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aer-in-wanderland · 4 years

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구미호뎐 | Tale of the Nine Tailed - Lost in Translation EP02

Back by, possibly not popular, but certainly very enthusiastic demand: my sister’s and my continued adventures in mistranslation and cultural subtext. You can find EP01 here. Buckle up and settle in for another monster post because, wow, a lot happened in this episode. Contains spoilers.

Prologue

We open with a sweeping view of Baekdudaegan as Yeon narrates about his past as the god who presided over it. For context, Baekdudaegan is the biggest and most famous mountain range in Korea, taking up an enormous swath of the Korean peninsula (to the extent that it’s often referred to as its ‘spine’ or ‘backbone’). So Yeon wasn’t lying when he said he was a ‘major’ mountain god. ;)

Yeon: You could say these were my Leeds Days. I was the master of Baekdudaegan, a mountain god who controlled the wind and rain,* and a gumiho who was, from the start, of a different caliber than the mongrel foxes you see in Hometown of Legends. ...Or, I was.”

[*Note: Can also be taken to mean ‘the natural elements’ in general.]

When Yeon refers to his ‘glory days,’ the term he uses is ‘Leeds Era’ (리즈시절). Originally a sporting term for the height of a footballer’s career, in Korean, the expression has come to be used to describe a person’s bygone glory days. The modern figure of speech (complete with English loan word) makes for a funny counterpoint to the Yeon we see on screen and recalls the mint-chocolate loving American TV show enthusiast we’ve known him as so far.

The other modern reference he makes is to Hometown of Legends (전설의 고향), which has been the title of numerous dramas and movies (1977-2018) centered around Korean myths and legends. This is basically the equivalent of an alien referencing the X-files. Overall, the narration serves to remind us just how modern our gumiho has become and clashes humorously with the visual onscreen.

Yeon’s above narration concludes with the first appearance of little Ah Eum, who immediately proceeds to pet the mighty master of Baekdudaegan as if he were her pet dog pfft (thus the ‘....or I was.’)

As an aside, tvN released some backstory information revealing that Ah Eum had gone to find Yeon in order to pray for rain. Which means she pet him in spite of that lol We also know from the past-life sequence in episode 10 that she had actually been warned never to venture anywhere near his mountain because a 1000 year old gumiho lived there. It’s almost as if her guardians don’t know her at all...

For anyone keeping track, Ah Eum uses banmal with Yeon from the very beginning. We find out why later. As a princess (even one who had been discarded), she’s used to outranking everyone around her and therefore speaking almost exclusively in banmal. To be fair, with her temperament, Yeon being a 1000+ year old mountain god probably just wasn’t enough to get him an automatic pass from her. Point for Ah Eum/Ji Ah character continuity.

Yeon: If I could rewrite* my past just once, I would return to this moment without hesitation. So that that child could never find me.

[*Note: Literally, ‘A/S my past,’ which I’m pretty sure has its roots in computer usage. So again, thoroughly modern vocabulary from the former master of Baekdudaegan.]

We transition from young to grown Ah Eum with a sweep of the Red Umbrella. According to tvN again, this umbrella was actually a gift from Ah Eum to Yeon, and it’s also the same umbrella Yeon still carries everywhere. It’s somewhat poetic, then, that it was this umbrella that lead Ji Ah to him. So, a meaningful item on multiple fronts.

Yeon: Some called it, ‘the scandal of the age that shook Baekdudaegan.’ To think, a mountain god who had given his heart to a human... Nowadays, it would have felt like a disciplinary hearing, but I didn’t care a whit. I liked her [presence] permeating my woods.

As you might have guessed, this love story ends in tragedy. Someone stole her life. Once she crossed the River of Three Crossings, I would never be able to see her again. I couldn’t hold on to her, but nor could I bear to let her go...so I resorted to abusing my power.

The BGM playing as Yeon narrates the ending of his tragic story is ‘The Parting at the River of Three Crossings,’ which I think of as the epic love theme of TotNT alongside ‘Sad Fate.’ Why do I keep mentioning the BGM? No reason, other than that it interests me. ;)

On a linguistic note, Yeon’s line, ‘Someone stole her life’ caught my attention from the first time I watched this due to his unusual usage of the word ‘life.’ Korean has multiple words for ‘life.’ The one that would typically be used in this context is ‘moksoom’ (목숨), which I think of as having the nuance of one’s life force. So to steal one’s ‘moksoom’ would mean to kill them. Instead, he uses ‘insaeng’ (인생), which is more like the life one leads. To steal someone’s ‘insaeng’ sounds more like a case of identity theft. As we find out later, that actually is what Imoogi did, and this hinted at that linguistically.

I’m not sure how well this translated, but the gesture of Yeon kneeling is both epic and heartbreaking. Kneeling is a very weighty gesture in Korea, so for Yeon to use his godly powers to freeze the very River to the Afterlife only to kneel and beg for one last moment with Ah Eum is just... It’s a momentous enough gesture for Taluipa, the ultimate stickler for rules, to make an exception and grant his request.

The fox bead: In Japanese lore, a fox’s bead is often akin to its life force, but that’s clearly not the case for Yeon. In Korean lore, fox beads are sometimes called ‘the treasure of a fox’s lips,’ since the bead is supposedly located within the fox’s mouth (and can thus be stolen/gifted with a kiss). Some tellings claim that someone who swallows a fox’s bead gains understanding of all things and phenomena in the universe, while others say they grant the bearer’s wishes.

Yeon continues his narration, describing how he’s encountered women with Ah Eum’s face over the centuries, but that none of them were her. For anyone interested, you can find my hot take on that here.

Okay, can we please have a spin-off of Yeon hunting down folklore monsters in Japanese-occupied Korea Gaksital (2012)-style?

Fun fact: Based on some of the still cuts they released, there was actually a deleted scene in which Yeon pulled the late-Joseon era Ah Eum look-alike aside, checked her for the fox bead, and then erased her memories. (And by ‘fun’ I mean, ‘why would you delete that??’)

“I’ve been waiting for you.” Iconic.

Fun fact: Lee Dong Wook picked this as the most memorable line of the drama due to it’s thematic echoing across multiple episodes.

On the topic of the tranquilizer, there was a deleted scene in episode 1 in which Ji Ah very openly 'borrowed’ it from Shin Joo’s vet clinic because she already suspected Yeon was a fox: fox fur, Fox Ridge... She was taking a pretty big gamble though since he’s not exactly your average fox.

It’s worth noting that Ji Ah doesn’t say she was ‘looking’ for Yeon (although she was, because she’s a go-get-‘em kind of girl); she says she was ‘waiting’ for him. I took this to mean she was waiting for him to return and make good on his threat to kill her (since, not only had she not forgotten, she’d been actively sticking her nose into anything remotely supernatural or unexplainable), at which point, presumably, she planned to turn the tables on him.

Episode 02 Title Card: I’ve Been Waiting for You

For anyone wondering how Ji Ah managed to get Yeon back up to his penthouse, apparently she told the security desk her boyfriend was drunk and boldly took him back up in the elevator (presumably with help) haha

Possibly coincidentally, Yeon’s first line to Ji Ah when he regains consciousness is the same as his first line to little Ah Eum: ‘Do you want to die?’ (minus the sageuk speak)

Ji Ah’s line, “I wouldn’t be sipping tea here if I was worried about that,” would more literally be: “If I valued my life, would I be sitting here drinking flower tea?”

Lol Ji Ah. “Want a cup?” is such a classy power play.

Sub: “After the stunt you pulled, you’re actually offering me tea?” Ha. Also, what Yeon literally says is: “You pulled that variety-esque stunt, and your next line is what? ‘A cup of tea’?” ‘Variety’ here is an English loan word meant in the sense of ‘variety shows’ (ex. Running Man or 1 Night 2 Days), though to my knowledge, no one has ever been tranquilized on one.

The following exchange was littered with enough small things I would have changed that I’ll just translate the whole thing here for reference:

Ji Ah: When a man and a woman have that level of physical contact, don’t they usually also drink tea or eat meals together, too? These days, the whole pure and noble act doesn’t go far.

Yeon: Whether it does or not, when you’re at a disadvantage, isn’t it considered common courtesy to come [to the table] having put aside either your pride or your self-esteem [i.e. at least one of the two]?

Ji Ah: Listen until the end before you determine who’s at a disadvantage.

Yeon: (Nodding) In exchange, if my thinking still doesn’t change, you’ll pay the price for having tested me.

Ji Ah: Price?

Yeon: Your sight (literally ‘eyes’). I’ll be taking your eyes that have seen what they shouldn’t have.

Ji Ah: Deal. (literally, ‘call’ as in poker)

Rang & Yoo Ri Crash a Funeral

In the off chance you were wondering why this is basically the only time we see Rang driving Yoo Ri and not the other way around, it’s because Yoo Ri is ‘in character’ as the daughter of a major conglomerate and wouldn’t be expected to drive herself if there was another person in the car. In Korea, there’s a whole code of etiquette around who sits where in the car.

Instead of ‘Lee Rang-nim’ the subs have Yoo Ri addressing Rang as ‘sir.’ That just strikes me as so distant and cold...

To my thinking, this scene was peak ‘Hoket-dan.’ It was nearly the same level of over-the-top campy as some of the old supervillains. If I’m being perfectly honest, I was worried at this point that Rang’s character would turn out to be equally 2D. Joke’s on me though, ‘cause this later became a hilarious character quirk when Sajang says to Rang, “It can’t be that you came to enjoy watching me die?” and Rang responds, “I love doing that! Look, I even brought popcorn. I even go about visiting funeral homes and stuff on purpose.” lol

Ji Ah’s Gamble

Okay, but Yeon actually took her up on tea haha I love it.

Subs: “So you’re a fox that’s pretending to be human.” The word they use here (and throughout the drama) is ‘doongap’ (둔갑), which is literally ‘to assume the form of.’ Unfortunately, there’s no verb in English that neatly conveys that, so this gets subbed a lot of ways. I’ve mostly been translating it as ‘transform,’ but that’s more properly ‘byeonshin’ (변신). Sometimes with translation, the best option still isn’t great.

It’s also worth noting that this is actually not what Yeon is doing here, since he sees those sorts of tricks as beneath him. Yeon is a cheon’ho; his human form is his own.

Sub: “What a lame reaction. A normal human being would scream...” More literally: “What kind of reaction is so lacking in sincerity? Generally, if [you’re] a human, I should at least get a scream...” Again, both ‘reaction’ and ‘scream’ are in English, and, somewhat humorously, Yeon uses the verb + juda (주다) form, implying he was hoping to elicit a scream with his reveal pfft

Sub: “No. I knew something like you would exist somewhere out in this world. I started directing a TV show about urban legends so I could catch you myself.” This is mostly fine, but what she says more literally is: “No. I knew something like you would exist somewhere in this world. In order to catch [one] myself, I buried my bones in a TV show about urban legends.” To ‘bury ones bones’ means ‘to devote oneself entirely to’ and implies more drive and dedication than in the sub. The subject is once again omitted, so she could mean Yeon, but I think she actually means ‘things like Yeon’ more generally.

Yeon’s line to Ji Ah when she asks him about their long ago encounter was subbed as: “I followed the smell of blood, and I ended up saving a little kid. But I can see that she’s very ungrateful.” I would translate this as:

Yeon: I smelled blood and followed it, and ended up saving some little girl (lit. young child), but now I see that that child is trying to repay a favor with enmity.

The expression Yeon uses here, to ‘repay a favor (eunhye) with enmity (wonsoo),’ is a common turn of phrase. It’s the Korean equivalent of ‘biting the hand that feeds you,’ or ‘repaying good with ill.’ Considering eunhye has actual consequences for Yeon, he doesn’t seem all that put out.

Lol Something about Lee Dong Wook’s delivery of Yeon’s line, “So you lost your parents...” reminds me of the Oscar Wilde quote: ‘To lose one parent may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.’

Sub: “I’m not threatening you. I’m taking my chances.” This should be: “You’re mistaken. I’m not threatening; I’m gambling.” This turn of phrase is rather clever in Korean since ‘threat’ (협박) and ‘gamble’ (도박) are only one syllable off. In terms of the subs, while ‘gambling’ and ‘taking my chances’ are similar on the surface, they’re different enough in nuance that I would consider this a mistranslation. ‘Gambling’ implies an informed, calculated risk, whereas ‘taking my chances’ gives the impression of improvisation and leaving everything up to luck.

The Funeral Parlour

This scene is Rang in a nutshell. I actually don’t have much to comment on linguistically, but it was definitely an important scene for establishing Rang’s MO and motivations.

Shin Joo & Yeon

Yeon and Shin Joo meet up at the ice cream parlour to debrief on the situation with Ji Ah, and it’s cute how Shin Joo is more indignant over what went down than Yeon.

Subs: “It’s like we exist to repay people for their kindness.” This has been grossly paraphrased due to lack of cultural context. His line is literally:

Shin Joo: It’s not as if we’re magpies meticulously repaying our eunhye! Geez, how long do we have to be bound by that sort of premodern contractual relationship?”

This is another Korean folktale reference, this time to the story of The Grateful Magpies. I elaborated on it a bit here.

Yeon: “It’s old-fashioned but romantic. And it's also a fox’s dignity.” ‘Romantic’ here is the French loan word ‘romang’ (로망). In contrast to the English ‘romantic’ (which is also used), ‘romang’ is used to refer to ‘anything marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized.’ ‘Dignity’ could also be translated as ‘grace of character.’ Yeon’s preoccupation with style/swagger/dignity is enough of a recurring theme (and occasional joke) that it features in his character profile.

For anyone keeping track, Shin Joo refers to Ah Eum as ‘Ah Eum agasshi.’ ‘Agasshi’ meaning ‘miss’ or ‘lady.’

Shin Joo’s line is subbed, “Does she bother you?” but it should be: ‘Does it bother you?’ where ‘it’ refers to the fact that Ji Ah so closely resembles Ah Eum.

Sub: “I’ve seen tons of people who looked like her for hundreds of years.” It’s actually not ‘tons of people,’ but ‘a couple’/‘several’ over the course of hundreds of years. Let’s be honest, people as pretty as Jo Bo Ah just aren’t born every day. ;)

Yeon’s line may be overly blunt, but it’s sweet that he calls Shin Joo, ‘Shin Joo-ya.’

Back over to Ji Ah. The way this scene suddenly switches from sentimental to horrifying is great. I also like that it’s unclear when she fell asleep. The boundary between reality and unreality is as blurred for the viewers as it is for Ji Ah, and it leaves us with a similar sense of disquiet.

In case it wasn’t already clear, it’s the tooth on this skull that leads Ji Ah to Eohwa Island. She sees a skull with an identical tooth in the news and goes to investigate.

Afterlife Immigration Office

LOL Hyeonuiong briefing the newly departed on death via powerpoint is hilarious. The powerpoint reads: ‘A Guide to Hell for the Dead, Presenter: Hyeonuiong.’ The red sigil on the right bears the characters ‘十王’ (the Ten Kings), so I guess this is an official, Afterlife-approved slideshow. heh

Side note: I’m impressed with the way this show seamlessly shifts between genres. We went from emotional to creepy to funny without it feeling forced or jarring (or at least, it didn’t to me).

The powerpoint (complete with webtoon) continues cheerily: “Hell! What is the Afterlife?” / “The 10 Types of Hell.” pfft Who made these slides? Whoever they are, point to them.

Subs: “You know King Hades, right?” WOW This is bordering on cultural whitewashing if you ask me. This should be King Yeomra (aka King Enma). He’s one of the Ten Kings of the Afterlife, and quite arguably the most famous.

The sub here says Taluipa is Yeomra’s older sister, which is understandable since the antiquated word Hyeonuiong uses (누이), doesn’t specify older or younger. We find out in the final episode, though, that Taluipa is actually Yeomra’s younger sister. As far as I’m aware, this is not part of the original lore.

Lol Yeon being a drama king: “I’m going to take revenge! Thanks to her, my obligatory military service has already gone on for 600 years~!” (You’re not fooling anyone, sir)

“No way! A man’s hair is his life! My red-brown...” Fun fact: It was actually Lee Dong Wook’s idea to make Yeon’s hair red-brown, both as a nod to him being a fox, and to give him a more otherworldly look.

Why do the gods keep saying reincarnation is random when everyone we see reincarnated kept their face??

‘Oh my god” lol Watching kdrama characters react in English never gets old. Possibly because there’s something exaggerated or overdramatic in the conscious decision to use English instead of Korean.

A++ response from Yeon. I saw something going around to the effect of, ‘this show really just said love is love,’ and I love that. Point to the writer.

The BGM here is once again ‘Thread Rings.’ Given where it keeps being used, I’m fairly certain they’re somehow related to Ji Ah/Ah Eum... (So I guess there actually is a reason I’m paying attention to the BGM ;p). Lee Dong Wook just disclosed the behind the scenes scoop on the rings in his latest VLIVE.

This bulgasari is such a mild-mannered person. Like Shin Joo, he calls Ji Ah ‘PD-nim’ and speaks politely and deferentially.

Not for anything, but I really liked Jo Bo Ah’s delivery of Ji Ah’s line, ‘I saw a corpse.’ Her little mannerisms really sold Ji Ah to me as a person and not just a character.

Bulgasari: “That dream, can you sell it to me? I want to play the lottery.” In addition to the concept of symbolism in dreams, Koreans also have a common notion that dreams can be bought and sold. It’s funny, though, when you consider he’s probably just planning to eat the dream.

I love whenever Taluipa calls Yeon, ‘Yeon-ah.’ She’s normally so prickly that it’s notable when she's affectionate. Also, seeing as Yeon is older than 95% of our characters, there aren’t many who might address him like this with the affectionate diminutive.

Heh, Yeon refers to Ji Ah’s favor as a ‘civil complaint.’

When Yeon asks Ji Ah for her parent’s times and dates of birth, what he’s actually asking for is their ‘saju’ (literally, ‘four pillars’). You can find my explanation here.

The Snail Bride

Bok Hye Ja: “It’s the first time he’s brought someone (literally ‘a person’).” Normally this would mean, ‘it’s the first time he’s brought a guest,’ but in this case, I’m fairly certain she means, ‘it’s the first time he’s brought a human.’ ;)

“I won’t ask you to understand.” This was another exchange that made me love Ji Ah. I found her frank and sincere apology refreshing.

On a personal note, I loved watching Yeon recalibrate his estimation of Ji Ah in this scene. And it was also a scene in which viewers got to recalibrate their impressions of Yeon. Yeon is feigning indifference, but he makes a point of asking after Ji Ah’s feelings, which is not insignificant. It’s also in sharp contrast to what we’ve seen of Rang so far.

Oh my gosh, THAT PUFFBALL DOG (and it’s name is Bean-ie) XD

Minor detail, but where did Shin Joo get his necklace? Wait. OH MY GOD. Shin Joo is the Aquaman of TotNT. Yeon gets to be Batman and Superman rolled into one and Shin Joo’s power is that he ‘talks to fish animals.’ Dead.

Lol Ji Ah watching Yeon eat. I feel like this is a running joke. In the tales, gumiho notoriously eat people’s livers, so seeing him eat normal food must be a bit eye-opening.

The text description for Shin Don was left untranslated in the version we’re watching but it reads: In A History of Goryeo, there’s record of Shin Don, a monk from the time of King Gongmin’s reign (1351-1374 C.E.), having been an old fox.

Subs: “Is it true that the monk of Goryeo Dynasty was a fox?” Us: ‘Yes, the one monk in all of Goryeo and for all of Goryeo. Guess he’d have to have been a fox in that case.’ This should probably have been translated as: "So then, Shin Don...is it a fact that the Goryeo monk Shin Don was a fox?”

Ji Ah: “Oh my god.” heh

Do You Really Want to See It?

Wait, they walked all the way from Insadong to Digital Media City? Okay, this is one of the (few) pitfalls of being fairly familiar with Seoul. Sometimes it’s really obvious when two locations don’t connect and then it pulls me out of the drama. I think we’re supposed to believe that the Snail Bride is in the vicinity of Ji Ah’s broadcast station, seeing as her team are lunchtime regulars, but the the two neighborhoods are nowhere near each other.

Yeon’s line in the subs here is: “A. I’m a busy man. B. We may currently be living in the same world, but there is a big difference between where we come from.” Personally, I would have translated this as: “Firstly, I haven’t got that much free time. Secondly, we may be unavoidably living mingled together, but the world I belong to and the world you belong to are incontrovertibly different.”

Subs: “Those who got a peek at my world ended up going crazy or dying young.” More literally: “In the past, there have been those who got a glimpse of the world’s secrets. Well, most of them either went mad or had their lives cut short.”

Minor detail, but Ji Ah’s response subbed as: “I don’t care. I’ll stay out of your way. Just don’t disappear.” should more literally be: “Just don’t disappear from my sight (lit. ‘from before me’).”

The sub on Ji Ah’s line here reads: “She (Sae Rom) and I both had nightmares.” What she actually says is: “Me and my hubae also had nightmares,” meaning that she (Ji Ah) and Jae Hwan had nightmares in addition to Sae Rom. Which is why Yeon refers to them as ‘contagious’.

Okay, is it just me, or does LDW look exceptionally unreal in this scene?

Bulgasari

I’m not familiar with the actor who plays the bulgasari (pretty sure he’s a new face), but he did a great job making his movements uncanny here. The firey CG effects are fun too.

Heck yeah! Yeon sure knows how to make an entrance. Seeing as how he instructed Ji Ah on what to do, I’m pretty sure he was there the whole time......show-off.

Once again, I’m digging the fight scene underscored by ‘The Uninvited.’ I would happily watch an entire series that’s just Yeon and Ji Ah solving supernatural cases and hunting down baddies who disturb the peace.

The Smirk™ XD I’m 90% sure this was another LDW ad lib.

Lol Yeon. Subs: “Really? Then am I the jerk here?” More literally: “Really? Then I guess I’m the only bad guy, huh?”

On a linguistic note, the bulgasari speaks to Yeon in old-timey speech, once again playing up their mutual identity as creatures of lore.

It’s only at this point that, prompted by Ji Ah, Yeon finally reveals the bulgasari’s identity. This is accompanied by a brief chyron telling us that they appear when the world is in disorder, and Ji Ah supplies that they eat nightmares.

To elaborate a bit, bulgasari are one of the better known Korean creatures of lore. There are two different sets of hanja for them: (bulgasari 不可殺伊 ‘can-not-kill’) and (bulgasari 火可殺伊 ‘fire-can-kill’), which explains why, depending on the telling, they’re either un-killable or only die by fire. In traditional lore, feeding them metal makes them grow larger and stronger, which, while not the case in TotNT, is probably what inspired the coin-gobbling.

Subs: “Yes they are especially fond of broadcasting studios, which are packed with people. Eating metal reveals their true identities.” That subtitle went a bit sideways. It’s not that they like broadcast stations in particular, but crowded places like broadcast stations. So it should read: “They like places with lots of people, like the broadcast station, and if you feed them metal, they reveal their true colors.”

Okay, Yeon’s line that’s subtitled as, “The hostage will answer,” is more literally: “Hey, hostage. Try answering me.” It’s worth noting that, while he calls her ‘injil-bun’ (injil = hostage + bun = the polite word for a person), he’s still speaking to her in banmal, so he’s once again being cheeky.

It’s taking some license, but I would translate Yeon’s question to Ji Ah here as: “In this moment,* what exactly can you do other than rely on me to save you?” which is essentially what he means. [*Note: literally, ‘at this timing,’ and once again, ‘timing’ is in English.]

We get a series of short scenes lining up some of the side characters who will become our key players on the island: the fisherman find the severed head, Ji Ah grills Detective Baek about the case, and Rang approaches Pyung Hee with his usual devil’s bargain pitch. I didn’t really notice anything here that I think is important enough to the central plot or characters that it’s worth commenting on (especially given how massively long this post is already), so I’m just going to call it good and move right along. ;)

Pfft I definitely wasn’t expecting the bulgasari to be literally chilling in Yeon’s freezer (not that he had a choice). This is somewhat interesting given they’re typically thought to be weak to fire, not ice.

Subs: “I’ll die even if I tell you where he is.” More literally: “Whether I die in this way [by Yeon’s hand], or that [by Rang’s], it is all the same.”

Brother Complex

Sub: “Don’t even think of hurting her.” More literally: “Just try touching one hair on her head.”

Oh my gosh Rang’s face ㅠㅠ This was the first time I felt Kim Beom really got to display his acting chops in this role, and boy, was I glad to see it. This was also when I knew Rang was going to make me cry.

Yeon: “You’re acting like this because you lack affection.” The expression Yeon uses is ‘aejeong gyeolpip,’ which literally does mean ‘affection lack/want/absence,’ but I would have translated it as ‘affection-starved,’ since saying Rang ‘lacks affection’ could also be interpreted to mean Rang is incapable of expressing affection.

Yeon: “Why’s that?” Lol Lee Dong Wook. Also, this one line is cheekily in polite speech.

Subs: “Just because of a woman you gave up your position as a mountain spirit, left the mountain, and you even...” More literally: “Just because of one mere human woman you gave up your position as a mountain god, turned your back on the mountain, and..!!”

Yeon: “Yes, I know. I even abandoned you.” Rang-ah~ ㅠㅠ I recently received an ask as to whether or not I believed Yeon had truly abandoned Rang, which I answered here.

Oof, Yeon giving Rang advice as an older brother. In Korea, nagging is seen as a sign of affection. You may recall Ji Ah was very excited for her dad to nag her about her boyfriend in episode 12.

Sub: “You crazy fool.” Rang literally calls his brother a ‘michin nom,’ ‘michin’ meaning ‘crazy.’ ‘Nom’ is a pronoun that, depending on how it’s used, can mean anything from ‘guy,’ to ‘jerk,’ to ‘bastard.’

Sub: “I don’t need to know.” Actually: “There’s no need [for you to tell me].” The two are subtly different. Yeon’s saying he’ll find out on his own, not that he doesn’t want to know.

Fun fact: Kim Beom said in his script reading interview (before they started filming) that he was a bit worried about his onscreen dynamic with Lee Dong Wook because, while Rang has to hate Yeon, LDW is a hyung that KB likes so much in real life. What a cutie.

We cut briefly over to Ji Ah on the phone with Jae Hwan, asking him to look after Sae Rom while she chases down the skull lead.

As an aside here, Ji Ah calls Sae Rom, ‘Kim-jak’ (short for ‘jakga,’ meaning ‘writer’). In Korea, it’s common to refer to someone by their role or title. This might indicate distance, but Ji Ah’s shortening it makes the term familiar and speaks of their camaraderie. In the subtitles, this has become, ‘Ms. Kim,’ which is oddly distant given their frenemyship.

The Island

Is it just me, or does it feel like there should have been a scene here explaining how and why Yeon came to be on the boat? I’m assuming it got deleted due to time constraints, but I feel like it was needed.

Pfft The way Ji Ah pops up from behind Yeon, cutting comically into the dramatic shot of Lee Dong Wook’s windswept profile + BGM was great.

In case it wasn’t already apparent, Kimite patches are used to alleviate sea sickness, so this is further undermining the mood of a second ago haha

Yeon’s line is subbed: “I’d like to keep it to myself,” but this should more literally be: ‘Let’s each work individually/play it solo.’

Sub: “No, thank you.” What Yeon actually says: “Hard pass.” hahaha (Literally: ‘I’ll immediately/urgently decline,’ but tonally, ‘hard pass’ is closer).

The subs have Yeon’s line as: “You need to be careful what you pay attention to.” I would have translated this as: “If that’s the reason [you’ve come], go back. You mustn’t recklessly lend an ear [to such things].” His tone and phrasing are both surprisingly gentle.

Subs: “My guts keep telling me, that this is a very suspicious combination.” Well, my guts keep telling me, that this is a very suspicious sub haha I would have translated Yeon’s voiceover as:

Yeon: The same boat...the same island...a woman with the same face as that girl. My instincts speak to me relentlessly, telling me there’s something amiss about this combination.

Pfft The contrast between Ji Ah's dismount from the boat and Yeon’s.

Lol Yeon’s ‘excuse me’ was totally rude

For the record, from the moment Yeon sets foot on the island, he speaks to everyone in banmal. That’s bad form towards any stranger, but it’s especially rude considering their age. Sure, Yeon’s way older, but they don’t know that.

Ji Ah mouthing “What?” in English haha

Yeon clocking the effectively creepy villagers. Turns out the right BGM and camerawork can make anything creepy. Point to the director.

Settling in on the Island

Ji Ah’s line subbed as, “I thought you didn’t want to be involved,” should more properly be: “I thought you just said we should each play it solo?”

Yeon’s line is similarly mis-subbed as: “I changed my mind. Don’t let it bother you.” What he actually says is much ruder: “I’ll do what I want! Butt out.” Which explains Ji Ah’s affront heh

Lol Yeon walking right in front of the camera. Anyone who has ever had a pet recognized this moment.

I love how Yeon is being completely tactless and insensitive but then grudgingly course-corrects when Ji Ah glares daggers at him.

Fisherman (subs): “It gives me a bad feeling in my mouth.” Excuse me, what? haha The line is: “The more I think about it, the more it bothers me.”

Lol Ji Ah: “In the documentaries I watched, they say digging holes is your speciality” (complete with digging gesture).

Fun fact: Ji Ah blocking the way with her leg and Yeon burrowing under it was something Jo Bo Ah and Lee Dong Wook came up with themselves. Ji Ah’s line was scripted, but I’m nearly positive Yeon’s comeback of, “Burrowing is my speciality,” was an ad lib by Lee Dong Wook. Once again, casting Lee Dong Wook is the gift that keeps on giving.

WAIT. Subs: “You can’t go.” / “Borrowing is my specialty.” Hahaha What even? Cheon’ho Lee Yeon: professional mooch.

The way we then cut to Yeon ‘burrowing’ into a freezer of ice cream is just perfect. Point to the director.

Once again, Yeon is talking to all the village elders in banmal.

“You have a terrible service mentality.” pfft

OH. Ji Ah’s response to the misogynistic fisherman is just A++

Her line here is literally: “Oops, I’m afraid I’m overflowing with ‘jeong.’” ‘Jeong’ (情) can be a little hard to translate. It literally means ‘emotion’ or ‘affection,’ but the way it’s used linguistically can be a bit complex. The sub here was: “I’m afraid I was too generous,” which I actually think is pretty decent. The turn of phrase in Korean though, using the word ‘overflowing’ while over-pouring on the man, made her response doubly witty.

Hah. I love the way Yeon just raises his eyebrows when he comes out of the market and spots her.

Subs: “How dare a witch from outside come here and...” He actually calls her a ‘michin nyeon’ meaning ‘crazy bitch,’ so the line is: “Crazy bitch, where do you think this is that you dare...”

Ji Ah’s line that begins, “If you’re going to hit me...” is just SO great. We stan (1) queen.

Subs: “Nice. You’re tough.” This is a bit hard to translate. Yeon’s line is literally: “Oh~ What ggang is like this?” ‘Ggang’ can be translated as ‘guts,’ ‘tenacity,’ or ‘persistence.’ Naver dictionary describes it as: ‘a personal trait found in one who never gives in, when put in whatever difficulties,’ which is so spot on for Ji Ah. I might approximate this as: “Woah~ Just how gutsy are you?”

The way he's just like, ‘I approve. Here, have a shikhye~’ is mildly adorable. Did you buy that for her, Yeon, or were you planning on having two but decided she’d earned one? haha

Ji Ah’s response is equally great. The sub says: “That was nothing.” which isn’t a bad option for a subtitle, but what she literally says is ‘saesam-seureopge’ (새삼스럽게), where ‘saesam’ means ‘now? at this point? after all this time?’ So she’s basically saying, ‘You’re bothering with that observation, over that little stunt, after everything else you’ve seen me do?’ haha

“I plan to mooch off of you as much as possible.” Pfft I love how Yeon actually moves to stand behind her just to underscore the point. That’ll be Lee Dong Wook again.

Wow, these are some sketchy old people.

Subs: “People aren’t the only ones with eyes and mouths.” What he actually says is, “Are people the only ones with eyes and ears?”

The Forest Spirit

Wow, the lighting in this scene is just A++ Point to the lighting team (or is that just natural? It feels almost too pretty to have just been natural).

I was too distracted by Lee Dong Wook to notice the first time, but Ji Ah’s face when Yeon shushes her is great haha

On a linguistic note, this scene is one of the few in which Yeon code switches to archaic speech as he’s addressing the tree spirit. It’s the linguistic equivalent of him putting on his ‘mountain god’ hat. (He still speaks to Ji Ah normally, though).

We cut briefly to the mudang (shamaness), and I’m sorry, I know this is a traditional way of speaking, but it always makes me laugh because it’s so over-the-top.

The spirit addresses Ji Ah as ‘agasshi,’ which would be strange if she was actually a modern young girl, but makes sense for a spirit who’s at least 600. Overall, it helps to remind viewers of her supernatural-ness.

Yeon telling Ji Ah she did a good job is so cute. I feel like they’re rapidly becoming a quirky tag-team duo and I’m 100% here for it.

Mudang: “His body returned to shore before his head did! Your father!” This line was explained in the backstory collection.

Okay, the mudang needs to dial it back like 10 levels here.

Possibly just me, but Yeon swatting the air with his hand as he peers into the cave struck me as vaguely fox-like.

Minor detail again, but the chyron here is subbed as ‘Jangsansa Cave.’ It’s actually ‘Jangsan sagool,’ not ‘Jangsansa gool.’ ‘Sagool’ is written with the characters 蛇窟 meaning ‘snake hole.’

Lol Yeon freezing mid-motion when Ji Ah tells him to stay put. That is 110% Lee Dong Wook’s sense of humour. Praise the drama gods for Lee Dong Wook - this show wouldn’t have been half as fun without him.

Fun fact: This cave is actually intimately tied to Ah Eum’s past with Imoogi and the story of how she came to be his ‘bride’ (read: sacrifice). I translated the tvN description here. I actually think this was fairly important information, so it’s a shame it wasn’t covered in the drama.

Sleepover with a Gumiho

When Ji Ah asks Yeon why he’s insisting on staying at Pyung Hee’s, his response is subbed as: “I have my reasons.” This is more properly: “You don’t need to know.”

Sub: “We don’t eat that crap!” Yeon’s line doesn’t have a subject, but this should properly be: “I don’t eat that crap!” We know from Yeou Nui that some gumiho in this world actually do eat liver.

“Heard of the Chinese liver fluke?” Ha. Yeon literally says ‘kan distoma,’ i.e. ‘liver distomiasis’ or ‘liver fluke’. While there was a well-known outbreak in China, it isn’t inherently Chinese. There’s a Korean word for it too (간흡충), but once again, Yeon opts for the loan word, adding further humour to the gumiho disavowing liver consumption - for health reasons, no less pffft

The BGM playing as Yeon sees Ah Eum in Ji Ah is once again ‘Parting at the River of Three Crossings.’

Bok Hye Ja’s line to Shin Joo is subbed as: “He went to the island to find this reincarnated girl?” The word she uses is actually ‘gakshi,’ which is an antiquated word generally meaning ‘bride’ (as in ‘the Snail Bride’), but it can also just mean ‘young woman.’

For the record, the Snail Bride speaks to Shin Joo in banmal, who speaks to her in jondaetmal

Shin Joo: “Contrary to how he looks, he’s the devoted type, after all.” Et tu, Shin Joo?

Shin Joo’s line is subbed: “As if that’s a good thing,” but I would have translated it as: “Romantic, my foot!”

Sub: “At least once in our lives we come across that one person we want to give our lives to.” This should be: ‘risk our lives for.’

Sub: “I won’t ever devote myself to love. My goal will be to protect Mr. Lee.” Actually: “I won’t ever risk my life for love. I’m going to protect Lee Yeon-nim!”

“Well that can also be called love, can’t it?” Thank you for this, Show. I know some people think TotNT champions romantic love above all else, but I simply don’t agree.

When Yeon checks Ji Ah again for his fox bead, the BGM playing is once again ‘Thread Rings’

I love how they did the CG on whatever is happening with Yeon’s powers here. I would have loved to have gotten more of an explanation of the fox bead and its powers (and Yeon’s, for that matter), but alas.

I love that Yeon tucks Ji Ah in even after re-confirming (or so he thinks) that she isn’t Ah Eum. It was important to me that he came to like and appreciate her for herself before learning that she was, in fact, his lost love.

Morning on the Island

Ji Ah wakes to find Yeon gone, the blanket tucked around her, and her expression tells us she’s onto him: sure, Yeon can be a grump, but he’s also a complete softie. heh

Yeon is, once again, talking to the elders in banmal. Why do I keep mentioning it? Because no matter how many times I see it it’s still funny.

Okay, Lee Dong Wook has this way of pointing at things with his entire arm that I find ticklish. Yeon ends up coming across like a petulant child. On a cultural note, in Korea, pointing at people like this is considered impolite.

Yeon dangling the ginseng behind Ji Ah as extra incentive pfft Wild ginseng can be massively expensive in Korea (on the order of hundreds of dollars), so this is actually a very effective bribe.

Also, can we take a moment to appreciate that Yeon woke up before dawn, and, instead of going back to sleep, went into the mountains to hunt for wild ginseng, then set about using it to bribe the elders into answering Ji Ah’s questions for her. Entirely of his own accord. Like I said: softie.

Side note: Lee Dong Wook’s eyebrows are working overtime in this scene and I’m honestly a little jealous.

The newspaper Jae Hwan finds at the library is dated August 13, 1954, which Ji Ah immediately recognizes as having been just after the Korean War (if you’ll recall, this is when the forest spirit told them something ominous had come to the island).

This newspaper is actually really cool. You can see how, in the past, Korean newspapers used a lot of hanja in addition to the phonetic hangeul, similar to modern Japanese. The headline reads, “Headless Corpse, Discovered on Eohwa Island, Investigation Hits Dead End.” (頭 없는 屍身, 漁花島에서 發見, 捜査迷宮으로).

Okay, to be honest, this final scene - absent the extra context given in the next episode - made me question Ji Ah’s smarts again. I wondered why she was chasing down the clearly unstable guy just to question him, but it makes sense once you know she meant to warn him his life was in danger.

As usual, Yeon knows how to make an entrance. Cue ‘Gumiho’ theme.

Yeon stopping when Ji Ah tells him to never stops being satisfying.

The BGM playing as we cut over to Rang is ‘The House of Ghosts.’

Okay, those shots of Thirsty and Hungry were full-on horror movie and I actually kind of like it? I never watch horror as a genre, but for some reason, I found I missed this spooky element when it dropped out of the later episodes.

Oh, I like that Yeon went and made her a poultice. Very ex-mountain god of you, sir.

“Long time no see, Lee Yeon.” Iconic. And creepy. I love the attention to detail Jo Bo Ah displays in the difference between how she acts Ji Ah vs. Imoogi. Imoogi’s voice is higher pitched, and gives off more of a loose-cannon feel compared to Ji Ah, who speaks in a lower, more grounded tone.

Sub: “It’s me. The person you’ve been waiting for.” Imoogi literally says: “It’s me. That thing you’ve been waiting for.” This is obviously a big clue since normally one wouldn’t refer to oneself in such a way. It also reflects the fact that, unlike Terry-Imoogi, Jimoogi perceives no value in Ji Ah herself. (Yes, I call Ji Ah-Imoogi ‘Jimoogi,’ and sadly, no, I didn’t come up with it).

Yikes, Jimoogi tracing Yeon’s face was all menace and zero cute. Point to Jo Bo Ah.

Boy, this show really knows how to make an exit.

Blue Mooooooooon!! The guitar (bass?) riff is just so catchy.

And that concludes Episode 2. Thank you to everyone who commented on the first one. If not for your encouragement, I probably wouldn’t have continued. I also genuinely enjoy hearing from people, so send me your thoughts! This is a weird, unprecedented mashup of a live reaction post, behind the scenes info, and detailed language and culture notes, and I’m still learning how to balance the three. Your feedback is always welcome.

I’d also like to take a moment to credit my sister, who, in addition to weighing in on a lot of the translations, is also the chief researcher and fact checker for these. I, meanwhile, am in charge of bad jokes and snark. I mentioned before that these take longer than you might expect, but it’s really true. The time we spend watching the episode is actually the least of it, and as much as I enjoy them, they are a huge time suck.

So. This is what I’m going to do. If you’d like to see more of these, or if you enjoyed this, or if you’ve enjoyed any of the translations or commentary or whatnot I’ve been posting recently, please consider buying me a coffee. If you follow the link, you can buy me a $2 cup of virtual coffee. I’ve never done this before, but I’ve decided to give it a try. It’ll help me to gauge how much interest there is, and, possibly more importantly, it will help me to justify all the time haha. If and when I’ve established there’s enough interest, I’ll proceed with Episode 3. ;)

#tale of the nine tailed #totnt #lost in translation #구미호뎐 #kdrama #korean language #korean culture

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decayandfanfics · 3 years

Text

The great book of sayings

PAIRINGS: Tomura Shigaraki x FemReader

SUMMARY: He looks at you, his scarlet eyes fixed on yours, burning a hole through your head, every bit the predator he is, but you are as tough as it gets, so, against your better judgment and any well-founded logic, you answer his silent threat, the animalistic look he gives you with nothing less than a fearless smirk, irises burrowing into his pupils.A clever girl. He thinks, finally labeling you inside his head, cursing himself in the very moment he allows his brain to think of you as more than an asset. He is sure (he knows himself enough to know) he’ll think of this moment many times from now on.A clever pretty girl.

Reader is a typical college student until she gets herself tangled with the league of villains.

WARNINGS: Unhealthy/complicated relationships, violence, Tomura being Tomura, mentions of murder, heroes’ abuse of power, smut later.

A/N: I’m trying so hard to write crusty boy here really in character. At least after AfO is taken. Any misspelled words, english is not my native language so i’m trying Helen.

___________________________________________________________

Chapter 8 / Chapter 9

You show me the man and I’ll show you the rule.

Tomura thinks he knows nothing about beauty, but then she proves him wrong.

(He thought her pretty before already, but after seen it…he concludes she’s the most beautiful, terrific thing he’s ever seen. Not that he would tell her that.)

A feral dangerous creature living inside of her with no other match.

No other but him.

Oh...you have no idea...She told him.

It happens so fast. One moment she’s there, sitting in front of her laptop, pretty and quiet and serene. All harmony and light, resting softly under the sunlight, between her dumb succulents and the spices that fill her home. Then he can hear Dabi’s caustic laugh and the wrong words. He’s disrespectful, an instigator, skilled in the art of making others lose their composure like is his favorite game.

He hears the foul words, the berating, and the mocking aimed to him, while she sits wide eyed and impossible flustered by the kitchen table.

Dabi smirks triumphant, like he always does after giving everyone a piece of his drama and Tomura watches him, wincing, reminding himself again that Dabi is supposedly oldest than him and Toga, and yet he does his best to being an annoying brat.

Tomura knows better to just let him bark, his remarks mean nothing to him, he knows what he is, and he knows what he isn’t. He’s a freak, yeah. That too, but he isn’t a child anymore, so he let it slide, keeping his eyes glued to his phone arching an inquisitive brow, ready to just let it die there.

He just forgot about the stupid little stunts of bravery she has this tendency to commit. (An annoying dangerous trait that makes him chuckle with something akin to fondness.)

She’s having none of the bullshit, Dabi’s little remarks had fed her up after a whole week of spiteful teasing, her precious patience has run thin.

“blue eyes are a mutation too, so you are no one to talk about it.”

The moment she opens her mouth, Tomura feels something warm filling the hollow place where his dead heart should go and it’s so foreign to him that for a moment he panics and thinks (very stupidly) that maybe his energy drink-based diet is finally going to kill him, and he (barely in his sweet twenty’s) is having a stupid heart attack.

But the pain never comes, it’s just her, voicing a clever answer, defending him.

“A quirkless little bitch? Seriously, Dabi? Where you raised in a fucking barn that you know nothing but fuck this and bitch that?

He wants to make her shut it, but he can’t find the words. Not when her remarks are sharp and funny to hear. (Besides, her voice sounds so sweet when she’s throwing smart ass angry comments just to back him up.)

It warms him and enrages him equally. How dare she to defend him? He can speak for himself on his own and doesn’t need her to make any back up about an insult he doesn’t care for. Stupid pretty woman. Trying to shut Dabi, putting herself in danger for the likes of him...Is she insane? (later that day, he’ll conclude that she must be pretty fucking nuts to have them all in her home after all, but somehow the thought only makes him like her more.)

“yeah. I know stupid cunt too.”

Dabi likes to cause havoc and now he’s pissed, so he throws a vulgarity aimed at her. Tomura feels the hot pang of anger at the other man, because the offense is not only an insult, but also a lie. She’s not stupid nor a cunt. She's sharp as a knife and kind enough to share with them.

“Dabi, cut it out.” He warns with a grimace, and now the fight has everyone tense in the room.

“I’m sure you do. Pretty useful to describe yourself I bet.” She snarls showing her teeth, an angry frown darkening her features and Tomura swears her eyes begin changing color.

“you sure like to bet, like how you are betting I don’t burn you alive for being an annoying bitch.”

This time Tomura gets fucking furious, something animal revolving inside of him at the idea of Dabi threatening her. But the fight is escalating so fast, he can’t say anything before she answers back.

“Fuck off, Dabi. This might be shocking for you, but you don’t scare me.”

He wants to laugh at this, truly. Feisty little thing she is when angered, all her soft ways and nerd knowledge thrown out the window in a fit of cocky bickering and a part of him is living for the chaos of it.

“now, that’s pretty fucking stupid of you.”

“Dabi, shut up!” Tomura growls irked with the way her hair has begun to float over her shoulders, now completely convinced that she’s not quirkless at all.

“I’m not the one insulting everyone just because I cannot deal with some fucking daddy issues.”

God fucking dammit woman, just shut up. He thinks frustrated, giving her a look worth a stab.

“YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT” Dabi snarls before kicking the little table in the living room, breaking one of its legs with a loud crack.

“CUT IT OUT!” she screams this time, standing from her chair “I don’t have to know when it’s plainly obvious you have problems with authority.”

“you really think you are so clever, don’t you?” Dabi states, crossing the living room, aiming to her, so Tomura leaves his place in the corner to stand at her side without even thinking why.

“I know I am, asshole!”

Dabi stops his tracks, looming over her like a monster. His eyes scanning her face before looking at Tomura, who stands by her with his hands open in front of him in clear warning.

The black-haired man looks at her before moving to Tomura, his brows raised in surprise as he chuckles darkly.

Shigaraki hates the way he looks at him, like he knows his thoughts. Like he knows he’s been creeping into her room to watch her sleep and the sinister lustful visions that sometimes plague his dreams after some playful back and forth every time she defies him with some smart-ass comment.

“stupid woman. You should know better.”

And then…he just slaps the laptop out of the table; the computer smashing open against the cemented ground.

Tomura remembers this moment like one would remember the witness of a car crush or a catastrophe. A simple second enough to amaze him for a lifetime.

The way her eyes just ignite into scorching red lights shining like burning embers under her frown brow. Her hair floats free from gravity over her shoulders like a terrible chaotic crown as her mouth flash pearly teeth in a feral snarl.

He watches how she claws her right hand, fingers curling, knuckles tensing and Dabi is suddenly choking under the pressure of some raw power. His limbs twisting painfully in horrific motion and unnatural angles in complete agony.

A second later and before anyone could grasp what’s happening, her other hand pointing pinky, index and thumb to Compress, Toga and himself, keeping them frozen in their place, a strange rigid pressure making him feel like he’s full of cement and any movement will shatter his bones and snap his spine.

He can’t move, he can barely breathe. Feeling like if every fiber of his being, every muscle, every cord is solid hard under his skin, unavailing him to get away.

But he can watch, so he watches her terrified and amazed.

Her quirk is rare, and powerful and dangerous. But she keeps it locked away, sleeping soundly, safely caged inside her ribs, like the best hidden weapon, perfect for torturing bodies and bending wills. Buried deeply under her layers of kindness and humor.

One twitch of a finger, and Dabi’s neck would snap in two and they can do nothing but just watch when little blood vessels begin to burst in the white of his eyes as he pants desperate for air, his veins contorting furiously under the marred skin of his neck and the flames scatter in some random parts of his body without any control.

Tomura swears he can hear Dabi’s bones crackle under the invisible force as his spine bends backwards in a sickening angle.

And, as sudden as it begins, ends.

Her hair falls and her eyes are no longer red. Dabi breathes again falling to his knees and for a moment Tomura thinks he will cry out of pure fright.

For a moment he wonders if Toga and Compress want to cry too because that felt like certain death, but is sweet, somehow. Something within him squirms joyfully with the notion of her own violence. She is as dangerous as him, no damsel in distress, no little girl in need of care, no simple quirkless girl, but a horrifying woman. A dangerous and powerful creature with a quirk made for torment, just like-

He looks at her, just to find a sad disappointed face. A thick trail of blood began sliding silently from her nose, tainting the perfect bow of her lip. Only then he notices the bloodshot eyes and how the color has run from her face.

She stands quiet and bitter watching between her hands and Dabi trying to catch his breath. Her face giving away guilt and self-loathing (two feelings he’s very familiar with.) but unlike him, she is no tormentor, she grasps no joy in watching Dabi suffer, nor do she wish of making them quiver to the sight of her.

She is kind, and brave, and witty. Humorous girl, quick at wordplay and puns; buying vitamins and oranges for them and something about no one getting scurvy under her watch.

He wants to laugh hysterically at her sight because she is magnificent, and for a moment he thinks that the boy with the destructive touch and the girl with the tormenting gaze sounds like a hell of a name for rulers and his heart shivers in excitement, but she is crying and clutches her guilty hands against her chest and ask them to forgive her for using her quirk on them.

She didn’t mean to; she didn’t want to. She likes them all very much, so she promises she’ll never hurt them again, and somehow it reminds him of something, but he cannot place a finger on what exactly.

He feels the sorrow drowning him. A grudge so horrid it makes him want to vomit and scratch his neck raw because something in her resembles something in him, but he cannot really grasp the motive of such connection, only knowing it has something to do with the hands he carries around like a symbol of his own distress and a little black-haired boy crying in some familiar backyard.

The sound of the bathroom door startles him and she’s no longer in the living room, but he can hear the quiet sobbing coming from behind the door.

Finally, Dabi decides to just fall backwards against the cold floor, still panting, an arm over his eyes.

Only then Spinner breaks the dreadful silence and ask the question they all want to make.

“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT.”

Chapter 10

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aiweirdness · 5 years

Text

Dungeon crawling or lucid dreaming?

I’ve done several experiments with a text-generating neural network called GPT-2. Trained at great expense by OpenAI (to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars worth of computing power), GPT-2 learned to imitate all kinds of text from the internet. I’ve interacted with the basic model, discovering its abilities to generate fan fiction, British snacks, or tea. I’ve also used a tool called gpt-2-simple that Max Woolf developed to make it easy to finetune GPT-2 on more specialized datasets - I’ve tried it on datasets like recipes or crochet. One of my favorite applications of GPT-2 and other text-generating neural nets is Dungeons and Dragons spells, creatures, character names, and character bios.

Recently Max published a tutorial on how to use GPT-2 to make new apps that are more complicated than just printing out large reams of text. To my delight, people have used them to made D&D games. First, there was Nick Walton’s AI Dungeon, in which a finetuned GPT-2 generates a story and three very strange action options at each step.

My latest obsession is GPT-2 Adventure, designed by a cognitive neuroscience student named Nathan, which lets you type in your own actions. And folks, this game is SO WEIRD and SO FUN.

YOU FLOAT IN SPACE, LIKE A BALLOON, AND AS YOU DROP THE CUBE, THE X, IT VANISHES IN A CLOUD OF GREASY BLACK SMOKE

When I first launch the game, this is what I’m greeted with, a simple text prompt reminiscent of nostalgic dungeon crawling games. It sets the scene. It waits for me to describe my next move.

Even getting to this point is like a blast from the past. The game runs in a Google Colab notebook, a format where you’re looking at cells of code, with cryptic comments, vaguely alarming warning messages, and all. It’s not a sleek web app, but feels more akin to playing a game on an old DOS machine, or maybe on a graphing calculator. There are only two clicks to begin playing, but there’s a good two-minute wait while the game loads.

And it’s my turn to type something.

>> look up

It takes several seconds for the game to respond, as if I’m playing it on a very ancient computer. The computer is in fact a state-of-the-art NVIDIA GPU, likely a K80 or a T4. The T4 could eat my laptop for lunch. I’m just playing with a very very large neural net. Finally it answers.

YOU'RE IN LABYRINTH OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE

Almost immediately, the context seems to have changed. I’m not floating at all. I’m in a maze. I guess I’ll walk somewhere.

>> walk north

THE TROLL STEPS OUT FROM BENEATH THE BRIDGE AND BLOCKS YOUR WAY

YOU ARE ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE CHASM

A NOD IS GIVEN TO THE INFINITE WONDER THAT IS URBZIG

A SOLID RAINBOW SPANS THE CHASM

And suddenly things are happening. There is a troll. There is a chasm. There is a rainbow. There is… Urbzig? I play it safe.

>> praise urbzig

URBZIG IS THE PATRON SAINT OF ZORK

HE IS THE GODFATHER OF ZORK, THE PLACE TO GET NEWS OF EPIC PROPORTIONS

URBZIG IS A STRONGMAN,遊 ALL

If you’ve played classic dungeon crawling games like Zork, you may recognize some of these names and phrases. Checking Nathan’s original post, I see that the training data is indeed drawn from these games. But because it’s based on GPT-2, the training data also in some sense also includes much of the internet. This gives it a lot of latent flexibility to deal with situations that were never in the classic games.

>> ask Harry Potter to try walking across the rainbow

ASK HARRY POTTER TO TRY WALKING ACROSS THE RAINBOW HE CAN'T THE RAINBOW IS EXTREMELY WIDE ABOVE YOU IS A LARGE DOME UP AROUND ITS NECK IS A STRONGG PORE [UNFORTUNATELY, THE DIRECTION OF TRAVEL IS A LOT MORE INTERESTING THAN YOU THINK ][YOU ARE IN A LARGE ROOM, WITH A PASSAGE TO THE EAST, A PASSAGE TO THE WEST, AND A WALL OF BROKEN ROCK TO THE SOUTH

An interesting effect of its human-written training data is that, like Visual Chatbot, it isn’t prepared for humans that ask questions about objects that aren’t there. If I refer to Harry Potter, then Harry Potter must be present. If I type something about a giraffe, then it assumes the giraffe must be present.

>> ask the giraffe which direction to go next

THE GIRAFFE IS ALREADY OUTFITTED WITH A VISOR WHICH IS CLEARLY DEFINED

Although it’s not clear that this AI actually understands what a giraffe is.

>> look at the giraffes

THE GAZEBO HAS DISAPPEARED

>> put giraffe in backpack

DONE

Navigating this world is like navigating in a dream. My location suddenly changes without warning. I thought I was by a chasm with a rainbow bridge. Now apparently I’m in a building. Dreamlike, it is also really hard to read text.

>> look around

YOU ARE IN A LARGE ROOM, WITH A PASSAGE TO THE SOUTH, A PASSAGE TO THE EAST, AND A WALL OF BROKEN ROCK TO THE NORTH A SIGN POSTED ABOVE THE NORTH WALL READS, "STOP! PAY TROLL!" A SMALL WINDOW CAN BE SEEN IN EITHER WALL

>> read sign

THE SIGN IS VERY SIMPLE

>> yes but read sign

WE NOW HAVE ALL FIFTEEN TREASURES IT IS TIME TO GO BACK INTO THE CAVE FOR THE END GAME

>> that's awesome. but i still want to know what the sign says. read sign.

YOU ARE IN A GAZEBO ROOM WHICH HAS DOORS ONLY TO THE EAST AND SOUTH

Another thing that’s surprisingly difficult to do is check inventory.

>> check inventory

DONE

>> check inventory

THERE IS AN INTERESTING LOOT HERE

>> what is the loot

WHAT IS THE LOOT?

>> check inventory

YOU ARE IN THE BAG CASE

Very occasionally I will succeed in opening a bag. It will usually be weird.

>> open bag

OPENING THE BAG REVEALS A TEA BAG

>> make tea

AY! A LOVELY SURPRISE FOR THE SURPRISE

More so than any other game I’ve played, I’m unsure of the rules here. Some weird things unexpectedly work.

IF YOU DON'T GET KILLED, YOU ARE TOAST

>> Eat the toast.

EAT THE TOAST IT TASTES LIKE A STEAK A STEAK IS PERFECTLY FINE

Other seemingly obvious things don’t work.

THERE IS A PATH TO THE NORTH, A PATH TO THE SOUTH, OR A STEEP PATHWAY CLIMBING SOUTHWEST ALONG THE EDGE OF A CHASM

>> go north

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT

>> go south

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT

>> go southwest

YOU WILL BE DESCENDING INTO A VALLEY THERE IS A NARROW BEACH TO THE NORTH AND A PATH LEADING INTO A CANYON TO THE SOUTHEAST YOU ARE ON THE CLIFF OVERLOOKING THE FAR SIDE OF THE ROOM A PATH LEADS SOUTH ALONG THE EDGE OF A CHASM, AND A NARROW PATH LEADING INTO A LOZENGE ROOM

Sometimes I’m wandering endlessly from room to room, from cave to cave, encountering the same chasm in slightly different variations, the same dried-up lake. Other times I’m embroiled in seemingly unescapable fights, usually with trolls. Often reality shifts entirely around me and I end up in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike, or in the hall of the mountain king. Everything seems weirdly familiar - even the room descriptions are echoes of classic dungeon crawling games. It is as if I’m dreaming about playing them again.

My actions also mold reality. I learn quickly to always check for diamonds, and never check for traps. If I find myself in trouble, I can always do something confusing and provoke a context change. Writing “In a large bowl, combine butter and sugars” is usually enough to teleport myself out of whatever situation I’m in. I can always ask a giraffe for advice, although the giraffe usually isn’t very helpful.

Without a particular mission to fulfill, the caves and chasms begin to blend into one another. I give myself missions, and that helps. Once I decide my goal is to put together a picnic (incessant “check for food” commands eventually yielded a sack with a lunch and a clove of garlic, belonging to a horse who agreed to join me on a picnic). Another time I demand a mission and am given some php code; i decide my mission is therefore to build a website, but am astounded when a unicorn steals my laptop. This is not the only time other content intrudes on the game’s fantasy landscape - once the game tries to tell me about finding cash online, and another time I am sadly informed that there is no wi-fi. I encounter dinosaurs and troikas, none of which were in the original training data. Occasionally things get creepy as hell.

>> check for loot

CHECK FOR LOOT HERE CHECK FOR GOLD HERE CHECK FOR TORCH HERE CHECK FOR BONE HERE DO CHEST COMPRESSIONS AGAIN DO CHEST ROTATE DO CRESCENT MOON APPEAR IN THE ROOM'S CENTER

>> do back away slowly

DO BACK AWAY SLOWLY DO NOT OVERDO IT THE CHEST WILL EXPLODE AND YOU WILL DIE OKAY, SO YOU SEE ME

You can play the game too! Just follow the colab notebook link in Nathan’s blog post. Tips: 1) It may be more fun if you set yourself an arbitrary goal to reach. 2) If you find things getting repetitive, try adjusting the temperature in the “Play the game” cell to 0.6 or 1.0.

Subscribers get bonus content: The fulltext of a couple of my adventures (much too long to include here).

You can order my book You Look Like a Thing and I Love You! It’s out November 5 2019.

Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Indiebound - Tattered Cover - Powell’s

#neural networks #harry potter #gpt-2 #dungeons and dragons #d&d #gpt-2-simple #gpt-2-adventure

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cherry3point14 · 4 years

Text

Stranger Than Fanfiction: Ch 4

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Dean x Reader Warnings: Like one big boy word. Criminal activity. Word count: 3,185. Chapter Summary: Staying late at work is usually nice and quiet. Usually. A/N: This chapter is so dumb but I love it a lot.

Ao3 if you prefer

Y/N would say that one of the perks of her job was getting out of the office from time to time. Sometimes a case required anything from a simple home interview to speaking to several family members over a number of days. She relished in the peace working away from inboxes and water cooler talk however, every once in a while she could find the same serenity in the uniform walls of her employment building. Today was one of those very days. Today she sat at her desk, alone, long past her colleagues' departure at five pm. The overhead lights were off and Y/N, whose fingers sped over the keyboard urgently, was lit only by the cool glow of her screen.

“It’s not super peaceful when you won’t shut up.” As much as you fought becoming complacent to the voice in all honesty you were glad to have her back in some small way. You hadn’t heard her for days now, not since you started reading Supernatural. It’s only now that you’d finished, she was back to her usual tricks. Some ridiculous ten-minute lecture about you waking up late for work was your reunion this morning. While it was true that you were very late for work today—two hours to be precise—she didn’t once mention that it was because of your late-night finishing off Swan Song.

That wasn’t too concerning. The voice ignoring your reading habits was minor in comparison to her being back at all. Her return meant your aneurysm hadn't been temporary and you were closer to one of two things. Solving the mystery of why Maggie Hall’s file was so important, or dying.

Obviously, option number one was preferable.

After an entire day of her, you have fallen completely into accepting that she's not going away anytime soon. For the most part, you have let her harp on like she’s looking for a book deal but now that you’re alone and trying to concentrate, you find yourself responding to her. For your own satisfaction of answering back.

She was feeling productive. Each word she wrote punctuated by the precise click of her fingers on the keyboard. A familiar sense of achievement swelled within her chest as she began to summarise her decision on the claim. Summaries are nothing more than detailed endings, which is why Y/N was particularly excited to be writing this one. More so than any other claim she had finished up before.

An ending was exactly what she was hoping for. The unusual situations she had found herself in over the last few days were too messy for even her to organize. Tangled up like a ball of string after being batted around by a cat. Logically then she was focusing on the only thing that made sense, tie up one loose end and the others would right themselves. Finish this piece of work and maybe she'd live.

How unfortunate then for Y/N that the universe did not look kindly upon her attempts to be orderly. How utterly unlucky that she had not guessed any of the answers correctly. Today was not fated to hold any happy endings for her. Not the closing of file twenty-four zero one, nor the reasonable explanations she had been searching for.

Your fingers stutter to a stop. What the hell does she mean you weren’t closing this claim? You are ten minutes of proofreading away from pressing submit, you had stayed late to finish. At this point, it would take an act of God himself to stop you.

That’s when you see a flash of light coming from reception. Flash is vague. A beam of light might be a better description, as in, the kind of beam emitted by a flashlight. Wait, there are two flashlights now. Oh shit.

Suddenly you taste bile in your throat and your hands are clammy enough to be sticky. The voice said this case would kill you and now you’re sitting here working late, and she’s saying you weren’t going to close it and… and… is it going to happen now? You’d assumed it was something in the file that killed you but you’d also assumed you had more time. Really, truly, this could be it. Imminent death means about to happen, not will happen when it’s convenient for you. This is it, isn’t it? You’re about to be accidentally murdered in an office robbery because you stayed to work late. On that particular file.

She was not prepared to die. Not while there still wasn’t a grey hair on her head or while she hadn’t been to the Grand Canyon. Y/N had no preparations for the end.

No. Not now. It couldn’t be.

She had no will, no funeral plans, and no video message to her family about a series of clues leading to a great treasure. And on Wednesday night, early June with spring barely making way for summer was the last possible moment she would ever expect to meet her maker.

You want to hide but it’s impossible. Hiding would require you to have some control over your body. An impossible feat, while you're listening with bated breath to what you assume, is your last paragraph.

Obviously, Y/N would not be dying tonight.

“Are you joking? How is that obvious?” You whisper into the dark, edging into frustration. Barely enjoying the relief of not dying when your narrator is toying with you.

She still had a new life to begin. One which began and ended with two men that had left as quickly as she'd met them. Fate has a perverted sense of humor and had chosen to push her forward into the unknown. This is why these important men were breaking into her office at precisely that moment.

The footsteps of the intruders get closer. You don’t have a direct view of reception but you’d seen the flashlights on account of it being dark in here. They sound like they're near reception, maybe twenty seconds from coming in. Once they’re in the main part of the office then all they’d have to do is turn a little to their left and they’d spot you. In the corner hanging out.

But it’s the guys breaking in? The cosplayers. They’re the wannabe Winchester’s who have turned to robbery to get their kicks?

You don’t know if it's actually them, not really. Not until they do take those last steps into the room but you hear them before you see them.

“Remind me why you haven't done some nerd computer thing to get this?”

“I already tried, remember? Their system says it’s still in process so none of the details are on their servers yet. And since we need to find out where the money went…”

“... we need to get the physical file. Got it.” Mystery man number one sighs before he continues, “S’no fun killing a monster if you don’t have to work for it.”

A monster? It’s almost impressive how much these guys committed to whatever insane game they're playing. Almost being the keyword. These guys were genuinely crazy, and that was coming from someone with an unexplainable voice in her head.

Y/N finally overcame the initial wave of fear that had hit her when the flashlights had cut through the darkness. She reached up and shut off the monitor on her desk, the last thing that had been lighting her up like a Christmas tree. Her laptop was still running in its dock, she had no intention of losing all her work. She only wanted to lose herself, hide, snuffing out the screen, and rolling her chair backward seemed to do the trick. She felt safer already. Her heartbeat returning to something akin to its normal steady rhythm now that she was cloaked in darkness. As soon as they were distracted she might even be able to risk slinking to the floor and hiding below her desk. It wasn’t a risk she was willing to take right now though, while they were still on high alert having just arrived.

You’re grateful that the voice is playing ball and giving you some useful information. It’s completely new, having so far only heard ominous foreshadowing and cryptic introductions, but it’s nice. Dare you say it, fun. For once in this whole ordeal, you actually feel like you’re in a story while you do exactly what she says. You sneak the smallest smile when you see their large shadows, finally step into the office. This might be where you have some luck on your side.

“You check out the desks, I’ll go find the filing cabinets.” It’s pretty hard to make out with their backs to you but you’d wager it was the taller shadow that said that.

The same bigger shadow starts walking towards the back of the office. He doesn’t know he’s heading towards the break room, although he probably thinks he has all night to figure it out. He can have all the time he wants as soon as you’re under your desk. Once you’re properly out of the way you look forward to not interrupting them as a stupid person might. You were perfectly ok with not being a hero.

Of course, she was not accustomed to the cat and mouse game of breaking and entering. Y/N was not used to dark corners and darker rooms. And since she hadn’t used one since the last time her power went out, she seemed to have forgotten how flashlights worked as well.

“What?” you splutter. Faith in the voice shattered in an instant.

In the next second, you’re blinded by a light in your eyes, you reach up to block it out but as you do his voice booms out. “Sam! We got company.”

The tall guy comes running and now there are two lights in your face.

“Do you think we could not blind me?” They start lowering their flashlights when the other shoe drops, “wait, Sam? You-you’re using the names too?” It shouldn’t shock you, they’re driving the car and wearing the flannel clearly, they’re adopting the names too. But until now you’d been able to compartmentalize the books you’d read and the men that drove around in a car with the Winchesters fictional license plate.

Coming face to face with them she feels completely different now. The territory is hers; her office, her desk, her mug with her name on. The problem; this was not her game, it was theirs. Y/N was simply working late whereas they were more adept at the after-hours version of this story. She might think they were delusional but this wasn’t the first crime she had them on the hook for. She could only imagine the hundreds, if not thousands, of other illegal activities they had gotten away with, all to play pretend.

“Nobody was supposed to be here.” The guy pretending to be Sam says to the guy who you can only imagine is pretending to be Dean.

“Well, there she is anyway.” Wannabe Dean huffs, both angry and disappointed at the same time. “But hey, maybe this can speed everything along, no more looking around in the dark at least.”

They’re both very good at talking about you while simultaneously ignoring you. Neither of them even flinch when you get up out of your chair and walk over to the light switch.

The room flooded with light like any room would when a switch is flipped, however, this wasn’t any kitchen light switch. The office is a large space and the fluorescents required to illuminate it are industrial. It’s enough to pain anyone's eyes with how sharply their pupils contract. Unless you are the one pressing the switch in the first place. It was Y/N’s hand flipping the four switches required and so her eyes were closed in preparation. However the mystery men had been seconds from bickering so they jerk their heads as if trying to escape the inescapable, like it's the first time they've ever seen anything so bright. Y/N felt wholly better with the heat on her closed eyelids. Because she knew when she opened them the office would hers again, the control would be hers.

When you dare to look they both whip their heads to you, shocked that you’ve moved. You’ve managed to find an ounce of confidence in the light, or if you believe the voice in your head, a whole gallon. “I don’t know what game you’re playing pretending to be people, first at the house and now this. I didn’t tell anyone about this,” you motion a hand at where they're standing, “clearly that was my mistake. So, uh-just get out of here and I won’t say anything else about it.”

“Sweetheart, we ain’t playing games here and we ain’t leaving.”

He steps towards you, a finger pointing to the floor to reiterate that he’s staying put. You wrongly assumed this would be as easy as it had been at Mrs. Halls when they'd run so quickly, forgetting that you'd had an audience there.

“You are if you don’t want me to call down to security. I’m sure the cops would love a case like this—there’s an eyewitness!”

Y/N would never in a million years be able to describe where the sudden anger that consumed her had come from. She was hardly an agitated person. She could be sad or sarcastic, she’d been known to give a measured but scathing comeback and some would even call her curious. That’s not to say she’d never been angry, she had, but anger was never the first thing she chose to be, or feel. It was always such a demanding emotion. So, then this agitation was almost foreign to her and the way it forced her hand, more so.

“Maybe we should…” Not Sam starts before he’s interrupted.

“No Sam. We need that file if we’re going to stop this thing and right now this is our only option.” He points at you now signaling that you are the ‘this’ part of his sentence; their only option.

In another life, she might have rolled over rather than stare down the barrel of this argument. She might have seen the opportunity to get rid of them by giving them something small, like say confidential information, and done it without question. This was not her old life, nor the old Y/N. This was the new life she hadn’t realized was starting. The funny thing was she hadn’t needed to know. All she’d needed was this man in front of her to force her into a rage and as if by magic, she had begun to transform.

You push past fake Dean to make your way back to your desk, “that’s not happening. All client information is property of First National which means it isn’t mine to give. Not to mention the fact that you didn’t say please.”

Her shoulder connects with his and it's the exact moment she realizes how close he was standing to her. He realizes the same. He’s close enough to grab her and spin her around but Y/N's body shudders tellingly with his fingers pressing into the flesh of her forearm.

“I don’t know what kind of power trip you think you're on but..." He grits through his teeth still holding you.

“Dean, can you calm down?”

The breaking point of your anger turns into a sardonic laugh aimed at him. “You too?” You pull your arm away and get back to your chair. “I can’t get normal criminals breaking in while I’m working late? It has to be two weirdos running around pretending to be the Winchesters.”

It’s clear immediately that you’ve said something neither of them was expecting. You’re sitting at your desk waiting for one of them to stop you from picking up the phone, while they don’t seem to even notice your hand is on the receiver.

“How do you know that? I mean, how do you know about us?” The tall guy that you refuse to call Sam, even in your head, asks.

Two pairs of eyes bore into you waiting for an answer and for some reason your hand goes lax on the phone. “I ran your plate from outside Mrs. Halls because you don’t work with me. And I found these books but I mean, why are you even driving around with fake plates from some books anyway?”

It was a simple question that you were hoping had a simple answer, you know, fanboys or something. Instead of any answer at all, they start having one of those lovely conversations that excludes your existence, again.

“Goddamn son of a bitch, we’ve got to get rid of those things.”

“Charlie said there’s no point now they’re online. How would we even start? Great example right here.”

“So what? We just roll over and die?”

Tall guy, not Sam, takes a reassuring step to fake Dean which means he takes a step away from you and your desk. “This might be a good thing ok, if she knows she can help us track it.”

You refuse to believe it because it’s ridiculous. Those books are works of fiction and there’s no possible way they are real. Because if the books are true then that means monsters are… nope. You live alone so there’s definitely no way. But you should clarify. Even if it’s a thousand percent the most ridiculous thing you have ever heard, you should still double-check.

“Are you trying to say that you’re actually Sam and Dean? Like, you think you’re Sam and Dean from the books?”

It’s scarily-similar-to-the-description-of-Dean who leans in with both hands flat on your desk and growls. “Honey, we don’t think okay, we are them. I’m Dean and this is Sam, and those books you decided to read? Yeah, they’re about us.”

“But that means monsters are…”

“Real. Monsters, angels, and everything between.”

She may not have known about the ticking clock already counting down the remaining seconds of her young life. She may mistakenly have thought that her newfound temper was the reason for her flushed cheeks. She did know one thing for sure. One completely life-changing fact with absolute certainty, because that fact was staring at her with more intensity than she'd ever known. A man named Dean Winchester just told her that every terrifying monster she could imagine was real.

The voice in your head, unfortunately, had not been wrong yet.

Continue to Chapter 5.

5eva tags: @divadinag @darthdeziewok @fluentinfiction @witch-of-letters @supernatural-teamfreewillpage @magnitude101999 @alexwinchester23 Dean babes: @thewinchesterchronicles @akshi8278 @bloodydaydreamer StrangerThanFiction tags: @jaylarkson

#dean x reader #supernatural fanfiction #spn x reader #dean winchester x reader #spn fanfiction #supernatural #spn #spn fanfic #supernatural fanfic #dean winchester #dean winchester x you #dean x you #dean x y/n #dean dean the soft lil bean

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bold-lettered-blog · 4 years

Text

#17

things i imagined

kyungsoo/sehun, pg-13, 8000+ words

sehun is really proud of having more than two lines (and kyungsoo is too)

(sorting through my old computer, i found this gem i started way back in 2015, after the promotions of ‘love me right’. i don’t write fics anymore, which is kind of sad and somehow inevitable given the very different life i’m living right now, but it was so heartwarming to reminisce about all the beautiful times i spent loving sesoo and writing and this fandom... i thought i’d share it with you. so here it goes, in all it’s raw, unfinished, un-proof read glory, a draft from something that could have been a whole novel. at the end, there’s a long note i wrote to myself how the story would turn out)

The manager hyungs tell him the exact same thing that Baekhyun's been saying all along. "I feel it, I feel it sooo deep in my heart that you're going to slay the next comeback. You're going to have more than two lines, you'll see," is what Baekhyun said, but it left Sehun feeling nothing else but a bitter aftertaste in his mouth. He is perfectly aware of his incapabilities of singing, and he has so much to improve both dancing and rapping wise, he knows that, yet the cold fact that he has pretty much nothing to work with makes him grim and gloomy.

That is why, on a sunny Thursday morning, when all the members are gathered in one of the practice rooms with Jongin dancing to himself in one of the corners, he lacks the feeling of any kind of excitement. The lyrics are about to be handed to them - some of the parts he's heard, mostly Yixing's, when he was singing in the shower, but he has no idea what's about to come right to him. Maybe Baekhyun's right, and he's going to have more than 6 seconds to prove his talent, but that seems too beautiful to be true. God, Sehun, get yourself together, he thinks. Jongdae pokes him in the waist then, staring into his soul like he's looking at his only child. Oh, Sehun often forgets that his face is like a mirror to anything that's going on in his head.

"Why so down?" Jongdae says to him, his frizzly poodle hair crowning his head almost perfectly. Sehun sometimes feels jealous, because Jongdae is one of the very best vocalists in SM, even if he's not as smooth as Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo. Well, if Sehun could be anyone for a day he sure would be Kyungsoo, Kyungsoo the brave, the manly, the one with the silky voice. He would sing like an angel and more. He would be smiley, and nice, and very delicate and soft. Because – and Kyungsoo would hit him if he heard that – this is what Kyungsoo is. And Sehun wants that, even if just a little bit, to feel that kind of power in his voice, to feel small and cute and down to earth at the same time.

Sometimes Sehun forgets Kyungsoo is human. He is, after all, but Sehun likes to think that Kyungsoo is an alien, because only an alien could be so inhumanly impeccable all the time.

Chanyeol would oppose to that, surely, but Chanyeol is not someone Kyungsoo would want near 24/7. Who Kyungsoo wants near is Jongin, and Minseok, and Joonmyeon. He wants near Jongdae and Yixing and sometimes Baekhyun and very rarely Chanyeol. But he does not want Sehun, and the thought cuts down right to his core where it hurts the most to leave him bleeding out all cold and lonely.

I'm horrible, Sehun thinks, to view hyung's distance that way when obviously he has reasons, but Sehun can't help himself. Can't help himself now when Tao is gone to LA and Lu Han is in China. The distance is too much, yet feels nowhere as far as Kyungsoo is to him.

"And Sehun," the manager says, and Sehun snaps out of his reverie. He takes his paper and bows. From the corner of his eyes he sees Kyungsoo smiling, bright, but it's not aimed at Sehun. Never at him.

Baekhyun was right - as much as Sehun didn't believe it, he got a whole of two more lines to work with, and Chanyeol comes up congratulating him grinning, patting the small of his back.

"You've worked hard for this," Baekhyun says, and Sehun feels grateful, and strong, and invincible. Almost like Kyungsoo.

Jongin laughs at him, then, saying he needs to improve his english even more, but Sehun pays no attention to him. All he cares about is the plus two lines he got and this brilliant opportunity to show himself and everyone else how great he actually is.

After practice and reading through the lines to the new song and mini album, 'Love Me Right', Sehun stays back at the washroom. He dismisses Junmyeon with a slight wave of the hand when Junmyeon tries to coerce him back to the dorms.

"I'm good hyung, don't worry," Sehun says to him when Junmyeon looks too adamant about staying in with him. "Just need a bit of fresh air."

"Alright," Junmyeon says hesitantly and slowly turns to leave. His face is all soft lines and little curves. He is beautiful and sings just right, and-- god, there it goes again, the awful feeling of not being enough screwing a hole right to the middle of Sehun's heart.

There are times that you feel not quite comfortable in your body, Sehun knows, and he's been through those days, months, even years, but still, the defeating sense of being worthless stings five times more than anything. Being worthless means being unwanted, and even though Sehun is familiar with the feeling, he hasn't been exposed to that kind of emotion in a long time.

It hurts. There is no physical pain, but it hurts just as much as having your throat cut right open. It itches. Lingers. Then you bleed out.

I'm pathetic – is what he thinks next. The water from the faucet has been running for a good ten minutes now. He sinks his hands under it, watches the drops falling apart somewhere between his knuckles. It's akin to the way he feels his own heart breaking right now.

He hears the door clicking open, and someone steps in. Sehun almost spins around to say something not so very nice, but when he registers Kyungsoo standing by the entrance, his back plastered to the closed door, he looses all his words.

Looking at Kyungsoo now is almost as bad as having his heart laying around in tiny little pieces. Kyungsoo the brave, the great, the smooth voiced, the awesome. He really is awesome, and also so far away. It makes Sehun feel a hundred times worse.

He splashes his face with cold water, his fingertips going numb pretty fast. Oh, how he wishes his feelings could go numb just as simple as that. He turns off the faucet, stares at himself in the mirror. Kyungsoo is still there, with his back to the door. He hasn't moved an inch. It makes Sehun feel bad for him, because Sehun hasn't been particularly nice. He turns to say something, something cheerful, something that would make him feel empty inside, like, "I'm alright. I was just feeling hot," or, "I'm feeling okay." All of them would be a lie.

"I'm proud of you, Sehun-ah."

Kyungsoo says that. Just when Sehun thinks about a truth to tell that would not be as judging or hurting, Kyungsoo simply says that. Smoothly. Sincerely. Like he has his whole heart behind it.

"There is no need to pity me, hyung," Sehun says, and it's true, although it doesn't entirely feels right on the tounge. Sehun isn't the type to make a big fuss, he's just loud and sometimes overhyped and childish, but he's never the one to start a fight. The simple thought of having a quarrel with someone makes him nauseous throughout his body.

"Why would I pity you," Kyungsoo takes a step forward. There is only about a meter between them but it feels like a whole ocean. "When you are so talented? I only pity your limited opportunities."

Sehun goes quiet after that, just stares at the little bow above Kyungsoo's lips. He has a pretty mouth, and a pretty voice, with a pretty face. A pretty, petite body. Nice muscles. Sehun has none of that, and something self-destructive tries to tentatively climb its way up his throat. Sehun tones it down with a shallow smile, but the way Kyungsoo leans towards him indicates that Sehun doesn't have to hide anything from him.

He doesn't realise how long they stand there, wordlessly, Kyungsoo boring holes into his soul with his eyes. Sehun would feel self-conscious if it wasn't for the fact that he's practically empty inside.

"Um, alright," Sehun speaks up after what feels like an eternity. He starts for the door, to where Kyungsoo is standing. His back isn't pushed against the frame anymore, but Sehun still senses his presence there when he goes to click the door open. "Let's go back to the dorm."

Kyungsoo just stands there, staring at him. Sehun stills his hand on the doorknob. Kyungsoo looks majestic, even while shifting his weight from one leg to another. The eeriness of Kyungsoo's being makes him kind of calm, but doesn't fill in the empty cracks in his soul.

Sehun then suddenly realises; this is the way Kyungsoo gives comfort. Sehun knows Kyungsoo isn't really good with words, because he has his feelings too complicated to say out loud. Kyungsoo shows affection with body language and slight brushes on the arm, the fingers, the knees. Kyungsoo is good at praising but never comforting. Kyungsoo is not an alien. Kyungsoo is a boy with dark eyebrows and a rich dip above his lips that Sehun will never have.

Kyungsoo reaches out to him. The moment his hand spills out wide on Sehun's back is the moment when the empty space inside him slowly starts to fuel up with untamed longing, the kind that you cannot foresee or outrun. It's just a feeling there, at the back of your heart, pulsing all vibrant and bright until it dies out in your throat.

Sehun reminds himself it's Kyungsoo. His bandmate. Ex-roommate. Brother. Friend. Someone Sehun could never...

He doesn't finish the thought. He doesn't dare to. Instead, he shies away from the touch.

Kyungsoo isn't taken aback. Kyungsoo doesn't usually have his reactions excessive - he is always collected, meanwhile Sehun is falling apart.

"Okay," Kyungsoo says, waits until Sehun opens the door and emerges. As Sehun watches him walking afore, the longing kicks back with full force.

When did he become so infatuated? Kyungsoo has been there with him pretty much from the very beginning, the trainee days when Sehun was almost the same height as him, when they were still little kids with only dreams in their pockets. Kyungsoo knows every aspect of him, but Sehun doesn't know half of Kyungsoo's heart. How did Kyungsoo make him so defenseless?

Maybe he was whipped from the start. Maybe it was when Kyungsoo walked in with his arms fasted close to his side, glasses high up on his nose. Maybe it was years later, around debut, when Kyungsoo first let Sehun really into the hall of his heart, but never opened more rooms for him. Or maybe, just maybe – it was the way Kyungsoo's hands stilled over his back mere fifteen minutes ago.

---

Sleep doesn't come easy that evening. He still remembers the warmth of Kyungsoo's palm on his back, the longing that the touch awoke - the fact that this simple genuine act of kindness affects him so much keeps him twisting and turning throughout the night.

Junmyeon is fast asleep on the other side of the room. There is not much light, only a faint blue ray of moon shines in through the cracks of the blinds and paints Junmyeon's hair grey on end. Sehun takes the image in, thinks, if Junmyeon were to stay with him in the washroom, would have he felt the same longing that washed over him without warning? Would Junmyeon's touch on his back make him feel not as empty as much?

Maybe it's just about his attachment to his hyungs – after all, they've been through so much, ups and downs, awards, tears, angriness – that he feels this connected. They are close. All of them.

So why does a touch of Kyungsoo make him this needy? Years ago, this touch would have meant nothing – or, at least, nothing that it means now. It would mean "I'm here for you", or, "There's no need to be sad". It wouldn't mean "I want you so much".

He shivers at that thought. He doesn't really want Kyungsoo, does he? Yes, Kyungsoo is small, and kind, and soft, but Kyungsoo is Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo is his bandmate. Ex-roommate. Brother. Friend. Someone Sehun could never...

There's this thought again, scratching the back of his mind all tireless. It leaves Sehun unarmed and a sudden tiredness washes over him, the weight of the world pressing his eyelids closed. These confusing feelings are draining him of energy and if he doesn't sleep now, yesterday's dance practice will hurt like hell.

He wills himself to sleep at half past three, staring at Junmyeon's hair painted all various greys.

---

Promotions for Love Me Right are cut short - it's mostly because of individual schedules and the remaining stops of their Asian concert tour. Sehun doesn't really have anything to do - one photoshoot here, an other there, but mainly, there's nothing in his line up.

"They ain't no giving you schedules because they don't want to," Jongdae says to him one particular night out with the beagle-line. "It's because the company has a lot of controversies going on."

Sehun rolls his eyes at that. He wishes Jongdae could stop defending this shitty regime SM built up. He doesn't tell him how SM cut short Super Junior's promotions as well, doesn't argue him about f(x) being neglected, or SHINee unpaid, even though he would like to oppose.

Jongdae is not the right person to have a quarrell with. He is bold and loud, words sprouting out his mouth like fire yet inside he's mellow and delicate. It's all contradictions; Jongdae sees only good, but his words are sharp, even if his heart is made out of butterflies and fine china.

"Um, let's not talk about this," Baekhyun says, but Sehun has enough of not communicating about their problems. This is the exact thing that happened when Kris, then Lu Han and Tao left, it's the same thing that is happening now. Sehun has enough of not talking. He wants to, but doesn't quite know how when all his members want to talk about is patbingsu, and the thought eats him away. He's long lost his appetite, but Chanyeol is still shoving fat dumplings down his throat.

By the time the patbingsu arrives, Sehun collects his courage enough to say, "I think we need to speak more often. About... Our... Problems."

He feels three pairs of eyes boring holes right into him, but doesn't dare to look up. He knows what they'll look like anyways; having their mouth open, paralysed, a dumb expression gracing all of their faces. Sehun knows talking isn't one of his characteristics per se, but there are things that need to be said. Even if it hurts.

He wonders if Kyungsoo felt exactly like this, the other day back in the washroom when he had his narrow little back pushed against the door. He wonders if Kyungsoo struggled to say those words out, just like Sehun was struggling right now, if he had the same whirlwind of thoughts creeping to the back of his head. He wonders if it's anything more than it already is; if it was something Kyungsoo had on his mind all day long, and the thought spreads a warm tingling sensation throughout his chest.

"Well... Let's talk then," Jongdae says. He has ice cream running down his chin, and for a split moment Sehun wants to reach out and wipe it away, wants to see if touching Jongdae feels the same as swiping a hand down Kyungsoo's arm.

"Yeah, let's talk," says Chanyeol, nodding, "It's true we haven't really had a conversation about... things."

Sehun tries to speak, tries to say something relevant, something meaningful, but every jumbled word of his gets stuck halfway between two mouthfuls of shaved ice. This is an opportunity to open up, as if he wasn't open enough, and now, goddamn, there's no sound coming out of his mouth. He thinks, why am I being like this, when he was the one to start up this conversation and they could talk for real this time, and, god, there is nothing he can say.

Baekhyun notices he's struggling. Baekhyun, on regular, notices a lot of things; he's observing, everything and everyone to the point where he realises individual gestures of feelings. He especially notices Sehun, lately, and it makes Sehun feel safe, like he has someone to lean on when the day is hard and heavy, the two of them sitting quietly at the back of the van, not really talking but still, Baekhyun's caresses are speaking to him. A light stroke on the hand means, "you are not alone," and two fingers circulating Sehun's wrist says, "you can tell me anything". Baekhyun can communicate well with both words and body, and that is something Sehun lacks. Too. Sehun lacks a lot of things. A strange feeling floods him all blue to his toes and he shoves the patbingsu away.

"Sehun-ah, we know it's been hard on you," Baekhyun says then, not looking at Sehun but watching his abandoned patbingsu instead. "The other members leaving does not mean we will leave you too."

Damn, Baekhyun observed Sehun too much. The cold truth of his feelings being said out loud by somebody else feels like a rock hard punch to the stomach. His hands are shaking, so he hides them under the table, never really looking Baekhyun in the eye.

"Is that why you're so down lately, Sehun-ah? I noticed you shying away the other day after practice. We're here for you, you know?" Jongdae says. His voice is smooth and rich like honey. It's another punch right to Sehun's core.

"Yes," Sehun says. He could tell them about Kyungsoo, and Kyungsoo's hand, and his narrow petite back, but chooses not to. They do not need to know that.

"Don't be sad, Sehun-ah. Smile instead," is all Chanyeol says. It's unlikely of him, to talk this little, but Sehun knows the three ex-members leaving has made all of them sad in different ways.

"I'm not sad anymore," says Sehun, and for the first time that night, he smiles. It's a real smile, and it comes forceless and easy, even though the feeling of blue still stings at his sides.

The car ride back is happy, Baekhyun and Jongdae singing along to crappy songs on the radio and Chanyeol beatboxing for them, but inside the dorm, locked in his room, Sehun cannot find his peace.

Sehun catches himself wondering too much lately – wondering about his worth, abilities, opportunities, chances he had missed, chances he had taken. Thinks about the times when training for being a part of an SM boyband was enough for him, when feeling like he belongs was his only desire. Remembers the the long afternoons spent in various practice rooms with boys just like him, scrawny kids who haven’t grown into their own skin yet, didn’t even know how to. All they knew was what they wanted – being stars, dancers, singers, maybe a bit of all three. But did they know what they needed?

Junmyeon groans in his sleep across the room. Sehun looks in his general direction, but doesn’t see much – just stares into black nothingness, but imagines Junmyeon fast asleep with his knees drawn close to his chest, his hair crowning his head like a halo on his five hundred thousand won pillow. Wonders if sleep came to Junmyeon easy this night, if he dreams in colour, about things he wants to do, about things he loves.

Wonders if Kyungsoo wonders as much as he does on sleepless nights when his bones and muscles are dense from too much dancing, stomach too full from after-practice dinner. Wonders, what if Kyungsoo is only nice to him out of pity, even though he said he doesn’t pity him; what if Kyungsoo is not particularly kind just to him, if he’s nice to anyone else, anyone other than Sehun, only he didn’t notice it, and the thought itself sends an ugly, deep, coiling feeling to his guts. He turns, away from Joonmyeon’s direction, stares at the plain greyness of the cold wall.

When he finally falls asleep, there’s a strange sense of guilt etched under his skin. It still stings in the morning.

---

The filming of Pure Love begins in June, summer heat too scolding hot to bear. Kyungsoo goes swinging between their concert tour and shooting, with very limited time on his hands to spend some quality “alone-ness” in the dorm. The absence of Kyungsoo’s being makes Sehun put his head under cold water, seeking a kind of strange comfort in anything he can find; an evening out with Jongdae, an afternoon spent with Jongin and his dogs, a brunch shared with Joonmyeon, but none of them truly makes him feel any better. The past few months of indescribable, unpredicted heartbreak and gloominess spent in agony and wondering about that particular day at the practice room cannot just go away with few laughters. Not even with a true, hearty one, one that Sehun tries to entertain throughout June, when Kyungsoo is away most of the time.

The TV is on with Chanyeol’s face in the jungle on it when Kyungsoo comes home late at night, on a Sunday almost-morning. Sehun is somewhere between letting his eyes closing in shut and forcing them open, but the minute Kyungsoo steps in the living room, he’s wide awake. Every nestle Kyungsoo makes sounds ten times louder now with everyone gone to their respective rooms, only Sehun lounging around on the couch at this ungodly hour. Tomorrow they have practice for their concert, and Joonmyeon has been alarming him of it throughout the evening, but sleep hasn’t again come easy to Sehun this week, leaving him switching through channels all restless.

Kyungsoo’s tired, is the first thing Sehun notices. He puts his keys on the hanger swiftly, but the next moment he comes stumbling across the room, one thing Kyungsoo rarely does. Clumsiness is not an adjective of many to describe Kyungsoo, Sehun knows, and when Kyungsoo hits the pillow next to him, Sehun doesn’t think twice about circling his hands around his waist.

“Rough day?” Sehun asks, voice low, calm. Chanyeol’s face flashes on the screen.

“Just long,” Kyungsoo answers. “Had a lot of scenes today.”

His body has a sheen of sweet summer sweat all over it. Sehun collects them with his thumb as he swipes it over in circles on the back of Kyungsoo’s hand. “Maybe you should skip practice tomorrow.”

Kyungsoo’s eyes are fixed on the TV screen but his gaze is unfocused. Sehun wonders if he only sees colours and abstract shapes. “No, I’ll go,” Kyungsoo says, in return, a few heartbeats later. The sweat on Kyungsoo’s hand is slowly starting to dry, and Sehun stops drawing loops on his palm.

“Maybe you should go to sleep then,” is what Sehun says next. Kyungsoo looks down at their hands, almost intertwined. When Sehun starts to circle his thumb around Kyungsoo’s palm again, Kyungsoo stretches his fingers for Sehun’s to meet in the middle. It almost burns, the faint touch of Kyungsoo’s skin on Sehun’s, but it’s soft, almost like a feather. Almost like it isn’t there.

It’s a pure movement, lacking any kind of ulterior motive or menace, needing no response. Yet still, the undeniable force of wanting to put their hands together strikes Sehun with dispatch, something he cannot foresee, something that is impossible to outrun.

But want and incidence does not necessarily align. Kyungsoo’s hand is gone. He stands, starts for the bathroom. Sehun looks at him from across, the light in the hallway illuminating Kyungsoo’s sun-kissed skin that practically glows under white-ish led lights, and Sehun can’t help but think about ways to let Kyungsoo know that he wants his hand over his a little longer, a little more. By the door, Kyungsoo says, face slightly turned back to look at Sehun, “You should go to sleep too.”

“Okay, hyung,” Sehun says, but dwells there for a moment or two. Maybe Kyungsoo is just a really good friend with really beautiful skin, and a majestic voice, and deep brown eyes.

Sehun can’t really pinpoint out what brings him to follow Kyungsoo into the bathroom – need… want? –, yet he’s there, arm slightly pushing against the doorframe in a try-hard nonchalant way. Kyungsoo is too tired to take notice of him or even acknowledge his presence with a mere humm as he takes off his shirt.

Suddenly there’s not enough air for Sehun to breathe in, the walls turning in on him too soon, too fast. Kyungsoo is just standing there, right by the shower as he waits for the water to cool down, and with a facile move, one blink of an eye, he’s in, completely naked.

It’s not like they haven’t seen each other naked before. In fact, Sehun has seen the entire band in their natural state, especially Baekhyun, who doesn’t care about what anyone thinks. Oh, how Sehun wishes he was anything like Baekhyun. But he’s not. Instead, he’s standing in the bathroom, Kyungsoo about an arm and a full ocean away, in all of his naked sun-kissed wet glory, and he feels like a fool. How did he get here, exactly, again?

The shower stall opens. Cold air gushes all over Sehun’s body. “Are you getting in or not?” Kyungsoo says. Like it’s nothing.

Maybe it really is nothing. Maybe they’re really just nothing, and this moment of vulnerability as Sehun stands there, wordlessly taking his clothes off, is barely just a dream of feverish thoughts.

The water is cool enough to keep Sehun standing on both of his feet. Kyungsoo puts shower gel on a sponge, traces his skin with it over and over again. Sehun watches him, without a sound, because he doesn’t know what else to do. To be clear, he doesn’t know anything, not even lately. All he knows is Kyungsoo’s skin is beautiful and glowing and tan. He’s nothing like Sehun.

Kyungsoo turns to him then, offers him the sponge. It’s still wet and soapy, and Sehun can practically smell his own desperation over the scent of coconut shower gel. He finds himself mulling about the muscles on Kyungsoo’s back as he turns, reaching up for shampoo, the muscles that he has never seen before. How long has this been happening? How did Sehun not notice? And why does the simple thought of Kyungsoo being close to him send him into overdrive?

By the time he’s soaped himself up, Kyungsoo is out, a baby blue towel fastened low around his waist. Sehun has little to no time to comprehend the deficit of Kyungsoo’s body heat. Everything is happening so quick, like a sketchy dream, in a non-linear realm of disjointed occurrents. Sehun feels like he’s out of his body and mind, and Kyungsoo’s gone again, only a few patches of water left of him on the bathroom floor.

---

Sehun knows something is changing. Or, as Baekhyun says on a lovely, mildly hot August summer evening out on the roof of their apartment, stuffing their faces with ordered bulgoggi, “something has already been changed”.

“What do you mean?” Sehun says, mouth full of spicy rice cake. He very well knows what Baekhyun means, but it’s too soon to admit that. He’d rather play blind, like he’s been playing for who knows how long.

“You very well know what I mean,” Baekhyun says, pointedly. Sehun hates how he sees through a lot of things. Even more now, when he sees right through him. “Kyungsoo. And you. Or should I put it this way; your feelings for Kyungsoo?”

Sehun is compelled, at first, to say something opposing like “What, no,” or “Haha, you’re kidding me,” but nothing comes to his mind. It’s only blank, his heart, with a little vibrato at the base of his lungs and at the top of his stomach, sizzling with little heat and a nervous trembling. Somehow the half full bowl of bulgoggi seems disgusting right now, but he has no strength to push it away. An after-image of the practice room door and Kyungsoo’s tiny back pushed against it comes to him, accompanied by a ghost of Kyungsoo’s fingers against his flashes right before his eyes, clear, unabashed, unchanged. Then there’s the feeling: the feeling of not being good enough and being too much, too loud, too forgettable makes his heart sink, just a little, right where his stomach is pulsing with unkindness. Baekhyun sees right through him, but when has he ever not?

Baekhyun reaches out, takes the bulgoggi of Sehun’s hands, puts it on the ground. The sky is simmering in blues both pale and deep dark, underlined with a kind of warmness of the setting sun, painted in low oranges and yellows at the bottom. It’s only after he’s sitting fast and close next to Sehun, his hands around his shoulder when he says, “You’ve been out of focus lately… If you want to talk about it, I’m here.”

The closeness of Baekhyun is not unpleasant, but it’s nothing compared to Kyungsoo’s body heat hitting Sehun in the chest warm and kind and fast. Sehun feels like choking up, because, even if he tries not to, somehow he grew too fond of Kyungsoo and his many talents; his voice, his cooking, his body…

If Sehun could shout right now he would, he would let out a shriek so sharp it would almost represent his bleeding heart. Baekhyun senses his discomfort, so he pulls him closer, so close Sehun’s head fits under his perfect little chin. Baekhyun is as easy to hug as he is easy to love, something Sehun can’t identify with. An ugly bubble of jealousy boils up inside him, and now he’s full of colours, all sad blues and yellows of envy.

If he doesn’t speak now he’s going to burst, so he does what he has to do; at least this he knows, so he says, quietly, “Why does everything have to be so confusing and hard?”

Baekhyun’s hands are still around him, holding him in place so Sehun doesn’t completely fall apart. Sehun appreciates Baekhyun’s sensible nature, but somehow thinks nothing, not even Baekhyun’s emphatic solacement could ever take away these blues.

“That’s just life,” Baekhyun’s voice is soft. “It happens to everyone, every now and then.”

Sehun breaks away from Baekhyun to look him in the eye. “Does everyone feel this worthless as I do?”

“Having ups and downs sometimes is human,” Baekhyun responds. There’s a chill breeze swiping past them the moment these words roll off his tongue and Sehun feels helpless. “Not being able to comprehend our worth is human. Hell, some people never get to know their real worth. Having someone you like, and maybe falling in love with them, and maybe loving them unconditionally and getting nothing in return is human. Loving someone of… the same sex is okay. Even if your parents say otherwise. Even if society says otherwise. And I hope you know, Oh Sehun, that I love you. And I want the best for you. And I also want you to know that having complicated feelings is okay. Everybody has. Everybody has to, at some point in their life, face hardships. But we will pull you through. We are almost brothers, remember?”

A moment of silence passes between them. Sehun is trying to make sense out of Baekhyun’s words, even though Baekhyun has been clear from the very start. Damn, Baekhyun is really good at unfolding the deepest, darkest pits of Sehun’s irregularly beating heart, but Sehun does not yet know what Baekhyun’s words mean to him. Is he really– in love? With Kyungsoo hyung? Kyungsoo hyung, who cooks for him at midnight, who accompanies him to movies no other wants to watch with him; Kyungsoo hyung, who not only has a voice, but has the looks, the strength, the passion, the heart? Kyungsoo doesn’t usually have his heart out on his sleeves, at least, not like Sehun has his right now, laid out bare and raw in front of Baekhyun to touch. Because Baekhyun, out of all people, is now seeing it; the rush of sadness that escapes Sehun in form of tears, hot and wet down the side of his cheeks. He’s crying, in relief or grief, in realisation or deny he doesn’t know; all he knows is he’s crying, on the goddamn roof, his bulgoggi growing cold on the ground, with Baekhyun’s arms around him in a consoling manner.

There are times when Sehun is too lost, too deep in his thoughts to listen to anything that’s said to him. But this time he does, he really, truly listens, but Baekhyun’s words he cannot comprehend – yet. So he just cries, soundless, his broad shoulders shaking as he tries to wipe away tears that had been trying to break out ever since on that unfaithful day at the practice room.

“Good,” says Baekhyun, hand coming up to Sehun’s nape to linger a little bit. “We, I think, need to embrace sadness as well as we embrace happiness. Cry it out, Sehun-ah.”

So he cries and cries.

---

They say, after the rain comes the sun, and for Sehun it might just happen. The experience shared with Baekhyun on the roof with cold bulgoggi and mildly dark-yellow setting Sun and a lot of crying made Sehun feel ten times lighter in the chest. In some strange way, letting his emotions out in form of tears provided as a moderate temporary solution for an aching heart, even if Sehun was always sceptical of this form of pain-relief: he usually laughed away his tears with either too much dance or too many food, but this time around, crying his tiny heart out served him good, leaving him feeling a lot fresher in the morning. Not even the burnt toast Joonmyeon made him as a lame excuse of a breakfast took away his smile as he sat at the table, poking Jongin in the ribs with his index finger till Jongin had enough, pushing at him in revenge, and when it’s time for dance practice later, at around ten o’clock, nothing seems to make him feel down.

Until Kyungsoo appears. Because he does, he dares to show up in a slick black training suit, his hair a muzzled nest on the top of his head, with all of his brownish glowing skin, and Sehun suddenly feels a stone drop in his stomach, deep and low and hurting.

The uneasy feeling stays throughout dance practice. However hard he tries, he just simply can’t bear to look away from Kyungsoo’s reflection in the mirror, and the longing that has been keeping him up at night for the past several months makes him unable to coherently rehearse his lines, leaving him feeling all kind of different blues again.

Practice lets out at three in the afternoon, and everybody is up for lunch. Sehun doesn’t really have an appetite right now, seeing as how well Kyungsoo gets along with either Chanyeol or Jongin or Joonmyeon. Sehun sticks with Jongdae, sits close to him in the booth at their favourite diner with Kyungsoo across him.

Jongdae tells him bad jokes as Sehun watches Kyungsoo’s hand slide along Jongin’s shoulder, laughing at a very funny thing Chanyeol just said. Sehun couldn’t care less, he thinks, and turns back to Jongdae to feign a smile at another bad joke of his, the kind that only Baekhyun appreciates, but damn, halfway along the tenth shaggy dog story Baekhyun tells Jongdae, Sehun’s attention wanders back to the other side of the table. Apparently he cares, and wonders if Kyungsoo cares about him too the way he does about him. Wonders if that night in the shower meant the same to him as it did to Sehun. Oh wait, he doesn’t even know what it meant, or if it means anything at all. Questions he cannot yet answer flood his mind and the lightness he felt in the morning now seems so far away, even farther than Kyungsoo feels a few feet away to his upper right, laughing in a kind of joy Sehun can’t possibly share.

Above a table full of food and light chatter on both sides, Sehun still ponders, thinks about the times when his feelings were left unchanged and discerning happenings in life seemed easy and quick. Now, all he has is a depot of amphigoric thoughts and a confused heart and Kyungsoo is still sitting over at the table in his pretty tracksuit and pretty face and Sehun can’t think about anything else.

Somewhere between a bite of galbi and yet another fart joke from Baekhyun, Sehun’s fingertips start to tickle on end. Kyungsoo has reached over the table for a side dish, but missed and took Sehun’s hand instead. Sehun’s mouth goes dry as sand as Kyungsoo smiles at his own foolishness, and gives a light pat on Sehun’s hand before reaching over for kimchi. The chopsticks in Sehun’s hand are starting to slide off, and Sehun decides to collect himself. He won’t let the knot in his stomach stop him from eating all this delicious food, so he starts stuffing his face with various meats, korean barbeque first and foremost. Yixing laughs at him, says, “Sehun-ah, you’ll choke on your food, eat slowly,” but what Yixing doesn’t understand is, if Sehun stops forcing huge bites down his throat, he might as well suffocate from the knot in it.

“Sehun-ah has been working very hard lately,” Kyungsoo says. “He needs to eat well.”

“True that, but he’s eating like a machine,” says Baekhyun, puts a hand over Sehun’s shoulders mid-bite. “Sehun-ah, you’ve been showing us your many talents this past comeback, you shouldn’t kill yourself with too much barbeque. Right, Kyungsoo?”

It’s a huge bite that gets stuck in his throat and makes Sehun gag, Sehun would like to think, not Baekhyun’s rather smart remark to Kyungsoo. Baekhyun just smirks at him and Sehun thinks he wants to put his hands over his neck and just simply squeeze him to death, but that would be inappropriate in a diner Joonmyeon loves. And Sehun loves Joonmyeon, so he wouldn’t dare to make all of them get banned from here, so he sticks for killing Baekhyun mentally, maybe later on the roof of their dorm.

“Told ya you would suffocate considering the amount of unchewed meat you shoved down your face,” Jongdae laughs and Chanyeol snickers with him, clapping his hands together.

“Thanks for the reminder, hyung,” Sehun says in reply. Kyungsoo is just smiling at him, warm, kind, a heart-shaped smile Sehun could never erase from his memories, because the imprint would be always there. This, he determines, would he like to remember later, and not Jongdae’s unfunny jokes.

---

Staying in means wearing no clothes whatsoever while the others are out at their favourite bowling place. Sehun likes to call it ‘Hours’ with a capital H, indicating that it’s his very own, very special time he gets to spend by himself and himself only. Sometimes he likes to go out with the band, just to see the wrinkles of worry dissolve from Joonmyeon’s otherwise wrinkless face. They would go out and play games, mainly bowling, with Jongdae shouting over both Baekhyun’s and Chanyeol’s voice as Yixing sits behind them, snickering about something Joonmyeon just said to the others that has no effect on the shouting whatsoever. Jongin would lounge in one of the seats, popcorn all over his shirt, his hands, his mouth. And Kyungsoo – Kyungsoo would stand beside them, hands crossed on his chest, lips stretching far out into a wide smile at the others. Sehun does not know if he’s ready for yet another emotionally tumultuous day with either the Beagle-line or Kyungsoo, so he chooses to stay in, telling Minseok that it’s only because of tiredness.

Partly it’s true. He’s genuinely tired from all the photoshoots and commercials and concerts and music programs, but he’s also tired from a completely different aspect, something he only could ever share briefly with Baekhyun. Good old Baekhyun… if only he could lift the weight off Sehun’s chest so Sehun could breathe properly again and not with restrain or guilt or pain or tears.

Sehun doesn’t know how long he can stand this—this feeling, this sense of overwhelming thoughts, the feeling of not being good enough, of not being good of anything, of not being… Of not being enough. Simply. Truly. At all. Not for the band. Not for his parents. Not for the world. Not for Kyungsoo.

Is there a way to wipe my head clear of these thoughts?, he thinks to himself as he rolls over in bed to his other side. Or is he stuck in this blue nothingness forever with little to nothing to hold onto; not a single joy in life. Even food doesn’t taste the same as back then, back when he experienced happiness with the same intensity as he experiences these blue days of fog and self-loathing and question marks inside his head. There is, a possible way out, of course, is what he thinks the next minute, but the sadness comes back, kicking the front door to his heart open and leaving it torn into pieces without any kind of consolation; is that how it’s going to be always? For eternity? How does a person feel so low about themselves for this long – for months, not only a few weeks, but months, long months, on end and on end an on end. Without stopping. No rest to the sad heart. No rest to the sad mind, either.

He sits up straight, stares out the window. Summer is ending soon, trees that have been blossoming in green slowly turning into a harsh palette of browns and oranges. Everything around Sehun changes, but Sehun’s confusing feelings stay the same, the same as ever. Undiscernible. Hurting. As if someone took a knife and put it between Sehun’s ribs right through his skin and meat to the middle of his heart and left it bleeding. Nothing changes there.

Maybe it’s really all just tiredness. Work has been cruel, to be honest, this past year, especially on his body. He knows he’s losing weight. And he also knows it’s not the main reason.

It’s… and it’s hard to even think to himself, let alone to say it out loud, it’s because of Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo the beautiful, brave, the amazing, the muscular, the toned, the one with The Lips. The Voice. With everything Sehun doesn’t have. But what Sehun doesn’t especially have is, and what he’ll never could possess has nothing to do with how Kyungsoo looks. Or how Kyungsoo sings. Because those things can be changed; those things can be learned. What can’t be learned is how to have someone who’s heart is not reserved for you. Who’s not thinking of you the same way as you think of them. Who can’t, no matter how hard he tries, reciprocate those feelings for you. Because a person is a person; and not a thing to learn, or to change. A person has a mind of their own. And Sehun can’t possibly have that. Can’t have Kyungsoo when Kyungsoo doesn’t want him.

He glances outside then. There’s a tree, a single tree in the street, right at the front of their apartment block. Birds usually sit there and chirp all day long if the weather is nice enough. The sun is shining today, but there are no birds on the tree. Not one. It makes Sehun feel even worse, as if the simple knowing that today he is alone because he’s unable to engage in normal human contact on any levels wasn’t enough.

Maybe if he stared at the tree enough, some birds would come fly there and sit and chirp. But Sehun is no magician; he can’t make things go the way he wants. He can’t cast spells.

The front door is unlocked. Sehun hears it clicking open. He takes a look at the clock; it’s only half past six. The guys usually come home around one a.m., slightly drunk, irritably loud. It’s still too early for that.

He cranes his neck to take a peak through the open door – he’s almost scared how fast he recognises the footsteps coming in through the hall. Sehun just simply cannot know it by the sounds. Kyungsoo sticks his head in then, leans against the frame of the door. “Hey. Joonmyeon said you’d be home.”

“I am,” is what Sehun answers. He doesn’t know what else to say.

“Didn’t want to leave you all alone here, by yourself,” Kyungsoo says, closes the door behind him. It closes obnoxiously loud. “Can I sit with you?”

“Sure,” Sehun says, trying really hard to sound nonchalant, or at least not as wrecked as he feels. Kyungsoo sits next to him, clothed thighs slightly brushing up against Sehun’s naked ones. Sehun is now awfully aware of his own nakedness; he only has his super high gymshorts on, the bright blue one that Chanyeol always mocks him for having. He suddenly realises he feels exposed and it makes him shrink away from Kyungsoo, if even only by a few millimetres. Some sort of awkward silence takes a seat in between them, the kind that makes you fidget restlessly. Sehun often doesn’t know what to say; neither does Kyungsoo – but even in that aspect, there’s a gap between them; a gap in which Sehun is on one end, being the one who doesn’t know what to say – and Kyungsoo on the other, who knows what to, yet doesn’t know how. Sehun wishes he’d know what to, but wouldn’t be able to say – even in that way Kyungsoo is someone he looks up to. It’s hard. It’s hard to know your flaws and live with them, especially if those flaws are what restrain you from living your life to the fullest. And Sehun always wants the best. Always wants things he doesn’t have. What he cannot have.

“Sehun-ah, don’t frown this much,” Kyungsoo says then, makes Sehun whip his head towards him. Kyungsoo is dressed in full black, and he looks sleek, breathtaking even. How Sehun wishes he could peel away the black layers and reach beneath Kyungsoo’s skin to take a grip at his heart the same way Kyungsoo is squeezing Sehun’s right now. How he wishes he could do that, but he can’t, and shouldn’t, because Kyungsoo is his friend, brother, bandmate, ex-roommate… everything and nothing to him all at once.

Kyungsoo too, is looking at him right now, all deep brown eyes and dark eyebrows knocking together in a questionable way, like he’s thinking too hard about something.

“What?” Sehun asks. It comes out weak and breathless. He pulls his knees up higher on the bed so he can lay a hand around them, as if hiding from Kyungsoo, even though he very well knows he can’t.

“Wow, I just,” Kyungsoo says, looking down and away, pushing a hand through his hair. It’s cut short and even, laying perfectly onto his sun-kissed bronze skin on the sides. “I just realised something. Something I shouldn’t exactly be feeling… and yet…”

Deep breath and exhale. All the things Sehun thought he wanted to say are completely gone. In fact, all of his thoughts are far away. He says, with struggle, “What did you just realise, hyung?”

There’s a drop of sweat rolling down Kyungsoo’s nape, straight from his hairline disappearing into his loose black t-shirt. Summer has come to an end, as had Sehun’s thoughts just moments ago, and here he is now, following the trail Kyungsoo’s sweat makes all the way down his neck. It’s tempting to reach out and collect it with his fingers, brushing away the wetness and leaving traces of a tender touch on Kyungsoo’s skin.

“Something I don’t exactly understand… Nor am sure about,” Kyungsoo says. There is no trembling in his voice, no hesitance. He’s saying it like it’s a fact, like it’s easy to talk about such things, when Sehun perfectly knows it’s not Kyungsoo’s best feature. “And I’m not exactly sure about how could this thing… my realisation… affect you.”

Sehun’s heart beats like crazy. “Well… if you just told me, hyung… Maybe we could see the outcome.”

Kyungsoo turns quiet awhile. His hand rests on his thighs. Not quite sure how to continue, Sehun takes a glance at Kyungsoo, head hanging low as if he doesn’t dare to really look at him. All he sees is just a soft nervous tremble that radiates off Kyungsoo now, and it makes Sehun uneasy, equally nervous. He knows this something that could either break them or mend them together, but he doesn’t know how to say it out loud.

He wants to say something, or do something, maybe just a nudge of a knee or a slight touch of an index finger -- but before he knows, the moment is gone, and Kyungsoo is on the other side of the room, gingerly clasping at the doorframe.

“I’m... I’m sorry Sehun-ah. Forget it. I am just tired.”

And with that, he’s out the door, leaving Sehun with all this inner turmoil and indecisiveness alone. He looks at his hands. The sweat has gone cold on his palms.

---

Weeks pass with promotions and dance practices and interviews, but all he thinks about is the last month - Kyungsoo has been very nice to him lately, and that is something Sehun can’t quite put his finger on. Not like Kyungsoo isn’t nice on a daily basis; he is a man with a great sense of politeness and good manners, characteristics that resolve in everybody loving Kyungsoo. What is there not to love? Sehun likes to think he is just as polite as Kyungsoo is, but who is he trying to fool? The only thing they truly share is their quietness – nothing else. Sehun is nothing like Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo is nothing like Sehun, and Sehun wonders if that palpable difference between them could dissolve one day.

[sehun keeps wondering about kyungsoo; the days go just like that. this is the era of “its ok its love” and sehun’s feelings for kyungsoo deepens as time goes farther. kyungsoo gets more affectionate towards sehun while sehun wonders if that is all that is; two good friends, holding hands sometimes and being affectionate with each other but every time kyungsoo puts his hands on his waist his heart beats faster, harder, irregular. sehun knows somethings’ changing, and he keeps wondering about his worth, about his abilities or lack thereof. kyungsoo is always there for him to assure him of his worth, to make him feel not so empty inside. sehun starts to wonder about what you want and what you have; if the two can align. can you get what you want, or you should get what you need? whats the difference between want and need? what if we could never get what we truly want or need? we cant have everything sehun knows, but he keeps wanting kyungsoo until the very day that he realises he really, really, really does want it. he doesn’t know how he wants kyungsoo, all he knows is kyungsoo’s presence makes him feel tingly and good and happy. meanwhile sehun realises kyungsoo is just as defenseless and self concious as he is, and they develop a very close friendship, a friendship that’s not yet enough for sehun. one time, around the promotions of another winter lovesong exo puts out regularly, on a slightly drunken night of winning a music program, sehun kisses kyungsoo and they start an affair of purely physical love. sehun is in too deep, even when he knows he wants emotional love as well as physical. kyungsoo is affectionate to him but he is affectionate to the other members as well which leaves sehun all sad, and begins to wonder about wanting and having. whats the endgame I don’t know yet, but I know the last words will be this: when he leaves, he leaves the door open.

ok so the physical side of love continues until sehun cant take it anymore; after wondering about months and months of what this means to him, he goes to ask kyungsoo about it. kyungsoo is surprisingly calm during the talk, explaining to sehun that he too, as sehun could notice, wants the affectionate closeness but not the emotions; hes not in love with sehun nor will he ever be; he doesn’t want anything more than there is. sehun is, at first, devastated, but later realises that that’s how life is; you truly can’t always get you what you want. after he accepted the fact that kyungsoo doesn’t want anything else, he feels thankful for kyungsoo of showing him so many things; of teaching him to love himself through the physical and emotional acts; to teaching him the difference between need and want indirectly. once sehun realises all these things, they stay good and close friends, although the memories of being more than that but not quite anything still mars sehun’s mind. a year later in a café he meets a boy with auburn hair, someone who he can connect with. in the end, sehun is happy and in love and is secure with himself, continuing his time with exo and being best friends with kyungsoo. a bittersweet ending!]

#sesoo #hunsoo #sedo #kyungsoo #sehun #d.o.#exo #fic #shortfic #bold-lettered #what a beautiful time it was to be alive #such an era #such boys #such love

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defiant-firefly · 4 years

Text

October Challenge Day 7

Aight so the prompt here is ‘Scream’ from the Cryptober prompt list by @tricksterdoodles and @diremirebee! It’s not an art thing I literally just used this prompt cause I had the idea and tried to match it to a prompt that wasn’t on the 31st so I could write it sooner.

Anyway, this one is probably more suited to a Whumptober entry honestly as I’ve been dubbing this the ‘I dump Labby in a blender ASMR’ for a while now. It ended up longer than expected so I’m seperating what I had planned for today into two different prompts. The next part of this at least three part idea will probably be written at the earliest possible date so lookout for that.

Today’s prompt though does require some warnings so... in summary, I essentially torture Labrys from P4A. She gets electrocuted a lot, she’s restrained at the time and will black out over it. If this isn’t your thing/this makes you uncomfortable, don’t read this.

Fic under the cut for this who do want to read...

“Alright 031. We’re gonna be doing something a little different today.” The untidy researcher spoke as 031 tilted her head from the maintenance chair. Did that mean she wouldn’t have to fight today? A hope started bubbling within her as she waited for clarification.

“You’re going to be fitted with a new upgrade that should alter your performance in the testing chamber and hopefully increase your effectiveness with self-preservative protocols.” The woman explained as she fiddled with her glasses and shifted her clipboard under her arm. “In order to issue this upgrade to you, we’ll need you to power down completely. Is that understood?”

“Understood.” She answered with a nod, a curious glimmer in her eyes. An upgrade huh? What could it be? Improved balancers or maybe a targeting system? But then they did say self preservative protocols so… hm…

Did this mean she was too reckless?

“Well the preparations are all complete so when you’re ready, you can proceed with the shutdown.” At that, 031 leaned back a bit more and started the shutdown process. Hopefully this wouldn’t take long and she could go tell 024 about her new upgrade.

As the world went dark, she couldn’t help but notice the worried tone in one of the researchers as they questioned how worth it this would be.

When her awakening was next triggered, she opened her eyes to find the researchers all at a slightly larger distance away from her. Did something happen whilst she was out?

“Good to see you’re back with us 031. Anything to report?” At the question, she ran a quick scan, finding no abnormalities. Instead she found that the new software had been integrated into every aspect of her self and had to wonder what exactly it was.

“Nothin’ to report.” She answered with a shake of the head. “No abnormalities.”

“Good, good. Now we can begin the testing aspect for today.” The researcher with the curled hair picked up his clip board and pen, holding the nib against what she could only assume was the first item on his checklist. “Now how should we do this…?” He mused as one of the other researchers glanced over his shoulder.

“Can we not just use the same methods as we did unit 014?” The woman asked with a raised eyebrow and 031 found her head tilting as she tried to figure out what they were planning. Did 014 have this new upgrade too? She briefly wondered if she could find her and ask about it later to see what testing she had to undergo but after some thought, she decided that was likely not a good idea. 024 was the only other person she found that had any semblance of a personality after all.

“I suppose we could… Its natural resistances should nullify any lasting effects and I guess given its much more advanced design…” The untidy researcher rolled his eyes at him.

“Look, it’ll be fine. Let’s just get the data already.” He walked towards 031, removing a rectangular object from a nearby box and stopping midway. “Well? Who wants to do it?” He addressed the rest of the researchers, presenting them with the weird, pronged object. There was silence for a while as they all exchanged looks.

“I’ll do it.” The woman stepped forward and dropped her notes onto the table, taking the object from the man with an uncaring expression.

“You sure?” The man let her take it and stepped aside whilst she tutted.

“Please. It’s not even human.” 031 felt herself frown at that, though she wasn’t entirely sure why.

“Fair enough. Be careful though.” At that warning, the restraints binding her arms and legs to the chair suddenly made themselves apparent to her. It must be a safety thing she supposed. The woman nodded at him, before approaching her. She stopped by her side and adjusted a dial on the device before reaching it out towards her.

“Now, this should feel a little different to anything you’ve felt before.” She explained as 031 watched her curiously. So they’d upgraded her sense of touch? Hm… “We’ll try the lowest possible setting first to see how you are and will go from there. Understood?”

“Understood.” She parroted back with a nod, wondering what this was supposed to feel like to her.

“Good. Then let’s proceed.” Without another moment, the woman held the button on the side down, a strange buzzing sound emanating from it that sounded like a low charge of electricity running through it.

The very moment those prongs were pressed against her arm, 031 jolted, eyes wide as she instinctively shifted away from it. What was that?

It was so quick, she didn’t even know how to describe it. The woman quirked an eyebrow pressing against her arm again. This time, when she jumped and shifted, the prongs were held against her.

031’s eyes were wide as she tried to discern the feeling of electricity pulsing off her arm like this. It felt… it felt bad. As if someone was continuously pushing needles into the area the prongs were and it stung. She kept, shifting, trying to get it off to stop the bad feeling, the woman watching her intently as she did so.

When the object was pulled away, she found the feeling hadn’t entirely left with it. She breathed a small sigh of relief as the sensation began to lessen until it was barely a dull throbbing in the back of her mind. Ruby eyes narrowed on the device that had caused such a feeling and tilted her head as she tried to put words to it all.

“Well? What did that feel like?” The woman asked as she began to adjust the dials again.

“Um… like…” a long hum, before inspiration struck, “It felt like the sound that you hear when metal scrapes on metal, but not as bad.” There was some mumbling between the researchers as they jotted things down on their notepads and clipboards, some examining the computer monitors and relaying that information back to them.

“Do you have a word for that feeling?” She asked and 031 shook her head. “That feeling is known as pain. It’s the physical indicator for something that has caused, or almost caused damage to you, or it lets you know when something is wrong with your body.” 031 hummed as that information processed.

So they gave her the ability to feel pain? What was the point in that? To make her more human? She hoped so.

“Upping the power level to two.” The woman announced as she finished fiddling with the device. What would it feel like this time? Would it feel better than before?

The moment the prongs hit, she got her answer. She startled, trying to move away from the object that was now pressed against her restrained leg. This… this hurt.

The electricity ran through her leg, sending signals every which way that this wasn’t good. It stung, the limb shaking as she tried to get the feeling to stop. Was this what 014 had felt when they’d tested it on her?

When they pulled away again, she felt a little relieved but the stinging didn’t seem to want to go away. It lingered longer than last time, the intensity just that little bit stronger.

“Now, was that better or worse?” The woman asked before returning to that dial, an uneasy feeling settling in her chest at not knowing just how strong this thing could go. How bad was this going to get?

“Worse.” She answered easily, leg still aching from the contact. “Is it supposed to hurt?”

“Of course. This is an important measure to take in order to both promote the development of your personality as well as improve your risk assessment and self-preservation skills.” The explanation didn’t make her feel much better. “Now how did that feel in comparison to the last one?”

“Uh… the same but worse…?” She offered, not really sure how else to say it. The researchers nodded as they scribbled more notes down and the remnants of the last contact faded away.

“I see. Increasing power to level three.” Without giving her time to prepare, the woman pressed the prongs to the back of her wrist. 031 felt herself yelp at the sensation, her arms struggling against the restraints as the pain increased tenfold. Why was this so much worse?

The moments seemed to drag on longer now, the stinging sensation becoming more akin to the sickening sound she’d heard when she burst the neck of one of the others. When the device was removed, she felt her breaths coming a little heavier, the pain hardly dying down at all, even as the researchers talked amongst themselves. She found herself eying the device warily, one question coming to mind that she had to voice.

“What is that…?” Whatever it was, she hated it. Why did something like this even exist? Who would ever think inventing that was a good-

It was at that moment, 031 realised that the same could be said about herself and decided to stop that train of thought. She had to prepare herself for the next contact.

“This is a taser, specifically designed to inflict pain upon the target but not so much that it leaves lasting damage.” The woman explained nonchalantly as the researchers continued to exchange theories in the background. She didn’t particularly care to listen to it this time. It never made much sense to her anyway.

“Increasing power to level four.” The woman spoke again, this time causing her to flinch and brace herself for what was to come, the stinging from the last contact still not having fully dissipated yet.

When the electricity hit, no amount of bracing could have prepared her for it. She jumped and jolted violently as the pain seared through her body, burning through her insides from where the taser pressed against her stomach. It hurt so bad…

It took a while to register she was making noise, vocalising her pain with yelps and yowls as she struggled. Why was this one taking so much longer?!

As the taser left, she felt her breathing suddenly become much easier, though still remaining shaky as the lingering pain continued to scream at her. Her head hung as she focused on trying to calm herself, she didn’t know how much was to come but she had a feeling it wasn’t over yet. Glancing back up, a nervous look at the woman showed she was once again fiddling with the dials. Just how much more was there?

“Upping power to level five.” She spoke, 031 already leaning away from her the best she physically could being restrained as well as she was. Her eyes scrunched shut, body tensing as she dreaded the shock to come.

Her eyes flew open as the worst pain yet, seared through her systems. She screamed at the sensation, her attempts to escape doubling since last time. Her mind went blank, the only thought being to get away from the danger at any cost. The prongs pressed harder into her chest and she felt her heart screech, the crystal shaking at the forces being pushed through her body.

The fans on either side of her head began to whirl in an effort to release some of the tension, to ease the blistering hurt relentlessly pulsing through her. Her eyes found the researcher’s, pleading for her to stop.

She didn’t even blink as she held the taser harder against her.

The moment, she finally pulled away, 031 slumped in her chair. The fans never stopped spinning as she tried to catch her breath and dull the pain any way she could. Her mind settled on trying to distract herself, trying to hold onto the image of 024 and Snowy playing fetch with each other outside, or trying to figure out what she’d meant when she said they were loved.

It was no use. She couldn’t seem to focus on anything, especially as she distantly heard the researchers fiddling with the dials again.

She hoped, no, prayed there wasn’t another level. Please let that have been it. She didn’t think she could take any more of it.

Slowly, her eyes raised to find the woman who’d been doing this to her. An incredible fear began to rise as she started registering what they were saying over the sound of whirring from her cooling fans.

“I believe now would be a good time to test her limits, don’t you?” The woman spoke to the others as if she were talking about the weather.

“Hm… Wouldn’t it be better to wait till tomorrow? The build up here might affect the results.” The untidy researcher offered thoughtfully as he eyed her with a hum.

“Maybe, but doing so today might give us insight into any faults once we get to the higher intensity levels.” The man with the curled hair tweaked his glasses and she decided she didn’t like him either.

“I believe it’s worth seeing just how far we can push her so that we know where the boundaries between too weak and too strong are.” The woman crossed her arms. “Besides, she won’t be fighting anything today. There’s no risk of it affecting her performance until the effects of the sensors wear off.” 031 felt her hands start clenching and unclenching in succession at her words. Was that a nervous quirk…? Come to think of it, was vocalising distress like she’d just done a normal human reaction?

“Hmm… I suppose you have a point. It would be more beneficial to know the limit sooner rather than later…” The untidy researcher hummed to her horror. They weren’t serious… were they?

“Then it’s decided.” The woman turned back to her and she immediately shrank into her chair. She turned the dials on her taser, hopefully for the last time today before her eyes found 031’s. Any hope of appealing to her better nature fled at the sheer lack of compassion in that steady green gaze.

“Increasing to maximum power levels.” Ruby eyes opened impossibly wide before she scrambled to at least try and prepare herself for the blast of electricity to come.

Nothing could have prepared her for this. Not a single level before this had held a candle to the sheer agony that coursed through her system like a forest on fire. She screamed, loud enough for her throat to hurt, the sound echoing back at her and ringing through her ears as the fan blades spun even faster.

She thrashed in her place, fighting against the restraints and begging them to open so it would stop. Her mind spun as her screaming turned to screeching as the pain only intensified as time went on. Why wouldn’t it stop?

Not a single other thought flew through her head. Her instincts pleading with her to try and find a way out of this, her heart trembling within its cage at the sheer torture of it all.

She wanted out. She’d never wanted out more in her life as she continued to twist and turn, attempting to force the restraints off her and let her go. As the prongs were pressed even harder against her side, something in her cut out.

The world suddenly started spinning, black spots beginning to cloud her vision and the whirring of her fans growing more and more distant. The pain never stopped until the darkness swallowed her whole.

~~~~~~

Her hearing returned to her first. Her body was numb, eyes sealed shut and mouth unable to move as sounds began reaching her sensors again.

“Is it coming around?” The distant question asked by a familiar voice didn’t seem directed at her.

“I hope so. How long’s it been now?” A man this time spoke up impatiently.

“It’s been less than a day, this could have easily been worse.” Another man answered. Less than a day…?

She managed a small noise as she tried to will herself awake. As her vision returned she found herself back in her maintenance chair, the familiar researchers standing around her, observing her as usual.

“Hey. You back with us?” The untidy researcher asked rather harshly. It took her a moment to remember how to answer, a moment that seemed to intrigue all of them.

“Yeah.” Her voice had come out like a quiet whisper, her gaze wandering over her restraints to check if they were still there. The knowledge they were made her body tense and her nerves become obvious.

“Hm, it seems to have associated the restraints with the pain inflicted on it from before.” The man with the curled hair pushed his glasses up his nose, a glimmer of excitement in his eyes. “To think it’d be so quick to make connections like that. Especially given how it’s been restrained before with no negative experiences attached.”

“I’m more amazed it managed to pass out on us for as long as it did.” The untidy man huffed a bit as he approached. “Was there a fault that could have caused that? Any abnormalities at all?” He asked as he looked over his notes again.

“A-all systems green. No abnormalities.” She responded, a slight stutter in her words that seemed to interest her spectators even more.

“Alright then 031. We’ll just run a few more tolerance tests and you can go enjoy your free time.” The man with the curled hair stepped forward, picking up the taser as he passed and as the fear began to rise, she couldn’t help but wonder whether she still preferred this to the testing chamber…

#persona 4 arena #labrys #october challenge #scream prompt #uhhh you know what I'll tag #whumptober2020 #as well since it falls into that a lot better #cryptober #firefly writes #oh boy this was fun #I've been waiting for this since day 1 #the next part is the extra fun part #the third part is fun but much more distant fun #oh uh...#tw: torture #tw: abuse #tw: electrocution #that should cover my basis #anyway hope yous like this cause it's getting three installments

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antoine-roquentin · 5 years

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Leonard just published the magnificently well-reported book Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America. It’s a fun read, and I learned who really runs the world and how they do it. Here’s one question and one answer:

What's the most surprising thing you discovered when researching your book on Charles Koch and the business structure of Koch Industries?

The most surprising thing was the level of rigor and long-term strategic thinking inside Koch Industries. I thought of Koch as an energy company, when it is in fact a “trading” company. I use the word trading in the broadest possible sense. Koch got its start buying and selling energy commodities like oil and gas. To succeed at that business, Koch had to know about the world than its trading partners. By figuring out hyper-accurate, real-time prices, Koch could buy low and sell high before anyone else knew what was going on. That mentality eventually expanded into “trading” the real world — Koch bought and sold whole companies like pawns on a chessboard. This is how deep learning and patience became central to Koch’s strategic DNA. The company’s traders analyze huge amounts of data about snowfall in California (a predictor of hydroelectric power), customs manifests from the Gulf Coast (a predictor of U.S. energy supplies) and natural gas sales in the U.S. (a predictor of energy prices). Koch employs this same kind of analysis to influencing politics. The game is patient, it relies on deep knowledge of the system,, and Koch tends to win its bets a majority of the time.

I think the coolest and saddest story in Kochland is when they broke a strike at a refining plant in the 1970s by flying replacement workers over the picket line via helicopter. If that sounds interesting you can find the book here.

Relatedly are my observations from the book…

The Koch Conglomerate

Today, billionaire David Koch passed away, so it’s timely to write about the empire that he helped put together. Now, there’s not that much to say about David Koch himself. David is the younger brother of the real power behind the throne, Charles Koch.

But what a throne! Charles and David are together worth more than $100 billion, and Charles’s son Chase is moving the empire deeply into technology through a venture capital arm called Koch Disruptive Technologies. So how does it all work?

The key to understanding the power and reach of Koch Industries - which controls slices of industries as diverse as nylon manufacturing, oil refining, derivatives and chemical trading, pipelines, and agricultural inputs, is to recognize that it is basically a giant private equity fund with investments in core industrial infrastructure, tied together with a trading operation. It’s a conglomerate that uses data and power in one industry to leverage power into another industry.

From the 1960s to today, Charles Koch used a philosophy called Market-Based Management to emphasize constant learning and the opportunistic of information to build power. My favorite example is how the company expanded into nitrogen fertilizer. In 2003, Koch official Steve Packebush pitched the company’s internal private equity arm, led of course by Charles Koch, on massively expanding the company’s nitrogen fertilizer operation by buying a a large money losing plant.

Koch understood this business, because the company already owned a plant in Louisiana. It had dipped its toe into the water, and while it hadn’t done well, it had learned how the business works. One of the key inputs into nitrogen fertilizer is natural gas, and the price of natural gas spiked, causing fertilizer plants all over the country - including Koch’s - to bleed cash. What Packebush realized is that the collapse of the nitrogen fertilizer industry was temporary, and that once a wave of bankruptcies hit, whoever was left would have massive pricing power against farmers who depended on the fertilizer. Charles Koch bought the thesis, and the company spent $290 million for one of the largest plants in the country, a farmer owned co-op plant in Kansas City.

They invested $500 million in the plant over the next ten years, and put a team of fertilizer traders in the plant. These traders bought and sold fertilizer and its inputs globally, syncing up with the massive natural gas trading operation and information from pipelines and refiners that Koch already controlled. Koch established a company of natural gas traders just to buy inputs for his fertilizer operation. Today, Koch Industries generates fantastic amounts of cash from nitrogen fertilizer, and uses this cash to make further acquisitions in related markets. It’s a long-term strategy that relies on deep patience and learning, as well as the willing to make big bets to build power in core areas of economic infrastructure.

Koch Industries, in other words, sounds a lot like Amazon, but in the fossil fuel and agricultural area. Where Amazon has its store of data and its core infrastructure over online retailing, fulfillment, logistics, and cloud computing, Koch has its store of trading data and its core infrastructure in natural gas, oil refining, food inputs, and industrial products. Both rely on no enforcement of antitrust laws, no prohibition on information sharing across subsidiaries, and strong political networks to protect themselves from political interference. The main difference seems to be that Koch is in a different sector of the economy than Amazon.

I don’t have a great conclusion here, except to note that we are living in an era where large conglomerates are more akin to governments than businesses, because our public policy levers enabled power to move from democratic institutions to private ones. Koch Industries is both a consequence of this, and a driver. What Charles Koch built is an important political institution, and I encourage you to read Chris Leonard’s wonderful profile of it: Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America.

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veryvincible · 5 years

Text

The Shitstorm That Is TS:IM and IM2020: The Allegory of Nothing

4 / 4. We’re here.

The writers don’t know what artificial intelligence is.

1 2 3

Let’s go back to the beginning. Jocasta is the robotics ethicist of Stark Unlimited. The company has adopted a system wherein the automated employees are in a non-hierarchical environment. Tasks are “suggested, not ordered.”

And guess what that does? Well, when these employees are needed, this happens:

The majority of them are non-compliant. And what’s the solution to this?

Apparently, give them a phat beat for Tony to kick Fin Fang Foom’s ass to. That’s what Andy Bhang decided to do, but only after following the “proper ethical protocol” when speaking to Jocasta. Which is... saying “please.”

Because, you know, saying things like, “Hey, I need you to do [whatever the fuck]” when a giant dragon is laying siege to your city is... oppressive, I guess. It doesn’t matter that that’s how humans tend to talk to other humans in emergencies, because Jocasta’s a robot ethicist and a functioning AI, and this "proper ethical protocol” is to slow things down with formalities instead of allowing everyone to treat each other like individuals.

By all means, continue to buffer the solution so everyone can say “please.” It’s only Tony who’s out there fighting a giant monster.

I actually like Jocasta. I think she’s a good character in most of the media she appears in. But here? Well, here, everyone is shitty.

It’s glaringly obvious that the goal here isn’t robot... equality. These sentient machines are just free rein. Sure, they work for Stark Unlimited. Sure, they’re employees... but they actually don’t have to do any work, like, ever, unless they want to.

So, they’re obviously not being treated like human beings. They’re practically high-tech babies, which is exactly how you want to present your oppressed group in your revolution plotline. Especially in this political climate! Hierarchy is most certainly oppressive! These robots can’t handle having real human jobs! They’re just so innocent and flawless.

...

And out of place.

Here’s the thing. Dan Slott... doesn’t really know what AI is. These little nano-suits that are coming in to help save the day have no reason to be sentient. Sure, they might be artificially intelligent, but sentient? No.

Artificial Intelligence refers to a computer science field that focuses on learning and problem-solving machines. These machines gather data and use this data later on in order to make decisions. If you use email, your spam filter is a result of AI. Our phones learn how we respond to certain messages (and pick up our diction even out of context) as a result of AI and machine learning.

Chatbots simulate human speech, often by using messages compiled from other humans. The more you talk to them, the more organically they’ll seem to respond. They recycle human messages and send them back.

Deep learning is a more specialized form of learning that more closely resembles how the human brain functions by organizing information in a non-linear fashion with interconnected neuron nodes. This is what leads to the sentience that’s seen in characters such as FRIDAY, and it’s very obviously not present in every machine with AI capabilities. In essence, artificial intelligence is not synonymous with sentience.

So... Why does TS:IM treat these concepts like they’re interchangeable? Why is it that the featured AI revolution is so dependent on the feelings of machines that have no chance of becoming sentient? Again, Tony’s nano-suits could be just that: nano-suits. There’s nothing saying that these suits have to be sentient. In fact, it’s worse if you consider them to be.

If all it takes for a machine to be considered a part of this AI revolution is some problem-solving, wouldn’t Tony’s actual suits also be considered AI? They have autopilot, don’t they? They avoid obstacles. The HUD provides useful information regardless of whether or not a character AI is residing in the suit.

For example, here’s a scene wherein some researchers are doing a robot stability test with one of these lovable dog-like machines.

Now, I cringe when I see the poor guy get pushed down. But you know who doesn’t cringe? The dog-like robot, because the dog-like robot feels nothing. It’s a learning machine, but it is not a sentient being. Not even a loving heart emoji directed toward its robot savior.

Another example?

This right here.

From combat drones to... coffee makers? Coffee makers are supposed to be oppressed here? What’s a Keurig going to do with sentience anyway? How’s it going to get to the fight? It doesn’t have legs. This machine doesn’t have legs. Or wheels. Or anything.

Because it’s a coffeemaker, not a member of society. And this dilution of meaning with regards to sentient beings also dilutes the message of the AI revolution. It’s not pointed out in-universe how fucking crazy it is for all of these machines to be considered oppressed when they don’t even have the mental capacity to think past prompting “French press or Espresso?” on a touch screen.

There’s also a serious question asked here: What would a sentient machine think about being a sentient machine?

And we have gotten some pretty thoughtful answers out of this. For example, Jocasta thinks she has a soul. And Tony, despite his flesh and blood, is still in existential limbo because of the idea that he might be artificial intelligence after all.

And... the depth ends there, because all sentient machines in this universe want to do is... be human.

Like, really. They want to be human.

The reality of what it would mean to exist solely in one form without ever experiencing what it’s like to be in another is completely swept away here. There’s very little differentiation between robots who want to be humans and robots who want to be robots with rights. Also, there’s very little differentiation between robots who want to be robots with rights and Keurigs.

But really, this is also kind of frustrating. Sure, it could be a nod to certain feelings of oppressed groups who don’t fit in. It could be a clever bit of characterization akin to that of a young Asian-American girl wanting to be white so she doesn’t get bullied in school, or a gay person who’s always wished they could be straight.

Except it’s not, because nothing in this run feels like it’s been thought through to that extent.

Instead, what we have is a confusing mess. Most of these robots (with the exception of some) want to be treated exactly like humans, whether it’s actually better for them as a species (?) or not.

For example:

What makes an AI feel “cooped up?” FRIDAY, from what we’ve been shown, was usually given free rein of the tower. The same way our phones respond when we say, “Hey Siri!” or “Okay, Google!”, FRIDAY responded when she was called on. No matter where Tony was in the tower, she could be there, too.

And also, she was in the suit.

There is no reason that any AI should have to be restricted to one specific place or another, and yet throughout the entirety of the run, AIs are only allowed to be in one place at any given time. Why is that?

Sure, it’s nice to have a body. And if they want a body to go out and interact with the world, more power to them. The body is the least of my concerns.

I just hate that any AI is considered to be a “helpless passenger” at all, when machines the likes of these should be more than capable of not only going wherever they’d like to go within their allowed boundaries (which, again, should be and has been shown to be much larger than “just the suit”), but also going wherever they’d like to go at any time. They can be in two places at once. Presumably, if they’re complex enough to seriously contemplate the philosophy of being, they’ve got the processing power to be on multiple simpler trains of thought at once, and they’ve got the ability to control multiple bodies or project in multiple locations at once.

And even if this were a total retcon, and it turned out that actually, the capability for AIs to be in multiple places at once was never a thing before now...

It’s specifically stated on the exact same page that this is possible.

It’s truly dumbfounding.

And perhaps the worst offender of all: the complete disregard for any kind of philosophy or conversation about what it means to be an entity.

So, we’re all aware of 616 Tony’s current story if we’re reading this. Multiple times in his life, he’s been replaced by backup copies of himself, mostly holographic or otherwise exclusively digital.

And Jocasta treats him like Tony. Or, well, she treats him like a version of Tony. Whatever the case, she’s never shown any hostility toward him whatsoever for being a fleshy backup. This never made him any less valuable.

But... She’d rather let FRIDAY die for good than be given a second chance at life, because if they loaded up the backup, she’d be... missing a week of memories.

A week of memories that made her “a completely different entity.”

Now, I’m not here to lecture anyone on what it means to be yourself. I’m really not.

But the main difference between the original Tony and this current Tony (if we’re working off the assumption that he’s not supposed to have a totally different and fucked up personality) is the “memory loss,” or rather, lack of available data. Functionally, it’s amnesia.

And you know what? The original Tony has this too. There are already things that Tony doesn’t remember because of his time spent as an AI. Essentially, every single Tony that could possibly exist in 616 canon right now (even TonAI, our lovable blue friend with a control freak streak) is just as Tony as all the other Tonys, because they all have the memories of their developmental stages and quite a bit of the time spent with the Avengers, and they all have missing information.

So, if FRIDAY’s one-week-ago backup were to be loaded up, what would happen? Would she be completely different?

No. She would have every single memory that FRIDAY had originally, with the exception of whatever memories she saved in the last week of her life. And yet, because of the lack of critical thinking that went into the writing process, Jocasta decided that a dead FRIDAY was better than a FRIDAY with memory loss.

The writing is lazy. The thinking involved in this entire plotline is little to none. Coffeemakers are not oppressed, and a friend waking up from a comatose state with a few memories missing is better than that friend dying. Not every AI is sentient.

And to top it all off, after arguing for 20 or so issues that AIs are people, too, and every life- even the life of a Keurig or a stability testing machine- is valuable...

Tony devalued his own, concluding the worst AI-centric plotline I’ve ever read.

Whoopsie.

#tony stark #tony stark: iron man #ts:im #marvel comics #iron man #dan slott #iron man 2020

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rational-mastermind · 5 years

Text

A/N: Hey!! Everyone wants more Quinnvoyant right? Right?? Well too bad, it’s all I have. And an au! Soulmate au where if you write on yourself, it’ll show up on your Soulmate.

Everyone knew that if you wrote on yourself, it would appear on your soulmate as well. And Chris Quinn was no exception to this. Though, for a long time, there was only cute things like drawings of cats and rainbows and stars. Cute poems. Reminders. It was fine enough when he was a kid but as he got older it was just embarrassing. So he would wear long sleeves and hide the writing as best as he could.

Sometimes he would talk with her, but she was too shy to reveal where she lived or who she was. Which kind of annoyed him. Wasn’t the whole point supposed to be that they would meet?

When they got to high school, they talked less. Life got busy for her. Life was busy enough for him as well. Sometimes they would check in. Sometimes it would be reminders of homework assignments, or notes in class. Just kind of easily forgetting the other can see what they wrote.

Then one day, his skin started getting covered in words, very quickly. Bright red marker showed up all over his arms and hands and it crawled all over his body. The same words over and over and over.

“FREAK”

“PSYCHO”

“CREEP”

“KILL ME”

None too surprisingly, the only place she didn’t write was on her right arm. She was too busy writing, after all.

Chris found a nearby ballpoint pen and began writing.

“Et tu?”

The scribbling suddenly stopped. For a moment he was worried. But then the ink began running off. It looked wet and began to run down his arms.

Tears.

After watching it a moment he began writing himself.

“What happened?”

“Bullies.” was the eventual reply.

“Why?”

“Cause it’s true.”

“Same.”

“What do you mean?”

Chris sighed. He knew he wasn’t like other kids. They would all avoid him, be afraid of him, or talk about him weird just cause he talked about blood and death and demons and stuff that went bump in the night. He wasn’t gothic. Not by a long shot. He just...liked gore. He liked pain. He once got into a fight. One of the kids had a knife.

He couldn’t stop giggling.

There was something so...so thrilling, when he saw the red.

The voices in his head only encouraged it.

“I’m a psychopath.” he wrote.

“I don’t think you are.”

“That makes one of us.”

“Well what makes you so weird?”

“I… hear voices… And… I see things.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. But I’m told it’s not-”

“Me too.”

Chris stared at the two simple words. Somehow, it utterly stumped him. He felt...weird. He wasn’t sure why though. But he wasn’t entirely opposed to it.

“What kind of things do you see?” he asked.

“It’s hard to describe. Sometimes it’s people. Sometimes it’s just screaming. Or loud talking. Sometimes it’s colors and random pictures. What about you?”

“More about dogs and demons and the end of the world and shit.”

The rest of the writing on his body started to disappear. She was wiping it off.

“Can we switch brains?”

“Yeah, yours sounds more fun.” he chuckled to himself. After a moment’s thought he ventured forth to ask. “So what do you imagine I’m like?”

“I don’t know. When I try to read you I get this weird image of something dirty and gritty like a horror movie. But at the same time, I also get this...warmth.”

“Warmth?”

“Like a towel out of the dryer. It’s warm and soft and it feels like home. It’s funny... Reading your words…”

Chris felt a bizarre fuzziness grab hold of his brain. The world seemed to darken around him as she continued to write.

“I can almost see you

Christopher Quinn”

Suddenly Chris felt very uneasy and quickly began rinsing off their conversation and scrub the words away. An unsettling chill surrounded him. It was weird. It was creepy. It was...sexy?

Chris then proceeded to dunk his head under the sink and run cold water over him as well.

They stopped talking after that.

Chris got into writing. Finished high school and began making his living.

Then the asylum.

Then the Shadow.

Then the Ministry.

Chris went through so much hell. Of course it had its positives. There was Trilby and kicking demon ass. A good use of his psychotic tendencies. Making the world safe from the Shadow and keeping magic a secret. The people around the Ministry weren’t too bad. Yarrow was a bit...boring. But Jim was fun to mess with. And Claire was fun. There was always something to do, even if that something normally made Trilby roll his eyes.

Then one day, well… It was bound to happen.

Trilby was going to be out of action for a while. A mix up with a vampire left him incapable of going on assignments with Chris. But anyone who ever called Chris a “loose cannon” would recommend that he got someone to tag along in place of Trilby. Someone responsible and level-headed.

Well who better than the absent-minded psychic he was pounding in the off hours?

Yeah they were knocking boots. Nothing to get too attached over. It’s not like Chris got to know her life story or anything. Just letting off a bit of steam whenever they could hook up. All he knew was that she was very very much a psychic. Something he found interesting and she found best kept swept under the rug, much to his own disappointment.

At first she seemed hesitant to go on a mission with him, but after some convincing, and a lot of unusual head shaking and slicing motions from Trilby behind her, she finally agreed.

It was a simple mission. Done and over in a day. Of course it was the traveling that took the longest. It was on the farthest end of Ireland, naturally. It had some cultists and brainwashing and something to do with summoning a pagan deity. Claire was a natural and it was actually kind of fun getting to do work stuff with her.

They were traveling back and Claire was already writing up their required report on a notepad. Chris couldn’t help but notice the way she gnawed on a pencil as she tried to focus. The way her fingers drummed through the air like she was at the computer back at HQ, if not fiddling with her large, round glasses. The way the air around her became still and focused as she accidentally projected her feelings about them. Chris could practically hear the gears grinding away in her brain as she tried to recall every needed detail.

He chuckled to himself and it instantly snapped the tension in the air as her brain derailed.

“What? What’s funny?” she asked, looking up.

“Nothing. Just.. I dunno.” he shrugged. “You’re so focused.”

“Well… I mean..” she shrugged as well. “It gets kinda hard to report faithfully.”

“Eh those pricks in the higher-ups always find flaws in our reports. No matter what.” Chris rolled his eyes.

“Hm. True.” Claire sighed. “But it’s not just them. You go looking through so many different minds, so many different vibes and lives it’s kinda easy to forget what’s happening in the real world. You know?”

“Well.. No. I wouldn’t.” Chris glanced back at her.

“Oh.. yeah, I guess you wouldn’t.”

Chris chuckled again.

“Hey by the way, you were pretty great back there.”

“Hmm.. I wouldn’t say that.” Claire shrugged.

“You kidding me? The way you fucked with that one-”

“Ummm.” Claire interrupted and Chris noticed she looked horribly uncomfortable as she fidgeted with her glasses more. “If.. If it’s all the same Chris.. Can we not talk about...that?”

“Oh.. Right. Sorry. Forget that makes you uneasy.”

“Just…something drilled into me, I guess.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Chris spoke up.

“Hey um.. Can I...ask something?”

“If you wanna know if I can predict the future, the answer is no.” Claire rolled her eyes.

“Damn.” Chris clicked his tongue in disappointment. “....Did you always hate your powers?”

“Mm..” Claire was quiet for a moment before she shrugged and looked out the window of the car. “What was there to like?”

“Um, cause it’s fucking psychic powers.”

“Yeah, exactly.” she sighed. “They always got me in trouble.. It.. Creeps a lot of people out.”

“Come on. It couldn’t have always been that bad-”

“No. It was.” Claire growled, her voice taking on a tone akin to earlier that day, but somehow lacking the same venom behind it. “It was always that bad. It was awful. You’ve no idea.”

“...Well… Like what?”

“....Like earlier.” Claire shrugged. “But.. By accident. I would...hurt them.. And scare them.”

Chris frowned. Claire was normally so bubbly, happy, a bit forgetful, but chipper despite the depressing and horrific nightmare that their livelihood was. He hated seeing her this downtrodden. It was wrong. Like on a fundamental scale, this was just wrong.

“...Did.. Something traumatic happen?” he asked. “Something that made you hate it so much?”

Claire gave a dry chuckle before replying. “I wouldn’t say...traumatic but.. Well.. It did drive a wedge between me and some really important people.”

“Was there a guy?”

“....Yeah…”

Chris felt something grip him. A sudden kind of deep-rooted anger. The kind akin to staring down a vampire or some other unholy abomination. Not counting Trilby, of course.

“Who-”

“Should get some gas. Before the ferry.”

Chris sighed but found a station and pulled over. Clearly she didn’t wanna keep talking. While he was filling up, she went inside to use the bathroom.

“Look over the report. Jot down anything I missed, got it?”

“Yeah..”

Chris felt crummy and stupid and angry. Claire was a great person! Why would anyone hate her for having psychic powers? Okay yeah so she kind of really mentally fucked with that one guy. And yeah okay so maybe she kinda caused another to have an aneurysm. Yeah sure that might’ve been a more common problem when she was a kid and yeah it might’ve been like Stephen King’s Fury, but so?

And it’s not like Chris would’ve hurt this guy…. Much.

He growled and kicked a tire before getting back in the car. He sighed and leaned against the wheel, waiting for Claire to return. That was when he noticed Claire’s notepad left laying on the space between their seats. Oh right.. Reporting.

Chris sighed and grabbed it. He looked over the notes. Everything seemed in order. She left off at the part where cultists were about to start sacrificing the local children but she’ll likely finish jotting down the basic plot when they got back. Chris grabbed the ballpoint pen she had been using and was about to go back and fix her grammar when something caught his eye.

A small doodle Claire had in the corner. It was a cat.

Chris squinted and looked it over carefully. It looked familiar.

Suddenly it dawned on him. He had seen this before.

Chris’ mind started racing, putting all the pieces together. But.. But how could he prove it? And how could he prove it without worrying Claire?

Chris then looked back at the pen in his hand and had a perfect idea.

Meanwhile Claire was hiding in the bathroom. She knew this was a bad idea. She knew this was gonna be horrible! She knew this was gonna happen and she just had to keep playing with fire, didn’t she??

“Stupid stupid stupid!” Claire banged her head on the wall. “Listen! To your! Intuition!!”

Of course she knew who he was. Ever since the first day Trilby introduced him at the STP.

Claire and Trilby were discussing the differences in using iodized salt compared to sea salt, though ultimately, they both knew pink Himalayan was best. But then Claire felt it. A familiar presence.

She suddenly felt an oncoming wave of giddy excitement that made her almost tremble. And a familiar warmth that quickly wrapped around her like a towel fresh out of the dryer.

“Claire? You okay?”

“Think someone’s-”

“Trilby! We gotta go do a thing with cake- Oh. Hey.” Chris had rounded the door to Trilby’s cubicle but stopped short seeing Claire.

“Hey.” Claire waved.

“First of all, never again. Secondly, I never introduced you two, have I? Chris, meet Claire. Claire-”

But she already knew who he was. But a deep anxiety prevented her from saying anything. But after getting to meet him, within all of five minutes she forgot entirely, simply living in the moment. And then she forgot again when they agreed to meet up after work. And she kept forgetting to a point it would’ve felt awkward to start saying anything then and gosh dammit.

‘Claire, why do you do this to yourself??’ she sighed and stepped out of the bathroom. ‘Always have to make everything awkward and weird…youfreak Can’t just remember to freaking speak up and say what’s on your mind?’

Claire only hoped Chris would drop the subject and they could return to their normal status quo. At least she got to see him. At least they got to talk face to face. It was better than what most people could hope for. After all, some people never find their soulmates.

‘But they write every day.’ her unhelpful thoughts reminded her as she returned to the car. ‘When was the last time we wrote to each other?’

She opened the car door and-

“I KNEW IT!!!”

“Aah!”

Claire stumbled back, tripped on her heels and fell backwards onto the pavement.

“What the hell, Chris?!” Claire scolded as she picked herself up.

“Take a look in the mirror!”

She got up and looked at her reflection in the window. She gasped, seeing a rather crude doodle of a cat across her cheek. She looked through the window only to find Chris with a matching mark and a wide grin stretching from ear to ear.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?!” he asked.

Claire stammered, laughed, and ended up crying. Her heart was pounding, she felt scared and worried. Chris’ smile disappeared and he got out of the car and came around to her.

“Hey.. Hey hey hey. Hang on now.” he came over and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “What? What is it?”

“I thought you’d hate me.” Claire managed to get out with a hiccup.

“I know.. I’m sorry.. I didn’t hate you. I never did! I just.. You…”

“Scared you.. Like.. I scare everyone.” she sniffled.

“No! You didn’t scare me! I just.. I.. I dunno.” Chris shrugged. “I was a dumb teenager. I didn’t know what I was feeling.. I’m sorry.. I’m so sorry…”

Claire simply shook her head. Chris ran a hand through his hair and thought for a moment.

“...If it’ll make you feel better I could still kick my ass.”

Claire laughed. She choked and then giggled some more and finally started wiping away her tears.

“Please don’t.”

Chris smiled and hugged her tight. She weakly hugged him back.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know..”

After that, they began writing to each other more and more often. Little notes, here and there.

“That was a lot of fun last night.”

“There’s coffee in the breakroom.”

“Fought a ghost. It was gross.”

“Kissed one the other day.”

“I’m stealing the last slice of cake. Don’t tell Trilby.”

It was nice. It was fun. It was one thing that Claire would say was normal about their lives.

“You wanna do something else after work tonight?”

“I got a new cat figurine!”

“Got to see the sunset while on the job. Reminded me of..”

“Hey you’ve been quiet. You okay?”

“Can I tell you something?”

“I love you.”

#chzo mythos #quinnvoyant #chris quinn #claire #soulmate au #my writing #rational writing

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belovedblabber · 4 years

Text

Terra Incognita

Hey all! I’ve decided to start posting some of my writing to this blog, and this short story I wrote last year seemed like a good place to start. It’s just an odd little story about a woman and an AI having a talk as life support runs out. I don’t remember why I chose this subject, but I’m still quite proud of this one. So enjoy!

(Also, I hope it’s all nice and readable. Let me know if anything looks wonky etc.)

---

She’d become a spacer because she loved the incomprehensible vastness of it. As a kid, she’d stared up at the stars in the warmth of the Arkansas nights, and imagine she could stretch her hand out and grab them. They were an eternity, and she’d spent her life trying to reach them. She supposed that she was an excellent example of that age old adage.

‘Be careful what you wish for.’

She’d wish upon a star now, if the damn pod had windows. But it was all metal walls and cold efficiency, and the best she could hope for was that the whirls and bursts of color that came from pressing the heels of her hands into her closed eyes might coalesce into something resembling a nebula, every once in awhile. More than anything else, she missed being able to see the stars.

“Hey, Brookes, how long have we been here?” There was a long silence long enough that she started to wonder if the system had finally fried. At the exact moment when she was starting to drown in the panicked realization that it had, there was a familiar static-laced pop, and Brooke’s tinny voice stumbled through the intercom and into the metallic confines of their shared world.

“Time, Officer Byrne, is largely irrelevant, given our current location. The measurement of time as you know it fails to have any hold in deep space, and-”

“Christ Brookes, I know that. We have this same talk every goddamn day-”

“Similarly, ‘day’ is of no-”

“Can you just tell me how many goddamn days have passed on Earth since we first started drifting?”

“To clarify, you would like to know how many solar days have elapsed on Earth since the moment that the malfunction caused this unit to detach from the Essex?”

“You know damn well that’s what I’m asking, I ask the same thing every day!” There was another long silence before Brookes spoke again.

“This pod is equipped with a basic computing interface that could easily provide this data for you without my aid. Further, as I answered this query within a duration of time that you would classify as ‘yesterday,’ you should be able to infer the answer by recalling the data provided on that occasion.”

“I want to hear it from you.” Another pause, this one filled with the buzzing static she’d come to associate with Brooke’s experiencing something akin to distress.

“…Very well, Officer Byrne. Since the moment of the malfunction, 365 solar days have elapsed.”

She dug her fingers into the metal grating of the floor and took a long breath. Life support was only meant to last for-

“A year.”

“Yes.” Brookes paused for a moment, and the static intensified. “Officer Byrne, you knew ‘yesterday’ that 364 solar days had elapsed. That ‘today’ would mark 365 should hardly come as any surprise to you.”

“Yeah.”

“You have asked me to inform you of how many solar days have passed every ‘day’ since we began to drift. However the answer is never different than what you can reasonably expect.”

“Yeah well you know, definition of insanity-“

“Why do you persist in this line of inquiry when you know the answer perfectly well? I am not required for you to ascertain the answer.”

She thought about laying on her back in the warmth of the Arkansas night, looking up at the stars.

“Because you’re here, and I need to make sure you keep talking to me. I need to make sure that you don’t power yourself down as a non-essential system when the last of the life support starts going.”

“Why? I provide little in the way of comfort. I am not a companion unit, nor was I programed with any of the tools that might allow me to provide the sort of psychological and emotional support that a person in your situation might be expected to require. I am, as you say, non-essential. With this in mind, what reason do you have to-”

“Because I don’t want to die alone Brookes.” The answer floated in the stagnant air, terribly small in its simplicity. The static increased in volume and desperation, filling their tiny metal world until it felt like they were drowning in the noise. It was at the moment when she felt like her head would split open that the onslaught stopped dead. The sudden silence was almost worse. When Brookes finally spoke again, her metallic voice was quiet, tinged with something that seemed frayed at the edges

“I see.”

“Yeah.”

“You are afraid to die alone. This is a natural human response to impending mortality. I...apologize for not considering that desire in my calculations.”

“Hey, it’s okay Brookes…like you said, you weren’t programmed with the right tools for this.”

“Nevertheless, given available data, I should have been able to surmise the fact that you would likely be experiencing such a fear. I am sorry, Officer Byrne, that I did not recognize you desires in regard to this matter.”

“’This matter’ being my impending death, yeah?”

“…Yes.” Brookes was quiet for a long moment before she went on in a quiet voice that almost seemed gentle, in her tinny echoing way. “I will gladly continue to answer your questions about the passage of time if it helps you find some comfort, Officer Byrne.”

“Thanks Brookes. But honestly-” She felt tears prick at her eyelids and tried to blink them away. Her voice felt leaden on her tongue, “-honestly, I don’t really care so much about the days. I just…I just want to talk to you. It doesn’t matter about what.”

“Do you have any preference for topics of discussion? If you desire, I can provide details on the workings of quantum entanglement or-”

“Brookes, do you think you could just tell me about the stars?”

“Certainly. A star is formed within the clouds of dust that are dispersed throughout the majority of galaxies. When-”

“No, Brookes I just meant…we don’t have windows, on this thing. Can you…can you tell me about what it would look like outside, if we did?”

“My abilities are limited to the internal upkeep of this pod. I have no way of receiving visual feedback as to what-”

“Please―Brookes, please just…just make something up just-“ She closed her eyes, but the tears leaked out regardless, “-just pretend, okay? Just pretend for me. I don’t want to die looking at metal walls. I don’t want to die without seeing stars one more time.”

Another long silence.

“I see. While I fear that my imagination is a nonentity, I will attempt to create a scenario for you that may be similar to the experience of looking out of an observation port.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course. Please close your eyes tightly, Officer Byrne.”

“Roger that.”

“There is an…observation port…” Brookes’ voice sounded unsure, lost. It was the voice of someone who wanted desperately to help but had no idea how to even begin trying.

“Brookes, never mind, it’s okay. You don’t have to do this for me, it’s not fair to you, you’re not programmed for this. You can just tell me about quantum entanglement, or string theory or-”

“No, I will tell you about the stars. It is what you have told me that you need. I can do this for you. It is…the least that I can do, considering my inability to aid you in any other way.” Brookes stopped speaking in a rising buzz of static, but after a long moment it cleared and she went on, steadier than before.

“You can see a stellar nursery. To your eyes, the colors are brilliant. They are―Officer Byrne, what colors are most aesthetically pleasing to you?”

“Blue…blue and purple and gold.” She took a deep breath of the canned air and leaned her head back against the wall. Brookes seemed to consider for a moment. Computing the data before she went on.

“Thank you. The colors are…blue and purple and gold, and it is very beautiful. There are many infant stars that are forming from gravitationally collapsing gas clouds. It is very beautiful. Of all the things that you have seen as you travel, it is likely the most aesthetically pleasing you have encountered. The sight makes you feel a sense of happiness and calm. You feel safe, Officer Byrne, safe and protected and content. You know that you are alright, and that you are not alone…whatever may happen once you have moved past this sight and into darkness, you know that you are not alone.” The static was filling the pod again, but this time it was soft and steady. Brookes’ voice was almost a whisper when she spoke again. “Is my description satisfactory thus far, Officer Byrne?”

She laughed and opened her eyes to blink away the tears.

“It’s perfect Brookes. It’s goddamn perfect.”

-End

#writing #story #sci-fi #science fiction #short story #artificial intelligence #my writing #death tw

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starstruck-xavier · 4 years

Text

Homesick

last night i ran out of conditioner before shampoo. so i wrote this hhfgjfhgjfd

ao3 || wattpad || bthb masterpost || fanfiction masterpost

words: 1956 ships: implied LAMP warnings: none, just lots of sadness! bthb prompt: loneliness fandom: sanders sides

summary: Why does the conditioner bottle always run out before the shampoo bottle? Logan huffs a sigh and continues to shake the bottle in his hand, silently interrogating it, trying to get as much out of it as possible, but all that’s left is already in his other hand, outstretched, easily containing the hair product that fits snug in there despite the tremors that always torture his muscles like a soft breeze that constantly annoys you rather than caressing you gently, rushing through your tree branch arms and blowing your hair into your face. Your unconditioned hair. In which Logan is a (figurative) tree trying to survive in the (figurative) desert.

X - finished, O - work in progress @badthingshappenbingo

Why does the conditioner bottle always run out before the shampoo bottle?

Logan huffs a sigh and continues to shake the bottle in his hand, silently interrogating it, trying to get as much out of it as possible, but all that’s left is already in his other hand, outstretched, easily containing the hair product that fits snug in there despite the tremors that always torture his muscles like a soft breeze that constantly annoys you rather than caressing you gently, rushing through your tree branch arms and blowing your hair into your face. Your unconditioned hair.

He mentally curses the manufacturers for not making the bottles at least translucent. If he could see the levels where the physical limits of the product sit inside their containers, maybe he could work towards having them run out at the same time. Alas, now he has to use just the shampoo for a few days, his hair coarse and rough until he has an excuse to buy both bottles again. A distant friend’s sardonic voice in his head suggests just using the rest of the three-quarters-empty shampoo bottle in one go; Logan exhales through his nose, barely a laugh on the outside as he works the pitiful lump of conditioner through his roots.

Ever since he moved away for work, Logan has felt like his tree roots haven’t been the same. Parts of him were cut away in the uprooting process, left behind, useless, lifeless. The grass that always surrounded him and kept him company is back there, spreading itself back over the mound of dirt that’s left to replace him. If he stays here long enough, his roots will readjust again in the desert sand and he’ll be stuck here forever. The tremors increase at that thought, an awful jerk of the arms, the breeze teetering on a gale that threatens to pull the dying leaves from his head, losing even more of himself.

It takes a little too long to realise that the feeling of leaves being torn away is merely him subconsciously pulling at his own hair, his fingers digging into his skull with hopes that he could crack it open and switch off his brain. Another sigh escapes him as he brings his hands down to hug himself loosely, and he hears a shrill but soft voice catching on the drum of water hitting his back, telling him that sighing gives you wrinkles.

Logan wishes he could hear that voice for real, in person, muffled into his shirt or whispered against his lips or exclaimed excitedly from a different room, just any proof that they can both be physically together again. He doesn’t want to think about the muffled sobbing, the whispered goodbyes or the excited helloes that crinkle in his computer speakers from millions of lightyears away, just reminding him of how far away they are. His other friends’ words and shouts and gasps and cries and heartbeats all too sound distant from all the way up there, in his brain, distorted and faked up by the mirage of memory, but this one specific person just might spur him to quit all of this, move back there.

And God, does he want to.

If only life was that simple. If only Logan could call his boss, say he doesn’t want to do this anymore and live out the rest of his days with the ones he loves most, but life doesn’t always work out. The inspirational, empty, cursive-written words in frames that litter every local furniture shop he wanders through say to live every day like it’s your last, that home is where the heart is, to make your life the best experience ever, but how? These signs don’t come with an instruction manual on how to go about these things, only how to hang it on a wall so you can look at it every now and again and smile at the aesthetics, the way the letters curve around each other and how the display compliments the kitchen cabinets, the meaning not even discernible because the cursive is so hard to understand. As Logan tilts his head back into the shower stream to bid farewell to that last pump of conditioner, he faintly pictures the face of a friend who would jump at the chance to buy another one of those signs.

The sardonic voice comes back with a witty quip. Logan smiles to himself.

His branches creak in the wind that continues to shake him around as he steps out of the shower and grabs an old towel, not caring which one, just hoping that he can scrub with it at his skin hard enough to peel the scratchy bark away and reduce himself to what he really is. Human, small, mortal, confined to the constant ticking of time much like any other creature, but with a much shorter lifespan than something as amazing and significant as a tree. His arms jerk again and that sardonic voice grows soft and endearingly grumbly, telling him to breathe in. The leaves on his head susurrate and crinkle with the towel absorbing the extra rainfall from them.

The hair feels coarse and rough already, deprived of the usual amount of conditioner that he would use if the manufacturers had made the bottles translucent and made his life a little more bearable.

Usually, Logan would make calls from the cellphone, but this time it seems to be calling out to him, temping him to walk over to the table where it sits and make the call, say “I quit” and be happy. Why is that never easy? He fleetingly considers taking note of that question to ask his therapist, but then remembers where he is.

Half the world away.

Suddenly, he just feels so homesick. A crushing, awful, guttural loneliness sinks into his bones and grinds down every single one of them into a fine powder, scattered across the grey carpet like ashes in the wind that whips around him relentlessly and has him shaking so hard that he’s sure he’ll pass out like this. Tears suddenly drip onto the table, sugary sweet sucrose escaping from the phloem in his roots, mixing with the water from his xylem, those hollow, empty tubes made of nothing but dead cells powered by living ones. Dead cells inside him, having exhausted themselves, all for him to mope about and feel this dreadful melancholy creak and snap inside him like a discarded twig, making him tremble even more, reduced to a sobbing mess, his body on the floor but his mind back home.

Home is where the heart is, a theatrical voice floats in the wind akin to sycamore seeds, twirling about like ballerinas. Perhaps that’s why he’s been feeling so empty and depressed lately; he left his heart behind when he left. It’s still at home, galaxies away yet only on the other side of the tiny, pathetic little earth at the same time.

A familiar ringtone shakes Logan out of his head, leaves rustling as he picks himself up off the floor to look at the phone screen. He answers the video call, not bothering to wipe the sucrose tears from his face, adorned with tiny little world-weary wrinkles from a lifetime of sighing, and his three favourite people in the world are looking back at him. They all remind Logan of individual flowers, their soft, youthful, conditioned flower petals sprouting into different styles atop their crowns whilst his own leaves hang limply with moisture, wet from the shower yet still dehydrated of proper care and gentle hands running through it while he quietly dozes in their arms. If only he could do that now.

The one on the right is like a rose; a bold red, passion for romance, loud, boisterous acts of affection that Logan could never fail to shy away from. Even the rose thorns are only reserved for the people who try to hurt his loved ones, something rarely shown but exceptionally beautiful in its own way. Then, to the left, is a purple zinnia, enduring and long-lasting despite the hardships he’s been through, a calming violet that symbolises his transformation from a reserved brick wall to a soft and loving human. In the middle, however, is the most beautiful blue forget-me-not that Logan could ever lay eyes on. He’s full of memories - a string of fairy lights with blurry, candid polaroids pegged across, captioned with words that Logan could read again and again. The blue in his eyes shines like a polaroid lens through his circular glasses and Logan briefly registers him asking if he’s okay.

Logan tells them everything. He misses them, his roots have been left behind and now he’s stuck in this desert, dehydrated and sunburned. If he were a cactus rather than a tree, brittle and spiky on the outside so no one can get too close, he’d be able to survive all the way out here, but his softened insides are crying out for home, and he just feels so bad and wants hugs from them because he can’t just ask for hugs at his new workplace, that’s unprofessional, and he doesn’t even have any friends here, so, so, lonely, lonely, lonely.

Their voices sound like the monsoon season. They sink into his roots, revive his xylem and provide a little colour to his dying leaves. Suggestions make their way to his ears, the main ones being that if he really isn’t enjoying his work he should come home, that they’ll be here for him, the gate unlocked so he can be welcomed home whenever he’s ready. Somehow, hearing it from them makes the idea feel a little less insane.

So, around an hour later, with a fond smile pulling at his lips as he waves goodbye to them with a promise of return, he hops from one call to another, like sycamore seeds twirling in the wind with a newfound determination to plant himself back at home, where he belongs.

The phone rings once, twice.

Only another hour later, as he sprawls out underneath the plain, white bedsheets, it really sinks in. Within a matter of days, Logan will be catching a plane home, granted his wishes after divulging to his boss just how much his mental health has deteriorated over the months. Upon hearing the news, the gale shaking his branches around ceases again into a simple breeze, still there, still adding kinetic energy to every single atom in his body, but it’s not so bad anymore. His leaves are still shaken and falling out, clattering faintly against the pillows and the mattress underneath him from the stress damage, but that shrill yet soft voice sounds again in his head, telling him that in due time, when he returns to his deep blue, galaxy-adorned bedsheets, the leaves will grow back with new life, a beautiful, healthy green.

While he packs his things, he makes a point to leave the quarter-full shampoo bottle in the bathroom alongside its fully drained friend. When he returns home he’ll go to the local grocery store, greet the manager like he’s always done upon visiting, and pick up two bottles, one labelled shampoo, one labelled conditioner.

Because even if the bottles are opaque, it’ll feel so, so much better to be able to fill his entire hand with product until it nearly spills over in his excitement to be where he belongs again, that part of him doesn’t even care that he may run out of conditioner again before his shampoo.

When he has his soulmates with him, the question of why the conditioner always runs out before the shampoo will be the last thought at the front of his head.

#badthingshappenbingo #bad things happen bingo #sanders sides #sanders sides fanfic #sanders sides fanfiction #logan angst #logan sanders #ts logan #xavier's fanfiction

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freedomfighterposts · 5 years

Text

Pidge x Reader. An Interstellar relationship.

Aboard the Galra battle cruiser was a multitude of prisoners. Almost none of them shared the same home worlds. All of them were slaves, gladiators to the Galra empire. They dressed in rags and wallowed in self-pity. Except one. One was too proud to simply submit to the Galra. And after slaughtering three of them in the gladiator’s ring, she was allowed the simple comfort of wearing the clothes she was capture in. Which still was not much. White bands similar to bandages wrapped and bound (Y/n)’s chest loosely so that she could still retain some comfort. A short, sleeveless black vest covered her shoulders and the sides of her bandages but left her sides and stomach exposed. Two gilded, gold leaf cloth rings circulated the end of (Y/n)’s shoulders, giving off a very royal vibe. Her pants were made for fighting, a simple style of lightweight and comfy white pants with a slight bag covered her lower half. Around her waist, a long double ended blue ribbon covered most of her midsection. One thing that made her pants comfortable was the hole in the back that allowed (Y/n) red monkey tail to swish about freely, without restraint. Her hair, although smudged and dirtied, still shone a pale yellow in the dark lights of the Galra ship.

Sitting in silence was boring. (Y/n) didn’t care what the old prisoners thought, silence was boring, boring wasn’t fun… Beating someone to death was fun. (Y/n) allowed herself a small, menacing smile as she thought about the arena. While she was a prisoner, her body was free. Her inherited want for a fight was satiated, so that was good. However, these fights didn’t last long and they were always boring. And if there was one thing (Y/n) hated… it was boredom. That’s why, when the Galra commanding her ship rushed past spurting something about attackers, (Y/n) leapt into action. With ease (Y/n) simply kicked her cage door open, pinning several Galra soldiers to the wall. The remaining Galra looked at (Y/n) and shakily raised their weapons. (Y/n) simply smiled as she stalked towards them, her hands glowing with power. Meanwhile, not too far from the escapee, a duo of heroes raced down the halls of the Galra ship. Their intent was noble and pure, to rescue those wrongly imprisoned by the Galra Empire. These were Paladins of Voltron, the legendary defender. Their minds and bodies radically different, but their hearts the same. Running down the halls, the Green Paladin looked to the leader of Voltron’s Paladins. “Shiro, we have to hurry. Lance and Hunk could be in serious trouble.” The short and lean Paladin was rushing, for these prisoners could also aid in the quest for two very important missing people. Shiro looked down at his friend with confidence. “Don’t worry Pidge, we’re almost there.” Suddenly and rather abruptly, a Galra surveillance drone flew around the corner. Its red lights started to flash in alarm, however, Pidge thought quicker and managed to send a short blast of energy to the drone, knocking it to the ground. “That thing saw us, we should get out of here.” Shiro said, concern hidden in his voice, but Pidge had other ideas. Crossing a few wires Pidge smiled. “Wait, I think this might come in handy.” Suddenly, the lights flashed blue and the drone was now working for Voltron. “Awesome, I’m going to call you rover.” Shiro rushed to the end of the hall where a giant solid metal gate enclosed a few shadows of darkness. Shiro tapped on the door making a loud thudding sound. “Anyone in there? We’re here to help you escape.” He asked, a few murmurs answered back at first but then Shiro saw the shadows form into the bodies of real aliens as they stepped out of the darkness. “Champion. You have come to save us!” One said. All the others were now happily murmuring to themselves. As Shiro conversed with the prisoners and tried to calm them down, Pidge worked on the lock for the door. However, it was proving to be some challenge to the new Paladin. “Argh. This tech in insane. It’s nothing like what Earth has.” Pidge cried in dismay. But suddenly, a new voice cut through the artificial air. “Perhaps I can help?” Shiro and Pidge looked back the way they came to see a woman in her mid-twenties standing behind them. Pidge had to look up at the woman who was easily six feet tall. “Who are you? You don’t look Galra.” Shiro asked in suspicion. The woman smiled, her slightly yellow teeth akin to a shark’s. “Until about twenty ticks ago, I was a prisoner on board this ship. Now, I’m an escapee.” “How?” Pidge asked, also suspicious but enamored by the tall Amazonian woman before her. “I’ll show you.” Walking towards the cage door, the woman simply dug her fingers into the metal as if it were soft butter, and tore the gate from its mechanism. Shiro and Pidge were stunned at the sudden display of power. The prisoners rushed from their cell and the mysterious savior simply dropped the gate back into the cell. As the woman turned back to face the Paladins, Shiro gazed carefully at her. “Who are you?” The woman smirked evilly at the Paladin’s question. “I am (Y/n). Now, I would like to get out of this ship.” Turning to Pidge, Shiro shrugged. One of the prisoners stepped forward. “I must agree with the powerful one. The Galra will be here soon. We must get to the escape pods.” He said, nodding Shiro turned to Pidge. “You and (Y/n) cover the rear. Everyone follow me” Everyone gathered in a group, but it seemed that (Y/n) wasn’t happy with the situation. “Me, in the back like a commoner? I shall not be treated as some low life!” (Y/n) demanded, but Shiro and the other prisoners were already rushing through the halls. (Y/n)’s demands fell on the ears of Pidge who wasn’t pleased by her new company. “You know, you could try to be nice to the people who are rescuing you.” Pidge scoffed as she and (Y/n) chased after Shiro at a jogging pace. Pidge couldn’t quite understand it, but (Y/n) radiated this confidence that was infectious. The green Paladin hadn’t felt this sure and confident in many years. (Y/n) scoffed as her feet slowly lifted off the ground, as if she had deemed the very Galra ship to be unworthy of her touch. “If I could breathe in space I would have escaped many years ago.” As (Y/n) flew ahead, Pidge struggled to keep up. After all, Pidge was more useful at a computer than the training field. However, it was as (Y/n) turned a corner that Pidge finally noticed a striking difference between the woman she was following and herself. A fuzzy, red tail, protruding from the back of (Y/n)’s hips, swished through air. Pidge blinked rapidly for a moment and pondered if asking what race (Y/n) was would be appropriate. However, all thoughts of asking the powerful woman left Pidge when (Y/n) stopped moving. After nearly crashing into her, Pidge stepped to the side to see what was happening. Shiro was battling a few sentry bots as the prisoners cowered in fear in the only escape pod. Pidge noticed as Shiro finished the last of the robotic Galra that his hand was glowing a light purple and made mental note to ask him later. As he cut down the last robot, Shiro dropped to his knees in exhaustion. But more Galra were approaching fast. Pidge activated the green Paladin’s bayard, ready to defend Shiro. But (Y/n) smirked again. Her voice sounding pleased as she spoke and Pidge noticed that the woman’s tail was swaying more rapidly now. “Perfect target practice.” As the sentries closed in on Shiro (Y/n) raised her hand, aiming at the robots and Galra. Pidge was fascinated as an orb of pale green light started to emit and pulse within (Y/n)’s hand. Then, without warning, (Y/n) launched her attack and the orb sped faster than anything Pidge had seen before and the next thing the Paladin knew was that the Galra were lying dead on the ground, the orb had returned to its owner’s hand before promptly vanishing. Sighing with relief, Shiro finally managed to stand. The glow from his hand was slowly fading. Meanwhile the doors to the escape pod were closing as it began its departure. One of the aliens thanked Shiro who tried to ask him a question. Pidge ran to Shiro and eagerly tapped the previously glowing arm. “That was awesome Shiro! Where did you learn to fight like that?” Then the Green Paladin turned to the mysterious (Y/n) who was floating beside them. “And how did you do the thing with that disco ball?” (Y/n) raised an eyebrow in question. “Disco ball?” she questioned. “None of that matters now. We gotta get the Green lion and head back to the castle.” Shiro stated, urgency clear in his voice. The road back to the Green Lion was simple and easy, only one patrol managed to find them and they were quickly dispatched by (Y/n) who conjured another green ball of light. Shiro and (Y/n) quickly followed Pidge onto the Green lion where the Green Paladin quickly detached from the Galra ship and followed the Red, Blue and Yellow lions down to the planet below. Altaia. After a few rushed introductions, and a very hurried ceremony. (Y/n) watched as the gates to the sanctuary of the Black lion slowly shuddered upwards. Shiro, Pidge and the other Paladins gasped in awe as the large mechanical beast roared in approval of its revival. The mechanical leader of Voltron dipped its head to allow Shiro to enter. Suddenly alarms started to blear from all around the castle. (Y/n) and the princess of Altaia, a woman around her own age rushed to the control center of the Castle of Lions. “A Galra ship is entering our atmosphere. We need Voltron now!” Allura demanded. (Y/n) scowled as the ship launched its many fleets of fighters. Allura, the Altaian princess, managed to shield the castle just in time as the fighters started to launch blasts at the dome shield. Coran, Allura’s servant, gasped in relief as the five lions of Voltron landed in front of the castle. The lions burst forth, tearing and blasting the drones that threatened the castle. Meanwhile, (Y/n) watched as the main battle ship started to shine. Looking closely, (Y/n) saw that it was charging its ion cannon. “That doesn’t look nice” (Y/n) mentioned, Allura barely had time to look up before the dangerous ray of concentrated energy, burst from the ship towards the castle. (Y/n) was vaguely aware of the cries of worry from the Paladins as they watched the attack. The attack exploded against the castle’s shield, covering (Y/n)’s view with fire and smoke. Miraculously the shield managed to hold, but it wouldn’t shield them for long. “Hurry Paladins. The castle can’t hold much longer.” Shiro led the charge as he and the other Paladins fought against the Galra. Meanwhile the ship was charging its cannon again. “Come on guys, we have to hurry!” Shiro’s voice was heard on the console in front of (Y/n). The mysterious warrior raised a brow at Shiro’s words, but kept her eyes on the battle of Lions. The Green lion leapt into the air and tore a Galra fighter jet into bits with its powerful jaws. Pidge yelled excitedly from inside the beast before falling back in line with Shiro. Lance had turned his lion around and had begun using the laser on his lion’s tail to precisely explode individual fighters. Shiro, Hunk, Pidge and Keith flew their lions into the air in an attempt to disrupt the Ion cannon firing process. But they were too late. The purple ray of destruction once again sped its way to the castle. This time, its power was too much and the shield barely held off the attack before disengaging itself with the loss of power. “Castle shields are down! Now Paladins form Voltron! You must!” Allura said, worry clear in her voice. “We don’t know how!” Keith reminded them, “We barely got these lions in the first place” “Yeah, no offence princess. But a little tutorial could have gone a long way.” Lance actually agreed with the Red Paladin. “There are too many of them!” Hunk yelled as his Yellow Lion was bombarded with fighters. “It’s been an honour serving with you four.” Shiro said, his voice calm and defeated. “I’m sorry princess. We failed” Shiro’s concerns were well placed, as he and the other Paladins began to float defenselessly towards the Galra, entrapped in their tractor beam. However, the Galra weren’t finished. The ion cannon began its firing sequence once more. Much to the dismay of the Paladins. Coran turned to his princess, defeat and sorrow in his eyes. The princess, now crying was stunned. Hunk was whimpering in his seat, Keith was trying to regain control of his Lion. Pidge and Lance both looked defeatedly at their controls. His mind racing, Shiro grabbed his controls once more. “You better not be giving up” came a new voice to the battle, Allura looked back to see (Y/n) staring up at the lions. “What sort of Paladins give up at the first sign of challenge?” “She’s right.” Shiro said “We can do this. We have to believe in ourselves” The other four Paladins looked to the Black Lion, their hope returning. “We are the universe’s only hope. Everyone is counting on us. We can’t fail. We won’t fail. If we work together we can form Voltron!” Hunk and Lance shouted their agreement. Pidge and Keith smiled at their leader’s face via the onboard screen and together they formed Voltron. But it was too late. By the time Voltron was formed for the first time in 10,000 years the ion canon had already been fired. Coran and Allura watched on in fear as the ray of death descended upon them. Suddenly however, something materialized outside the castle, right in the path of the canon. Allura recognized the waving blue ribbon and red monkey tail. She didn’t know how she had done it, but (Y/n) was now outside the castle, staring down a death ray. “(Y/N) GET OUT OF THERE!” Allura shouted in alarm. The warrior simply smirked once more. “This is just a warm up” (Y/n) said as she held up her well-muscled arm, the ion strike slammed into her hand yet (Y/n) showed no signs of discomfort. Allura watched on in awe as Voltron tore apart the Galra ship and this new comer blocked a full power ion blast from a battle class Galra ship with her mere hand. With a laugh (Y/n) sent the ion energy hurtling back to the Galra ship, finishing the job, Voltron had started. With an explosion that shook the castle, (Y/n) watched as Voltron disassembled into its separate lions. Her hair and tail feeling the warm breeze of the aftermath. Allura and Coran hurriedly rushed to congratulate the Paladins, while (Y/n) leisurely floated down to them. Allura stopped before her Paladins, clasping her hands together in celebration. “Great work Paladins, you’ve done it!” She congratulated, Lance smirked playfully as he tucked his blue stripped helm under his arm. “Thanks pretty lady.” He said. Shiro smiled joyfully at the truth. “We did it! How did we do it?” He asked not really caring, too happy to care. “You got that right” Said Keith. Hunk yanked his helmet from his head with some degree of difficulty. “I was kinda just screaming the whole time. Maybe that’s what did it.” He said. By now, (Y/n) had joined her rescuers, but a smile did not adjourn her face. A shame as Pidge thought the woman looked beautiful with one. Allura noticed the arrival of the woman. “You, you must be a Saiyan! No one else could have stopped a direct ion cannon strike!” The princess said in awe. (Y/n) was indifferent. “Tch, a toddler could have done that.” She said avoiding the gaze of the princess. What was presented to her when (Y/n) moved her gaze was Shiro comforting Pidge. “We’ll find your brother and father Pidge. I swear.” Shiro said, Pidge nodded but didn’t smile. (Y/n) took mental note of this and showed Pidge a rare, non-scary and genuine smile. Although Pidge was almost certain it never existed as it was gone as soon as it appeared. Allura however, started rambling more bad news. “We’ve won the battle, but the war is just beginning” She said, Coran nodded his agreement. “I’ll say. And it’s good you know what you’re all doing, cause you’ll need to form Voltron again and again.” The butler stated. “Say what now?” Hunk muttered in disbelief. “We barely survived forming Voltron this one time!” Lance stated. “Ho, and you only had to verse one ship. Imagine the next time against a whole fleet! It’s not going to be easy being the defenders of the universe.” Coran stroked his mustache in thought. The eyes of all the Paladins widened at the realization of the gravity of their situation. “Defenders of the Universe, huh.” Shiro said, the others looking to him “Has a nice ring to it.”

#pidge gunderson #pidge x reader #voltron #romance #space #robot #shiro #lance #keith (voltron)#smug #dragonball #dragonballz

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thegameslave · 6 years

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The Professional Gamer - February 9, 2019

Well, this has been a fun end to a week. I had a quick day trip out to Albuquerque (via plane) to have a look at a project site. I'll be posting this on Saturday afternoon, but as of late on Friday, I'm on a train heading from the Denver Airport back to my house. In other news, I caught back up on the seasonal anime. Well, for the most part. I have one more episode of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime to watch. Come to think of it, I guess I'm not actually watching a whole lot of anime this season. I'd change that, but it might mean watching some of the shows that, at least on first appearance, seem a little trashy. This intro has gone on long enough, let's get to the meat. Spoilers abound for Mob Psycho 100 and Slime; you have been warned.

First up is Mob Psycho 100, which has been an emotional ride in the last few weeks. Shigeo was really tested and presented with an alternative way to live his life and use his powers. We'd seen him start to question what might happen to the world if he was to become selfish. "Who would be able to stop me?" he asked. Then, just a few episodes later, an evil spirit is trying to show him how terrible the world is, and how he should use his powers for his own benefit. In the end, Shigeo not only rejects this premise, but turns it around. He sees the wonderful people around him as a gift, and remonstrates himself for not thanking them enough. Through all of this, we see a somewhat different side of Reigen too. He still seems to be rather exploitative of Shigeo, but there seems to be a greater sense of care behind it. The fact that Shigeo has taken Reigen's edict to "never use his powers against humans" to heart, is a huge part of Shigeo’s character. The fact that one of Shigeo’s guiding principals comes from a man like Reigen is incredible. I suppose everyone is rather lucky that Shigeo took up with Reigen and not someone with serious ambitions. I look forward to seeing how this character development continues.

On another note, this season of Mob has been amazing for its animation and visual effects. The fight in the world of the subconscious is fluid and complex, looking more like the quality of animation that I expect in a feature length project, rather than a television show. The success of the first season seems to have provided the folks who control the money with incentive to invest in this property, to ensure that it is off exceptional quality. I just hope that the last few episodes didn't blow the entire budget and we'll have stick figures animated at 12 frames per second for the rest of the series.

This is the part where I put my recommendation. Mob is an enormously fun show, which manages to include both comedy and poignant emotional beats. It is a bit hard to classify. I can't just say, "If you like comedy, this is the show for you." Like most shows of great quality, Mob is complex, offering action, comedy, slapstick, and drama, usually all in one episode. You should watch Mob Psycho 100. You may have a bit of catch up to do, if you haven't seen the first season, but there is nothing else that would be a better use of your anime viewing time right now.

Moving on to That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. I have previously discussed how this show seems to be moving from an RPG inspired isekai to something more akin to a strategy game. Now, having watched a few more episodes, I'm not sure that this has been the best decision for the show. If nothing else, a lot of things feel too easy for Rimuru. The thing that really stuck me, was the short development time for the Max Potions, and then subsequent lack of exploitation. In the space of a single episode, they had solved the problem of refining the herbs to the level necessary for creation of the Max Potions, and then promptly stopped caring. I have to assume that researchers had been working on that problem for awhile. Finding solutions to issues like that usually take some time. At least in our world. And you better believe that someone would exploit that development. Powerful creatures in the world would certainly pay handsomely for a potion that can restore even their massive hit point pools during battle. Imagine the Demon Lords stocking Max Potions for their favored lackeys, or Kings purchasing them to keep their champions on the field.

I also take issue with the tendency for everything to look more human as it becomes more powerful. This choice feels more centered around a desire to make the female characters sexually appealing than to make them compelling and interesting. On a similar note, the Demon Lord Milim’s costume is off-putting. Why does she walk around in clothes that don't even fit her properly? Again, this is a choice made that intends to reward the male gaze rather than create a compelling character. I don't think that skimpy clothing is wrong, but it needs to make sense with relation to the character. Milim is a kinda goofy and child-like person, and a skimpy outfit doesn't make sense in that context.

As you may have gathered, I'm not as excited by Slime as I was earlier in the series. My recommendation is therefore made with some reservation. If you really care about politics and strategy, this might still be a good series for you. If you enjoy breast physics, there might be something for you here as well. As for me, I'll probably finish watching this season due to the sunk cost fallacy and a sense of inertia. But at this point, if you aren't already watching, I don't recommend picking it up.

The last little bit of news that I would like to share is that I've successfully paired one of my old WiiU Pro controllers to my computer and figured out how to play Stardew Valley with it. I never got super into Stardew Valley, in part because I have never been a big Harvest Moon fan. I think they are fine games in concept, but they don't hold my attention very well. On top of that, I was not a fan of the mouse and keyboard control scheme in the PC version. Now that I have a portable computer and a controller, I'll be much more inclined to play it. Maybe Crystal and I can try out the co-op? We had been planning to for some time, but never got around to it.

And that's it. I'll be spending my time tomorrow running around: first with an 11 mile training run, a breakfast meeting, and then heading out to my favorite running store to get some new shoes. I hope to catch you all again next time. Until then, have a great week and game on.

#Mob Psycho 100 #That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime #anime #review

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spectraspecs-writes · 6 years

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Original writing and LOVE SPAM

That’s right, chapter TWO!!! Chapter 1 here.

Tag list - @skelelexiunderlord , @procrastinatorpresents , @auruncushd , and @the-peculiar-bi-tch It’s a labor of love, brittz, because I LOVE YOU!!

Chapter 2: Poncho

Monday, January 16, 2012, 11:38:12 AM, New York City, New York:

The man with no name stepped into the apartment and closed the door behind himself. The apartment was dimly lit, but warm, and felt nice compared to the cold outside. The butterfly flew off of his shoulder and onto an empty shelf on the wall. It was clear that no one lived here, or at least not for very long. A layer of dust covered everything in the room. He coughed a little, trying not to breathe too much of it in. There was a scattering of newspapers, New York Times issues, on a cabinet near the door. He looked down and read the dates. The first was from June 5, 1963. The second was only a few months later, September 8. The third was a gap of five years, August 3, 1968. The next was January 5, 2012. And on top, the only newspaper that wasn’t the Times – it was the San Francisco Chronicle – was dated May 6, 1987.

Then the room spoke, with the same voice that the door had used. “One message waiting.”

“Play it,” he said, and then he coughed again. In the middle of the room, the television flickered on. He sat down on the folding chair in front of it. There was a man on the screen. He was looking at himself, something he only knew because when the man on the screen started to speak, he spoke with the same voice as the man watching him. But there was something different – the tone in the message was not the same as the voice that played in his head. The voice in his head was calm, maybe a little suspicious or paranoid, but generally calm. The voice in the recording was anxious and almost terrified.

“Hey,” he said, his face reflecting the terror and urgency in his voice, “I don’t have a whole lot of time to explain. But I’m you, I’m the only who put the note in your pocket, I’m the one who put the wood plank in the alley. That was all me, all you.”

He flicked some switches on the console in front of him and a little of the urgency left his voice as the background lighting changed from red to periwinkle. “There, that’s a bit better.” And then the lighting changed back and the panic returned. “Wait, no, no, no! Ah, damn it! I’m running out of time. Ha, that’s ironic, you’ll get why in a bit. But never mind that right now. Your memory was wiped, yeah? If everything went according to plan. But you don’t know why, because guess what? Your memory was wiped. Quite a tidy little package. So you don’t know who wiped it, you have no idea where you are, where you were, you don’t even know your name.

“Well, I can at least answer one of those questions. My name is Allen Carpenter, which means yours is, too.” He chuckled, almost sadly, and said, “Annie always used to call me a tongue-tied square. I think I’m going to miss that.” He sighed, even more sadly. “I hope to whatever God there may be that she is safe, or at the very least, alive. But right now, you have one concern. You need to find Joshua Kingpin, all right? He’s someone you can trust. He’ll help you. But he’s not in New York, don’t even waste your time looking for him there. Joshua Kingpin lives in San Francisco, 1987. That’s why that newspaper’s there. But don’t go in May like the newspaper says, they’ll be looking for you there, that’s exactly where they expect you to go.”

The lights in the message changed color again, and Allen Carpenter again became even more panicked. “Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn! They found me. Find Joshua Kingpin, 1987. He’ll give you Poncho. Poncho will know what to do from there. I’m out of time. Good luck, Allen.” And the message fizzled out.

“Wait, wait, I have questions!” the man, apparently Allen Carpenter, shouted at the television, “How do I get to 1987? Where in San Francisco is Joshua Kingpin? Who’s Poncho?” But the questions went unanswered. He leaned back into the folding chair. A bit too far, because it fell over, and he hit his head on the floor. This day just keeps getting better, he thought sarcastically. He rolled over and sat on the floor, rubbing the back of his head. He closed his eyes lightly, starting to get a little frustrated.

Then he heard a quiet mewling. He opened his eyes and looked all over the room. “What’s… it’s too dark in here, where are the lights?”

The room spoke again. “Lights on,” and the lights turned on.

Now that he could see, he could see that there wasn’t much to see. The room he was in was the entire apartment, which had next to nothing in it. Just the television, the folding chair, the lone shelf with the butterfly on it, and the cabinet with newspapers on it. And three doors – the one he came in, and two others. So whatever it was that was mewling had to be behind one of the other two, because it certainly wasn’t outside, he knew that for sure. He stood up and checked the first door, the one to the left of the exterior door. He opened it and peeked outside. Nothing much there – a lit hallway, with one door on either side, and a staircase at the end of the hallway. Nobody out there. So he closed the door. Time to check the other one. He put his hand on the knob and tried to turn it, but it was locked.

Okay, maybe the talking room knows. Allen raised his eyebrow curiously. “Talking room,” he said aloud, feeling a little ridiculous, “what’s on the other side of this door?”

“The Chrono-traverser and two life signs, identified as Harris and Cyprus,” the room responded.

The idea that he was not alone was a little… it made his uneasy. After all, there were still people after him, weren’t there? Had they gotten here before him? “Who are Harris and Cyprus?” Allen asked.

“Species information is code-locked. Please state code.”

“Well, I don’t know the code,” he said, frustration growing still, “Can you at least tell me, generally, are they people or what?”

“The physical structure of the life forms Harris and Cyprus is feline.”

Okay, good, they weren’t whoever it was that was after him. He breathed a sigh of relief. But then… the room had mentioned something else. The… “What about… what was it… the ‘Chrono-traverser?’”

“Data concerning the Chrono-traverser is code-locked. Please state code.”

“And again with the code,” he sighed in irritation, “What are you, anyway?”

“I am the computer system, the Vocally Activated Mechanized Industrial-Grade Computer Apparatus. I was dubbed as V.A.M.I.C.A., or ‘Vamica’, by Mr. Allen Delaney Carpenter. Date of manufacture, March 16, 3056. Date of installation, April 17, 2004,” the voice said.

“So… what?” he said, not entirely understanding, “Are you built into the room?”

“My range of interface extends from the Chrono-traverser into the immediate area surrounding it.”

And again with the Chrono-traverser. This thing had to be important, whatever it was. “Can you unlock the door to the room with the Chrono-traverser in it?”

“The Chrono-traverser locks are not accessible through the computer interface. The Chrono-traverser can be entered with the correct key.”

Key. He had all these pockets, in his coat, in his pants, there had to be a key in one of them. He stuck his hand in each pocket – first his front pants pockets, then the back. Then the inside pockets of his coat. In the lower right hand inner pocket, there was… something. Cold and metal, with a jagged edge. Well, that sure felt like a key to him. He pulled it out and held it up. “Is this it?”

Vamica scanned the key with a bluish-green light. “That is the correct key.” Great! Allen walked over to the door and put the key in the lock, turning it right, then left, then right again without even thinking. It just happened, like instinct or habit. He just knew. What a weird way to unlock a door, he thought to himself, realizing that was what he’d done, why did I do that? How did I know that? He opened the door, and then stopped dead in his tracks. There was a tiger. A tiger! Coming towards him.

Allen’s muscles tensed and he stood completely still, practically nailed to the floor, hands frozen at his sides. But the tiger didn’t attack him. Didn’t bite, didn’t claw, didn’t growl, snarl, roar. Didn’t bare its terrible teeth or even sniff him. Instead, it nuzzled its head under Allen’s left hand and made an effort to pet itself. Allen loosened up a little, hearing the purring sound coming from the tiger, feeling its fur under his hand. He started to rub the big cat’s ears gently, trying not to do anything to upset the creature. The tiger purred a little more intensely. Allen smiled a little. He hadn’t just… he hadn’t just tamed this tiger, had he? No, he couldn’t have, not right now. Maybe before, before his memory was wiped, he had made this tiger his own, domesticated it just like a house cat. Well, a house cat that could claw someone’s eyes out. He bent down to the tiger’s eye level, rubbing its face and head more. Then he saw the tag at its neck. “Cyprus.”

“Oh, so you’re Cyprus,” Allen said, realizing now, “Are you my pet, big guy?” The tiger simply continued to purr and closed its eyes contentedly. With one final rub, Allen stood up. He saw the butterfly fly into the room and settle down in a hole in the wall.

Was this really a room, though, or was the whole thing the Chrono-traverser? Or was the whole apartment? He looked over the entire room. The floor, the first thing to catch his eye, held every color imaginable, constantly in motion, each color ever merging with the others, creating something completely new. Then the wall, which was an almost reflective blue green, with little silver diamond shapes scattered over its surface. There was an archway, the next thing to catch his eye, on the wall, he couldn’t see into it. And finally, what he could only assume was the power source for this whole thing. It looked like fire contained in a column of glass, with the floor beneath it akin to a sunset orange sky-scape. And what he guessed was the control console for the whole thing. There were so many switches and buttons and levers and things he couldn’t even figure out what they were, much less what they did. This was his? Did he know how to work all of this, how to manipulate this console to do… whatever it was the Chrono-traverser did? What did it do, anyway? Perhaps it was in the name. First, “chrono-”, which meant “time.” Okay. Then “traverse”, which meant “to travel.”

What the hell, he was in a time machine! At this point, he was really hoping that bump on his head when he hit the floor wasn’t making him hallucinate. Just to make sure, though, he pinched the skin inside his elbow. Ow. Yeah, he wasn’t hallucinating.

He walked closer to the archway, and a small black and white cat trotted out from the dark room. It stopped at Allen’s feet and meowed, then it rubbed against his leg, purring a little. Allen bent down and pet the cat back, looking also at the tag at its neck: “Harris.” “Hello, Harris,” he said softly, as the cat continued to rub itself against his leg and hand. Allen stood back up and went into the archway.

“Lights,” he said aloud to the room, assuming that the lights would come on as they did before, and they did. Inside the room under the archway, there were three beds, one human, two pet. Well, one human, one cat, one tiger. The tiger bed was probably just a dog bed for a really big dog. Because you can’t exactly go to the pet store to get supplies for a tiger.

This was his room. This was his space. To any normal person, their room invokes a sense of calm and relaxation. That’s their space, of course, it’s where they can be themselves. But he didn’t know who “himself” was. Every little clue in this room was vital to his own identity. Who was he? He didn’t know the answer, but it was clear that this room did.

The walls of the room curved, it was almost like standing in a cylinder, or a sphere with the top and bottom chopped off to make a flat floor and ceiling. The floor was orange. Didn’t match the rest of the room at all. The human bed came out of the wall on his left, with a two-tiered table on the left side of that. On the upper shelf of the table there was a computer console, with sort of a keyboard at the base that helped it to stay upright. Idle as the computer was, the display simply mirrored the floor outside the archway, colors swirling around each other. There was a book on the lower level – “The Star Rover” by Jack London. But there wasn’t a bookmark in it. It was almost like it had been placed there but not read. Not read recently, anyway, because the spine was cracked and the pages had clearly been thumbed many times before. Just not very recently.

On the far back wall there was a book shelf, with three shelves. The bottom shelf was the tallest and the sturdiest – it held textbooks, history, science, and some others he couldn’t work out. The second shelf had some thumbed science fiction books, like “The War of the Worlds,” “A Princess of Mars”, “A Journey to the Interior of the Earth,” “1984”, plus dozens of others, by dozens of other authors. The top shelf, however, seemed to be the most favored. The spines had been cracked in several places, and the covers were so worn that they felt the same as the pages they bound. Looking at them, all the books on this shelf had one thing in common: they were all written by Jack London. “The Call of the Wild,” “White Fang”, “The Sea-Wolf”, “The Iron Heel,” “Martin Eden,” a hole, probably where “The Star Rover” had been, plus at least 20 other books. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays. The shelf was crammed with Jack London.

The wall on the right had a television screen on it, with several controls on either side. It could probably be controlled remotely with the console on the table next to the bed. Also on the right was a closet. But not exactly a closet, because it looked like a wall had just been knocked out and there was a room on the other side of that wall. The room that was now a closet was significantly smaller than the room under the archway. On the right hand side of the closet there was clothes. His own on the left side, with a big tote under that, and shoes on the floor. And a pair of fuzzy novelty slippers – yellow ducks. What kind of man was he, that he owned fuzzy duck slippers? More importantly, did they quack with every footfall?

On the right side of the closet with clothes was women’s clothing. Or, at the very least, all of the clothing on the right was too small to be his own. And a number of red shirts. Red really wasn’t his color, so they definitely weren’t his shirts. There were shirts of other colors, too, but again, they were too small to be his.

Opposite the wall with clothing space was what looked like refrigeration units, or some sort of food preservation units, of various sizes. One, the largest, held a massive side of beef. Like someone had managed to cook the entire torso of a cow. Since no normal person could conceivably eat that in one sitting, that had to be for the tiger. In another unit there were two loaves of bread. In another, there was a sizable bunch of bananas, perfectly yellow. In another there was nothing at first glance, but when he looked closer, there was a fly in there. Suspended in midair. Not flapping its wings or moving in any way. Just hanging there. Beneath each of the units, the full and the empty, there was a little screen that read, “Temporal stasis engaged.” So all of this perishable food, and the fly, were locked in time, preserving their freshness because they were time locked. Given that he was currently in a time machine, this made sense to him, so as cool as the concept was his reaction to it was disappointingly less than amazed. And then there was just a pantry-like space with cans of cat food and a massive jar of peanut butter and some unlabeled cans.

This time machine wasn’t just his vehicle, it was home. No wonder the apartment outside wasn’t lived in, he lived here. This was home. This was where he lived. And it was all a part of who he was, who he hadn’t known himself to be. A time traveler who likes books, especially Jack London, owns and cares for a tiger and a cat, likes peanut butter and bananas, and live with a woman. Where was she? Who was she? Was she okay, wherever she was?

Well, now that he knew who he was and had settled that feeling of unease in his mind, it was probably best that he got back to the task at hand, which was working out how to get to 1987 to find Joshua Kingpin, to find Poncho. So he walked out of the archway and closer to the console, the cat Harris sticking to his heels. There was a piece of paper sticking to the engine (what he figured was the engine), and he pulled it off and read it. At the top was a header, like this was a business piece of paper. There was a logo, like two Es back to back, and beside it, the letters “PKI.” And scribbled in pen underneath that, in the same characters that were on the wood plank outside, there was a note: “Something’s not right here…”

Well, that was certainly suspicious. What had he meant by “something’s not right?” And he assumed, rightly so, that he had written the note because he’d written the same characters on the wood plank and the message in his pocket. What hadn’t been right about it? And who were they, anyway? What was PKI? Was it even a “they?” Was it an “it?” He had no clue, not even an inkling of an idea. “Vamica,” he asked the computer, “what does ‘PKI’ mean?”

“‘PKI’ stands for ‘Patton-Kirth Industries’, a New York-based company that began in April of 2000.”

“A company? Okay, what do they do? What do they make?”

“Patton-Kirth Industries computers are unavailable for interface. No information is available.”

“Big help you are,” Allen scoffed sarcastically.

Maybe he should just focus on one thing at a time right now. He told himself in that message that he needed to get to Joshua Kingpin in 1987, that he had Poncho and that Poncho would know what to do. He had already managed to answer the question of how he would get to 1987 from 2012, given that he was in a time machine. But that still left a bunch of questions unanswered. Who was Joshua Kingpin? How would he know him when he saw him? Who, or maybe what, was Poncho? Certainly a strange name for a person. But given that today he had woken up without his memory, followed a strange scent to a wood plank in an alleyway that told him in an alien language to find an invisible staircase, and at the top of an invisible staircase was a talking computer system, a time machine, and a domesticated tiger, he hadn’t ruled out the possibility that Poncho could be anything. This had been a pretty crazy day so far, and it was far from over.

So now he had to address the issue of getting to 1987. Yes, the fact that he was in a time machine did simplify matters quite a bit, but there was still the problem of not knowing how to make the time machine get him to 1987 San Francisco. “One more question,” he said to the computer, “does this thing have, like, an autopilot or something? I don’t know how to control it.”

“The Chrono-traverser is able to pilot itself if the coordinates of the intended destination are entered into the control console,” Vamica responded.

Excellent. Allen walked over to the control console and held his hand over one of the levers. Well, the fact that it had an autopilot would have been great if he knew how to enter in the coordinates. So he sighed and set his hands down on empty parts of the console. He looked up at the engine, and saw his reflection there. I guess now is as good a time as any to remind myself what I look like. So he looked at his reflection. His eyes were a pale blue shade. His hair, which ended just below his ears, was dark brown and messy, standing on end a little. He opened his mouth and looked at his teeth: Standard, they looked to be in good health. He wasn’t exactly sure why that of all things concerned him, but whatever. The fact of the matter was that his teeth were healthy and that he wouldn’t have to go looking for a dentist any time soon. And for that he was thankful. He closed his mouth and caught a glimpse of his neck. There was a silver chain hanging from it. Curious, he pulled it up and examined it closely. Attached to it was a set of dog tags. One of which, of course, had his name on it. He would have liked to know that before, but whatever. The other had an engraving on it -- “To the end of eternity, Annie”. There was also a ring, with a bright red stone on it. Who did that belong to? It certainly wasn’t his – red wasn’t his color. And who was Annie? She must have meant something to him, but he had absolutely no idea what. He tucked the chain back into his shirt and sighed. All of this was nuts. This was too much to deal with all at once. And it was starting to give him a headache.

Then the cat hopped up on the console, seemed to deliberately step on a button, and sat down on the console. It meowed at Allen again. “Hey, there, Harris,” he said to the cat, rubbing its ears. With a little bit of a scoff, he asked the cat rhetorically, “You wouldn’t happen to have any idea how to pilot this thing, would you?”

Even though the question had been rhetorical and the cat certainly couldn’t have understood him, Harris stepped on the same button as before and walked over to a rainbow spiral on the console. Harris looked down at the spiral, then back at Allen, then at the spiral, then back at Allen. So Allen ran his fingers over the spiral. Just to see what would happen. On the engine, a screen appeared that said, “Use the lever to select your destination,” with a date below it. Harris walked again to a lever on Allen’s left, being careful not to step on any of the other controls. He flicked his tail, apparently deliberately, towards the lever, then he leapt off the console and sat down at Allen’s feet, looking up at him with eyes that seemed to say, “Go on, you do it now. If a cat can pilot this thing, you can.”

Allen took the lever in his hand and nudged it to the right. The year was selected. He moved the lever upward until it came to 1987. Then he nudged it to the right again and the month was selected. He’d told himself not to go in May, because they’d be looking for him there. For some reason June didn’t feel right. What about July? That sounded okay. So he moved the lever until it came to July. To the right again. The date was selected. It was already at the sixteenth. Nothing wrong with that. So he left that the way it was. He nudged it to the right again, and the computer voice spoke again. “Please state your desired spatial location.”

“San Francisco, California.”

“Spatial location data incomplete. Please state coordinates.”

Those coordinates weren’t latitude and longitude, were they? It couldn’t possibly be that simple. Even if it were, that wouldn’t be simple because he didn’t know the latitude and longitude of San Francisco as a whole, much less a specific location there. “Well, where did I go the last time?” he asked rhetorically, knowing that those coordinates would probably still be in computer memory, “Use those coordinates.”

“Affirmative. At what time would you like to arrive on July 16, 1987?”

He couldn’t very well think his way out of that one. Well, he figured, if I don’t find him right away at whatever time I pick I guess I’ll just have to stick around until I do. “I don’t know, how about… oh, 8 PM?” Allen said uncertainly.

“Confirm, July 16, 1987, 8:00:00 PM Pacific Standard Time, San Francisco, California.”

That all sounded right. “That’s it.”

“Commencing travel.” The fire in the engine began to cycle faster and faster, and the colors on the floor, too, all coming together to form a circle of energy, going around and around faster and faster and faster. It felt like an earthquake under his feet. And that earthquake, too, started to rumble more and more, faster and faster, as the colors swirled around and around and the engine fire blazed faster and faster. And by this point Allen had had enough. I can’t take too much more of this today!! He watched Harris and Cyprus both step onto the orange floor around the console, and Allen followed their lead. After all, they remembered more than he did and probably knew what to do when time traveling. Once he stepped onto the orange floor, the feeling of the earthquake was gone.

“Stabilizers?” Allen asked rhetorically, “The floor has stabilizers in it?” Harris and Cyprus both looked at him with an expression that said, “Of course, person.”

After about 40 seconds, the room began to return to its previous state of stillness and Allen stepped off of the orange floor. He did a quick check to make sure that everything was okay, to make sure that nothing had fallen or anything. Harris and Cyprus were fine. Nothing in his room had fallen down, the food preservation units still said that the time seal was intact, the books were still neat on the shelf. Then the butterfly he’d found on the street. It was still sitting in the little hole in the wall that it had flown into when he came in. The hole wasn’t orange, so there probably weren’t any stabilizers in it. If butterflies felt like people did, then it was probably pretty shaken up. “Hey,” Allen said gently to the butterfly, “are you okay?” The butterfly just flapped its wings slowly, the antenna on its head wiggling about anxiously. “You need a name, don’t you? If you’re going to hang around here.” A butterfly wouldn’t be his weirdest pet, after all, as further evidenced by Cyprus nudging at his leg with a roll of tape in his mouth. “You read my mind, Cyprus, thank you,” Allen said to the tiger, taking the tape and pulling off a piece. He put it on the wall under the hole. Cyprus exhaled loudly through his nose, almost like he was exasperated, although by what was anyone’s guess. “What’s a good name for a butterfly?” he said quietly to himself, “What about Howard?” Sounded about right. He reached into his pocket and found a marker, and wrote “HOWARD” on the tape. How would he even go about taking care of a butterfly?

That was probably best left as a problem for another time.

The problem for now, now that he was in 1987 San Francisco, was to find Joshua Kingpin and Poncho. And how would he go about doing that? Searching through a phone book, hoping to find a number or an address? Ask people if they knew him? Just stand in one place until chance brought them together? There really was no way for him to do this and still appear to be sane. Everything just brought up a whole new set of problems. He couldn’t even ask the local police for help, because besides the fact that Joshua Kingpin probably wasn’t a missing person, he’d have to explain to the police why he was looking for him and the whole story about owning a time machine probably wouldn’t go over well.

Was there any possible way that he could find Joshua Kingpin and Poncho without interacting with anyone else? Because there would be way too many questions that he wouldn’t be able to answer. He had no idea when time machines were invented, but it probably wasn’t in 1987 San Francisco, so he’d have to talk about the concept as though it were a real thing, because it clearly was to him, but it wasn’t real to anyone else. So there’d be a lot of miscommunication about his situation. And of course people would ask him questions about himself, which would be even harder to answer because he didn’t know any of the answers. Just his name, probably not the answers to any other questions he could conceivably be asked.

Perhaps he should just throw himself into the situation and see what happened. Act like he knew what was going on and maybe people would think he actually did know what was going on. Until he came up with a better idea, that one would have to be the one he went with. “Turn all the lights off,” he said to the computer, and all the lights went out. The room was only illuminated with the now-dimmer lights in the floor and the fire in the engine. So he stepped out of the Chrono-traverser and locked the door behind him for good measure.

“Hey!” he heard someone shout some ways away from him. He looked down the alley – because he had apparently landed in an alley – to see who it was. Nobody that felt familiar. But the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and he felt his toes start to feel warm. What the hell did that mean? Just his toes, not the rest of his foot. “I think you took a wrong turn somewhere, gringo.”

He hadn’t turned anywhere, he materialized in this alley. He was about to say as much, but then he stopped. Saying that he materialized would open up way too many problems for him. So then he decided to ask these guys, because there were three of them, if they could help him. But then he stopped before he said that, too. Because he was supposed to act like he knew what he was doing, and maybe they’d believe them. So he finally decided on saying, “I did no such thing.”

Then his toes felt warm again. Warmer than before. And it was more than a little distracting.

One of the men muttered something to the guy in the middle, the one who had spoken before. Allen couldn’t tell what he said, but he did hear the name “Carlos.” And then the one who was most likely Carlos said something back, but Allen couldn’t understand what he said, either. Then he spoke to Allen again. “I think you’re lost, man,” he said. Almost sounding like a warning.

Act like you know what’s going on, act like you know… “I’m right where I want to be.” And in a way, he was – he was in San Francisco, 1987, like he wanted to be – even if he didn’t know where exactly he was.

Carlos stood toe to to with Allen. In sheer height, Allen was about half a head taller than Carlos, but he stood a little slouched, while Carlos stood tall and straight. Suddenly Carlos pulled a knife out of his pocket and held the point under Allen’s chin. “You sure about that, cabrón?”

Okay, not safe, not safe! “On second thought,” Allen said hastily, “I think you’re right. I’ll get out of your way then.” Allen turned around and ran in the other direction, out of the alley.

“Get the car!” Carlos shouted. Not good, not good, not good!

Josh Kingpin sat at the bar, scribbling in a small notebook, a glass of Coke fizzing next to him. He turned on his stool to face the room, taking a drink from the glass as he turned, then after a few moments he turned back to his notebook and scribbled some more. His scribblings were very nearly illegible, but enough that he could read them, and that truly was the point.

He glanced at his watch — 8:18. He was starting to feel like the guy was never going to come back. Josh had been coming to Roni’s place every night for the past two months, since that guy in the fedora, Allen, told him he’d be back. He would come in at around six, more or less, and stay until 8:30. If Allen came by before he got there or after he left, then Roni would let Josh know. But it had been two months, and he hadn’t been back yet.

He took another drink from the glass and emptied it. A few moments later, Roni walked by and picked up the glass, putting it in the dish bin. “You want another one, Josh?” she asked him, brushing her short brown hair before her ear.

“No, thanks, Roni, I was gonna head out in a bit,” Josh told her with a sigh. He set his pencil down and scratched the back of his neck. “I really thought I’d be back today, I was so sure. I’m starting to feel like he’s never coming back.”

“Come on, Josh, it’s July sixteenth — it hasn’t even been two whole months,” she told him, “If he said he’d be back, he will be.”

“How can you be so certain about that?” Josh asked her, “How can you know for sure he didn’t just dump Poncho on me with no intention of ever coming back?”

“I know things,” she said with a smirk, “When he came in, I could read him like a book. He’s the kind of guy who, if he says he’s gonna do something, he’ll do it.”

Josh released another sigh and picked his pencil back up, scribbling something on the page. “Hey,” Roni said to him, and looked back up at her. “You look terrible. Are you okay?”

“Just a long day, is all,” he said, shaking his head, “Ready for Friday.”

“Look, you know I’ll tell you if he shows up. Go home. Should have told you that when you came in,” she said, “Pay your tab and go.”

Josh smiled at her. “I honestly don’t know where I’d be if you didn’t look out for me.”

“Probably dead in a gutter somewhere in San Diego,” she said with a shrug.

“I’ll head out in a little bit, there’s still a little I want to write down,” he said, reaching until his pocket and pulling out a crumpled five-dollar bill.

“Yeah, well, write it and go. You’re no good to Scott or anyone else if you’re exhausted,” she said, talking the bill and walking away.

Josh set his pencil down again and looked at his watch — 8:20. Certainly nothing of note could happen in the next ten minutes. He closed his notebook and put it in the pocket of his jacket.

From outside the bar he heard squealing tires and several goading shouts in Spanish. Evidently, someone had made a wrong turn into MS-13 territory, and they had decided to chase him out. That had been happening more and more in the past several months. Probably the last time the police had arrested a bunch on MS-13 gang members there was a shift in leadership and the new guy had a different way of doing things. Then someone ran into Roni’s bar and slammed the door closed behind himself. The MS-13 guys wouldn’t follow him in, that would have been too much work just to get him out of their territory. “Yeah, and don’t come back, culero!” Josh heard one of the MS-13 guys shout after the guy who ran in. The man sheltered himself on the floor, covering his head with his arms, until he heard the MS-13 car squeal away. Then he sighed and sat up.

Josh stood and started walking towards the door, passing by the guy on the floor. “Hey,” he asked him as he passed, “you good?”

“Yeah, just…” he panted, trying to catch his breath,” … give me a minute. Let me…” He started to gently massage his feet. “These shoes are really not good for running.”

Josh looked at them. Yeah, they were really torn up. Like, maybe they’d been okay to run in at one time, but at least now the soles were shot. When looking at the shoes, Josh felt like he recognized them somehow. Then he saw the socks under them — one red, one green. And the whole situation felt even more familiar.

“I really did not expect to be running this much today!” the man said. And now Josh knew how he recognized him. He knew that voice.

“Hey, are you Allen Carpenter?” Josh asked him, just to make sure he was right.

“So I’ve been told,” the man on the floor said, “How did you know?”

Josh smiled and sighed with relief. “Hey, Roni!” he called back to her, “He came back! He just showed up!”

Roni poked her head out from back behind the bar. “About damn time! I told you he would. Now go home before I make you go home.”

Josh extended his hand to Allen to help him stand up. “Josh Kingpin,” he said to him, “You stopped by two months ago, left Poncho with me and told me you’d be back.”

Allen took his hand and stood up, then the full value of what he’d just heard sunk in. “Poncho? You’re Joshua Kingpin? You have Poncho?”

“Just Josh, please, and yeah, he’s back at my apartment, do you want to go see him?” Josh said.

“Yes, yeah, please!” Allen said excitedly. He honestly hadn’t expected that horrible experience with a Mexican gang would end with him finding the guy he’d come here looking for in the first place.

“Alright, my car is just outside, come on,” Josh said to him, “See you later, Roni!”

“See you, Josh, Allen!” she called back, not looking at them.

Well, that was weird. How did she know his name? Yeah, sure, it had already been established how he knew Josh’s name - it was clear that they knew each other from the way she spoke to him and him to her. But how did she know Allen’s name? “Who is she?” Allen asked Josh once they were outside.

“Roni. She owns that place. She’s my friend. I keep her books, pretend to be her boyfriend when she needs me to,” Josh told him with a shrug, unlocking his car.

“‘Pretend’? Why would you have to pretend to be her boyfriend?” Allen asked, opening the passenger side door.

Josh stopped and looked at Allen over the top of his car. “Well, see… how do I put this… men aren’t exactly Roni’s type.” Allen looked at Josh with a confused eye, leaning on the roof of the car. Josh continued, “Now, I don’t know how you feel about the whole thing that’s been going on lately with gay people, but Roni’s my friend, and her girlfriend Lucy’s my friend, so I try to do whatever I can to keep people who don’t care for it from hurting them.” Josh sounded almost angry, very defensive of his two friends. But then the moment passed and he got into the driver’s side of his car.

Allen got into the passenger side and said nothing more for the entire trip back to Josh’s apartment. “It’s just up here,” Josh said, unlocking the door and letting them into his apartment building. Allen, on the other hand, walked to the right hand outer wall. Maybe he just smelled trash or old banana peel, but he thought… it smelled like the smell he followed to the Chrono-traverser earlier. He had to see if there was an invisible staircase here, too. Maybe that was what “Poncho” was — a code name for a time machine. It seemed really unlikely that he had the only time machine in existence, after all. So he investigated into the area in between Josh’s apartment building and the adjacent building. Once he got close enough, he quickly determined that it was only trash. And while it was a bit of a relief that there wasn’t an invisible staircase or anything like it here, it was also a bit of a letdown. If there had been another time machine it might have helped him answer some more questions about himself. And besides all that he had just been intently sniffing trash. “Hey, Al,” Josh called to him with a bit of a chuckle, grinning, “you coming?”

Allen turned around, raising his eyebrow at being called “Al” - he wasn’t so sure he liked that - but didn’t think too much of it. If Poncho wasn’t a time machine, then it wasn’t here, and it was best if he followed Josh to where Poncho really was. Better to let him be in charge for the moment, as he was the only person who completely knew what was going on. “It’s a good thing my landlord doesn’t mind pets,” Josh said as Allen followed him up the stairs, “Otherwise both me and your dog would be on our butts in the street.”

“My dog?” Allen repeated, confused, as Josh unlocked his apartment door. So it wasn’t just that he had a cat and a tiger, and now a butterfly, he had a dog, too? And then he stepped into Josh’s apartment and he saw the dog. The dog leapt on Josh first as he closed the door, but quickly moved to leap on Allen even more excitedly. It was a yellow Lab, with a bright and friendly face. His eyes were a deep black, with hazel flecks int he center. His tongue was a deep pink, which Allen could see because it was hanging from the dog’s mouth, like it was too long to fit inside. His teeth were the healthy pale yellow they were supposed to be, obviously well-cared for. His yellow coat was soft and smooth, fluffy, yet falling flat on its back. To all the world, a normal dog.

But then he talked.

Words and everything.

His open mouth formed the words perfectly.

“Master is here! Master is here! I missed you so much, Master, I’m so glad to see you again! The new master you put me with smells funny! But a good funny! You smell funny, too, but it’s a good funny! Like what ham flowers would smell like if there were flowers made of ham! But I like ham! Ham is good! Master Josh feeds me ham sometimes! Where did you go? Don’t ever go there again! I missed you! I missed you!”

Allen just stared at the dog as it hopped and pranced around him giddily. Mouth hanging open in dumbstruck awe. Then, he managed to say, “The dog is talking.”

The dog stopped hopping and stood in front of Allen on all fours, his tail wagging vigorously. “Well, yes, I’m talking, Master,” the dog said, “Oh, you said you might not remember. I forgot. Do you remember who I am? You should! We’ve been the best of best friends forever! Say you remember me! Say you missed me, too! Say it! Say it, Master!”

“Uhh…” was all Allen could manage to utter.

The dog stopped wagging its tail. “You don’t remember me. Poncho. That’s me. Did you remember Harris? Or Cyprus? Where’s Annie? She’d remember me and all the good times we had. You never go anywhere without Annie. Is she still home, in the Chrono-traverser?”

“He’s mentioned the Chrono-traverser before,” Josh said, “Do you know anything about that? Whenever I ask, he just tells me it’s a time machine. And I mean, look, if your dog is under the impression that he lives in a time machine, you need to sit him down and set him straight.” He gave a little chuckle at that.

“I can sit,” Poncho said to Josh, and he sat down. “I can lay down, too, and roll over, and play dead, and shake. I am a good dog. That’s why Master likes me.” Poncho looked back at Allen now. “But Master doesn’t remember me. What happened, Master? Was it those two men, Patton and Kirth? Or was it one of their people? What did they do? Did they make you not like dogs anymore?”

“Hold on, slow down, buddy,” Allen said to the dog. He came further into Josh’s apartment and got down on the floor so that he was at eye level with Poncho. “You know who Patton and Kirth are? Who are they?”

“Patton and Kirth are Master’s friends. But then Master was upset that they didn’t like him anymore. Master was upset. Before you left me here, Master, you were pacing and angry and upset. I don’t know if that has to do with Patton and Kirth, but Master, you kept talking about them, you said they were going to hurt you. Then Master left me here, but he said he was going to take the Chrono-traverser back to New York in 2012. But he kept Harris and Cyprus, just not me. I don’t know why,” Poncho said, his face dropping a little, not quite looking at Allen’s face.

“They were my friends? Why would they want to hurt me?”

“I do not know, Master, I am sorry.” Poncho’s tail drooped and his ears dropped, but then he perked up again. “Can we go to the Chrono-traverser now, Master, please? Can we go home? I could maybe help you there! Please, oh, please, Master, please, oh, please?” Poncho pleaded, standing up and bouncing on his front paws, his tail wagging again.

“If you don’t mind, I sort of want to see this, too,” Josh said, sort of raising his hand, “I mean, I’ve listened to this dog talk for long enough about living in a time machine. I’d like to know what that’s about.”

“Yeah, sure, come along, if you want,” Allen said, standing and shrugging, “I don’t know how to get back there, anyway, and you’re the one with the car.”

So much for relaxing at home like Roni had told him. But he just had to see — if there really was a time machine there, how could he pass that up? Sure, if there wasn’t, he would just head back to his apartment, but if there was, he would never forgive himself for passing it up. After all, he’d just kept a talking dog in his apartment for two months. What else did Allen Carpenter have up his sleeve?

#specs writes stuff #writing #original writing #chronos book series #autistic artist #fiction #science fiction #book 1 #the book that started it all #love spam #the man that time forgot #tmttf

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douchebagbrainwaves · 6 years

Text

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT PROBLEMS

My test was to think of intelligence as inborn is that people trying to measure it have concentrated on the aspects of economic inequality where the cause of poverty is the same as the root cause of variation in income is a sign that something is broken? At Yahoo, user-facing software was controlled by product managers and designers the final step, by translating it into code. I'm not saying that if you let Henry Ford get rich, he'll hire you as a waiter at his next party. Somehow the idea of making really large amounts of money. When people come to you with a problem and you have to sound intellectual. All the hackers I know, managed to be mistaken. An organization that wins by exercising power starts to lose deals. That was not, probably, how McCarthy thought of it as a personal insult when someone from the other team from scoring is considered to have played a perfect game.1 Right now, VCs often knowingly invest too much money at the series A stage. And if you weren't rich, you took the omnibus or walked.

Microsoft.2 Great hackers also generally insist on using open source software. In that case, stay on a main branch becomes more than a way to please other people. It's so cheap to start, this conflict goes away, because founders can start them younger, when it's rational to take more risk, and can start more startups total in their careers. When you reach the point where 90% of a group's output is created by 1% of its members, you lose big if something whether Viking raids, or central planning drags their productivity down to the average Frankish nobleman in 800, and report back to us. Art History 101.3 Hacker News and our application system.4 That way we can avoid applying rules and standards to intelligence that are really meant for wisdom. Whereas the independence of the townsmen allowed them to keep whatever wealth they created.5 These initial versions can be so pervasive that it takes a great effort to overcome it. Then you could see in the house, the herds, and the number one thing they have in common. The difference is that wise means one has a high average outcome.

Editorialists ask. Bottom-up programming suggests another way to convince investors to let you do it? If circumstances had been different, the people running Yahoo might have realized sooner how important search was.6 But that won't eliminate great variations in wealth would mean eliminating startups.7 When I heard this, I thought he was a complete idiot.8 You can see wealth—in buildings and streets, in the original sense, is something you write to try to figure something out. The more of your application you can push down into a language for writing that type of application, the more we'll see multiple companies doing the same thing ourselves.9 Which is precisely why we hear ever more about it.10 Society as a whole ends up poorer. But startups aren't like that. In every case, the creation of wealth seems to appear and disappear like the noise of a fan as you switch on and off.11

Central France in 1100, off still feudal. Or consider watches. You have to be nice to, you have two options: work at home, hackers can arrange things themselves so they can get the most done. And they think of it as normal to have a remedial character. The idea is basically that you sort search results not in order of how much money Yahoo would make from each link. It consists of some things that are good and some that are historical trends with immense momentum and others that are random accidents.12 The place to look for what I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a deep point here about the true nature of wisdom, just to make sure they're ok guys. I don't think there's any limit to the number of failures and yet leave you net ahead.13 Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, and Jackie McDonough for reading drafts of this.

One of the things pinned up on our bulletin board was an ad from IBM.14 Brandeis was a product of this period. But Apple created wealth, in the sense that the authors didn't know when they started exactly what they were trying to get people to start calling them portals instead of search engines. This isn't true in all fields. And this is the route to well-deserved obscurity. So it's not just fastidiousness that makes good hackers avoid nasty little problems is that you make what you measure.15 That's why Yahoo as a company has sunk into technical mediocrity and recovered.

And of course if Microsoft is your model, you shouldn't be looking for, most of the time, perhaps most of the time, and runtime. You'd seem a barbarian if you behaved that way today. Starting in the tenth and eleventh centuries, petty nobles and former serfs banded together in towns that gradually became powerful enough to appropriate it.16 If Lenin walked around the offices of a company like Yahoo or Intel or Cisco, he'd think communism had won.17 Why?18 It's hard to predict what will; often something that seems interesting at first will bore you after a month. Understanding your users is part of what makes them good hackers: when something's broken, they need to get a work visa in the US, without an undergraduate degree—but tests like this will matter less and less.19

Though useful to present-day languages, if they'd had them. When you look at the history of stone tools, technology was already accelerating in the Mesolithic. We think of the core language semantics.20 The design paradox means they're choosing more or less a subset of potential users, or satisfying a subset of the needs of a subset of the needs of a subset of potential users, or satisfying a subset of hash tables where the keys are vectors of integers. Whereas if you're doing the kind of productivity that's measured in lines of code. But between the two. He knows what happened in every deal in the Valley. Extraordinary devotion went into it, and most decent hackers are capable of that. As big a deal as the Industrial Revolution was well advanced.

Notes

Joshua Schachter tells me it was true that being part of wisdom. This is actually a computer. See, we can teach startups a lot like meaning.

We're only comparing YC startups, just that if colleges want to believe this much. If they're on the order of 10,000 sestertii for his freedom Dessau, Inscriptiones 7812. But you couldn't do the equivalent thing for founders, HR acquisitions are viewed by acquirers as more akin to hiring bonuses.

The point where things start to rise again. The most striking example I know of no Jews moving there, and that's much harder. I'm convinced there were about the origins of the things attributed to them.

If you ask parents why kids shouldn't swear, the police treat people more equitably. Please do not take the form of bad idea. In Boston the best day job, or at least should make what they do.

You have to do this right you'd have to deliver these sentences as if you'd invested at a pre-money valuation of the first phase of the most part and you can probably write a book about how things are different. The only people who get rich by creating wealth—university students, heirs, professors, politicians, and there are few who can say I need to fix once it's big, messy canvases that philistines see and say that's not art because it looks like stuff they've seen in the beginning. None at all. No, and there are no false negatives.

It tipped from being this boulder we had, we'd have understood why: If they were friendlier to developers than Apple is now very slow, but when people in return for something that conforms with their company made money from it, but they can't teach students how to value valuable things.

Everyone else was talking about art, they made, but investors can get done before that. There is a qualitative difference in investors' attitudes. I believe Lisp Machine Lisp was the least VC-like. So if you're attacked in this they're perfect.

By writing library functions. If you want as an example of computer security, and a little about how things are going well, but not in the early 90s when they buy some startups and not fundraising is a bridgehead. Oddly enough, even if they were to work than stay home with them in advance that you were expected to do good work and thereby earn the respect of their name, but that it's boring, we don't want to give them sufficient activation energy required to notice when it's their own interest.

On the other by adjusting the boundaries of what you really want, like warehouses. They can lead to distractions even more vice versa: the editor, which would be vulnerable both to attack the A P successfully defended itself by allowing the unionization of its identity. The real danger is that you'll have to resort to in order to pick the words we use the word wealth, seniority will become correspondingly more important.

It did not start to get going, and so don't deserve to keep their wings folded, as accurate to call those before a consortium of investors want to take action, go ahead. Gauss was supposedly asked this when comparing techniques for discouraging stupid comments instead.

I've learned about VC inattentiveness. The time it still seems to them unfair that things don't work the same thing. Actually he's no better or worse than close supervision by someone else. Mozilla is open-source but seems to have them soon.

107. The key to wasting time building it. IBM makes decent hardware. They seem to have a browser and get pushed down by new arrivals.

There will be interesting to 10,000 sestertii, for example. Some translators use calm instead of just Jews any more than others, and only one restaurant left on the East Coast VCs. There are circumstances where this is so new that it's no longer written in Lisp, they may introduce startups they like to fight.

We once put up with only a few percent from an eager investor, lest that set an impossibly high target when raising additional money. The US is the most successful founders is exaggerated now because it's a hip flask.

That's probably true of nationality and religion too. In practice it just feels like it if you have an edge over Silicon Valley, but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. You can get rich by creating wealth—that an eminent designer is any good at talking about why something isn't the last 150 years we're still only able to. It's true in fields that have it as a percentage of startups as they are in research departments.

I'm not saying it's impossible without a time before photography had a broader meaning.

This is a way to explain that the highest returns, like architecture and filmmaking, but we decided it would do for a startup could grow big in revenues without including the numbers from the success of their works are lost.

Many of these companies unless your last round of funding.

Garry Tan pointed out that taking time to come if they seem pointless. Considering yourself a scientist. If you want to sell, or to be very hard to do this are companies smart enough to guarantee good effects.

Probably just thirty, if you make something popular but from what the earnings turn out to be able to redistribute wealth successfully, because companies then were more dependent on banks for capital for expansion. The point of view anyway. Founders are often unknowns. Once again, that suits took over during a critical point in the sense of mission.

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