#at least for someone of my era

[nootybloops]

Literal computer programmer here.

Primary school, mac at school, windows at home (once we got a computer). High school, windows at school, mac at home. First two laptops were macs (one still runs my music!).

I didn't even learn how to start programming anything other than very basic webdev stuff until this point! I was in my late 20s!

Desktop is windows purely because so many games still require it, extremely shitty third laptop is linux because I was only using it for uni programming work anyway so why even bother paying for a windows license when you're going to have to fake linux half the time to compile stuff anyway.

All of which to say: I've got Some Experience in this shit, and I'mma tell you your computer literacy has nothing to do with the OS and everything to do with a combination of how interested you are, and the quality of the teaching you receive.

Forever grateful to my PS Computer Teacher, who who taught all the kids at my school how to use The Computers! IIRC the first computers we ever got a go at didn't even have mice, they just had keyboards! And she taught us about whatever the mac equivalent of ms paint was by drawing the GUI on a whiteboard, and explaining the icons!

(This is actually an extremely effective method, by the way. No matter what anyone tells you, understanding icons is not intuitive, and an explanation beforehand stops you freaking out because So! Many! Thing!!! I remember we were all particularly confused by the eraser tool.)

As it happens, she was also the librarian. And when we were a bit older and the school actually had an internet connection (it was the 90s, okay), she taught us about how to find stuff out online, and how to tell if it was reputable or not. Extremely good teacher, and excellent at guessing what would actually be useful for us to know in the future.

Anyway these days, where phones do so much shit By Magic*, and both mac and windows upper management seem to want pcs to follow them (see: app stores), it's no surprise that kids don't know how things work. How could they? The level of technical skills they need to make things work is tiny, and from what I hear they don't get helpful computer lessons any more! It's like expecting a regular train commuter to know how the signaling works. Just. What??

* ie, in the background where you can't see anything at all, even if you want to.

Also to underline Feather's point above, we had a semester's worth of typing lessons in high school. I was the only one in the class who knew how to touch type at the start of it, and I'm pretty damn sure I was the only one who knew how to touch type at the end of it, because no one cared. The teaching in that class was uh... nonexistent, I don't remember a single lesson. IIRC there was some kind of typing tutor program we were supposed to use, but we were pretty much just left to do whatever on the computers (as long as it was text-based. There was a LOT of people turning the font size in word way up and writing swears at people across the room).

If I hadn't already known I probably would've used the time to learn, because even back then it was extremely obvious that it was going to be An Extremely Helpful Life Skill, but clearly none of my classmates agreed with that. :/

[galactic-rhea]

yikes.

I hope you're happy @squad-724 and @helloyesthisisdilophsaurus

[tititilani]

I can't stop thinking about if Simon had taken Edwin's offer

Like Charles finds Edwin in the hallway as ever but this time there's another boy there too, cowering against the wall next to him. Maybe the dollhead spider doesn't care about Simon, too busy focusing on its favorite target, so Charles is left standing in the hallway with Simon when Edwin is taken.

They get out of hell, but Edwin doesn't confess due to Simon hovering behind his elbow. He doesn't want to confess his emotions in front of his killer, who he probably hasn't even properly figured out how he's feeling towards yet.

The Night Nurse is pissed they came out with an extra soul but Niko's same loophole still applies and Simon stays.

"This is Simon," Edwin says when it's all said and done, finally introducing the boy that's been hiding behind him since the door closed. "He was a...classmate of mine."

"He saved me," Simon says, looking up at Edwin moony-eyed and Charles knows that look and something settles heavy in his stomach.

"Glad to have ya, mate," he tells him even though the words taste sour. This other boy knew Edwin when he was alive, the thought is slightly terrifying to him.

Simon settles in fine with the agency even if the agency feels a little crowded now with five people in it but he continues to moon over Edwin and Edwin just...never tells anyone how they actually knew each other. He reasons it just doesn't matter, that he can't find the right time, whatever.

Charles never really warms up to him, though he tries to hide it, but he sees the looks Simon gives Edwin, a soppy smitten look that is somehow worse than anything Monty or the Cat King ever tried with Edwin because of all of them, Simon arguably knows the most about like Edwardian courting. That, like Edwin, Simon has also survived hell. Charles hates the idea that someone could potentially understand Edwin more than he does.

He hates it so much that nothing further happens between him and Crystal because the idea of Edwin being left alone with Simon bothers him so much. He sees Simon adjusting Edwin's collar one (1) time and it makes him feel sick.

And then there's the fortune-teller.

They only go to her sometimes for cases because she never fails to freak Charles out but her prophecies tend to be accurate like 60% of the time which is pretty good for a fortune teller. She looks at the two of them at the end, because it is just the two of them for once, and then looks just at Edwin.

"How kind you are," she says, the words a compliment but the tone snide. "To house your killer. Pray tell it doesn't come back to you."

"What." Charles says. "The fuck."

Charles is furious, of course, and it takes Edwin a long time to talk him out of smashing Simon's face in with the new cricket bat.

"He's like me," he insists in that quiet but firm voice. Charles wants to scream that Simon is nothing like Edwin - that he doesn't have a fraction of Edwin's kindness or pissiness, that his blue eyes are not nearly as beautiful as Edwin's green - but before he can even open his mouth, Edwin continues. "He...He likes boys, Charles. He likes me."

Oh. Oh.

Charles stares at Edwin who is looking back at him, trying and failing to hide the fact he's terrified, and Charles doesn't give one shit that Edwin likes boys because he's his best mate forever. He's still pissed that Simon is apparently staying but he has to hug Edwin at that. "I'm still pissed you didn't tell me about him," is all he says, swallowing back the other words he wants to say.

Charles grows even more paranoid about Simon being around, who has to get used to the fact that Charles takes to swinging his cricket bat ominously every time he comes within ten feet of Edwin. He finds out that adjusting clothing was an Edwardian courting thing and wants to break something. The very idea the very person who killed his best mate is now trying to put the moves on said best mate pisses him off.

It also makes him think of numerous times Edwin had readjusted his collar or jacket in the past and it makes his non-existent stomach flip.

Eventually, Simon decides he's ready to move on to his after-life and Charles keeps his hands from fisting when he looks at Edwin with that same soppy look. He knows Edwin has forgiven Simon by now but Charles has always been better at holding a grudge and he knows what is going to come out of Simon's mouth before he even asks. He knows that if Edwin says yes, he won't stop him.

Charles also knows that if Edwin does, there is no way he is going to find any kind of his own afterlife.

"You could come with me," Simon says hopefully and the moment after is the longest in Charles' life.

"Thank you, Simon," Edwin says kindly and Charles has to keep himself from crying. "But I have no interest in going anywhere without Charles."

He steps back - away from Simon and back towards Charles. Ears suspiciously pink, Edwin links their hands and they watch as Simon follows the Night Nurse.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 261

“So is no one going to talk about the eldritch space child or…” 

“I mean, do you want to get between a child and Batman? I think the only one who could even get close right now is Superman…” 

“No you’re right, I think- oh my god the eldritch space child is playing with batman’s bat-ears and he’s not doing anything about it what the fuck I thought only Robins could get away with that-” 

[thriftybruce]

experimenting with a different brush/warm up

[itsriotmotherfuckers]

Whenever I get comments on my fics I’m just like “oh you like my writing? You enjoyed this enough to tell me? How do you feel about a fall wedding? Or spring or summer or winter I’m not picky, whenever you want. I will literally take a bullet for you”

[inumbrapugnabimus-maybe]

Consider

moon

Thank you @doodlebugdrawz for these wonderful tags

[fatedroses]

Baby Zenos being curious of everything means Atticus can't skip out on tuning anymore and Solus gets extra hands for some of his tools.

[nedlittle]

it's that time of the year again! i read a whopping 135 books in 2024 and have collected the worst of the worst for your entertainment ft. homophobia, taylor swift, girlboss baba yaga, and mary shelley's nipples. i hope you enjoy these reviews to make up for the suffering i endured to write them.

a lethal lady by nekesa afia ⭐

A Lethal Lady exists in a series of nondescript beige rooms because there is no effort put into making them anything else. Your reader should not have to imagine scenery themselves because you cannot be bothered to craft any description apart from vague adjectives, which do nothing if they exist without context!

the good women of fudi by liu hong ⭐

It's like Liu Hong sat down and Googled "gay books" and read the first one that came up, then Googled "lesbian books" and did the exact same thing. And then she thought, What if I did that but worse?

the witch and the tsar by oleysa salnikova gilmore ⭐

We can't even have hags anymore. Because of woke. At least Marya Morevna is bisexual.

mary and the birth of frankenstein by anne eekhout (tr. laura watkinson) ⭐

If I were sent back to 1816, I could identify Mary Shelley by her nipples alone. I could pick her nipples out of a police lineup. Her nipples are going to haunt me for the rest of my life. Her nipples are more myself than my own.

a fatal crossing by tom hindle ⭐.25

The timeline spans five days but feels like five years. The chapters are relatively short, but the action is so repetitive that it becomes cyclical, dragging on like Hector's corpse around the walls of Troy.

five wives by joan thomas ⭐.25

The Governor General's Award is not a serious award, lmao. We have approximately five recognizable Canadian writers, so much of our publishing is just slop, so we have to reward everyone who can string two sentences together.

dear sylvia, love jane by erin hall ⭐.5

It's like oh wow queer found family! community! a spunky underdog protagonist! And then a woman is murdered off-page by her husband who is then iced on-page by the mob. And then we go back to found family.

late bloomer by mazey eddings ⭐.75

You could scroll gay Twitter for 30 minutes and have the same experience as reading this book.

the formidable miss cassidy by meihan boey ⭐⭐

The characters and dialogue were too twee for my tastes, and Miss Cassidy herself is Mary Poppins if she were a whimsigoth Tumblr witch.

maude horton's glorious revenge by lizzie pook ⭐⭐

The whole book lends itself to being read with only half of one's brain engaged; neither engaging nor forgettable, it's the sort of thing that vanishes entirely from your psyche the moment after you mark it as read.

[lungthief]

once again rewatched tomgreg cruel summer. the entire thing is still a landmark achievement in video editing but these 15 seconds alone could sustain me for decades

[variousqueerthings]

thing about rose, for me, is that she wasn't there first -- this in a "she was first in nu!who in the sense that this was the first person to travel with nine, and the first person since the timewar, and the last person that nine was with, to the point that ten was born out of that experience/modelled on her."

and in that framing, I am a big fan of her haunting of the narrative, because it start outs with her placing herself inside the doctor's ribcage and rebooting their ability to want to feel things, but unfortunately rose is still a human, like every human the doctor travelled with before, it's just that the doctor forgot how to steel themself against that inevitability because of the circumstances around meeting rose

this is The thing that I find tragic about martha, because I think she could have been that person, if she'd been the first person post-timewar to travel with the doctor, but because she's coming in during bleeding-heart times, she's got to deal with triage instead. and yes, there are wonders, and yes, there are good times, but for a lot of it, it's shrapnel, and I think if it hadn't been, she would have had a very different attitude towards *waves hands* space and time travel and aliens and the universe (one where she wouldn't be the person trusted with something like the osterhagen key)

and donna had a sense of that Space the doctor was in post-rose (she canonically stopped the doctor from dying in runaway bride) and stepped away from it, and didn't get back to the doctor until some of that hole-in-chest had been bandaged up, which martha did a great job of, but didn't get to really benefit from, and I think that's the sad thing about martha jones, is that she absolutely got a taste of the beauty and the splendor, but never without all the violence and heave weight that was put onto her

which, again, she seems to have been very aware of, considering she joined UNIT and Torchwood. her eyes were barely ever rose tinted (no pun here) during her whole journey in the story. martha really is in my opinion the most tragic companion (that I've met so far, I know Adric straight up dies, but maybe he had some fun times before that?), because yes, donna loses her memories and rose is in a parallel universe, but that's more tragic for the doctor -- they've both built lives

in donna's case there's probably a lot of imperfection in that life, but clearly a lot of joy as well, with her and her husband and her kid and her mum, and I'm sure she'd have preferred to be the donna who saw the universe and was splendid, but martha never gets to forget, and has to continue her life one step out of sync of everything she could have been

which, maybe her life is pretty flipping fantastic, but we really don't know, which is the biggest thing I side-eye about the first nu!who era. that whole weird ending with the sontaran and mickey is like... anti-character work, it answers nothing and it makes very little sense

all I know about her at the end is that she more than anyone saw the doctor's life and became a soldier (still a doctor as well, but...) because that was the work she saw needed doing, and she's the kind of person who does what needs doing. but is she... okay? youknow?

but going back to the original point, is that framing martha through the lens of rose is all well and good in the sense that rose is the reason the doctor is at that emotional point when he meets martha -- although donna absolutely had a very big hand in that as well -- but once we've established that, martha's arc is martha's arc, and it's dull to me to frame it as the "rebound" arc or even particularly about alloromanticism (including -- and this is why i get why people do it in fandom -- some shit said by rtd, which is just less interesting than what I get out of it, so shhhh)

she's got so much going on, and her relationship with the doctor changes the trajectory of her life, and it's in many ways a more interesting and far less straightforward trajectory of bad-to-better that many companions get -- it's a wonderfully complicated narrative that (and again, I get that some of this comes from within deliberate framings of the text, even though I think it's more than open enough to do more with, death of the author and all that -- but certainly not all of this is text either, some of it is ignoring what is actually there) is done a disservice by not going through the real messed up fascinating extraordinary shit that's going on during her era + arc in s4

but also... is she ok? I want to know. it's one of my top three burning questions, since we're getting a bit of best-ofs of the noughties DW era, some of your crimes can be righted by a simple bit of martha mr davies

[lotrmusical]

tell you what. i love being older than i used to be. and more transgender also

[thebirdandhersong]

this feels like an appropriate time to say that I do not subscribe to silly camp vocabulary, i.e. specifically the term Heart Sparkle (to refer to someone who you don't have a crush on, but someone who simply makes your heart Sparkle when they walk into the room) and have a strong objection to it due to the visceral reaction it evokes in my whole body whenever i hear it, i.e. it makes me cringe, but I can't tell if that's because it genuinely embarrasses me secondhand to hear it said out loud, or because I do find it a very endearing term and am embarrassed for liking it as much as I do, or what. or WHAT.

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

the x files au where everything is exactly the same except mulder takes home the child neanderthal from the jersey devil episode and raises them as his own

[prettyboisteveharrington]

Don’t take my heart don’t break my heart. Don’t… Don’t throw it away

Have a short Drabble based on book two’s love confession between Drake and Mc

Drake Walker x MC ( Rose Throne)

Word count: 856

Thorne… Meet me on the hotel balcony tonight. We need to talk ~ Drake.

As you made your Way up to the hotel balcony all you Can Think about is Drake and how much you love him. How much you need him.

Drake. Drake. Drake.

You stand and look out at New York. You are thinking about what you are going to say to him, you want him to know how special he is to you, how wonderful he makes you feel but you don’t want to mess it up.

You hear footsteps behind you and turn around and see him.

As you finally see him it feels like your heart is beating ten, twenty if not a hundred times faster than it normally does.

You drink in his presence, from the lights illuminating his face to his Golden eyes that remind you of a glass of whiskey near the fireplace.

‘Hi’ you say breathlessly

‘Hey, Thorne’ Drake says he would Seem very composed if you didn’t know him like you do. You see through the cracks. You can tell that he’s nervous just like you.

He takes a few tentative steps forward, his eyes locked on yours.

‘We need to talk… About Us’

‘Yeah, we do’ you agree and nod your head.

You take a step towards him as well. You take a deep breath. You can do this.

‘Drake… Liam proposed to me tonight’

‘Oh’

Drake face falls and you can see the hurt in his eyes for a brief second before he composes himself and his face turns stoic.

‘I’m very happ-‘ Drake starts to say even if his facial expression betrays him. He looks like you just ripped his heart out and shattered it into a million pieces.

It hurts to see him like that. So broken. You take a deep breath and you reach out and gently take his hand in yours

‘I turned him down Drake. I told him i’m in love with you’

‘….What?’ Drake says and he looks surprised

You give his hand a squeeze.

‘From the first moment i saw you I was drawn to you. Sure we didn’t get along at first but there was something about you that kept pulling me back to you’ you say and smile at him

‘Thorne do you really mean it? Liam could give you so much more than me. Hells he could give you anything you wanted. You could have Cordonia and be Queen. Do you really want to settle for less than you deserve… Settle for me?’ Drake searches your eyes for any hint of a lie

You step towards him again your eyes are glossy. It hurts to see Drake like this. It hurts to hear him speak so ill of himself.

‘I hate when you do this. It hurts Drake’

Drake looks at you concerned

‘Rose I-‘

‘I don’t want a kingdom or be Queen. What i want is You. It hurts me greatly that you can’t see how much you have to offer’

Drake seems lost for words as looks at you with a vulnerable expression on his face.

You stand on your toes and lean in to kiss Drake’s left cheek

‘You are Incredibly handsome’

You lean in and kiss his right cheek

‘ you would do anything for me’

You stand on your toes and kiss his forehead

‘You are the first person i think about when i wake up and the last person I think about before I fall asleep’

You lean in and kiss his nose

‘The only person i want to be with is you. I’m yours Drake. Completely. Do you want me too?’

‘I do. Thorne how can I not want you’ Drake says and caresses your cheek with his hand, his hand trembles and you lean into the touch. Your eyes trace his lips before you look into his eyes again

‘Then what are you waiting for?’ You say and lean into him, your lips are inches away from his

His lips meet yours in a searching kiss as he wraps his arms around your waist.

There’s a look of gentle, astonished joy on his face as he pulls away. You lean your head against his you are unable to stop smiling.

You look into his eyes

‘I love you Drake Walker. I have loved you for a long time. Always will. Nothing and no one could ever change that. You are it for me. My soulmate. My marshmallow’

Drake’s eyes are glossy and his smile is wide

‘I don’t know what I could have possibly done to deserve someone like you Rose Thorne. But I will never stop trying to be worthy of you. I love you with every fiber of my being and I will always give you my all’ Drake says earnestly unable to look anywhere but at you

Drake takes your hand and kisses it gently

The two of you sit down on the ground, your head rests on Drake’s shoulder as you both watch the sunset.

[skitskatdacat63]

Contemplation on Seb's hair: