was more easily able to make sense of the changes that had been implemented since Hange acquired it.

The app icon was reminiscent of the love alarm, two rings around it but instead of a heart in between, there was an icon, an elegant cross between a flower and a color wheel.

Red. Blue. Yellow. In between the primary colors were purple, green and orange.

Nifa activated it and held the phone between her fingertips. Just like the night when Levi had first played with it, the colored blobs swam amongst one another again, each blob would disappear one by one, leaving the remaining colors.

Yellow and Orange. “Looks like I’m happy,” Nifa commented. “So apparently the new dashboard allows us to connect this reading on the phone to a PC and get a more detailed explanation, numbers, heart rate, all the like.”

“You seem to know a lot about the app,” Levi mused.

Nifa cocked her head to one side. “Well, I’m into psychology too. I work as a psychologist in one of the hospitals. Our hospital is one of the first ones to buy software licenses so I’ve done my research.” She hummed, looking straight at him for a second as if studying him. “Now that I think about it, your job wasn’t on your profile. What do you do for a living?”

Levi’s response was automatic. “IT work.” He was suddenly self conscious about even mentioning the word ‘developer.’

“Ooooh... So you’d probably figure out how this app works much faster than I would.” Nifa sighed. “And you could probably help reassure me about this."

“Reassure you about what?”

“I’m honestly pretty nervous about rolling out this software.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s relatively new, a few bugs would come up here and there.”

“All softwares are going to face new bugs with every update. It’s never ending,” Levi said nonchalantly.

“Spoken like a true IT guy,” Nifa joked. She took a sip of her shake and stared down at his tea and up at him again. “Say, since you’re in IT, you think you can hook us up with someone?”

“Hook you up with someone?” Levi asked. His mind was going places more suited for a tinder date than a conversation on career. He raised one eyebrow in question. He couldn’t be too sure of what she meant just yet.

It looked like she had started to understand that double entendre. Nifa blushed then let out a cough. “No, no. Our company is looking to build a small support team.”

“An IT support team?” Levi asked.

“Well, people who could focus on learning the product, dealing with whatever bugs, testing them, compiling them and sending them over to the Mood Alarm team. You think you’d know anyone tech savvy? Maybe familiar with how biotechnology works?

“I could try to look around…” Levi said.

“Great!” Nifa chimed

By some magic, the conversation shifted elsewhere. Nifa had a way with conversation, keeping some sort of a flow, talking about her own job and getting him to talk about his freelance projects.

Levi’s thoughts on the hospital solution though were an ubiquitous part of his mind space.That was the whole point of the investment right? Back then, Zeke and Hange had plans on selling it to hospitals.

And there was a free trial. That night, Levi had been curious enough to click the ‘book a free trial button’ and to even fill out the first few lines.

Organization name? He didn't have one.

Purpose? To catch up with his own brain child maybe.

He ended up staring at the blank screen for a while, wondering where the hell he would get an organization and a valid purpose.

He wanted to check it out, he really did. And he was a little salty that they required a background check before they even allowed trials for a project he created.

Curiosity became desperation. With desperation, came creativity, audacity. He took his phone with the intention of just asking Nifa a few questions, only to see there was an unread message from her.

Thanks for today! I had a lot of fun. Hopefully, we can plan something soon. I might be busy with work this week but maybe the week after?

Levi stared at her message and composed a quick reply, pleasantries forgotten.

You mentioned something about IT support openings in the hospital...

***

The hiring manager introduced himself as Moblit but he didn't say much else. Instead, he spent the next few minutes looking through Levi's resume, his brow wrinkled.

"Is there something wrong with my resume?" Levi asked, breaking the silence. He had kept it minimalistic, only sticking to odd jobs the past five years.

Moblit shook his head. "Nothing, it just doesn't look like you have support role experience."

"Do I need experience in a support role? I think I'm familiar enough with how apps work to stand in as one," Levi said. Should he mention that he had done the support work before?

"So you've compiled tickets, sent them over to developers?"

I'm the developer who deals with those bullshit tickets. He thought to himself. On the outside though, he nodded and leaned a bit more forward on the table. It wasn’t too difficult to show interest. He was genuinely interested, having given in to that curiosity-turned-desperation.

"Well, if you're interested in taking the job then…” Moblit said. “Let's see how much you know about the mood alarm app." He opened a folder. "It's a relatively new solution, so I don't expect you to know much but if you've heard of the love alarm?"

"I have."

"Well they're from the same corporation…"

Information on their history flew into one ear and out the other. "Do you have any more questions for me?" Levi asked. He could have interrupted Moblit there but he didn’t want to hear about a history he actually experienced first hand.

Moblit cleared his throat. "Well, if you could tell me how you think the mood alarm works? Then I’ll give you a list of common bugs and can you tell me how you will go about raising them to developers?

***

Six years hadn’t done much to make him forget. He had been working with the love alarm for almost a decade after all.

And the mood alarm? He had a strange connection to it, he couldn’t explain.

The code wasn’t open source. Of course it wouldn’t. That was an enterprise application and they wouldn’t want any hacker just randomly getting it. Yet, why did he feel so offended at not having access?

“Hey Levi, how would you handle this?”

“Handle what?” Levi didn’t look up from his monitor immediately. The voice and the question have all were all too familiar and it wasn’t urgent anyway.

“Levi, take a look…” Farlan seemed more frustrated than a second ago.

Levi looked at Farlan’s screen. Another display issue. He was all too familiar with the bugs and it looked like the love alarm and the mood alarm were coming up with the same issues. “Click the activate button three times really fast, right click the desktop, select inspect and take a screenshot. We send it over to the developers on the mood alarm team,” Levi said. That had become routine after a while, yet somehow, his two colleagues Farlan and Isabel were still asking questions.

Maybe because he was the only one who understood what the hell the developers needed to see to actually get to the bottom of the problem.

“Make sure to check it in both light mode and dark mode,” Levi said. “And also, there’s a known bug for the phone app, check if turning on the alarm affects your ability to receive notifications from other apps.” Those words had sent a wave of nostalgia through him. That was one of the bugs he had gotten around to fixing with the love alarm.

“Hey...”Isabel’s voice sounded from next to him. Levi turned around, almost jumping when he saw she had been close enough to look over his shoulder. “What are you researching?”

It wouldn't look good if he slacked off at work in front of colleagues a good few years his junior. Levi closed the tab. “Just my own research on mood alarm.” And when he looked at his codes a little longer, then back at Isabel who seemed almost confused, Levi realized it had looked more like extra work than anything else.

He spent the whole morning on ‘extra work, watching the API calls, making notes to himself to check the codes he had sent Hange years back just to see how much had changed.

“You finished all your tasks today and you still wanna do research on the mood alarm?” Farlan asked, a look of utter amazement on his face.

“What can I say? This app is pretty interesting.” it wasn’t a lie. Watching the growth of his own child from afar, was a fun thing to do.

“It honestly feels like you’ve done this type of work before."

“I did something similar,” Levi said.

“What kind of place did you work in before?” Isabel asked excitedly, her tasks also forgotten.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Levi answered, his tone unchanged.

“Something like the love alarm?”

Levi nodded. “Maybe that’s the reason I can figure things out pretty fast,” he said. The best plan of action was to digress.

“So that means we could make you handle the harder cases?” Farlan snickered.

“I’d rather you learn how to deal with others on your own,” Levi said. “I’ve worked with these apps for a long time. The bugs never end.”

***

“Moblit’s saying you’re doing a pretty good job picking out the bugs,” Nifa spoke above the bustle of the lunch time crowd.

“Are we?” Levi asked. He kept his words brief, not wanting to waste too much energy speaking over the others in the hospital cafeteria.

“Well, he was talking about you mostly,” Nifa said. “Most big issues get resolved with each release. And Moblit was saying that our support team just gives really good feedback.”

“The developers do the work. All we do is find the bugs.” Levi started to pick more meticulously at his salad

Nifa shook her head. “I think the support team deserves credit too. It’s difficult figuring out whether issues are user issues or there’s really a bug. Isabel also told me you find ways to reproduce it quickly.”

“Do I?” His responses were getting less and less creative. There just wasn’t much to say and the compliments were making him more and more uncomfortable by the second.

Moblit was a life saver. He had broken out of the crowd, running to Nifa, an urgent but excited expression on his face. “Nifa, you’ve got to hear this.”

Levi used that brief distraction to shovel more salad into his mouth.

Moblit had spoken just beneath the sounds of other conversations and Levi couldn’t make out what he had said. He did make out the urgency in Nifa’s face and the excitement. Whatever Moblit had said was contagious.

“When are they coming?” Nifa asked, her voice much louder than Moblit’s.

Levi stood up, gathering his plate, his utensils and his unfinished salad. “If I’m not supposed to be in this conversation…”

Moblit shook his head. “Levi, no, please stay. I’d rather you hear this since this is related to your line of work too.”

“Why?” Levi raised one eyebrow.

“Zeke Jaeger and his partner Doctor Hange Zoe, they’re planning to visit,” Moblit said.

Levi couldn’t even tell what expression he had on then.

Maybe Moblit had interpreted shock as confusion. “Zeke Jaeger is the owner of the love alarm. Hange Zoe’s the creator of the mood alarm… In case you didn't know.”

***

“Hey, I wanna see her… Is this how she looks like?” Isabel’s voice was a whisper, a very loud whisper. “She looks smart.”

Farlan’s voice wasn’t any softer. “Well, that’s what you’d expect from the mastermind behind the mood alarm right? I heard Zeke Jaeger bought her the love alarm so she could look through the code and make the mood alarm for herself.”

“Where did you hear that?” Isabel asked.

“Watch the interviews.”

The click and clack of the keyboard. Then there was the sound of voices coming from the loud speaker from Farlan’s computer.

Then Hange’s very familiar voice.

Levi didn’t want to listen. “You know, if you spend too much time looking through this. You’re not gonna get anything done.” He forced his voice into something louder than what he was comfortable with. “Don’t you two have other tasks to do?”

“Aren’t you excited to meet them?” Isabel rolled her chair next to Levi.

No way in hell am I meeting them. “I’m planning on taking a leave,” he said.

“Wait, why?” Isabel seeming heartbroken, as if Levi taking a leave was the most terrible thing in the world.

“Well, as employees we’re entitled to leaves right?” Levi asked emotionlessly, willing himself not to at all be affected by Isabel’s puppy dog face.

Farlan sighed. “You’re the best one at this type of work among the three of us. You know, this is a good opportunity for you to get noticed.”

“I don’t wanna get noticed,” Levi said, as he focused back again on the screen, refreshing their ticketing software a little bit faster that time. It really was an uneventful afternoon. He couldn’t blame Farlan and Isabel for doing nothing.

“It’s a big money, a chance at a big career move,” Farlan said, raising his voice as if that could have done anything to convince Levi.

Levi looked up from the monitor and back to Farlan. “Do you really want me out of here?”

Farlan shrugged. “I dunno, you just seem too overqualified for this kind of job.”

Levi sighed. “Believe me, I’m happy to be here.” He continued to click refresh, just in case anything could have halted that already seemingly awkward conversation. The reason why he didn’t want to run into Zeke or Hange… Was it written all over his face?

Just in case Farlan and Isabel were mind readers, Levi kept quiet, kept his eyes glued on the screen and he prayed the day would get busier somehow.

It did. But it got busy so close to the end of the day and overtime seemed inevitable.

“We’re not receiving any readings.”

The same exact fucking line, from ten different customers from different hospital branches around the country. “You’re fucking kidding me,” Levi muttered.

He opened all the test devices, only to find, none of them were receiving readings from the mood alarm either. He was sure though, he was annoyed, very very annoyed. Maybe even angry. “Try testing,” he ordered.

Farlan and Isabel were more emotional than he was. If it didn’t work for them, it probably wasn’t working at all.

They had full trust on him. Isabel and Farlan nodded and they went through the devices quickly. All test devices exhausted and there was nothing much to do. Levi was convinced it was an issue that could only be investigated on the backend. “We’re done for the day.”

“We have to send a report right?”

Levi started to pack his bag. “Send a report saying we’re not getting any readings,” he said with a shrug. “It’s probably a backend issue or an issue with their API.”

“You sure we can’t do anything from our side?” Farlan pressed.

Levi shook his head. “None.” He logged out, slung his backpack over his shoulder and exited the office.

He sensed their disappointment in him. In his months working there, Levi had never left the office without doing a thorough investigation and writing a detailed report.

That might be the first time in months, they would give something completely unhelpful for the developers. That wasn’t Levi’s intention though. There were just some things that were better off investigated on his own personal PC.

For the first time in a while, Levi didn’t go straight for the shower when he arrived back home. He booted up his own PC. When he checked his cloud account, he found the private repository with all the codes from the love alarm and the mood alarm was still there.

It hadn’t been touched in years though.

He scrolled through the code, allowing that wave of nostalgic to wash over him gently. Having been the only one who worked on the base, Levi was very very familiar with it. Memories came quickly with the nostalgia. There was a point where the server was down and he remembered the hundreds of support tickets about the temporarily malfunctioning love alarm.

No readings were coming through. Levi did a quick calculation of the time zones of his own city and of the mood alarm headquarters. Then he looked through the code again.

Convinced that it was a fair theory, Levi opened his pseudo email, entered the support email for the mood alarm and left just one sentence on the email body.

I’m convinced one of your devs left a debugger on one of these codes on the backend.

A few years ago, he had been guilty of leaving a debugger running overnight,  fucking up the whole command system of the love alarm.

He copied and pasted a part of the code and the sent the email off. For all he knew, the mood alarm could have branched off far from the love alarm, rendering his theory completely stupid. Still, it was a theory worth entertaining.

The issues from work forgotten, Levi started to open his other emails, finding one from Petra on the third page, dated months ago.

Just a reminder that he hadn’t opened that email in months. “A wedding invite?”

Petra Ral and Oluo Bozado invite you to celebrate their wedding…

He didn’t need the rest of it to convince himself to go. He only needed to look at the date under, conveniently a week after Hange and Zeke were scheduled to visit the hospital where he worked.

He sent off two emails that night.

One to Petra, a very very late RSVP.

Then one to management, a request for a two week leave. For personal reasons.

A wedding always made a good personal reason. That was probably only half his actual personal reason though.

***

“I didn’t even expect you to come.” Petra seemed happy.

It could have been the make up or her natural blush. She was a glowing bride, glowing bright enough that Levi was starting to feel lonely.

“It’s been a while,” Levi said. “And you two are looking good.”

“How’s life abroad?” Petra asked.

“It’s fine,” Levi said.

“You adjusted well?” Petra asked again.

“Yeah, I guess I did.” Levi took a sip of his wine.

“You managed to get a software engineering job there?” That time it was Oluo who asked.

“Something similar,” Levi said. He started to shake his glass a bit, feigning deep consideration. Maybe that would explain his inability to respond. In truth, he was in no mood to make conversation but when the bride and the groom had gone out of their way to sit next to him on the bench outside their party, and they had gone through all the trouble of asking, it was only polite that he kept his side of the conversation.

Somewhere along the exchanges, Petra brought up a question. And whether it had been appropriate or not, Levi couldn’t tell but he thought it worth an answer at least.

“Have you met anyone?” Petra asked.

“What?” Levi responded.

“I dunno… I guess someone who makes you feel good? Someone who manages to ring your love alarm?” Petra gave him a knowing look.

Levi only had to shift his gaze from Petra to the seemingly blank face of Oluo to know, Petra had at least kept that part to herself. To the others, his alarm ringing with Hange could have been just a bug.

Levi shook his head. “I haven’t touched the love alarm in years,” he admitted.

Petra seemed more understanding. “We haven’t touched it in years either.”

Levi raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

Petra stared ahead, looking deep in thought. She turned to Oluo. “Well, I guess a part of us wanted to build this organically, get to know each other first. And maybe that’s the best way to find people. I think the love alarm just causes unnecessary chaos sometimes.”

Levi only had to look back at his past five years to see it. To be honest, he could actually put the blame on the love alarm for completely uprooting his life. He couldn't say he totally agreed though. He didn’t regret the time with Hange either.

But he wasn’t going to deny her credit where credit was due. “You make sense.”

It wasn’t as simple as that though. Somehow, Hange’s own words had torn into the silence. Just for him. The love alarm causes chaos but sometimes it can tie loose ends.

And for him, it had been both. It had caused chaos but somehow, meeting Hange, having gotten to know her, having gotten to talk to her had tied some loose ends inside him.

What kind of loose ends? He couldn’t be too sure.

“Even when you don’t use the love alarm now, have you met other people?” Petra was still very interested in his love life.

Oluo should have been silently uncomfortable about that. Levi couldn’t tell with a quick glance.

“I’ve met a few people though… There’s someone named Nifa,” Levi said,

“Next time you come here, you’ll take her for a visit? Make sure to introduce us to her?” Petra asked.

“Or maybe next time, it will be us visiting,” Oluo added.

The brief conversation ended soon after, with a few exchanged greetings and a promise to bring Nifa. In case something ever happened between him and NIfa.

By the end of the night, he had made a promise to himself not to use that love alarm to find his next love.

Petra was right, the love alarm could cause unnecessary chaos. Besides, love is a choice right?

***

Levi came back from his very relaxing two week leave to two words that made his stomach turn.

Doctor Zoe. That was what Farlan and Isabel called her.

“Doctor Zoe…” Levi repeated. The words tasted unfamiliar. Suddenly, the road trip, the beach trip and just the quiet meetings in the cafe all seemed like just a fevered dream.

“And she stopped to talk to all of us!” Isabel sang, her eyes filled with wonder. “You should have stayed. I swear, I feel like you would have gotten along. She never stops talking. You two could have talked about the mood alarm for hours.”

“She sounds tiring to be with,” Levi said, an attempt at a halfhearted reply.

Farlan grinned, an alarmingly knowing expression on his face. “Don’t lie, you would have enjoyed at least listening. You’re way more enthusiastic about the mood alarm than we are.”

“I’m just being a good employee.” Levi shook his head, as if that was enough to erase the regret that shoved itself into his throat and down to his chest.

“She really made sure to talk to everyone,” Isabel said. “And she stayed for a few days longer. Maybe the plans changed since she went alone.”

“Wait, she came alone?” Levi said. Don’t regret. Don’t you dare regret leaving.

Farlan nodded in response. “Moblit explained this to us before they came.” He turned to Isabel as if expecting some explanation from her.

“I can’t be too sure either, I’ve only heard a bit about it. And rich people like the Jaegers, they like to keep their personal lives a secret right?” Isabel answered.

Farlan shrugged. “Anyway, from what Moblit told me, they intended to visit all the major customers including our hospital chain. They’ve been planning this tour for months, maybe even years but Doctor Zoe ended up going alone.”

“Did you ever find out why?” Levi kept his voice soft, anything louder and he might just look more invested. He turned back to the unopened tickets on his screen. From his peripherals, he could see Farlan and Isabel exchanging glances.

It was Farlan who spoke up. “I have a theory.”

“Tell me,” Levi said.

“They fought.”

“Okay, couples fight.” Levi continued to click at the tickets, opening them one by one, just to feel productive.

“Yeah, but it must have been a big fight right?” Isabel added. “I did some research on Doctor Zoe after we met her and apparently, they were having problems even years ago. Apparently, there are rumors that her husband bought the love alarm to save their marriage.”

“Where the hell did you get that info?” Farlan sounded incredulous.

Isabel chuckled mischievously. “The dark, dark internet.”

“That can’t be true.” Farlan shook his head in disbelief.

“I can’t really prove it anymore. A lot of the threads online that actually discuss this get taken down by the admin. But I swear, now that I think about it, it does make sense. I read some articles, no one expected Zeke Jaeger to buy the love alarm… Some said he did it to save the love alarm after a major bug showed up that could have prevented PR….Apparently, there was a certain point a few years ago, where there were photos of Doctor Zoe with another man. I tried looking for the photos but I can’t find them anymore.”

“You really got invested in her love life huh?”

Isabel groaned. “I couldn’t help it. She seemed so nice and she talked to us a lot even when we were just support, she took the time to teach us and she’s just so humble…”

“But what if she really did cheat on her husband?” Farlan challenged. “I mean, the rumors have to have been there for a reason right?”

“Do you think she looks like the type to cheat?” Isabel asked. “That very honest and open face?”

Farlan coughed in surprise. “She doesn’t for sure---but rumors don’t come out of nowhere right?”

“You two, go back to work,” Levi said. While the two had been working, he had been assigning tickets to them, an ingenious way to compose himself.

“Wait not yet, what do you think Levi? You might have better intuition than we do.”

“Intuition?” Levi repeated, one eyebrow raised.

“Does she really look like the type to cheat?” Farlan asked.

Levi continued to stare at the screen, not willing to risk showing them whatever expression played at his face then. “I didn’t meet her. You two did so you’re better qualified to answer that question. Tell me, does she look like the type to cheat?”

Farlan paused for a second, then narrowed his eyes at Levi. “I think I have a question which you might be more qualified to answer,” Farlan said. “You’re pretty good at finding bugs. Have you ever done research on the love alarm bug? What do you think the bug was… The one which made Zeke Jaeger buy the app?”

“I don’t think there was a bug,” Levi said.

“What do you mean?” Farlan pressed.

“Get back to work you two.” Levi kept his voice firm, loud and authoritative. Something he would have rather not done, if it hadn’t been for the weight which came with what should have been a light piece of gossip, and his whittling ability to keep a stoic demeanor.

The deep dark internet. Levi watched his two companions. Their eyes were once again fixed on the screen, Farlan’s fingers were flying over the keyboard, Isabel was playing with some test device.

Deep enough at work for Levi to take his own quick break. He opened an incognito tab and put his headphones on.

One video or one article, and he’d get back to work. He found an interview, the opening questions had been the same familiar ones Farlan had been playing on speaker months ago.

He played the first few questions at twice the speed. He knew the answers already.

What inspired you to make the mood alarm?

“Love alarm… Codes… Yadayadayada…” Levi muttered just a loud enough for himself. Hange had been careful not to mention anything about a developer. He could see the way she had shifted gazes for just a second, seeming uncomfortable.

He couldn’t blame her. Isabel had said so herself, in the deep dark internet, maybe there were rumors of an affair.

And some journalists were aware.

Personal Life? Around the point that someone asked about her personal life, Levi slowed the clip down. They had timed it, to the exact point where Hange had tensed up and looked away for just a second.

“Can you tell us about your relationship with Zeke Jaeger? How has it been?”

“How did you feel when you realized he bought you the love alarm? Is it true he bought it to win you back?”

Hange was admirably professional about it. “We’re digressing now,” she said with a light hearted tone, a laugh which seemed more rehearsed than actually Hange’s.

Is it true you had an affair with another man? It wasn’t loud enough for Hange to have heard it, just a sound among others. When Levi had been looking for that question and it rang more loudly for him. He rewinded the video a few times just to make sure.

What the hell… No we didn’t… We. Didn’t. Have. An. Affair.

“Levi, are you okay?” Isabel asked

“What?”

“You were talking to yourself just now.”

Levi quickly closed the tab as Isabel looked over his shoulder. “Nothing, just looking at tickets,” he said. He went back to their ticketing application, opened a few more tickets and decided to table the research until later that evening.

***

The deep, dark internet.

With his own personal wifi and his own VPN, Levi had more wriggle room to dig deeper.

There was a mention of a fight, a marriage on the rocks, and the rumors only grew from there. The more Levi found, the more courage he mustered. It turned out, the process of scrolling through threads, joining chat groups had been nothing but liberating.

Liberating but infuriating.

The internet was an aggregate of bad takes and the occasional good one. From bad takes came horrible half baked rumors.

I swear, if they end up divorcing…

Jaeger should have dumped her fucking ass from the start.

Slut…

Whore…

Hange Zoe. Fucking gold digger.

There were rumors that she had manipulated Zeke for the money. Rumors that she had only married him to complete her PhD.

Levi quickly went through those.

Some of the people were nice though and Levi read those comments a little more slowly.

The mood alarm was Zoe’s deal.

The money Jaeger put into was a donation.

If they’re not happy, let them divorce.

And there were videos, particularly zoomed videos in events of Zeke and Hange in conventions and conferences, the latest one only a few months ago. Before Hange  had visited the hospital.

In the most recent one, they were talking, just at the corner behind the stage, still visible from the camera. Levi rewinded the video again and again just to confirm their identity.

The Hange on the screen seemed indignant. Zeke had pulled her in by the waist, she pulled away. In response, Zeke had once again gone for her hands, pulling her towards him.

Just like back in the school gym.

It was different, that time in the gym Hange had been accepted yet determined at the same time. The Hange on the video, or the least, the one he could make out from the flailing of her hands, the stamping of her food on the ground, the moment she had pulled away then turned away was telling.

Hange wasn’t accepting anything anymore.

Levi scrolled through the comments.

If Hange Zoe divorces Zeke Jaeger… If she keeps possession of the mood alarm... she’s a gold digger.

She needed Jaeger funds to complete PhD… It’s Zeke Jaeger’s PhD not hers lmao XD

It was around the fifth most liked comment when Levi closed the tab, not bothering to bookmark the site. That was enough internet toxicity for the day.

***

“You’re transferring me?” Levi had ended up preempting the discussion.

Nifa and Moblit looked at each other, then back at him. Then Nifa nodded.

Moblit shook his head, creating some confusion. “No, we wanted your opinion on this first. The city we’ll be transferring you to isn’t very… convenient.”

“But you will be paid more,” Nifa said.

Since no one actually wants to live there. A fact no one actually admitted during those types of meetings but Levi had been in corporate long enough to know.

“And it’s just for a few years,” Moblit said, his tone, a tone of reassurance more than actual confidence. “Our hospital got special permission to do testing and research and we’ll need one support guy there. This is an important project for our hospital so...”

Levi had done a quick google search of the city under the table, a name he never heard of, and just the picture of a very sleepy town with not many buildings with even two floors was indicative. There was a reason why Moblit and Nifa seemed uncertain about a transfer.

There wasn’t much he did anyway in that city. How could moving away be any different?

“What’s this research about?” Levi asked.

Moblit responded to that more clearly and more confidently. “We’re planning to do further research, create programs for kids who grew up in difficult households to help them process emotions better. We’re starting with a few kids, on a small research facility up north… And having someone on call would be helpful.”

It didn’t take much to convince Levi after that. “There isn’t much for me to miss here anyway.” Really, he would have taken that transfer even without the pay raise.

***

There was peace and quiet which came with living in the middle of nowhere. Peace and quiet had a way of making Levi unbearably bored yet at the same time more perceptive as to why the hell no one wanted to live there in the first place.

Winters were cruel, with snow piling up meters high. Even in the summers, the sky was overcast and in all four seasons, the air still found a way to be suffocatingly dry.

Someone mentioned something about lake effects and something about rain shadows, and Levi couldn’t really tell which one was it. He wasn’t a scientist after all.

He was human though, a very simple minded human with no science degree. So he let the weather affect his moods, maybe even affect his long term philosophies in life. His current environment was too different from the bustling city he grew up in, or the other urban jungle he had lived the past five years of his life, he deemed his new home, the epitome of the middle of nowhere.

It was completely unfamiliar and by some psychological consequence to Levi, it was too far flung from his old life for Levi to even entertain anything about his old life, beyond work. So it became easier to take a more pragmatic approach at reminiscing.

A few months into his transfer, he had even started reading articles on Zeke and Hange again.

Billionaire Zeke Jaeger finalizes divorce would Mood Alarm founder Hange Zoe.

Then the comments section:

That was fast.

I knew it, Zoe’s a gold digger.

There was the string of names, whore, sluts, cheaters and gold diggers that never made too much sense as sentences. So Levi quickly closed the tab.

You actually did it. He thought to himself. And when he thought a little longer about it, he realized he did feel happy for her.

Happy? Sad? Disappointed? Out of curiosity, he opened his own mood alarm and clicked activate. It glowed with a bright green.

He could have been happier.

Levi decided to blame the sky for his fickle mood. That grey view that stretched far unimpeded by any of the surrounding low rising buildings, only ending by the mountains that seemed hundreds of miles away.

The surrounding mountains and the large lake followed him to work. An overly scenic landscape that reminded him, the train back to the capital only came once a day, the train that passed through the next major city only passed three times a day.

And fucking hell, train tickets were expensive.

By some modern day definition, Levi really was trapped in the middle of nowhere.

The weather only made him more cynical, yet angrier at the tasteless comments under the news article on Zeke and Hange’s divorce. As he neared the research center, he ended up tabling that reflection with one sentence, something comforting yet oddly depressing.

Hange wouldn’t look for me. Then he brushed it away violently soon after. The audacity of even considering the prospect that he was important enough for her to want to search for him. Why would Hange care where he is?

The fact that Hange was followed by the press while he was trapped in the middle of nowhere was indicative enough. They were from two completely different worlds.

***

It may have taken months more, but what Levi clocked to a ‘bout of wanderlust’ eventually settled. He found, keeping himself busy with the right work had done wonders to placate the turmoil inside him.

Keeping busy somehow made it easier to sit up and get ready for work. It meant managing to desensitize his own moods to the weather around him.

Most importantly, it meant seeing some connection with the world, some sliver of motivation to go the extra mile with the people who worked with.

“Early as always, Ackerman.” Same greeting everyday.

“Morning to you too, Onyankopon,” Levi responded as he entered the irsmall office.

Onyankopon was a companion  duringearly in the mornings, lunch times, late afternoons and sometimes, even the dinners when he would invite Levi out for a drink in the only bar for miles around.

Still, it made life remotely eventful when the only changing things had been the weather and his work.

And his work was very eventful.

“Uncle Levi! Did you find any bugs yesterday?” Just like every other morning, the two kids would burst through the door. Or more specifically, the brunette was always the one bursting through the door, the blonde just followed.

“Gaby, you might be bothering them,” Falco said. He said that at least three times a week.

Levi had never been the type anyway to tell them he didn’t mind their morning visits. It always meant something to look forward to.

“Nothing so far,” Levi said. He looked towards Onyakopon, the one in charge of reporting issues. “Hopefully.”

Onyankopon raised his hands in defense. “Don’t get mad at me, get mad at the devs who created the mood alarm in the first place."

Levi was constantly mad at the devs anyway, if he considered that constant state of self loathing. Working on the mood alarm as support had only made Levi realize how many shortcuts he had taken into making that damn application years ago.

“There’s nothing today,” Levi said as he looked at the two kids. “But I could give you a quick lesson,” he added. He couldn’t say no to the crestfallen faces of the two kids.

He dragged one seat next to him and guided Gaby to one of them and Falco to his own seat. “When I want to look for errors in the code, I look here first.” It was a terribly boring lesson, a useless one. Support 101. At the least, the kids seemed satisfied. “If I right click here, and then inspect, I can see what this website is made out of.”

Gaby let out a breath, a mix between a ‘wow’ and an ‘oh.’ “I can’t read it.”

“It’s another language,” Levi explained. “Computers don’t understand our language. So we have to learn another language to be able to talk to them. And when we’re able to tell them what we want, they’ll do things for us, things we can’t do ourselves.”

Gaby had asked more questions after that. Falco had asked his own too, albeit hesitantly.

The difference between the network and console tabs, the meanings of the strange brackets, what happens if they just aimlessly click…

That morning session ended with less than half the questions answered, and a promise to teach them more the next morning. Like every other day before, at eight in the morning, Onyankopon brought them to the activity room and Levi was left alone in the office.

There weren’t many people in the research center, only five employees in total. After all, there were only ten to twenty kids who came and went every day, a very manageable number for five people. He and Onyankopon shared an office and with Onyankopon busy a good chunk of the day, Levi was left alone.

With his own efficient working methods and his outstanding ability to quickly pick out the bugs, Levi was usually free for a cumulated five hours a day.

When he first started working there, his five hour long breaks consisted of reading novels or whatever stupid article came up on his timeline. He could have taken longer breaks yet chose to spend them as short sporadic bouts of inactivity

By spreading out periods of inactivity, Levi managed to somehow pacify the guilt at ‘doing nothing’ while being paid for the eight hours a day. There were times, it was strong, remnants maybe of his stint with the love alarm, barely taking leaves, willingly putting him through the pain of overtime.

Some days, they were particularly strong, sometimes incomprehensible that Levi suspected they could have been related to the burning curiosity, the burning attachment to his own application that never abated.

A burning attachment, a natural need to be productive eventually resulted in sporadic bouts of unproductivity spent just testing the mood alarm all for a brief look into his own emotions.

Even when he wasn’t feeling anything in particular, the application continued to glow colors, just flitting between greens and blues. They could have been yellows or oranges maybe, when Onyankopon or Gabi or Falco visited. He had never been the type to wear his heart on his sleeve though and thus, had never opened it with them around.

That day wasn’t any different. Alone in the office, he opened it again, held it in his hands and watched the colored blobs swim amongst each other, mix amongst one another, then disappear.

Blue or Green? That day it was blue. Why blue and why not green? He could never ask. ‘How’ was always an easier question to answer. He only had to connect his phone to the PC then boot up the dashboard.

His next break, he decided to try a visualization exercise, like every other time before.

Memories never seemed to do the trick. He’d take a risk and dive deep, into his memories with Hange, his anger at the situation, the loss of a life before. Yet it all came out greens and blues. The alarm rang, an almost deafening sound in the silent room and for a split second, it had Levi attentive and a little paranoid. Levi knew though, with the thick concrete walls around him, it was a sound just for him.

He connected his phone to the dashboard and booted the PC again.

There were numbers. He switched to a bar graph view, noting how there were terms, hormones and chemicals he could only barely make sense of. But the blue and the green bars higher than usual yet still very low were signs in themselves.

That morning was a normal morning. And every morning since he built that habit had been a normal morning.

The only thing which ended up different about that day was when footsteps sounded just outside the door. If Levi had been listening closely, he would have been able to point out, those weren't a rhythm of footsteps he was particularly privy too.

But normal mornings tended to desensitize people. Footsteps weren’t particularly interesting either.

In a town with only a few hundred people, it would most likely be someone who already lived there. He continued to work. He disconnected his phone from the dashboard and played with the mood alarm in his own phone again.

The door clicked open behind him, slowly enough for the creak to sound, then fast enough for the slam to come right after yet gently.

Onyankopon always opened the door a little wider, always slamming the door behind him and in between, there was always a greeting. If Levi had been more aware of his surroundings, maybe the lack of all that could have peaked his interest.

In the grand scheme of things though, the door slamming wasn’t anything particularly interesting. Levi continued to sit and stare at his phone.

“Levi Ackerman.”

A voice in an empty room though, was always an interesting thing. By some natural inclination towards voices, any presence in a room that was always his by mid morning, Levi was listening.

Making sense of the voice was a surprisingly slow process. The mood alarm reacted first.

The alarm sounded.

A wave climbed from his chest up until his neck, there was a bristle at the back of his neck, a tickle at his ears, then something pricked at his eyes. He looked down at the alarm before he could completely understand. The colors continued to swim then mix.

They always disappeared and finalized the reading in five seconds.

A second or two passed, and the colors still didn’t look at all in a hurry to disappear.

You’re going crazy Levi. He took a deep breath. He was dreaming. Because what the fuck. Of course she wouldn’t be here. She had an international company to run.

“Levi…” The voice sang. “That’s you right?”

Don’t look back.

“Or maybe there are just a lot of developers named Levi in this world… “ The footsteps were only getting closer. “Developers who are just really good at using the mood alarm.” Then the voice was right next to him.

When she had settled on that seat right at his peripherals, he couldn’t exactly chalk it up to a fevered dream. The mood alarm in his hands continued to ring. He could have sworn at least five seconds had passed. Yet the colors never disappeared, countless colors still swimming around on the interface as the mood alarm continued to read his emotions.

Levi had never been a master of articulation. The war of colors, the chaos on the phone were the best visual representation. He struggled to find the right words, but she continued to stare from his peripherals, her face many things at once.

Apologetic? Expectant?

“It is you,” she said, triumph and relief apparent in her tone.

That only pissed Levi off more. Another emotion added to his boiling pot. Eventually Levi thought it necessary to respond. With too little time, too little mindspace to even attempt to articulate, Levi kept himself to three words, the only three which could have meant everything at once.

“What the fuck.”

In response, she let out a soft laugh. “Are you crying?”

Crying? Now that Levi did think about it, there had been a crack in her voice too. Levi looked up to see her, smiling. Her eyes were smiling too. Then he followed the tear streak that barely grazed the side of her lip.

There was enough time, enough silence for Levi to gather himself. To stare at the reading on the application that couldn’t seem to decide what emotion Levi was feeling.

With enough self discipline, enough concentration, Levi managed to speak. “Hange, if you ask people why they’re crying, you’re just gonna make it worse.”

***

There was only one tea shop in the town, a tea shop which naturally, Levi had chosen as his favorite hang out spot.

Over the months, he had grown familiar with it and in turn, it had grown to become an intimate friend. An intimate friend he had never expected to ever introduce to Hange.

Onyankopon and Moblit had joined them for tea though, and suddenly, Hange didn’t feel like Hange. It could have been the way she shifted to an ‘all business’ demeanor or maybe a part of him was still trying to rationalize what he had deemed to be a very irrational thought.

Maybe he had imagined visiting the cafe with Hange a few times. The realist inside him though, had always believed it to be impossible. At that moment, the dreamer inside him was still taking its victory lap.

“You should have told us you’d be coming. We could have set up something better than late afternoon tea,” Onyankopon said. Either way, he seemed very happy to see them.

Moblit took a sip from his cup then revealed an apologetic smile underneath as he put the cup down. “Apologies for visiting all of a sudden. Doctor Zoe is a very impulsive person.”

Hange nodded. “I hope you don’t mind. As soon as I heard about this, I hopped on the next plane just to get here as soon as possible,” she said “I’m hoping to start something like this in the hospitals back home.”

Moblit put his cup down. “Right, I never got to properly introduce you to Levi.” He turned to Onyankopon then to Levi. “But I’m sure you’ve had a fair share of introductions… You did barge into his office this morning.” He had an apologetic look on his face.

“Hey, Doctor Zoe just wanted to see how we were using the software,” Onyankopon said in Hange’s defense. “I’m more than honored to see that the founder of the mood alarm is taking the time to even wander around our facility.”

Moblit cleared his throat. “Anyway, Levi, this is Doctor Hange Zoe, the founder of the mood alarm application. She visited our main hospital a year back but if I remember correctly, you were on leave right?”

“On a personal leave,” Levi clarified. He couldn’t find much else to say. He took a long sip of tea.

“This is Levi Ackerman,” Moblit said. “One of our best in IT support. He learned how to use your application pretty fast.”

“Yes…” Hange said. “And ever since you told me about him, I’ve been very excited to meet him.” Her grin only got wider as she studied his features, her eyes giving him a good once over. “I guess that’s the reason I ended up taking my own tour of the center while you too were catching up. I wanted to see your genius IT support in action,” she joked.

It was almost unbelievable that that morning, Hange had showed a completely different side to him. She had wiped her own tears pretty fast, shifting her expression to something very professional as soon as Onyankopon and Moblit had entered the office just that morning.

The whole afternoon, Hange was busy with activities and tours of the town, Levi busy with his own work. They barely got to talk. Fortunately, that had allowed Levi time to compose himself, enough to keep a straight face when Onyankopon had invited them over for some tea.

Then and there, there were conversations of partnerships and business, almost reminiscent to whatever bullshit he had to deal with in his old company. But this conversation had Hange, and Hange had shifted her gaze towards him enough times for Levi to feel it only proper to reciprocate.

“Once this project is over, would you consider letting Levi go?” Hange asked. “I’d love to have him visit our main office, maybe help out with some of our development work.”

Moblit shook his head vigorously. “No hesitation. It always felt like he was overqualified for this type of job.”

“By the way you talk about him, I can tell.” She looked at Levi knowingly, a silent form of communication just between both of them. She turned back to Moblit then Onyankopon, her face once again all business. “There are many things I hope to still improve with this application so any support on research, troubleshooting, development is very much appreciated.”

“What do you suggest?” Moblit asked.

A quick glance at Onyankopon and Levi knew he was asking the same question.

Hange put one finger to her chin in thought “A partnership…”

It looked like they had expected Hange to talk Levi’s ear off non stop about the application. Moblit had mentioned something about going straight home while Hange discussed the partnership with Levi, mentioning bugs, the debugger that had been stuck in the system and the bugs which Levi had been quick to point out.

Levi, being respectful, had only listened.

That was until Onyankopon and Moblit offered to walk ahead, leaving Levi and Hange alone on the red brick road overlooking the large lake.

It was early in the evening but it still felt like late afternoon. The sun never set until seven or eight during the mid months of spring.

Yet, the streets was empty, bereft of anything but the both of them.

With one quick scan of their surroundings, Hange turned back to him, she bit her lip and took a deep breath.

Her demeanor was suddenly a stark contrast with the enthusiastic, eloquent one back at a cafe. The sudden transformation was enough for Levi to tense up,

Hange spoke up. “This town really sleeps early,” she commented. “You're planning on going home now too?”

“I usually go home an hour earlier, especially on weekdays,” Levi responded. “I’m only out at this time because they invited me for late afternoon tea.” Technically it was dinner.

“Do you go home….” Hange started, she paused for a second, a very out-of-place pause. “To anyone?”

It took a lot of effort for Levi to resist choking or even letting out a ghost of a laugh at that question. I’m married to my job. That was the answer that popped into his mind out of instinct.

“Did I make it time?” Hange added a second later, only reminding Levi that he hadn’t even mustered a glimmer of answer.

“Make it in time?” Levi asked, in an attempt to stall for time.

“Petra…”

“She married Oluo.”

Hange didn’t seem satisfied. “Is there someone else…” she pressed. “Someone else...”

Hange started to speak with her hands, gesturing for Levi to ‘go on,’ in some awkward wave of a hand. The first awkward gesture Hange had done since they arrived.

Levi couldn’t help but just appreciate that bout of vulnerability he could pull out of her. “There is,” he said.

Just for a second, Hange’s face fell and for a moment Levi relished it.

“Oh…” Hange turned away. “Then, I should take you home… I’d love to meet her…”

Then suddenly, Levi felt just a little bad for that trick. “I was fucking kidding,” he said.

Hange let out a loud sigh of relief, an ugly huff and she looked away, suddenly self conscious.

Levi had to admit, it was an ugly snort. He was tempted to take a good look at her face, and maybe he had craned his neck as she kept silent for a second longer. “I’m not some idiot who would marry someone just because it’s convenient," he said.

“Give me a break. I just graduated from college when I decided to get married,” Hange said. “Besides, we enjoyed each other’s company.”

“If you chose that type of life, I wouldn’t have stopped you. Besides, you had a lot on the line, your PhD, your mood alarm, the love alarm, your reputation. It wouldn’t have been easy choice to make.”

Hange hummed. “The PhD is done, my reputation, I don’t give too much of a rat’s ass about that. And the mood alarm? That has always been mine. I put my own money into building that business.”

“It definitely wasn’t cheap.”

“It wasn’t,” Hange admitted. “What if I told you, I earned my own capital for building it in one night in a casino.”

Levi's thoughts flew back to the night at the casino. He grinned. “I’d believe you.”

“So the mood alarm is mine and I managed to keep it,” Hange said. “But I never forgot you know... The plans, the codes, they’re all yours.”

“So you did get the email,” Levi said.

Hange nodded. “And the email got me thinking…” she trailed off for what seemed like an eternity.

Levi couldn’t wait. “About what?”

Hange thought for a few seconds longer, putting her hands behind her back. “That ended up one reason why I even considered leaving Zeke,” she said. “He has a different way of loving, I have a different one too. Love is freedom. Love is just trusting. Zeke on the other hand, always likes to play safe, tie people down.”

“What happened to ‘love is a choice?’”

Hange seemed unperturbed. “Love still is a choice.”

“Then why not choose to love Zeke?” Levi challenged.

Hange sighed and put one hand up. “You said it yourself, deciding to leave wouldn’t be an easy decision,” she started. “I considered three things.”

She put one finger up. “Our own views of love. Zeke sees it as a game, as an investment and he approaches it conservatively… On the other hand, I see love and relationships as a form of freedom, a risk. In love, I don't believe in playing to win.”

She put another finger up. “I considered how I was feeling, this really weird feeling, my thoughts on Pemberley then on colors.”

“I thought you didn’t want to be a slave to your emotions.”

Hange shook her head. “I’m not. I approached this methodically. Even before considering my feelings, I considered my circumstances.” She put the third finger up. “I considered the backlash, I considered Zeke’s feelings, dealing with a divorce. And that’s what brought me here, despite the criticism, despite my inability to buy the love alarm and to barely salvage the mood alarm.”

“You still gave in to your emotions.”

Hange nodded. “After thinking long and hard about it, I did. But before that, I weighed all three, and I decided to take the risk.”

“Was it worth it?”

Hange shrugged and she leaned over the rail, seeming mesmerized by the lake. “I won’t know yet but I guess, even when I thought you had someone else…” There was a flash of hurt on her face, enough for Levi to regret playing that little joke on her.

“I don’t have anyone else,” Levi clarified.

Hange continued to speak. “I still thought the risk was worth taking. It would have been unfair to Zeke if I stayed and who am I to stop you if someone makes you feel happy.” She turned back to him. “This is the way I’ll choose to love. I’ll weigh my emotions, my circumstances and my worst case scenarios. Then I decide the most loving thing to do. If I have to take a risk, I take it. And I guess, given all that, looking for you seemed like the correct decision.”

Levi couldn’t stifle that smile any longer, and he hoped somehow, his own words would stop it from getting any wider. “Well, it's too early to tell if it's a good decision.”

Hange opened her phone and opened the application. “Can we try again?”

“You wanna use the love alarm?” Levi asked. “Your ex-husband’s application.”

“It’s still your brainchild,” Hange said as she waited for it to load. She hovered her thumb over it.

“I don’t have it installed,” Levi said.

“I can wait,” Hange said. And there was no room for argument in her voice.

An awkward few minutes as Hange watched him download the application. Levi focused on the loading bar, and luckily, his biometrics were still registered from that brief experiment of a year ago.

“On three…” Hange said, her voice a little stilted.

But they didn’t finish counting or maybe they just counted at completely different paces.

The alarms rang, filling the empty space between them, two rings which never seemed to find a uniform pace. Even with a very dominant fastidious side though, Levi wasn’t thinking too much about such a small detail.

Hange’s was smiling, grinning, or whatever that was called. Her face was a mix between pure ecstasy and pure passion. She wrinkled her eyes at him, her mouth climbed into a grin wider than he had ever been used to.

She let out a loud sigh. “I was fucking scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“That you would have gotten over me… I dunno, thought you might just think love was a choice, and I dunno, stop feeling whatever that love alarm thing was feeling.”

“I don’t think the love alarm works like that,” Levi said. Really, he started to realize he didn’t know how it worked.

Hange shook her head. “I’m probably just overthinking. You know… I learned how to code over the years, talked to a few developers and tried to look into how the application works,” she said.

“Did you find anything?”

“Remember when you told me that the love alarm starts to figure out for its own what love is. It creates its own definition. Something we can’t even comprehend...” Hange was still grinning, her voice coming out as breaths and sometimes sounds.

Still, Levi could comprehend most of it. “You have any theories?” he pressed. Hange always had theories.

“Soulmates? Relationships in a past life?” Hange suggested.

“Well, we can’t really look back at those right?” Levi said. “Well, what else?”

One word, one word out of Hange’s mouth. “Pemberley.”

“Pemberley?” Levi asked. Somehow though as Hange looked back at the lake, up at the sky then at the gaudy main street of that small town. Levi started to understand it himself.

“It’s ugly here,” Levi said. At first he had meant it. As Hange started to look at her surroundings then back at the lake, with a look of wonder in her eyes, Levi was sure he had meant it as a challenge.

“When you’re in love then with the person we love, everywhere starts to feel like Pemberley,” Hange completed a second later.

Does it? And he wondered why the hell, he needed Hange to point it out.

They were in an ugly town, a place people were paid to live in. The sky was constantly overcast. When it wasn’t raining, it was snowing and it snowed six months a year. When it wasn’t snowing or raining, the sky was at least threatening it.

The way that Hange had looked at it with such naive wonder, the way she had just stood there, looking at everything and back at him, Levi couldn’t help but entertain the idea of Pemberley.

Maybe give the colors a chance to show themselves? Hange didn’t say it out loud. In the moment they made eye contact though, Levi couldn’t help but just give that little piece of advice a chance, whether it had been his own or Hange’s.

He looked first at the main road and the red brick path, noting how the gaudy red, worn by the elements more than actual foot traffic seemed to still glow a bright red despite the grey undertones. He then looked to the buildings, varying shades of concrete grey yet ‘the varying shades’ of it seemed to still have some sense of novelty.

He then looked back at the ocean, the dark sky above never allowed it a more beautiful shade of blue, yet the bluish black still continued to glow. The waves only sent glimmers of silver against the dark blue. Then it was only natural that he looked up at the sky, the sky which never allowed any other shade for itself, except on a few select days a year.

The fog blocked whatever green the mountains beyond the lake would have shown him.

Looking back at Hange then back at his surroundings, he started to accept it. There were greens, reds, blues, yellows and every other color in the spectrum. The world glowed with so many colors, so many lights and sounds. His emotions were a whirlwind that spun to whatever rhythm the lights and colors blinked at.

Colors persevered and they’ve always persevered.

Emotions persevered and they’ve always persevered.

Even emotions we don’t understand ourselves. Levi added to himself.

Maybe Hange was right. That was what the love alarm had been trying to show. The one person who made the colors, the emotions all the clearer.

“This is a beautiful place,” Hange said. “And I wouldn’t mind staying here, lay low a bit, just long enough for people to forget the divorce fiasco.”

“There are a few nice places here,” Levi said.

Hange continued to stare.

Why don’t we just live here together right Levi?

I know you, you wouldn’t be able to stay out of the action.

Levi felt almost ashamed at that mystery response that seemed to pop into his head out of nowhere. We can live here long enough to get our shit together. "First things first, let’s discuss this partnership, over tea in my house.”

“Now?” Hange’s widened her eyes. And her eyes were smiling.

“Well, unless you have other plans tonight,” Levi said.

Hange shook her head. “Nothing much…”

They made the whole way back to his home in silence. Surprisingly, Levi preferred it that way. It had been enough for him to appreciate his new comprehension of his surroundings, the small details he hadn't noticed before.

It wasn’t just the view. The rhythm of their footsteps, their uncoordinated breathing, and just the way the trees rustled, the wind blew, always found a way to glow different colors. His emotions, the chaos of every moment after that were also challenging him to find their colors.

And the circumstances that had them locked in his cramped apartment, sitting over tea, with no one else watching, nothing restricting them had Levi reflecting. It probably had Hange reflecting too. They spoke unhindered with just thoughts, expressions and locked gazes.

For one reason or the other, it happened quickly and abruptly, leaving no space or time to comprehend it.

Sitting on his living room sofa right next to her. Hands clasped against the other. Her dry lips were on his.

The magic welling in his chest, the thunder that climbed quickly up his throat, persevering even underneath the grey. They were all screaming at him then, they all glowed colors.

At that moment though, he had been to tired to reflect on it for any longer. He decided to just roll with it.

It was no use making sense of it. After all, life, love and emotions... They were all just complicated that way.