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studentinpursuitofclouds · 8 months ago

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That one recent question about Amethyne RSV gave me another one; how would the event be if Lance ever met with one of the Amethynes?

Let's just say the family had something to do with the adventurers. Maybe they tried to established a new Ferngill Republic department of defense, or a private security company that specializes with monsters (it's just a prompt that I randomly came up with, I'm sorry if it sounds dumb 🥲)

They need someone they can consult with, or even better, establish collaboration. For some reason, they managed to contact Lance (either they asked Farmer, or just knew him since from one of Victor's heart event, Lance seems to be the type of adventurer who is famous and approachable due to his friendly nature)

I can imagine, since from what I heard somewhere, Lance came from a noble family. So he knew pretty well high society etiquette, but never show them to anyone because of his humble personality. But when he met the Amethyne, he unconsciously let those etiquette lesson seep out (again, this might sound dumb, but I just love a situation where Lance unknowingly let others see his nobility side, especially to other noble that doesn't know his family and known him only as an adventurer)

Thank you for reading my super long rambling

Yes yes yes yes! Y E S !

Be aware, dear anon 😅 also super long rumbling:

_________________________________________

I definitely remember discussing with someone the possibility of Lance meeting the Amethyne family (at least one of them, like Maive), as the Farmer's spouse, not on official business. But this event is entirely possible!

Because if you recall the events in SVE, civilians can hire adventurers as mercenaries and bodyguards, and it doesn't violate the rules of the Guilds themselves or the Order. How exactly this happens, and whether it is somehow documented (by contract) is unknown, and yet it is there. Gunther was able to hire a Farmer to accompany him to the Mines, so why can't other adventurers do such a thing if it means extra profit and glorification of the Guild's name?

The north of Ridgeside Village is teeming with monsters, and although ninja assassins stand guard, they don't officially show up anywhere. Also, people are realizing that monsters exist, which means that if the problem gets to be too big, it's time to call in the professionals. And since the Amethyne family are (officially or not - I can't say) patrons of Ridgeside Village, looking out for the very community, like Lenny, they will send urgent letters to verified Guilds, offering work in the "cleanup".

Maive would definitely push for an urgent meeting with the Guild heads or deputies, as she wouldn't allow a possible threat to Ridgeside Village, plus the area covered in monsters could be utilized. I came up with this "Maive want an expansion everywhere" theory, because I vividly remember meeting her at the resort on Ginger Island, and the first thing she said was about "expanding the resort and creating a tourist spot here", or something like that. That surprised me a little bit. I don't know why the hell our Madame thinks she can do whatever she wants, but apparently she has enough power and the means to do it, she feels so confident. So Maive can do the same with Ridge Forest.

Now the question: which Guilds will respond?

The famous Castle Village was the first choice, since it's all professional monster hunters (also the prices are sharp, as Morris confirms when he hired them for Spirit's Eve, but it's not a problem for wealthy noble family), but due to some personal factors, Camilla said no. Okay, whatever, Maive will complain, and starts looking for other options later. The Adventurer's Guild is the most logical option, as the headquarters is not far away, but Marlon is unlikely to agree to deal with this family of demanding aristocrats, even for a lot of money (his own nerves are more important). And The First Slash Clan comes to mind.

Jolyne could safely let Lance, as her second-in-command, negotiate such contracts if it meant a benefit to the First Slash itself. Given that our pink-haired adventurer is smart and well-mannered (we won't mention here the possibility that Lance can be a smug bitch), his charm, silver tongue and friendly nature, he will always make good deals, Jolyne trusts him to do so.

Maive will invite Lance to a meeting at her mansion for dinner because that's what the rules of hospitality in her house require (also headcanons, because idk how this things works). Madame was morally prepared for all the antics of the guest, considering adventurers rather rude in communication and ill-mannered. Anything to bargain for the work. And what was her surprise when Lance spoke to her according to all the rules, as a civilized man, knows table etiquette perfectly and in general a very pleasant and polite person. Maive's discerning eyes wouldn't miss it all. The conversation somehow touched on Lance's personal life, to which he would politely and modestly confirm his pedigree of noble adventurers.

So now the adventurer from First Slash will take care of the monster problem, because Maive is sure that at least one of their guild members can be dealt with properly.

She won't ask about Lance in more detail about his life, because with all due respect, these are rather personal matters and her upbringing doesn't allow her to go overboard. But it will be allowed if Lance also happens to be the husband of Farmer, best friend of all Amethyne members and grandchild of Maive's old friends. That's where she learns all the details.

_________________________________________

I apologize if my rumbling got a little chaotic, but I've always been in favor of the idea of Lance interacting with the Amethyne family and what would come of it. Thank you again for your interesting thoughts, I really enjoyed rereading your ask! 😊💖

#sve #stardew valley expanded #sve lance #ridgeside village #rsv #sve headcanon #rsv headcanons #thanks for the ask!

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newyorkkiss · 2 months ago

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americas greatest band: document archive

had no idea how long this actually took until i saw the dates, 17th of march to the 23rd – actually one of the longest times i've spent tinkering on an active project, usually i just sit and churn everything out in 2-7 hour long straight sessions which can prove to be extremely flawed, so i wanted to break this one up and work on it at a pace just to see if it would come out less flawed and looking at it now, i think it's maybe one of my more better projects. for the sake of my own need to remember i'm throwing my original words in here (indented). but now to the construction of said thing.

i started with two "references" (i use quotes here as i feel i pretty much just stole and smashed these two things together which is a very shameful thing to do but i mean 99% of everything i make is just a bad mimic of something else – i lack original concept): this radiohead advertisement for the bends and a text concept by david byrne x lost art.

day 1 + 2

making rough thread of my worp in pogress... not sure if i'll even manage to execute it but. here is the rundown: saw this radiohead bends advert on tumblr a few days ago and it Spoke to me. the hand written scribbles and newsprint and layout. it's very lovely

as you'd assume i'm stealing this and spoon-ifying it for no reason other than: bored! but i am tweaking it as i go. will more or less follow the same elemented format though. decided to make important changes straight up by imitating news print headings/logos.

with those in mind i went and scouted out my typefaces, all of which i found bar one – the NYP logo set. did manage to find a rather iffy quality glyph set which i smashed together to create a mould and carved it all out myself.

which leads us to: this. which is the custom type i spent a good hour last night putting together. it needs refining bad but i have most of it down (right, rough). had to pen tool it from a low qual picture of the expanded tf (left, bones) as nyp is GATEKEEPING their tf

1. the template ⇢ 2. rough build ⇢ 3. final

with that built up i moved onto another adjusting chore: de-fattening the NYT type i had chosen to use as i found its lines to be too thick and i really wanted this to be as close to the source as i could get it to be.

right now instead of cleaning up the faux nyp i'm thinning this mock version of the nyt tf as its lines are too thick and i really, really have to be true to my sources. so i'm thinning it back which may or may not be completely useless thing to do. we'll see of course!

i considered this a possibly foolish thing to do at the time because thin lines can sometimes just dissolve badly when trying to bleed and rough them and if they'd dissolved then i'd basically had lost an hour doing nothing.

day 3

by the next day i'd recreated all my text and made a rip-off of the source just to see how it'd look.

made this instead. might use some elements of it, but yeah. i have no idea why i did this. so... disjointed

as you can see, i decided against using the same colour sets for them, instead keeping them true to their actual logo source just for my own sake of consistency.

note: if it isn't clear now, i'm extremely hellbent on making anything i mimic 1/1 as much as i possibly can within my own skill set and get very upset when i see bad replicas of things – i can write up the one time i got very pissed off about this one time and edited somebody else's work to be more faithful to its source if it's really that interesting to anybody lol.

an hour later i'd started putting together the framework of what would later be the final.

here's the bones of the main thing, i guess. will reformat and properly arrange everything but as long as i have everything down... something is happening

day 4

i'd spent 20 minutes creating my handwritten elements, things like arrows, lines, circles, etc., scanning and plonking them into the project.

hating this a lot but adding scribbly bits and trying to flesh out an idea that looks okay despite really really really disliking it. alas, i have to make and scan more lines 😐

by the end of the day i'd put something together, still unhappy with how empty it felt.

yucky wip. really want to trash this as it's starting to perplex me more than it should. something is missing and i have no idea what. there's so much dead space that it's making me mentally itchy.

note: i made this intentionally to split in two instead of the long one i posted here which i specifically fixed up for posting. spitting it in two meant it looked neater when i posted it on twt due to cropping and image compression – the long one at the top of this post is that split one as a whole. for some reason i initially started making it long before deciding that looked bad and going horizontal over vertical, as evidenced here.

day 5

digging through my eons of accumulated resources, i found a pre-set ink bleed template and decided to throw it in completely raw, just to see if that filled the negative space that seemed to be torturing me.

WAIT i think i have a rough idea of what im gonna do now. nvm this looks really bad bc i just threw it in no adjustments etc etc but in theory it looks okay? i think there's a vibe here

continuing on into the hours of the night, i tinkered around and tried to make sense of how the template worked as i'd never used it before then.

i think to get something out of this i'll have to rearrange everything separate which'll be... a task. but i'll try it anyway. oh and here's what this looks like w/o the smart filters. quite boring

then i rearranged it.

more tinkering – found direction and headed with it – though not much difference from the above iteration. though i did decide to cut them out of the dark background as it felt like it got chewed up pretty badly by the threshold adjustment and found the full pic just to clean it up that bit more.

awwwl right im back in and have been tinkering at it during the day. revised and cleaned up the lil pic of them i used in the corner and it looks much better now :) i think this might be it

then i went back in and made a long one which i'm not posting because it's fucking long and i don't need to drag this already mile long post – just imagine those two as one pic idk.

to finish this off i have to basically copy paste everything horizontally as i want it to be fluid as you swipe/look at it if that makes sense. this is what it actually looks like which is fine it just doesn't look good posted as you can tell above because it's cut in half lol

also tempted to go back and remake this all in color bc i kinda like how it looked? i'm not sure if i like it in b&w or color more. can somebody give opinions on what looks better – there's a rough colored version up thread

more tiny tinkering, this time trying to blend both together horizontally by making them join and creating the colored version.

ok. what are we feeling on this

here are my two "finals" i guess? not sure which one i prefer seeing as i now kinda hate everything here but whatever that's just me being too critical again.

day 6

one thing i noticed as a major flaw i almost didn't pick up on until i was swiping the split ones myself, was that the paper overlay did not layer across neatly, creating a very obvious cut that ruined all consistency of the project – had i done what i normally do aka 7 hour do it all at once no fucks given only realize fatal mistakes well fucking after i've finished and posted and then just have to live with the humiliation of error, i would have completely missed it until after the fact.

😐😐😐 this might be hard to see but to me it is glaringly visible. on this is a paper layer and it’s actually rather inconsistent (which is good as it makes things more realistic) HOWEVER, when you have it set like this and have it the same no modifications…

if you look at the black box which is sort of my connector piece if you will, you will see that it doesn’t match up bc the overlay hasn’t been put on it seamlessly. it’s an easy fix but now i’m annoyed i didn’t bother to check this earlier. once again my works are flawed! typical

after cleaning that up, i'd resigned to that being the final – as seen at the top of the post.

silly enough i posted a v1 that i hated and tweaked here, and because i am too overcritical i lashed out at myself for it. here's my original hatred of it from the repost:

posting this again bc i’ve gone back and overhauled/possibly made it infinitely worse. anyways, i think this should be pulled out of my hands and thrown very far away as i keep coming back and tinkering with it, fixing errors while inadvertently causing more etc. etc. the cycle will never end it just exists as one circle. in case you luckily didn’t see the V1 from the night prior, this is inspired/basically stolen from this radiohead advertisement and text concept recreated from this david byrne x lost art piece. being honest every time i look at this i hate it more but sometimes i think its okay but that is a very short lived feeling as i don’t think i’ve ever felt 100% on something i’ve gone and made ever. i’m too self critical and hold myself to a very high standard that i believe i am too unskilled to attempt to touch. this looks like some tiktok design garbage if i’m being totally honest with you. i hate it now

sad!

and that's the tormentingly long process of making something i quite hated but now have come to kind of like.

#extremely fucking long post – literal novel here #trash

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anarcho-masochist · 1 year ago

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Hello, this is a common thing, that in it's extreme form, is called coercive control. @imeverywoman420 is right when they say they invent methods of controlling their partner.

I used this as a topic for a couple of classes, but that was on coercive control *legislation* and I don't have the spoons to write a full new thing, so let me give you just a couple points and then some sources.

Note that, coercive control is a pattern of behavior. This means that individual incidents/tactics may seem minor, making it difficult for victims to explain. This also means that a one-off incident of possessiveness is *not* coercive control. The above examples either could or couldn't be, depending on the rest of the relationship.

But here's how a couple of these tactics are used:

Isolating the target from their friends, in general but especially of the opposite sex, is incredibly common. If you start with "I don't want you hanging out with her because she might like you/you could have an affair/I should be the only woman in your life" then they have upset you. If they love you, and don't suspect anything amiss, then they'll want to accomodate you to stop making you upset, or so they can keep you as a partner. You expand this to other friends, or just make it clear that you should be the #1 priority in their social life. You never threaten anything in particular...so it's not your fault if they worry about your emotional reaction or you leaving them or doing something drastic. Maybe you get a bit suicidal over it one time. It's not your fault. They could leave if they really wanted to. If they choose you as their main pillar of support and social interaction, that's great, right? And not your fault. If it also means you're the only person they're really close enough to to voice their doubts...that's just an fortunate side effect, since you can comfort them and help them see it isn't a problem at all.

(Used female pronouns just because of the above examples, this can obviously happen with any gender(s).)

The texting all the time thing, or expecting constant highs in a relationship, is as [uh why did it disappear? I guess someone edited their post] says, lovebombing. This is another great sign of toxic relationships. It is great at earning trust, you make them feel special and also if you love them so much, you probably don't want to hurt them. If you do, you'll change for them...so romantic, until a month later when your fave toxic behaviors resurface. But a lot of people will put up with this kind of thing for love, or not acknowledge a problem. It also might make you worry about what would happen if you leave.

So those are the forms addressed in this post, but there's *a lot* more. Here's some sources on the topic:

CW: some of these articles are very, perhaps unfairly, gendered

Scholarly Articles:

(Download the PDF, it has the full document, including measures of various controlling behaviors. Very useful!)

Other articles:

This is why i hate princess complexes… if ur friends with someone for a year or longer and you JUST started dating someone, ur friendships should come first tbh

#coercive control #sorry for making this post really long i intend to write maybe a few sentences and link like 2-3 sources #it's just really interesting!#long post

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daisybeewrites · 3 years ago

Text

Academy Blues

avoi-dance!

word count: 3.7k

warnings: nightmares

ship: dousy (daisy johnson/daniel sousa)

ahahaha dousy is becoming a spark

Shaking.

Quaking.

Rubble falling.

Bones snapping.

Something dark on the floor.

He’s gone.

Daisy bolted upright, ribs expanding and contracting rapidly. The bed was shaking. A small cacti was on the floor, sand and pebbles thrown across the rug, pieces of the decorative pot shattered. She looked over at her clock.

2:14am. Great.

Daisy quickly rose, gathering her rug in one hand and a sweatshirt in the other. She walked down the hall, quiet as a mouse, still shaky.

Breathe, Daisy, She told herself.

She reached the bathroom without encountering anyone. She set the rug on the counter, gathering the tiny cactus and shaking it out of the soil.

“Ouch,” She inhaled sharply. Cacti are prickly.

The mirror rattled a bit as Daisy shook the sand and pebbles into the trash. She held back tears, the aftershocks of her nightmare hitting her.

A presence in the doorway caught her attention.

“Daisy? What’re you doin’?”

Jemma sounded like she had just woken up, her accented voice thick and scratchy with sleep.

Daisy opened her mouth to respond, but her voice cracked on the first syllable. Jemma’s eyes widened, registering the sight before her. She rushed over, enveloping Daisy in a tight hug. Jemma could feel Daisy’s chest racking with sobs. At least she could comfort her now, like she wasn’t allowed to before.

Jemma slowly pulled away as Daisy’s cries became quieter and less frequent. The small cacti was still resting on the counter, the rug discarded on the tiled floor.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jemma asked gently.

Daisy looked up, the rattling of the mirror lessening as she exhaled.

“I broke my cactus,” She sniffled, a few tears escaping as she stared at the broken succulent. She was really looking forward to watching this one grow.

Daisy shook her head, wiping her eyes with her sweatshirt sleeve. Silently, the pair picked up the rug and walked back to Daisy’s room. Daisy saved the small cacti, not quite able to just throw it in the trash. Jemma surveyed the furniture, making sure that nothing else had fallen. Her room was in its usual messy yet organized array. It made Jemma’s skin itch, but at least Daisy knew where everything was. Daisy collapsed onto her bed, pulling a fuzzy blanket around her shoulders.

“Do you want me to stay?”

Daisy thought for a moment, watching Jemma fidget with her fingers and rub her neck, noting her under eye circles and the sluggish way she smiled.

“I’m good,” Daisy said.

Jemma raised an eyebrow, tilting her head. “Are you sure? I don’t mind, really,” She offered.

Daisy nodded. “I promise, I’m good.”

Jemma hesitantly nodded, then left, softly closing the door behind her.

Daisy flopped backwards onto her pillows. She wasn't sleeping anytime soon.

Daisy woke at 9:36 later that day, her alarm buzzing softly and her phone screen lit with several missed calls from Elena and May.

7:04–May

Are you otw?

7:10–Yo-yo

daisy, you’re late

7:15–Missed call from May (2)

8:02–Yo-yo

may is pissed

get your best sorry ready

Daisy sighed. Fuck nightmares.

She had already missed half of second period, not that it wasn’t anything she didn’t already know how to do. Might as well take advantage of the empty canteen.

After speedily brushing her teeth and getting dressed, Daisy grabbed her backpack and headed out.

True to routine, the canteen was void of people, save for a group of fifth-years chatting in the corner. Daisy grabbed her usual cinnamon raisin bagel and coffee and found a spot near the back doors. If May came in, she would run. It was too early and Daisy was too tired to deal with May’s concern.

Daisy glanced up as the doors across the large hall opened again, almost spitting out her coffee at who walked in.

Ohmygodhe’scomingoverhere, don’t be an idiot!

“Hey, Danny Boy,” Daisy greeted. Smooth, very good start.

“Hey, Dais,” He said, morning voice rough and low. Daisy ignored the rising number on her biometer watch and quickly hid her hand under the table, resting on her bouncing knee.

She cocked an eyebrow. “Just getting up, are we?”

Daniel shrugged, “My alarm clock is broken, and I’m ahead in all my classes anyway. Missing one to trade for sleep won’t hurt me.”

“Aren’t you in May’s class, though? She hates when people skip,” Daisy asked.

Daniel thought this over for a second before responding, demeanor a tad sheepish. “I might have already asked for the notes for this week, everything she’s teaching today I’ve already been studying.”

Daisy smiled. Nerd.

“Well, in that case, would you care to join me in my avoidance of classes?”

Daniel checked his analog watch, second period was almost over. “Sure. My third is calculus, and all we do in there is textbook work anyway.”

Daisy stood up, stretching a bit. Daniel followed her out of the canteen, across the grounds, and around the girls’ dorms.

“Uh, Daisy, where exactly are we going?”

Daisy grinned. “Ever been on the roof, Sousa?”

Sousa looked up at the top of the building. “Are we allowed up there?”

Daisy furrowed her brows, responding with a noncommittal hum. Did he not want to go up there?

“To master the art of avoidance, you must be unpredictable. Go where no one will find you. Dance along the edge of expectations,” Daisy exclaimed dramatically. “That’s why it’s called avoi-dance. We don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”

Daniel laughed, eyes smiling. “Ladies first,” He offered.

Daisy clambered onto the iron fire escape, waiting for Daniel on the first landing and giving him a hand. They started up the stairs together, wind blowing softly over their faces.

“So,” Daisy started when they reached the top, “This is it.”

Daniel watched as Daisy made a grand gesture, crouching down near an outlet to plug in the lights.

Putting on her best realtor voice, Daisy led Daniel around the space.

“In this corner we have a lovely, absolutely gorgeous three-hundred-sixty degree view of campus. Look! There are students in their natural habitat!

“And over here, we have a wonderful assortment of plants, both alive and barely clinging to life, just like most of the human inhabitants of the building!”

Daniel chuckled, nodding sagely. “Now, let’s talk money. What is the price per square foot, and how much are you suggesting as a down payment?”

Daisy’s grin faltered, not sure exactly what Sousa was talking about. Daniel’s smile grew wider at the slightly confused, completely adorable look on her face.

“Were you planning on getting work done?” Daniel asked.

Daisy shrugged, setting her backpack down and leaning against the low wall surrounding the edge of the roof. He joined her, sitting with one leg out and the other bent at his knee.

“It won’t take me long to finish this,” Daisy said, opening her laptop.

Daniel watched on as Daisy coded, taking mental notes of how her fingers glided over the keys, typing at a speed he could barely comprehend. She bit her bottom lip in concentration, pausing for a moment to assess her work, then continuing to circumvent the little red error messages that appeared at the top of her screen.

“How do you know what all that means?” Daniel asked. Daisy stopped typing for a moment to look over at him, tilting her head a bit.

“I guess I just picked it up pretty quick. When I was still living in my van, before Coulson found me, I had to make money somehow, so I started building codes and programs for people who needed it. They were definitely shady, and it got me into a couple tough spots, but I could always just move my van away, drive somewhere else.”

Daniel didn’t press for more information. Daisy seemed not to want to talk about it, as she turned back to her computer and let her hair fall into her face. A few minutes later, she pressed enter, and threw her hands up.

“Yes! Finally!”

Daniel peeked at her screen. Instead of a red error message, there was a small check at the top of her screen.

“So what exactly did you just do with the numbers and the symbol things?”

Daisy laughed lightly. “Sometimes SHIELD creates programs specifically for Academy students to hack into, so we can practice getting around firewalls and beating different layers of protection. At the end is usually some redacted file or just a blank document. Sometimes the Professors let the advanced students hack into companies and emails if they need help. It gives us ‘a wide range of practical experience.’”

Daniel scrunched his eyebrows, checking his watch. “So does it normally only take you fifteen minutes to complete assignments like this?”

Daisy smirked, “I don’t mean to brag, but yes. Most kids in my class can do it in forty-five, but I like to challenge myself.”

Daniel’s jaw dropped, amazed. “Wow. So in a couple years I’ll be doing that? I can keep up with CS 1, but that is…” He trailed off, not sure exactly how to describe it.

Daisy nodded, “It takes awhile to get used to, to understand. It’s like learning any other language, it helps if you start young, and I practically depended on coding for survival when I was in my teens. It gave me a huge leg up.”

Daniel let his gaze wander over Daisy’s face. She had a lot more to her than meets the eye. He looked into her eyes, finding her already staring at him, an intent look on her face. She opened her mouth to say somethi—

Briiiiiiiiiiing.

The bell cut her off. Daisy looked away quickly, cheeks tinted pink. Daniel made no move to get up, and neither did Daisy. They waited until it was over to speak again.

“I guess we should probably get going?”

Daisy agreed, standing up and reaching out a hand for Sousa to take. They walked back to campus together, parting ways to get to their classes.

Daisy passed by May’s room on her way to Physics, walking quickly and staring straight ahead.

“Daisy!”

Daisy stopped, walking backwards to stand in the open door of May’s classroom. No one was there but May.

Daisy slowly approached May down the rows of desks, smiling rather guiltily.

“Hey, May! How are you?” Daisy asked, voice an octave higher than normal. May had on her ‘Mom Face’, as Daisy called it, eyebrows slightly raised and lips pursed in a straight line.

“You know, leather jackets look great on you!” Daisy tried, picking at her nails, unable to maintain eye-contact without her chest constricting. May stayed silent.

Daisy dropped the cheery façade, sighing. This would get her nowhere.

“I’m sorry. I had a rough night and slept through my alarm. If it makes you feel better, I also missed my first three periods,” Daisy rushed out, exhaling sharply.

May sat back onto her desk, patting the space beside her.

“Call me next time,” May said, voice soft. “Asking for help isn’t weak, Daisy, and I don’t know how to help if you don’t tell me. I don’t have a class next period.”

Daisy nodded, a slight sting in her eyes. May continued, “You’ve had a rough year. I get it. But Daisy, running from those you love, who love you? It doesn’t work. Trust me, I’ve tried. The only thing that will work is facing your fears head-on, and keep running at them until eventually they’re powerless. You need closure.”

Daisy rested her head on May’s shoulder, unable to look her in the eye.

“I’m sorry, May,” Daisy apologized, voice small.

May wrapped an arm around her in a side hug.

“You don’t need to apologize. Let’s go work out some problems, my way.”

In the canteen, Jemma and Fitz sat in their usual spot by the back windows, both munching on spaghetti and rolls.

“Fitz! Tell me you didn’t!”

Fitz looked up from where he was tinkering with a piece of tech that looked suspiciously like an ICER with a small cloaking device attached to the side.

“I didn’t,” He replied. He kept tinkering with the small gun until it made a loud pop! and shocked him.

“Ouch!” Fitz winced, promptly dropping the modified ICER on the table, empty cartridge bouncing onto the floor. He bent to pick it up, reassembling the tech and taking another bite of pasta.

“Have you figured out the problem?” Jemma asked.

Fitz rolled his eyes. “It’s not a problem, Jemma, it’s just that I, uh, I can’t get the…” Fitz paused, waggling his hands in the air as if he was grasping for the right word.

“The concentration? Weight? Bullets?” Jemma supplied.

“The bullets work! Non-lethal, heavy stopping power, break up under the subcutaneous tissue. Same ones from when we were working on The Bus. No, it’s the, um, the safety. It keeps going off without my permission,” Fitz finished.

Jemma took a bite of her roll. “Are you using one-hundred nano-liters of dendrotoxin like I suggested?”

Fitz nodded. “That’s in the bullets. This is just the design. I can’t figure out the balance, with the addition of cloaking, it’s thrown my whole design off.”

“Maybe Daisy has an idea? She’s listened to us ramble on for years, she’s actually used them.”

Fitz and Jemma looked around for Daisy. It was 6, dinner started at 5, and they always ate together.

“Usually she’s here by now,” Jemma frowned. The three of them had fallen into a comfortable routine, meeting at lunch and dinner and making plans to study after.

“There’s that guy she’s been hanging out with, er,” Fitz paused, snapping his fingers, “Sousa! Maybe he knows something,” Fitz pointed to where Sousa was eating a plate of chicken and rice near the entrance to the canteen.

“Are you going to go talk to him?”

Fitz looked back at Daniel, considering his options. On one hand, he had never talked to the guy. What if he said something wrong and made a bad first impression? On the other hand, Fitz needed to make sure Daisy was okay. They had a routine they had agreed to stick to, and if she was off routine, it meant something was wrong.

“Let’s go together,” Fitz half-suggested, half-asked.

Jemma nodded, getting up and walking with Fitz across the cafeteria to stand in front of Daniel.

“Hello,” Jemma started, “Have you seen Daisy lately? We’ve noticed the two of you together recently.”

Fitz stood slightly behind Jemma, fingers weaving themselves together.

Daniel took in the two of them, noticing Jemma’s thumb swiping nervously across her palm.

“Would you like to sit down?” Daniel offered.

“No, thank you, we’d really just like to find Daisy,” Fitz rushed out, looking slightly above Daniel’s eyes as he talked.

Daniel nodded. “Are you guys Fitzsimmons? Daisy talks about you a lot, I’m glad to finally meet you. But to answer your question, I haven’t seen her since third period. Is something wrong?”

Jemma sighed. “She had a bad nightmare last night, but when I left she said she was fine. I went to check on her this morning but she didn’t answer, I assumed she was out for a run.”

Daniel furrowed his brows. Daisy hadn’t mentioned a nightmare. “Is that why she was missing her morning classes?”

“She’s sleep deprived and has a tendency to entirely abandon routines if she doesn’t get off on the right foot. I bet she’s with May,” Jemma said, looking to Fitz for confirmation.

Fitz just nodded, staring at Jemma.

“Great,” Jemma clapped her hands, “Should we go find her?”

It took Daniel a moment to realize the question was directed at him. “Oh, uh, yes, sure,” He stammered, getting up and jogging a bit to catch up to Fitz and Jemma.

“Oof!” Daisy exclaimed. She and May had been sparring for the past couple hours. Hours. Daisy was absolutely exhausted. May was feeling fine.

From the mat, Daisy reached a hand up so May could pull her up. Instead of getting up, though, Daisy pulled hard, flipping May over. May rolled rather chunkily, ending in a position that was half-squatting, half-sitting.

Maybe she was a little more tired than she let on.

“Good one. Next time, roll with the flip, too. If your attacker is faster than you, you could’ve just given them a free shot.”

Daisy got up slowly, dusting herself off and extending a hand out to May.

“Truce?”

May nodded. Then Daisy’s world spun, and she was flat on her back.

“Ughh. I deserved that,” Daisy panted.

May smirked, staying on the floor with Daisy.

“Feel any better?”

Daisy shrugged. “I’ll at least sleep hard,” She said, still catching her breath.

“There you are! We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

Daisy lifted her head off the mat to see Jemma and Fitz walking into the gym. Daniel was behind them.

Daisy sat fully up, allowing Jemma to help her to her feet.

“Sorry guys. I should have called,” Daisy grimaced.

Fitz shrugged, “It’s okay, Dais, we got Daniel to, er, tag along with us. He was a good ‘replacement you’ for a while.”

Daisy looked over to Daniel, who was trying to hide a blush by clearing his throat and looking anywhere but Daisy.

Oh, right. She was wearing nothing but a sports bra and spandex training shorts.

Daisy walked over to the edge of the mat, stretching out her arms and grabbing her SHIELD sweatshirt, tugging it on.

“Thank you, guys, I appreciate the concern,” Daisy checked her watch, “You already ate dinner?”

Jemma and Fitz nodded.

“Okay, I’ll grab something with May and see you at the dorms?”

Fitz gave her a thumbs up and left, Jemma right behind him. May grabbed her water bottle, letting Daisy know that she’d be in the canteen.

“And then there were two,” Daisy laughed nervously, threading her fingers together and shifting from side to side.

Daniel smiled, “And then there were two.”

An uncomfortable silence settled over them.

“Thanks for hanging out with me this morning. You didn’t have to,” Daisy blurted.

Daniel shrugged, frowning, “I wanted to.”

Daisy turned away from Daniel, face heating up. He wanted to hang out with her?

Daisy bent to grab her gym bag. When she turned back around, Daniel was waiting for her.

“You can tell me, you know, if you’re having a rough go of it. I won’t judge,” He stated, calm and collected.

Daisy nodded, unsure how to respond. She rose up onto her tiptoes and rocked back, once, twice, three times before letting out a slow exhale.

“Have you eaten dinner?” She asked.

“Sorta. I was about to eat before I left with Fitz and Simmons,” He said.

“Well, you’re welcome to eat with me and May,” Daisy offered.

Daniel grinned.

“I’ll take your bag.”

They arrived a number of minutes later at the canteen, Daisy offering to take her bag every couple minutes and Daniel readjusting the black duffel on his shoulder, refusing.

May thought they were exceptionally cute.

“Took you long enough,” The short woman said, amusement lacing her words.

Daisy plopped into a seat before Daniel could pull one out.

“I’m gonna go get some grub, I’ll leave you ladies to it,” Daniel announced.

May raised an eyebrow at Daisy, whose face promptly went pink.

“He’s a dork,” She said, “He was awed by my CS homework.”

“Was it the homework, or was it you?”

May shot Daisy a very pointed look, to which Daisy rolled her eyes.

“Whatever.”

“He’s very square” May observed, watching him over Daisy’s shoulder.

Daniel came up behind her, holding a plate with a cinnamon raisin bagel in one hand and a plate of chicken and rice in the other.

“I didn’t know what else you’d like, but I felt bad for not grabbing you anything.”

May hid a laugh by clearing her throat. Daisy reached out to accept the bagel, avoiding eye contact with May.

After dinner, back at the dorm, Jemma and Daisy were sprawled out on Daisy’s bed. Jemma held her flashcards in her hand, quizzing herself while Daisy talked.

“May says I need ‘closure’, whatever that means. I thought I had closure. I went to his funeral. I hugged his sister!”

Jemma set her cards down, accepting that she wasn’t going to get any more studying done.

“But you don’t know what happened. You were being controlled, you weren’t here. Daisy, you’ve always needed answers. You’ve never been able to leave a problem alone if you didn’t have the full story.”

Daisy sighed. Jemma was right.

“Well… On to happier subjects. Tell me about the new marine bio elective. How’s that going?”

Daisy smiled softly as Jemma’s face lit up and her hands came up to flap excitedly. Jemma went off on several different tangents about the professor’s experiences as a wildlife photographer and the different coral reefs they were studying in class. Daisy tried to listen, really, she did, but she found herself stuck in her head, responding with passive hums and ‘yeah’s.

Eventually, Jemma seemed to run out of steam, her smile still wide and face slightly flushed from how she had been ranting about climate change’s effects on the world’s reefs.

“It’s 10. I’m going to head up to bed.”

Daisy nodded. She had a plan.

She walked with Jemma back down the hall to her room, bidding her a good night. Daisy got back to her room, breathing in the quiet, then settled onto her rug against her bed, laptop sat in front of her. Lines of code danced on the screen, the light from the computer highlighting her face.

“You have to do this. You need closure,” Daisy murmured.

Daisy sat up, stretching. She changed positions several times, finally landing upside down on her bed. She craned her neck to read her clock, 11:23. Last chance to turn back, you know the consequences. You could get kicked out of SHIELD. They won’t trust you anymore.

Daisy pressed enter.

#daisy johnson #agents of s.h.i.e.l.d.#dousy #daniel sousa #jemma simmons #leo fitz #fitzsimmons #philindaisy #aos fic #mama may #marvel #melinda may #phil coulson #ash writes

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927roses-and-stuff · 4 years ago

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Miracles in Gotham: Chapter 4: Unwelcome Discoveries (Part 2)

Hey, guys! This fic is inspired by @ozmav’s Maribat AU. Shoutout to @mystery-5-5 for brainstorming ideas with me for this fic.

Woah, updating twice within the same week? It’s like I finally learned how to manage my time!... Not. Honestly this is my stress relief right now because I have two papers due tomorrow and those subjects are not as much fun to write about. On another note, I just finished my midterm and passed! So, yay! Anyways, hope you guys enjoy and have a little bit of luck come your way too.

Btw, after you’re reading this can you guys please tell me if I’m writing too much angst after reading through this chapter??? I am writing what I think would logically happen in this type of scenario, but I also tend to be really pessimistic.

If you want to see more, follow: #miraclesingotham or ask to be added to the tag list.

Tag list: @northernbluetongue @zerotosiki @spicybelladonna @my-name-is-michell @legendaryneckjudgestudent @lokiifriggasonn

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By the time Marinette entered the classroom, her mood had lifted considerably from moments before. She sat at her usual seat and prepared her things as the rest of the class filed in. Her mood was slightly disrupted by a disgruntled Lila who roughly swept past her, but otherwise it seemed like today was finally going to be a normal day; well as normal as one could get in Paris, anyway. As the last remaining students settled in, Mme. Bustier walked into the room with a huge stack of papers. She settled them on her desk before addressing everyone.

“Good morning, everyone!”

“Good morning, Mme. Bustier,” the class parroted back in varying degrees of enthusiasm. Mme. Bustier smiled in satisfaction.

“Now before we begin our usual morning exercise, I would like to call up Marinette and Alya to help me distribute these packages for you. I will give you a few minutes to look through it before discussing it further,” she said, as she split the pile of papers in half and handed one half to each girl. Marinette’s eyes bulged. The stack of papers consisted of multiple stacks of paper about twenty pages long each. She and Alya shared a glance before obeying Mme. Bustier’s orders. She started at Chloe and Sabrina’s desk and ended with Rose and Juleka at the back. Then, she returned to her seat, analyzing the stack of papers in front of her.

“Wayne Enterprises Sponsored International Connections Program in Gotham City, USA Information Package and Permission Forms”

After that was a bunch of paragraphs that Marinette skimmed over. The first few pages detailed what the program was for, their accommodations, costs for travel along with what necessary documents were needed, and all sorts of other details that made Marinette dizzy. The next few pages after that outlined the risks specific to Gotham and resources that students and their guardians were strongly recommended to review before even stepping onto Gotham grounds. The pages after that were permission forms asking for the legal guardian’s consent, her personal info, insurance, etc.

Needless to say, the whole class was baffled. In fact, some of them were downright lost, considering they didn’t even know a Gotham City existed in the US. Or what Wayne Enterprises was supposed to be and why they were offered to join this program. Only Max and Alya seemed excited at the prospect of the field trip, judging on the excited murmurs that Marinette could hear. She picked up on the word “vigilantes” from Alya and “greatest detective” from somewhere behind her and suddenly it all made sense. She wasn’t sure if she heard correctly, but she was pretty sure she heard Lila talking in self-assured whispers to the confused people around her. She held in a scoff, before returning her attention to the papers in front of her.

Marinette frowned, closing the package and pushing it away from her. She waited for Mme. Bustier to explain the details more clearly. Unfortunately, Marinette already knew there was no way she could go, at least, not without risking Paris’ safety.

“If you have finished, please bring your attention to me. I will explain everything. Please leave all your questions till the end,” Mme. Bustier said, clapping her hands to get everyone’s attention. “As you may have noticed, this opportunity has been given to us by M. Bruce Wayne of Wayne Enterprises. He has chosen our school as a trial school for a program that he wants to implement next year to help expand student achievement nationally and internationally. As well as to encourage young students like yourselves to make connections with students from other countries. In fact, I believe it was Mayor Bourgeois who sent M. Wayne a glowing recommendation of our class from fundraising events to everyone’s extracurriculars and achievements! I am so proud of all of you.”

At the front, Chloé straightened in her seat and smiled smugly. Beside her, Sabrina was looking from Chloé to the stack of papers in front of her in disbelief. The class was in a similar state of shock, and soon whispers erupted excitedly from most people in the class before Mme. Bustier silenced them all.

Oh, that made sense, Marinette thought. Despite the sense of pride she felt for herself and the class (their hard work deserved some reward after all, especially with all the akumas recently), she knew Mayor Bourgeois was not the type of person to recommend just anyone from the goodness of his heart. He had recommended this class to M. Wayne for Chloé’s own success. Which was a bit of a shame, Marinette thought, since Chloé had more than enough resources to find opportunities for herself. However, she couldn’t help but feel grateful to whatever deity convinced Mayor Bourgeois to include the class, anyway.

“Anyways,” Mme. Bustier said when the class had calmed down. “I expect everyone here to listen to what I have to say and take it to heart.” Mme. Bustier’s voice settled lowered, her tone becoming dangerously low. “This program is a huge opportunity however, Gotham City is full of many risks and I am making it absolutely mandatory for everyone in this room, as well as their legal guardians to use the sources outlined under “Risks to be Aware of While in Gotham City” Section. While M. Wayne has assured the supervisors for the trip as well as M. Damocles that our accommodations will be in Gotham’s financial district, there is still going to be danger; more than what we’re accustomed to in Paris.”

At the end of her spiel, the atmosphere in the room weighed heavy on Marinette. She had never seen Mme. Bustier so strict before, her teal eyes piercing through everybody in the room.

“Um, Mme. Bustier?” Lila spoke and stood up. The class swivelled their attention to her. “I’ve actually been to Gotham City and have met M. Wayne before for a humanitarian project. I’m sure M. Wayne will make sure to do everything to keep us safe.”

“That may be, Lila, but I assure you, these instructions were given to me by M. Wayne himself via email. He will do his best to make sure our trip is as safe as possible, but that means we need to do our part in keeping ourselves safe.”

Blinking owlishly, Lila faltered. “Yes, of course, Mme. Bustier.” She forced a smile. “I was just saying so because it would be an absolute shame for anyone to miss out on such a great opportunity!”

Marinette rolled her eyes. Sure, she thought. That, or she just wanted everyone to know that she knew Bruce Wayne- whoever he was- and be impressed. At least she didn’t claim that she saved Bruce Wayne’s horse or something similar. Or claim to be friends with the vigilantes Alya had been fangirling about earlier.

The rest of the morning was spent going through the rest of the package from how to ensure that everyone had their visa, to what they should bring and how they should behave while they were there. Marinette frowned; there was something off about this trip. She wasn’t sure whether it was the duration of the trip ( which had a minimum of one month, with extra time being granted in case of any future interruptions), or why an American company would choose this specific French class for the trial program instead of a class in say, London, or any other country that spoke English. It seemed that Max was thinking along the same lines as her, because the moment Mme. Bustier finished, his hand shot up in the air.

“Yes, Max?”

“I have a few questions concerning this program. Why is there a minimum allotted time for our stay? Would our parents need to agree to any extension of staying? And how are we supposed to communicate or even understand anything when most of us don’t speak English?”

Mme. Bustier smiled. “Those are all excellent questions. As I have said before, Gotham City is dangerous so there might be trips that are part of the program that will need to be rescheduled or we may need to take a later flight in case anything happens at the airport. Therefore, we need to be aware that our trip may last longer than the required month. Next, while we are there, you will be put in remedial English classes along with any classes you choose to take at Gotham Academy for the duration of our stay. This way, you will have the opportunity to brush up your English skills.”

Alya was quick to stand up and shoot her hand in the air. “Will we be going on any field trips outside of Gotham City? Like Metropolis?”

Mme. Bustier stared at her. “Maybe, but as for now, all details of the trip are included in the itinerary in your packages.”

Alya deflated, slumping in her seat. Marinette turned toward her and whispered, “What’s so special about Metropolis?”

She perked up and whispered excitedly. “It’s the home of Superman, Booster Gold and Blue Beetle!” Marinette had absolutely no clue -nor any real desire to know- who those were. It didn’t seem to matter as Alya rambled on. “And, and, and, it’s also the home to Pulwitzer prize-winning journalist Lois freaking Lane from the Daily Planet. I love her. I think I told Nino once that I would leave him for her (Nino gave an affirmative “uh huh”) if the opportunity ever arose and he said he wouldn’t mind as long as he could be with Superman. But that’s alright because Lois Lane is a badass and I love her; she is a genius-”

“Ahem.” Mme. Bustier coughed. Alya stopped mid-speech and laughed sheepishly. Her voice must have been louder than she realized.

“Sorry Mme. Bustier.”

“No problem, Alya. Just keep your excitement until the end of class.” She smiled softly. “And, I will see if I can mention your love for Lois Lane to M. Wayne.”

The way Alya froze in her seat, her jaw unhinged and wide eyes, Marinette wasn’t sure if she was in normal shock or if Mme. Bustier had actually managed to kill her with words. She chuckled before nudging her side to bring her back to reality. Shaken out of her stupor, Alya thanked Mme. Bustier and sat in her seat. Her smile was record-breakingly wide and she seemed to vibrate in place.

Letting out a giggle, Marinette was ecstatic for her best friend. Sure, she may not know the superheroes she mentioned, and still wasn’t too sure of who Lois Lane was, but Alya looked like she won a million euros and meeting her idol would be a great opportunity. As Alya continued to freak out however, she shared glances between Adrien and Nino in front of her and had to stifle their laughter.

Maybe if Alya did meet Lois Lane and Superman, and Gotham vigilantes, she could share her excitement with Marinette when the class returned to Paris.

The rest of the day had been pretty normal, with the addition of excitement in the air as her class discussed the trip to Gotham. Students from other classes seemed to be split between being jealous of the class for the opportunity, or relieved at the foreseeable absence of what they dubbed as “the akuma class.” Students from her own class huddled together in their small groups, already planning on what they wanted to do, what they thought Gotham would be like, and how they were excited to meet any cute Americans. Marinette couldn’t help but let their excitement affect her as well. Not only was going abroad always a cause for excitement but surely it was a relief to be able to leave Paris in the foreseeable future. It was exhausting being targeted by stupid demonic butterflies and sucking up your feelings like they didn’t exist (Unless you were Lila, then you cried and let everyone worry about your emotional state and any akumas that could come from it, that is). However, Marinette had a feeling that this trip to Gotham would stir a lot of drama within their class, when everyone had the chance to reveal any negative emotions without the consequence of an akuma around.

Well, that was that, she supposed as she went home for the lunch break, the permission forms tucked under her arm. She had been half tempted to chuck them in a bin somewhere, but knew her parents would be pissed if she didn’t tell them. Thus, she entered the bakery and once there was a lull in the orders, asked both of her parents if they could talk.

She led them upstairs in the living room and placed the bundle of papers on the dining room table. Marinette briefly explained the program and let them read through the package carefully. By the time they finished, Marinette only had an hour left of her two hour lunch break.

“So?” She prompted, trying to gauge their reactions.

Her maman and dad exchanged a glance and nodded, before turning back to her.

“You’re definitely going.” Her maman said, putting the package back on the table.

Marinette’s jaw dropped. “Wait, Maman, don’t you need some more time to think about this?” She couldn’t believe it. She should’ve chucked the package in a bin.

Her dad frowned. “Marinette, we don’t like it either, and it’s not...ideal, but we believe it’s for the best if you stay away from Paris for now.”

Marinette’s eyes widened, glancing back and forth between her maman and dad. “What do you mean?”

Her maman sighed. “Ever since we almost got akumatized on the day you were expelled, me and your father have been talking, and well, Paris isn’t safe for you anymore. It hasn’t been for a long time.”

Her dad nodded in agreement. Marinette felt befuddled. She felt like she definitely lost a few brain cells.

“Gotham City isn’t safe either, Maman, Papa. Didn’t you see the risks listed?” Marinette asked, grabbing the package and desperately scouring through the package. This was so not happening; she couldn’t afford to leave Paris.

She heard a sigh coming from her maman, before her hands settled on Marinette’s own. Marinette glanced up to stare at her maman’s cloudy grey gaze. “It’s definitely not ideal, and we wish you were somewhere safer, but I trust that M. Wayne and the school administration would never have allowed this to happen if it was too risky.”

“But-”

“And, “ her dad interjected before Marinette could continue. “If this hadn’t come up, we would’ve sent you away with your grandmère and you would’ve had to pause your schooling and travel around Europe with her until it was safe to come back home.”

“Or,” her maman added, giving Tom a small glare. “We would’ve sent you to Shanghai with your uncle Wang. At least this way, you can continue with your schooling and still be with your friends under the maximum amount of protection.”

Her breathing turned heavy at her words. Her heart was beating faster, was it just her imagination or did it feel like the room was stuffier than before. She didn’t understand. Why now? They had been planning to send her away. She pressed a hand against her chest to try to control her breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. It had been a calming trick Master Fu had shown her when she had been at the edge of getting an anxiety attack.

Not for the first time, Marinette wished she could just tell her parents she was Ladybug. Then again, maybe that would’ve motivated them further to get her out of Paris.

No, her maman and papa loved her. They just wanted her to be safe. They weren’t aware she’d been taking care of Paris all this time.

She felt her maman’s warm presence beside her as her papa engulfed them both. She barely registered the apologies her maman whispered as she stroked her hair. She was too busy pushing down all her anxieties.

She couldn’t risk getting akumatized.

Her lunch break had been long over by the time she had calmed down. By then, both her maman and papa had returned to the bakery with promises that they would talk about this tomorrow and that they would call the school to report her absence for the afternoon.

Marinette barely registered them as she trudged up to her bedroom. Then her bathroom. Shower. Dry hair. Change of clothes. Bed.

She didn’t know what to feel. She didn’t notice the kwamis flying towards her and snuggling with her, in her hair and the crook of her neck.

“What do I do?” She asked listlessly.

Tikki floated to her field of vision. “Marinette. It’ll be okay.”

“How?”

Tikki didn’t give an answer. She sighed and sat up. She was going to write in her diary until she read her last entry. Right. Marianne. She sighed. She’d call her and then go on an early patrol of the city.

She didn’t want the helplessness that came with being Marinette.

Taking a long, deep breath, she grabbed her tablet and called Marianne through video chat. Surprisingly, despite her age, Marianne adapted to technology pretty well. She and Master Fu were living somewhere in London, enjoying their retirement together. Marinette liked to keep up with them regularly, since she missed Master Fu, and their present now gave her hope for her own future.

She waited for the screen to load, and smiled widely when Marianne’s face entered the screen. She looked like she had just gotten home; the makeup she was wearing was starting to fade, and her hair was tied in a slightly wet updo bun.

“Marinette! Bonjour! How have you been, darling?” Marinette noticed that she had adopted a slight British accent when she talked. It hadn’t been that long since they last talked, so maybe her and Master Fu had been going out more.

“Bonjour Marianne.” She softly waved her hand. “Everything’s fine actually. How are you and Master Fu?”

Marianne smiled, re-focusing her own screen so Marinette could see her more clearly. “Everything’s been great. Wang has taken to liking massage parlors again. We just visited one yesterday.”

Marinette smiled fondly. She could feel Wayzz’s presence on her shoulder as he listened intently. If anyone had been more devastated than Marinette about Master Fu’s amnesia and departure, it would have been Wayzz. It had taken a long time for him to open up to Marinette and the other kwamis, often leaving the Oolong tea she brewed for him to run cold. Fortunately, he was getting better and opening up more. Their love for Master Fu had been what helped he and Marinette bond together as a new Guardian and kwami.

“I’m glad. It seems like you two are really happy.”

Marianne squinted her eyes; she could feel her gaze through the screen. “Why did you call, Marinette?”

“I, ah, had a question about the Miraculous actually. I was wondering if your time with Master Fu before had given you any insight to them.”

Marianne frowned slightly, rubbing her chin. “I’ve picked up on a few things, but Wang was really secretive. I’ll give it my best shot for you, dear.”

“Thank you! I was wondering if you had any clue as to why the Miracle Box turned into an egg when Master Fu renounced his Guardianship to me?”

Marianne sighed. “I wish I could tell you, but I’m as lost as you are.”

She deflated. Her hands gripped the tablet tighter. She knew there was only a miniscule chance that Marianne would’ve known anything, but a tiny part of her had hoped that luck would be on her side. Exhaling, Marinette thanked her.

On the other side of the screen, Marianne’s frown deepened. As happy as she was with Wang Fu, it was cruel for destiny to hand such a young child the enormous and numerous responsibilities that the Guardian had to bear. She glanced at Wang, who was sleeping on the couch contentedly. She was happy they could now spend the rest of their lives together in peace when most of it had been previously spent in war.

Speaking of war…

“Marinette, darling! I think I might know of someone who can help you!”

Marinette perked up. She had been about to change the subject or close the call, but maybe she had a bit of luck on her side after all.

“Who?”

“During the war, when Wang and I escaped to Paris, we were aided by someone who would become one of our closest friends. When he was recruited to battle in the war, he was very young, so Wang had lent him the Snake Miraculous for its powers of Intuition, at least until the war was over.”

Marinette felt Wayzz stiffen on her shoulder.

“She doesn’t mean…”

“Unfortunately,” Marianne continued. “When he returned home, he had an argument with Wang and almost didn’t return the Miraculous. It was only a month later that he left it on our doorstep. We haven’t heard from him since, but maybe he might know something. He was always a genius and intuitive beyond his years.”

Marinette frowned. “Do you know where he might be now?”

“His name is Alfred Pennyworth. He mentioned once that his family had a tradition of serving a family called the Waynes.”

Marinette’s frown deepened. There was the name Wayne again. Which meant Gotham. It felt like the universe really wanted her to go there. She sighed. At least she’d have an objective while she was there- if she did go in the first place. She smiled again, once she saw Marianne’s worried stare.

“Thank you so much, Marianne. I need to go now and plan what to do. I hope you and Master Fu stay well.”

Marianne smiled. “You too, Marinette. Don’t hesitate to call me for anything, dear.”

She merely nodded, and they both logged off. She set aside her tablet and turned to face Sass, who was already in front of her.

“Tell me everything you know about this Alfred Pennyworth and your time with him, Sass. I need to know if he can help before considering everything.”

The snake kwami merely nodded. “Of course, my Guardian.”

#and of course by universe i mean me #miraclesingotham #mlb x dc #maribat au #maribat #yall im really gonna add trauma to this already traumatized butler huh #i am so sorry #this arc was not supposed to be three chapters long #even i want them to go to gotham already but the set up ugh #ml x dc

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vivdunye · 4 years ago

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present day, present time

and you don't seem to understand

fabled adages of science

so i was watching the snyder cut of justice league the other morning, i couldn't really begin to tell you why other than i needed 4 hours of background noise . but i tuned in at one point when the fictional super Israeli, wonder woman, narrated a scene explaining an alien technology "that was so advanced that it almost seemed like sorcery", and wouldn't yknow, that's a real concept actually, i recognized it immediately as clark's third law:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

it's perhaps the most well known and oft quoted of the three, but i always felt like arthur c. clark's first 2 laws don't ever get quite enough love . i've been thinking heavily about the first law lately:

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

i've been thinking about it in relation to this one quote from wernher von braun that i always liked:

Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death.

many people are afraid of death; of ceasing the awareness of life, because they don't know what will happen to themselves after, where do they go if anywhere? it's much more nebulous in the secular sense if you haven't a construct for the afterlife already . i've been thinking about death more and more often lately to a worrying degree . however, scientific thought for all its clinical detachment from all things spiritual has strangely enough always felt like the perfect module for contemplating the metaphysical . so i decided to do some research .

i want to recall right now thomas edison's first intended use for the phonograph . edison had originally envisioned the phonograph primarily as a means of preserving the voices of loved ones after death . he later went on to try and develop a "ghost box" or "spiritphone" . this device would allow humans to communicate directly with the dead . he was unsuccessful .

if hauntology has taught us anything, we technically do have ghost boxes now, but maybe not in the way edison intended or even predicted . we carry them everywhere and can check them anytime, channeling messages through them constantly . we actively become digital ghosts, online we are both present and absent . the present implodes with the past, we've over-documented everything so now we can experience an instant nostalgia . today's future becomes archaic, we live in the archive to try and remember what the future once was .

'haunted' and 'futuristic' become one and the same .

by this token i'm reminded also by transhumanism . as the technological singularity fast approaches, as progress charges forward at a constantly increasing speed, current estimates posit the 2040s as the point in which technological improvements will occur at a constantly self-replicating rate . in the time between now and then, transhumanism and the eventual merging of human consciousness with machinery are theorized outcomes of technological progress . one day we might be able to leave the shackles of our human bodies and transcend our physical forms as a joined digital consciousness .

and in relation to this i also think now of clark's second law

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

through the wired

this is the stage on which the anime Serial Experiments Lain is set . a story, that while constructed on the patchwork of fiction, is nevertheless symbolic of certain phenomena based in reality .

also i apologize if it wasn't apparent that this post was going to be about Lain . im lainposting boys

the first few episodes exist to misdirect the viewer right from the beginning . and only by returning to these episodes having thought through the rest of the show, does their purpose become clear . the first episode, aptly titled "Layer 01: Weird" , is meant to show us exactly one thing, that lain is fucking weird . we can't tell what she's thinking, we can't tell what she's doing, and that's exactly how everyone around her feels . lain is totally and completely disconnected, she doesn't keep up with current events at school, she doesn't communicate with her family, near as we can tell she has no actual interests besides her stuffed animals and totally phasing out of reality. the inciting incident of the series happens when someone tries to make a connection with lain, and that person happens to be dead...

or at least there body is dead, their consciousness seems to have escaped into the wired . lain's decision to pursue this connection is what lead's her to ask her father for a new navi (the series' name for a personal computer) and that's all that really happens in this episode . coming back to it from later episodes we know that lain is probably thinking a lot throughout this episode . the decision to not entreat us to any of her thoughts is intentional, it is to make us feel distant from her as viewers, the same way that the world around her is distant . as lain forms connections throughout the series, so too, will we form a connection with her .

we do not know how much time has passed since then and the second episode, but whatever has happened lain has already developed a significant presence in the wired . this episode is tricky in its presentation as it doesn't make us privy to which things lain is lying about and which things she's honest about . in it we have lain talking to someone on her navi, she types sporadically in an encrypted language, and someone who looks just like her appears late one night in a night club downtown . while lain won't admit it to her classmates it's apparent at the end of the episode that it was her at the club all along . the key to understanding her actions throughout the episode is to realize she is trying to keep her existence in the wired and her existence in reality as separate entities . the realization she has by the end of the episode, which she uses to terrify a gunmen into suicide is that there is no escape from the wired, no matter where you are you are always connected .

made in the late-90s, Lain was quite ahead of its time . it predicted not only how in the early 2000s the internet would be regarded as a separate world where anonymity and personas reigned—it also predicted how the internet would eventually and inevitably overlap with the real world, once people in the real world realized that the internet is the real world . people have a tendency to see one part of themselves as their "true selves", whereas the parts they show to others are personas, they think of these things as separate when in reality a person is an amalgamation of all of their personas . lain tries to change her personas by dressing and acting differently from when she's in the wired-mode and in normal-mode, but she doesn't realize how people have been doing this way before the wired existed . her classmates are all 15 but they all pass for adults when they've dolled up and hit the club . if the characters in the show seem a bit young for their attitudes then you may not have met enough tech-savvy teenagers before . the purpose of this episode is to ultimately to prove to lain that the so-called real world and the wired are merely two layers of one reality, which couldn't be more true of the world today .

let there be light300pMTK. .

in mythology, psyche was the mortal princess who fell in love with and, eventually, married the god cupid; in religion and classical philosophy, psyche came to mean the human soul, and in the modern, literate world, it retains that meaning as the human spirit; in freudian analysis, psyche refers to the totality of the human mind: the id, ego and superego .

every meaning of psyche is distinctly human: a human princess who achieves godhood, the soul or mind of an individual . if previous episodes introduced the blurring of the real world with the wired, then episode three; "Layer 03: Psyche" is the episode that starts to blur human identity online and offline . one doesn’t even have to venture into the wired to ask what is human .

by this point we know that lain is definitely up to something . at this stage it's hard to tell what, but all we get are little glimpses into her actions . she still seems to be hiding a lot from the world around her and from the viewer in turn . ironically, lain's blank-faced silence and response to the questions of those around her it's own incrimination . when a police officer tells her to speak up (regarding the gunman's suicide) even if she had nothing to do with it, he doesn't realize she's being silent precisely because she does have something to do with it . but her deer-in-the-headlights persona gets her out of it .

the lain of the wired and the lain of reality are slowly starting to mesh into one whole . it remains difficult to interpret the physical existence of "other lain" so to speak, and the show refuses to outright show her playing that character . at the least, we do get to see lain access the wired in all its chaotic glory and she does begin to take an active interest in expanding her knowledge as she learns about and installs the "Psyche drive", a computer circuit that lain procures in hopes of it enhancing her computer's processing power . on the smaller scale, when lain applies the psyche processor to her navi, she is installing a spirit or soul, an animating element, to her machine . notably, the psyche does not replace the main processor; psyche augments the main processor, interpreting the data that flows through it . the soul is not simply the brain, it is an elevated consciousness or meta-self. by this point in the series lines become blurred and the lains begin to merge (hehe) . all of this is set against the backdrop of lain trying to decide if she should remain in the physical world or fully integrate in the wired . she hears one voice telling her that death feels amazing, and god exists in the wired, that there is nothing left for lain in this world . however, lain begins to establish a connection with her classmate alice, saying her name out loud and commiting it to memory for the first time, alice asks why her friends are not more shaken up after watching someone shoot himself in the head the previous day . it's almost as though lain is clinging to alice as an excuse to stay in the physical world out of fear for changing over . this all sets the seeds for what eventually grows throughout the series .

i want to recall the final meaning of the word “psyche". that the word also meant “butterfly,” which is how the greeks imagined the soul to appear . no doubt the symbolism of a creature that begins as one thing and transforms into another is not lost on us here .

every event serves to emphasize the existence of one's own personal reality, and as individuals from all others, we desire a place to belong . however that too is an egotistical concept . in order for there to be a mutual understanding, it is necessary to recognize here and now, like the brain synapses, we are all—in a logical yet chaotic manner—connected .

each is seperate—yet they are one . by connecting, humanity gains first awareness of its function as a seed . and by connecting a human no longer remains a mere endpoint, a "terminus", but becomes a junction to another point, having won the right to continue itself . in a sense, the ability to connect is the ability to continue . this not only applies to the connection of axial coordinates but temporal coordinates as well . therefore, at the time when a conscious, intentional connection is made, surely the dead will rise from there intended place, appearing at the time coordinate of the connection's origin .

in that moment, the realization will dawn that the time in which we inhabit our physical bodies is but the starting point of the connection, and the very meaning of possessing a physical body might be questioned .

we recognize we are connected .

serialize thyself .

#tecnobabel #text

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you-know-like-the-bird · 4 years ago

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It Gets Bad Before It Gets Worse

A/N: Right so... hello. Been a while since I last posted anything. But! Anyways! This is my little take on Deku joins the League of Villains and how that works out for him. This is only just the USJ incident, and that to not the whole thing, but that’s because I’ve still got to write the last bit (where All Might fights the Nomu) and I really wanted to post this now so... yeah.

I copied this from my word document, but tumblr just- ate up my italicised words? Like they’re still there, but nothing’s italisiced except for this author’s note that I’m typing straight out here on tumblr. I really don’t have the patience to go through this and re-work everything, so I hope it doesn’t mess with the flow of words too much.

But besides that, I hope you enjoy!

Edit: I fixed stuff.

"Kurogiri."

Shota sends out tendrils of his capture scarves and grabs onto two villains, swinging feet first through the space between them and right into a third. By all means, his attention is mostly on the b-lister villains surrounding him, but he's been careful not to let the three bosses out of sight. They haven't tried anything yet, which just mean that they're going to be more trouble later on.

"Take the brat up with you, won't you?" The man with the hands scratches at his neck, a contemplative tilt in his voice as he keeps Shota in his sights just as much as Shota keeps handsy in his.

There's warning lilt in mist-man's tone when he speaks, who Shota silently renames as Kurogiri for when he has to recount this incident for the police reports, hopefully with the villains locked up somewhere near. "Shigaraki..."

"Don't give me that tone!" The hands villain- Shigaraki- snaps, "You're not the leader of this operation. I am."

Kurogiri lets out a weary sigh just as Shota is forced to twist around to dodge a swipe of metal claws meant to dig into his torso, and regrets it immediately when he hears, "As you wish, Shigaraki."

When Shota turns back around, the Kurogiri is gone.

After the shock of, 'holy shit, this is really real' has passed, Class 1-A follows after Thirteen as they all run towards the entrance. They never quite make it there, when purple mist flickers into existence just ahead of them and starts to expands, bigger and bigger until it's like a swirly purple wall towering over them. That's not the last of it though, when Class 1-A watches a teenager who looks about their age step out from the mist.

"Is it time then?"

This is said to the owner of two yellow eyes that blink open in the mist, and voice that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. "There was a change of plans. Shigaraki... wished to have you called in early."

It's the last bit that has all eyes watching the boy, as he in turn watches Kurogiri from over his shoulder. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Deku?"

The boy slowly turns to meet a violent red gaze, and Class 1-A hold their breaths.

For one Izuku Midoriya, it’s like the world slowly halts to a standstill. Suddenly, nothing matters much anymore, not the fact that this is the first attack he's been allowed to participate in, and that too only to watch. Not that he was nervous why Shigaraki wanted him 'called in early'. Not that he was finally supposed to get his irrefutable proof that he hadn't lied to Sensei about All Might's weakness, that he had been loyal. No, none of that matters because Izuku doesn’t even look at the crowd of hero students, just the figure right at the front, with sparking hands that's more flash than boom, for now, and an expression that seems almost surprised to see him.

Izuku looks at Bakugou in fascinated horror, "Kacchan?"

This wasn't- this wasn't how this was supposed to go. Izuku was supposed to pop in and take notes, not come face to face with his childhood bully after almost a year.

Predictably, like it always happened when Kacchan was caught off guard, his expression twists from one of surprise to anger, like how dare Izuku try to pull a fast one on him. If only someone would tell Kacchan that Izuku is just as surprised to see him as Kacchan is to see Izuku, but good luck getting him to believe you.

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

"I-" There's that same adrenaline, pumping through using veins, the kind he always got when Kacchan had him by the front of his shirt and was screaming right in his face. But unlike before, where when the anger would come (‘What did I ever do to you?!’) and Izuku would push it down, he doesn't this time.

He hasn't in a long time pushed the anger down.

His eyes narrow and its hard, harder than anything Izuku's ever done, to keep his composure. His voice still trembles, threatening to betray the red-hot fury he feels curling in his gut, but he just about manages to keep that poisonous feeling contained in his hands, in his erratic breathing, but never seeping into his voice, onto his face, into his actions. "I could ask you the same thing Kacchan."

Kacchan goes to speak, give it back to him twice as hard because he never listens, does he? When Kurogiri draws a close to this verbal match of spitting bullets with a polite. "Sorry to interrupt, but me and comrades would appreciate it if you take this seriously."

Kurogiri has the kind of influence that is quiet but intense, which means people listen when he talks. Not only that, everyone realizes that he's clearly the bigger threat between being the warper and the dude who looks like literal middle schooler blocking their paths. Izuku knows rationally that this class of hero hopefuls' best bet right now would be to try and get past him and Kurogiri and to go call for help, but Izuku has enough faith in Kurogiri to handle that. Not that he can do much else, or think much else, because of the anger that just keeps building and building the longer he stands here with Kacchan's red hot glare pinned right on him, greater threat be damned. It should feel gratifying, that he's finally gotten Kacchan to look at him, not just as another thing in his way but a person, but maybe he hasn't. Maybe it had meant nothing at all to Kacchan, when Izuku Midoriya had disappeared off of the face of the Earth about ten months ago, taking nothing but the words of an angry bully with him.

Yeah, that fits the bill, doesn't it? Izuku may have known Kacchan for over 14 fucking years, but he's only ever been just another thing in Kacchan's way to step over on his way to glory. As if Kacchan noticed he was ever gone.

The only time Izuku ever gets to have Kacchan look at him again, acknowledge him again, and Izuku is just another obstacle in his way. Just like it's always been.

"We don't mean to be rude by intruding, but my comrades and I have taken the liberty of paying your school a visit in hopes of putting an end to All Might and his legacy. It seems, however, that he is not currently present."

Izuku can practically see the hypothetical steam of anger coming from Kacchan with his mouth twisted into a fearsome scowl. The boy beside him, with bright red hair that stands straight up as if cut from the face of a rock, mashes his fists together and shouts back, "What makes you think we'll just let you?"

Kurogiri only narrows his eyes, "We were not expecting you to. You are a class of foolish hero hopefuls, after all."

Izuku just about manages to tear his gaze away from Kacchan when Thirteen lifts a finger, and Izuku realizes what's about to come next. Just before he can warn Kurogiri, however, his attention snags on something else. Like Kacchan can't stand attention not being on him for even a second, him and the boy with the tall red hair have launched themselves forward, straight towards Kurogiri, though Izuku barely manages to scramble out of the way when Kacchan points one hand straight in his direction and uses the explosion to boost himself further, uncaring if Izuku gets caught in it. Probably hoping it hit him, actually.

They both manage to get what they think is a hit in and jump back, and the red head shouts, "We're not going to just let you waltz into our school to hurt All Might!"

When Kurogiri clicks his tongue, unhurt because it’d take more than that pathetic display of ego to even bother him, Izuku immediate knows that he's annoyed, but it's especially evident in his flat tone of voice when he speaks. "Very well. If we are clear on our roles." Purple mist sweeps out and covers everybody in a thick cloud. Izuku knows better than to resist it, only hoping that Kurogiri's kind enough not to drop him from somewhere high.

Izuku stumbles when he immerges from the portal, and it's all he can do not to trip and fall face first on the ground. Sensibly, Kurogiri hasn't come with him, probably still handling the handful of people left up at the entrance, because Izuku really still feels like he's going to explode at someone. Logically, he knows that it probably isn't Kurogiri's fault, that the poor man is just following orders and not much else. He may have more sense than one Tomura-fucking-Shigaraki, but that doesn't mean he's the one Sensei favors most.

Of course, speaking of the devil...

"Why did you send me up there?" Each word is bitten off and chewed before being spit out like poison. Izuku wished he could grab Tomura smug fucking face and break it over his knee.

Shigaraki’s smirk is the asshole-ish kind Izuku wished he could kick in, "What? Didn't like the surprise, brat?"

Oh ho ho, it's a very close thing Izuku doesn't just start screaming at this point. He's so angry, "That was not part of the plan."

Shigaraki scoffs, "I'm in charge, I can change the fucking plan."

If Izuku was keeping his cool before, he certainly isn't now, "You can't change it whenever you feel like it Shigaraki!"

Izuku is suddenly grabbed by the throat, and there's a terrifying moment where he wonders if this is it, this is how he dies. At the hands of who's supposed to be a comrade, with no thanks given for the certainly valuable information he'd brought to the League. He'd thought it be enough to get them to trust him, because really, what else did a quirkless loser like him have to offer? But it wasn't nearly enough, not by word of mouth alone that All Might was slowly dying of a grievous old injury that Sensei himself had given him. After all, what argument Izuku have to justify just why All Might would give that information to some random middle schooler he once saved?

But while Tomura looked like he would gladly put down his raised pinkie against Izuku's throat to complete his set of five, he doesn't yet. "Don't talk back to me like you've got any authority, brat."

Izuku's breathing has slowed to a halt, painfully aware of the fingers around his neck and the one finger that isn't, could so easily be put down and turn him to dust. But, even then, with nothing much left to lose except a mother who will now know for sure her child is dead instead of just missing, Izuku meets a single red eye peeking out from under a severed hand with his own determined green ones. Shigaraki doesn't scare him, and even if he does, like hell Izuku will give him the satisfaction of seeing the proof of it on his face.

"Are you just going stand there boss? We're not doing quite so well here." This comes from a woman who's desperately trying to keep an eye on the pro hero culling their ranks with extreme prejudice while calling back for help. But Izuku knows Shigaraki, full on expects the scoff that comes from him as he doesn't move a single fucking finger to help his 'party'. He just watches, with that hungry red gaze of his, as if all he wants is to hold the world in his hands and watch it crumble, cannot fathom why this vision of his has not yet come to fruition. As if the world should come to serve him, and only put up just enough of a challenge to make it 'fun' for him. Izuku manages to turn his head, neck still under Shigaraki's hands but as if this is the first time he's pushed the man hard enough to come close to death by decay, and watches as not a moment later Eraserhead swiftly takes out the woman who had dared to call out for help.

Shigaraki clicks his tongue, and spares a glance at Izuku, "You were told to watch, weren't you? Then watch how a real villain does it."

He pushes Izuku back roughly, leaving him to stand there with a hand rising to carefully press against his throat with the threat to it finally gone, as Shigaraki takes off straight for the pro hero standing ready for him, thinking he's prepared for someone as bat-shit insane as Shigaraki Tomura. From what little Izuku has seen, Eraser's doing pretty well so far, especially for an underground hero who specializes in stealth and springing surprise attacks onto villains from the cover of the shadows. He'd almost think that this was where Eraserhead thrives, except he knows better, can see it in the desperate way the man moves that this is far from his kind of game. No, as heroes do still surprise Izuku from time to time, Eraserhead’s probably down here trying to buy time for the students to get away, which they probably won't, not if Kurogiri's got anything to say about it.

Shigaraki grabs onto the first tendril of Eraser's scarf sent his way, and Eraser sends another only to duck under it as he manages to elbow Shigaraki right in the stomach. It's when this happens, that a flash of green against the plain brown terrain and a muffled croak catch his attention. Izuku looks to where the sound came from and sees round green eyes poking up from the edge of the raised platform, and feels his own eyes widen first in surprise, but then in panic.

Oh no.

He wonders if the girl crouched at the edge of this fight is alone, only to catch sight of something round and purple just behind her. What are these kids doing? Don't they know it's dangerous to just stand there like that, begging to get noticed by the manic villain willing to fell anyone and anything just because he finds them annoying? Don't they care that they're teacher is trying to give them a chance to get away, and they're squandering it by crouching at the edge of this fight?

The girl's gaze catches his and her own eyes widen. Probably because he's a villain too and he's obviously seen them. He looks back at Shigaraki just in time for the villain to say, "You're getting slower Eraserhead. It's hard to tell with those goggles of yours, but I've figured out your tell." He glances back at Izuku, and Izuku manages to wrangle his expression into something carefully blank. Shigaraki continues, having made sure that Izuku's watching, "Your hair falls back down in the intervals when you stop using you quirk." Izuku let's out heavy breath, because he knows Shigaraki is right, he'd noticed that too. And its then that Eraserhead's hair falls back over his face, while Shigaraki still has his elbow in a five-finger grip, and oh- Izuku knows what comes next. He tries to catch the girl's gaze again, but she's watching in horror as first his sleeve and then Eraserhead's skin starts to crumble away at the elbow. The hero jumps away, but Shigaraki's point has definitely been made.

A few of the low lifes that they most definitely picked from the streets for the sole purpose of playing cannon fodder surround Eraser again as Shigaraki carefully backs away. Eraserhead doesn't notice Shigaraki make a subtle gesture at the Nomu that has the tall beast finally move from somewhere behind him. For how big it is, the Nomu can be pretty sneaky when it wants to be, because Eraserhead doesn't notice it take position a few feet behind him as he handles the few of the street thugs still left standing.

Shigaraki has a smile in his voice, which Izuku can only tell because he sounds real fucking smug when he says, "If you think I'm the final boss Eraser, you're sorely mistaken."

And really, Izuku should have seen this coming, but he doesn't, and flinches back when Eraser turns back just a second too late, because it doesn't matter anyways when the Nomu is built to match All Might's speed. The Nomu puts the hero to the ground faster than Izuku can blink, the arm with the decayed elbow in gripped tightly with one of hand and his other holding Eraserhead’s head down. Izuku wonders how the girl and the other person with her are taking this, and if they regret sticking around for this final act, but he can't take his eyes off this scene without the fear of missing something important. It feels... wrong. Putting down a hero like Eraserhead, who only ever jumped into this fight to make sure his students had a chance, who's a great fucking hero anyways. The part of Izuku that will always be a fanboy seethes that this his own fault, that if he can't deal with the consequences then he shouldn't have made the choice to be here in the first place, but it's never that simple, not really. So Izuku watches, some part of him begging him to step forward and maybe try to reason with Shigaraki about sparing Eraserhead, but the more sensible part of him knows it's pointless. Shigaraki only ever does what he wants to, and there's a huge chance that if Izuku tries to tell him not to do something, he'll only ending up doing it just to spite him.

The Nomu slams Eraserhead's face into the concrete and Izuku let's out a shaky sigh, a sick feeling starting to churn in his stomach at the pool of blood that slowly inched outwards from where Eraser's head hit the ground. He glances back over to where the girl is and sees her staring at the scene with wide eyes, two hands clasped over her mouth in horror.

There's a flicker of something purple somewhere behind Shigaraki, which grows outwards in the air like how moss spreads over a stone wall, until Kurogiri stands there in a cloud of purplish smoke and intones, "Shigaraki Tomura."

Shigaraki slightly tilts his head to show that he's listening.

Kurogiri sounds almost apologetic, which is rare enough that Izuku's temporarily distracted from keeping an eye on the girl and the person with her that he's only caught a brief glimpse of until now. "I'm afraid that I let one student slip past. I believe he has most likely gone to get help."

Shigaraki's hands suddenly jerk up until the fingers dig into the sides of his neck, and Izuku can't help but make a face as he starts scratching them with slowly growing intensity. It's a habit of his that Kurogiri has been trying to get him to break, but has been unsuccessful so far.

"Kurogiri..." Shigaraki's voice is dark with malintent, "If you weren't the warp gate I would kill you."

Kurogiri shows no outward reaction to the threat, except the shifting of his features like a turbulent sea of purple. It makes it hard to get a read on him, without facial expression to use as a gauge of his mood, but Izuku likes to think he's gotten to know Kurogiri well enough to think he might just be the slightest bit amused right about now. None the less, familiar with the sentiment of Shigaraki being upset with him for one thing or another, Kurogiri ignores the murderous gleam in Shigaraki's eye and simply continues, "The other pro heroes will most likely be arriving soon, and we are not equipped to handle them with our... dwindling numbers. It is best if we take our leave."

Shigaraki lets out a low growl, his eyes pinballing wildly between the Nomu, Eraserhead and Izuku. "Game over, huh? Fine, we'll wrap up."

And Izuku doesn't even get a chance to relax at the prospect of Shigaraki finally being sensible for once and retreating at a fortunate time, because there's a mean look in his eye as his gaze lands on Izuku, then past him. Right over to where...

The girl.

"But I think we should leave behind a message for All Might first."

In the blink of an eye, Shigaraki has sprinted half the distant to the girl who just stands there, frozen in shock. That's when a harried cry rips from Izuku's throat as he goes stumbling after Shigaraki, "No!"

But it's too late, because Shigaraki already has his fingers splayed over the girl's face, and it never gets easier. That heart wrenching terror of the just before, a nanosecond where after Shigaraki's quirk kicks in and turns everything to dust.

Except that this time, it doesn’t kick in.

Izuku, frozen stiff and expecting a dead young girl with her head turned to dust in the air, but instead meeting eyes blown wide in terror but still very much alive, watches Shigaraki turn slowly to look behind him. His gaze stalls on Izuku just for a second but a second is enough to tell Izuku that his little outburst has not gone unnoticed, before passing over him over to where Eraserhead's face is lifted off the ground. It's nothing short of a miracle, how he's managed to look up even with the Nomu's death grip still wound into his hair, and his eyes are an angry bloodshot, but he's still here, still looking, still having saved that girl's life.

"You're so cool Eraserhead."

And finally, Izuku finds his voice, "L-let her go Shigaraki."

Shigaraki's lilting tone immediately sours back into a scowl, but he still doesn't let go. "Nobody asked you, brat."

It makes Izuku's resolve only steel, because he didn't sign up for anyone dying today except maybe a fully-fledged pro hero, "I'm not asking either, Shigaraki, let her go."

"You-" Shigaraki's angry snarl is cut off when there's a loud bang from the direction of the entrance that draws their attention. It's also at this moment that the girl flinches back, no longer frozen in fear like she had been before. Or maybe she was afraid Shigaraki would so something much worse if she had moved, which she might not have been wrong about. The girl leaps back, far enough that Izuku knows her quirk gives some sort of boost for that jump, but Shigaraki only watches her go, half his attention still on the sounds coming from the entrance.

They don't have to wait too long to find out what happened, when a figure larger than life steps into view at the top of the stairs and booms, "So fear not students! Because I am here!"

But oh, Izuku realizes with a sliver of fear even with an insurance like the Nomu to back them, All Might is not smiling.

A/N: I’m so sorry for people who didn’t want to read this and had to scroll all the way dow but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to insert a read more right now. I’ll edit this later to do that when I can.

#bnha #villain Deku #villain Izuku #Izuku Midoriya #my hero academia #Bakugou Katsuki #All Might #shigaraki tomura #League of Villains

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psychicanchortimemachine · 4 years ago

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12 Terminal Commands

Every Web Developer Should Know

The terminal is one of the foremost vital productivity tools in a developer's arsenal. Mastering it will have an awfully positive impact on your work flow, as several everyday tasks get reduced to writing a straightforward command and striking Enter. In this article we've ready for you a set of UNIX system commands that may assist you get the foremost out of your terminal. a number of them square measure inbuilt, others square measure free tools that square measure reliable and may be put in but a moment.

Curl

Curl may be a program line tool for creating requests over HTTP(s), FTP and dozens of different protocols you will haven't detected concerning. It will transfer files, check response headers, and freely access remote information.

In net development curl is usually used for testing connections and dealing with RESTful APIs.

# Fetch the headers of a URL. curl -I http://google.com HTTP/1.1 302 Found Cache-Control: private Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Referrer-Policy: no-referrer Location: http://www.google.com/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=0fCKWe6HCZTd8AfCoIWYBQ Content-Length: 258 Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2017 11:24:01 GMT # Make a GET request to a remote API. curl http://numbersapi.com/random/trivia 29 is the number of days it takes Saturn to orbit the Sun.

Curl commands can get much more complicated than this. There are tons of options for controlling headers, cookies, authentication,and more.

Tree

Tree may be a little instruction utility that shows you a visible illustration of the files during a directory. It works recursively, going over every level of nesting and drawing a formatted tree of all the contents. this fashion you'll quickly skim and notice the files you're trying to find.

tree . ├── css │ ├── bootstrap.css │ ├── bootstrap.min.css ├── fonts │ ├── glyphicons-halflings-regular.eot │ ├── glyphicons-halflings-regular.svg │ ├── glyphicons-halflings-regular.ttf │ ├── glyphicons-halflings-regular.woff │ └── glyphicons-halflings-regular.woff2 └── js ├── bootstrap.js └── bootstrap.min.js

There is also the option to filter the results using a simple regEx-like pattern:

tree -P '*.min.*' . ├── css │ ├── bootstrap.min.css ├── fonts └── js └── bootstrap.min.js

Tmux

According to its Wiki, Tmux may be a terminal electronic device, that translated in human language would mean that it is a tool for connecting multiple terminals to one terminal session.

It helps you to switch between programs in one terminal, add split screen panes, and connect multiple terminals to a similar session, keeping them in adjust. Tmux is particularly helpful once functioning on a far off server, because it helps you to produce new tabs while not having to log in once more.

Disk usage - du

The du command generates reports on the area usage of files and directories. it's terribly straightforward to use and may work recursively, rummaging every directory and returning the individual size of each file. A common use case for du is once one in every of your drives is running out of area and you do not understand why. Victimization this command you'll be able to quickly see what proportion storage every folder is taking, therefore finding the most important memory saver.

# Running this will show the space usage of each folder in the current directory. # The -h option makes the report easier to read. # -s prevents recursiveness and shows the total size of a folder. # The star wildcard (*) will run du on each file/folder in current directory. du -sh * 1.2G Desktop 4.0K Documents 40G Downloads 4.0K Music 4.9M Pictures 844K Public 4.0K Templates 6.9M Videos

There is also a similar command called

(Disk Free) which returns various information about the available disk space (the opposite of du).

Git

Git is far and away the foremost standard version system immediately. It’s one among the shaping tools of contemporary internet dev and that we simply could not leave it out of our list. There area unit many third-party apps and tools on the market however most of the people choose to access unpleasant person natively although the terminal. The unpleasant person CLI is basically powerful and might handle even the foremost tangled project history.

Tar

Tar is the default Unix tool for working with file archives. It allows you to quickly bundle multiple files into one package, making it easier to store and move them later on.

tar -cf archive.tar file1 file2 file3

Using the -x option it can also extract existing .tar archives.

tar -xf archive.tar

Note that almost all alternative formats like .zip and .rar can't be opened by tar and need alternative command utilities like unfasten.

Many trendy operating system systems run associate expanded version of tar (GNU tar) that may additionally perform file size compression:

# Create compressed gzip archive. tar -czf file.tar.gz inputfile1 inputfile2 # Extract .gz archive. tar -xzf file.tar.gz

If your OS doesn't have that version of tar, you can use

gzip

zcat

compress

to reduce the size of file archives.

md5sum

Unix has many inbuilt hashing commands together with

md5sum

sha1sum

and others. These program line tools have varied applications in programming, however most significantly they'll be used for checking the integrity of files. For example, if you've got downloaded associate degree .iso file from associate degree untrusted supply, there's some likelihood that the file contains harmful scripts. To form positive the .iso is safe, you'll generate associate degree md5 or alternative hash from it.

md5sum ubuntu-16.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso 0d9fe8e1ea408a5895cbbe3431989295 ubuntu-16.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso

You can then compare the generated string to the one provided from the first author (e.g. UbuntuHashes).

Htop

Htop could be a a lot of powerful different to the intrinsic prime task manager. It provides a complicated interface with several choices for observation and dominant system processes.

Although it runs within the terminal, htop has excellent support for mouse controls. This makes it a lot of easier to navigate the menus, choose processes, and organize the tasks thought sorting and filtering.

Links in UNIX operating system square measure the same as shortcuts in Windows, permitting you to urge fast access to bound files. Links square measure created via the ln command and might be 2 types: arduous or symbolic. Every kind has totally different properties and is employed for various things (read more).

Here is associate example of 1 of the various ways that you'll be able to use links. as an instance we've a directory on our desktop referred to as Scripts. It contains showing neatness organized bash scripts that we have a tendency to ordinarily use. on every occasion we wish to decision one in every of our scripts we'd need to do this:

~/Desktop/Scripts/git-scripts/git-cleanup

Obviously, this is isn't very convinient as we have to write the absolute path every time. Instead we can create a symlink from our Scripts folder to /usr/local/bin, which will make the scripts executable from all directories.

sudo ln -s ~/Desktop/Scripts/git-scripts/git-cleanup /usr/local/bin/

With the created symlink we can now call our script by simply writing its name in any opened terminal.

git-cleanup

SSH

With the ssh command users will quickly hook up with a foreign host and log into its UNIX operating system shell. This makes it doable to handily issue commands on the server directly from your native machine's terminal.

To establish a association you just got to specify the proper science address or URL. The primary time you hook up with a replacement server there'll be some style of authentication.

ssh username@remote_host

If you want to quickly execute a command on the server without logging in, you can simply add a command after the url. The command will run on the server and the result from it will be returned.

ssh username@remote_host ls /var/www some-website.com some-other-website.com

There is a lot you can do with SSH like creating proxies and tunnels, securing your connection with private keys, transferring files and more.

Grep

Grep is the standard Unix utility for finding strings inside text. It takes an input in the form of a file or direct stream, runs its content through a regular expression, and returns all the matching lines.

This command comes in handy once operating with massive files that require to be filtered. Below we tend to use grep together with the date command to look through an oversized log file and generate a brand new file containing solely errors from nowadays.

// Search for today's date (in format yyyy-mm-dd) and write the results to a new file. grep "$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")" all-errors-ever.log > today-errors.log

Another nice command for operating with strings is

sed

. It’s additional powerful (and additional complicated) than grep and may perform nearly any string-related task together with adding, removing or replacement strings.

Alias

Many OS commands, together with some featured during this article, tend to urge pretty long when you add all the choices to them. to create them easier to recollect, you'll produce short aliases with the alias bash inbuilt command:

# Create an alias for starting a local web server. alias server="python -m SimpleHTTPServer 9000" # Instead of typing the whole command simply use the alias. server Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 9000 ...

The alias are offered as long as you retain that terminal open. to create it permanent you'll add the alias command to your .bashrc file. We will be happy to answer your questions on designing, developing, and deploying comprehensive enterprise web, mobile apps and customized software solutions that best fit your organization needs.

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dungeons-and-danis · 6 years ago

Text

How I Prepare For Major Arcs & Organize My DM Notes, As Well As Just General Narrative Advice!

So, I got a question quite a while back to try out this neat little trend of displaying and explaining away how I prepare for a session, as well as show how i organize and utilize my notes as a DM. I’m going to be using my upcoming, work-in-progress arc, “Nightingale”, as a visual reference throughout the post.

So, I know i’ve released my DM’s notes on worldanvil before, but I gotta admit that the platform I most like to use for notes and plot setup is always OneNote, which I have for free via my college. It’s versatile, organized, and easy to navigate on any platform (even my phone!). So if you can get your hands on it, I highly recommend it.

PART ONE -- THE MAIN PAGE OF CENTRAL INFORMATION

What I like to do first, is create a central tab of navigation, the first thing that will pop up when I open my fresh set of notes! Things I like to include in that main tab would be any of the following:

Format Key

This will come in handy later, but essentially I have a key to differentiating different types of text throughout my notes and it looks like this (note: your notes DON’T have to look like this, but I recommend having a specific format for all these types of text to help keep you organized):

Reference Links

This is to link to articles I have on world anvil with more detailed information

Settings

NPC’s

Organizations/Factions

Misc.

Plot Setup/Brainstorming

This is helpful to get you started on your overarching plot! Be as messy as you want and DON’T DELETE ANYTHING, even if you think it’s stupid. All brainstorming is good brainstorming.

Objective

Themes

Relevant History

Hooks

Encounters

Small Outline of Main Questline

Reputation Points

I like, especially for big cities with lots of factions and NPC’s, to keep track of reputation and karma with a point system. Every good deed or bad deed, I like to record and assign a certain number of points to add or subtract from the total score of each faction, based off of just how good or bad that act was. This will help decide things in both the conclusion of that arc, as well as the conclusion of my campaign. This way, your actions really do have consequences.

PART TWO -- BUILDING THE PLOT IN ACTS

So I believe it is pertinent to keep things simple when it comes to notes, especially when it comes to major arcs where your players have a lot of freedom and you need to do a lot of writing in order to allow that freedom. So i like to build in 4 acts, each of them being dedicated to its own special needs. You can add however many acts as you might need, but this is just a base line!

Act One: The Introduction

Act Two: Exploration/Information Gathering

Act Three: The Rising Action

Act Four: The Conclusion/The Climax

To add onto this, I usually put these acts as Major Groups in OneNote, and they look a little like this:

Act One; Introducing Your Players To The Setting

This, in my opinion, is the most important act of the four. I usually like to send my players into the setting with a BANG! Throw something at them that they don’t expect! An eerie exorcism, a public execution of an old friend, a plague that keeps the party away from public entrances, anything you can think of! The intro should be narrative heavy, not battle-heavy. That will just make your party snore. Give them a reason to fight, a reason to care about this story and its NPCs. Make sure that this first part is your best work, because it sets the story from here on out and will determine if your players are eager to return to the table. Do not forget to set the precedent of your arc’s main plot goal here. If you don’t do it now, it won’t make sense elsewhere. Make the PC’s care right away!

For example, some snippets of my introduction notes look a little bit like this (remember my format key from before? well here it is in use:)

Act Two; Exploration/Information Gathering

This is a big one, because this is where the majority of your work will go. This is the part where the players can roam around the setting, getting to know the NPC’s and the environment for themselves and make their own opinions on the current state of affairs wherever they are. I like to get super organized with this part, because it can get VERY hectic while going live. You want to write where you leave room for players to move, but also keep them focused on the task at hand. So whatever dialogue or side quests you introduce in exploration, keep it brief and drawing back to the central plot line at hand.

I will expand more on this in PART 3, because it deserves its own section.

Act Three; The Rising Action

Yes, just like your english teacher taught you in 6th grade, there has to be a Rising Action in your plot line! This is self explanatory, it might seem. But this is the hardest part about writing up a plot line for D&D, because you never know how your players are going to change the plot. So keep things loose and relative, allowing for wiggle room and improvisation. But still, have a decent chunk of the plot ready to go in this act, because this will be the majority of your plot and usually where the information gathering from act two will start to come in handy. Things need to start coming to a head towards the end of this act, or else you’ll be stuck with a very unsatisfactory conclusion. Another helpful tip during this act, is to write down EVERY, and I mean EVERY SINGLE LITTLE question your players might have. Figure out an answer to all of them, even if the answer is “you’ll find out later”.

Act Four; The Conclusion/The Climax

This is the end. The part of your story where everything starts to come together into a full circle! You need to be prepared to answer all those questions your players had during act three, in one form or another. There’s nothing worse than ending an arc finding that there were a million plot holes that didn’t get accounted for. So prepare, prepare, prepare for this final act. On top of that, prepare for several outcomes on top of that! Don’t be afraid to change the ending on the fly, just make sure you answer those questions somehow--be it out right, or implied in the narrative. My best advice is to not write out the ending until you’re at least half way through act three. Because your player’s choices should matter, and should have a major effect on the ending. If they don’t, then whats the point in running a narrative-heavy campaign? This is where my reputation points have come in handy in the past.

PART 3 -- EXPANDING ON EXPLORATION

I wanted to give you guys a taste at how I organize my exploration section. And to be honest with you, it’s fairly to-the-point and straight forward. I’m using a city setting for my example, but I feel like this can apply to any settlement setting to be honest. But I usually like to start with a table of contents as the first page for me to land on when going to my Exploration section. It looks like this, and each link, links exactly to that page on the document so i don’t have to guess at where everything is.

I also have a page dedicated to general information about the city in my worldanvil, linked on the Reference Links page I mentioned before! But it’s always good to have a central source of information about your settlement when prepping.

Now, let’s take a look at what one of the shops looks like, as that’s most likely going to be the bulk of what you’re writing. We’re gonna start with my shop “Dagna’s General Goods Store”, which is simple enough. Here, you can see all the pages I have for this location:

These are specific to a certain encounter, but to put it in a more general sense, this is how I would organize any relevant location in a settlement:

Introduction

I like to introduce my players to the outside and inside of every establishment in my settlements. So, narrative of the outside... and then a narrative of the inside. For example, this one looks like this:

Then, from there, I can dive into whatever introducing encounters I may have planned for that shop on the same page. This is just to give the players an impression. I continue for this page like this:

I like to put in brackets before voicing a new character, how their voice may sound. But that’s just me!

The NPC(s)

Always have a page for NPC’s relative to the establishment! I usually like to link to my worldanvil at the top, but sometimes characters are so small that I don’t make them a page. For those instances, I like to write just a little bit about them under the following format:

Appearance

Personality (including voice/accent)

What They Know

Willing to Share

Not Willing to Share (requires skill checks, or otherwise)

I like to keep this brief as possible, because too much text will just overwhelm me when i’m actually DMing live. Don’t make them too complicated, unless they’re major NPC’s, otherwise you will suffer.

Whats For Sale

Self explanatory, especially for shops. If the establishment sells things, I like to take screenshots from the books and place them in this page. Or I make tables myself! Cause OneNote can do that lmao.

General Information

I like to split this up into three categories:

Schedules

What time does the establishment open and close? When is the owner there? When does the owner go to bed? Is there anything the people living there do at certain times that are of relevance? This all becomes helpful when trying to nail down routines and time tracking.

Points of Interest

Things the players can find! Maybe a secret heirloom, a private letter, or a family tree! Usually these require skill checks to find, but can also just be apart of the apparent environment!

Encounters

Events that happen to the players. This can happen at certain times, or only when the players are currently present! It’s entirely up to you. But don’t equate encounters with battle, encounters are just events, battle or otherwise!

Mine looks kind of like this, though it needs some more fleshing out-- which will come with time as my plot progresses.

Missions (if applicable)

This can split off into various sub pages, if need be, and may not even be applicable to this specific establishment! But sometimes, you can acquire missions from people and places. I like to write the mission pages in the Establishment or NPC pages that will give them out.

And well, that’s about it! Sorry for the huge post, but it gave me some time to kill, so there you go! LOL Have fun with that, guys.

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drlissahawthorne · 4 years ago

Text

marked me like a bloodstain

Who: Clarissa Hawthorne & Charlie Hawthorne-Mills ft. Andrea Hawthorne-Mills

When: Saturday, December 5, 2020

Where: Hawthorne-Mills home

What: Clarissa calls on the aid of her sibling-in-law to help her make sense of her jumbled thoughts from the night before.

Warnings: talk of past abuse

Word Count: 1650

Notes: Part 3 of 3. Part 1. Part 2.

The first thing Clarissa did when she got to Andrea and Charlie’s place was take a nap. She’d spoken briefly with them about what had happened, figuring it was best not to worry them more than she was already liable to. Then, after she’d slept for nearly five hours, she’d set herself up in the basement recording studio, deciding she wanted to work through as much of what she’d tried to create the night before as she possibly could.

After about an hour of trying and failing to make sense of even a little of it, she called on Charlie. Charlie was a music producer and the kind of person who could understand the gibberish she’d come up with in her haste to dump out every part of her brain into words. Which is how the pair of them ended up sitting at the piano, staring at a cluttered mess of mismatched phrases across the multiple notes on Clarissa’s laptop.

“So, what exactly were you doing last night that this happened?” They asked with a soft laugh.

“Uh, I think they call it coping with trauma?” Clarissa groaned. “He was my last boyfriend, the guy that made me choose between him and my work.”

“Oh, and you ran into him last night?”

“Yeah,” She sighed. “It was a nice night and then I got home and it was like everything I’d tried to ignore and bury and move on from, came out. Like, I just couldn’t focus on anything else, and even then, I wasn’t entirely focused.”

“You’ve certainly come up with a lot in a short amount of time, it seems. Can’t say all of it will be worth something right now, but we can definitely feel it out, see what we come up with, y’know? I’m honored that you’re even letting me near this. I know you’re not looking to make music, but…” Charlie drug out the word and Clarissa bumped them with her shoulder.

“Don’t even go there. This is just me working through shit. If it turns into something worthwhile, then it does, but we’re not going there.”

Charlie held up their hands. “I know, I know.”

For a while they just worked on picking apart different notes and rearranging them, creating new documents with better structure so that things really did resemble poems or songs, versus the madness that had spilled from Clarissa’s thoughts. Eventually, however, they managed to get it down to one document that they really wanted to dive into. It was still messy, but it had the first line that had really come to Clarissa in it.

“‘You drew stars around my scars, but now I’m bleeding.’ Good line, raw as hell too. So, tell me about this guy. Tell me how this came to be, what caused this?” Charlie urged with a soft smile. Clarissa’s face scrunched up, looking at the other words in the document, glasses perched on the end of her nose.

“So, we met in Pittsburgh, he’s a few years older than me, I wasn’t looking for anyone, y’know? I’d been kind of cast aside by every other lover I'd had. People not wanting to deal with the fact I was losing my eyesight. And he came along and he was sweet and caring and he made me feel wanted. Like I was someone’s favourite. Like I was his favourite. And We did all this stuff together and it was amazing. But, I was already hurt and I didn’t want to see that with every positive thing that came of our relationship, there was a knife marking me in such a worse way.” Clarissa shrugged a little. “He was horrible to me, but every time I doubted, every time I felt those insecurities pop up and I felt unwanted or unworthy, he made me feel amazing and wanted again. So I kept falling for it, for him. After every fight. Every unresolved argument. No one else really saw it, except for Jill and I refused to believe her. He was a typical abuser, if there is such a thing.”

Charlie just nodded as Clarissa spoke, copying and pasting and adding pieces to the document they were working on. They obviously had ideas and Clarissa found it absolutely enthralling to see them work. To see them in their element like this. Sure, they’d helped her work on the arrangement she used for the Riptide cover, but this was different. This was what they were really good at. Taking the bare bones of a song and fleshing it out. Making it grow and expand and become something real and tangible.

When they were done typing, they showed the screen to Clarissa. “This is what we’ve got, it’s a starting point. Let’s give it a melody and see where it takes us, yeah?”

Clarissa looked it over, whispering the lyrics to herself, trying to get a flow for them. It was definitely something that needed to be slow, easy going. Melancholy in a melody. The idea of reminiscing, even longing, for something now gone and past. The pain of loss still lingering despite the years that had passed.

Before she could even really think about what she was doing, she was finding her bearings on the piano and then started playing one of the melodies she’d thought of the night before. It wasn’t the one that had been strongest, but it was the one that felt right. Like it was meant to along with whatever this song was. Something rather simple but complex in its emotions.

“To kiss in cars and downtown bars was all we needed, you drew stars, around my scars, but now I’m bleeding cos I knew you, stepping on the last train marked like bloodstain,” Clarissa started to sing. It wasn’t a beginning. It didn’t feel like one, but it was definitely something. Something that she could work with.

“Let me see that,” she motioned for the laptop and Charlie handed it over, watching her type away. “So, when we met, it was this big event and I’d gotten sort of dressed up, nice shirt, heels, lipstick, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Pittsburgh, but there is an unnatural amount of cobblestone. And y’know, there’s this weird visual I have of that day, the sound of high heels on cobblestone, vintage tee, I’d literally sent someone the message ‘new phone, who’s this?’ I’m pretty sure. Like it was just this really vivid day in my memory, and not just because I’d met him, but that definitely plays a part.” Clarissa explained before hanging the laptop back, her additions at the top of the page.

“That’s really cool as a visual, actually, can you start playing again?” They asked as they looked over what she’d written. She obliged and as they moved along to the melody they started rearranging what she’d written, once again turning her stream of consciousness into something resembling song lyrics. They then started to add more. “I like this visual of clothing and memories. Is there anything about him you can tell me that could work with that?”

Clarissa thought for a while, scrunching up her face a bit, fingers still idly playing the notes of what was definitely turning into a song. “Drunk, late at night, dancing. Probably fall, so he was wearing jeans, and being silly, he’d joke about kisses being the fastest way to heal a broken heart, some days I think he was right about that.” She laughed a bit, watching as Charlie continued typing.

By the time Andrea called the pair of them up from the basement for dinner, they were bubbling with excitement. They had something that actually resembled a song on their hands. It wasn’t anywhere near finished, but it was far more than they’d had when they started and it made Clarissa feel a lot better, both about herself and everything that had happened since the day before.

“Well, you two have certainly been hard at work, haven’t you?” Andrea teased as they set the boxes of takeaway down on the kitchen table. “I figured I’d be nice and order takeaway, so we could do something together while we ate and before I lost you both to the basement again.”

“Sorry, I know I came over to hang out and have barely seen you.” Clarissa apologised and Andrea just shook their head.

“Please, I haven’t seen you this excited about something since… Lissa, it’s been years. You weren’t even this excited when you got the job in Brooklyn. I’m just happy this is turning into something good for you. There will be plenty of time to hang out and do things when this is done. I mean, you’ll be back in here in two weeks anyway, and then you’ll be here for a week and we can catch up and do stuff then.”

“But, we really should be nice and play a game with them while we eat, what do you say?” Charlie smiled and Clarissa nodded.

“I think we can do that, might be a good thing to give our brains a break, right?”

“I certainly think so, but you’re the one with the doctorate.” They all laughed as they dished food onto plates and got settled to play a game.

Two hours later, all three would find themselves in the recording studio as Clarissa performed, for the first time in full, a song Andrea had helped dub ‘cardigan’ and for good reason. It was a start to something, what that something was, Clarissa didn’t know, but what she did know, was that Jill, and anyone else privileged enough to hear it, would definitely like it. Maybe not as much as she did, but they would. It sounded a lot like healing to Clarissa, and that was something anyone who knew her would be able to get behind, or so she hoped.

#abuse tw #p: s004 #p: self #p: all #about: every tears a diamond on my cheek #about: musically charlie #about: you drew stars around my scars and now im bleeding #[and oop there be cardigan]

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schrijverr · 4 years ago

Text

Behind the Scenes

This is a story that developed from a small peek into my brain whenever I write the stories you read into a thinkpiece about writing and posting fanfiction.

On AO3.

Ships: none (unless you wanna ship me with my keyboard lol)

Warnings: none, I suppose, but it does get a little down in the end, I was having a rough day when I wrote this, sorry.

~~~~~~~~~~

I sit on my chair before my laptop. I’m curled into myself as my fingers glide over the keyboard and my thoughts flow out of my fingertips onto the screen.

It isn’t all that late, just past midnight, but it’s already dark outside and in order to see the keys properly I have to turn on the lamp I have on my desk. With the light it’s kind of cozy here in my little nook of the world.

I look to the screen and try to make sense of my own words. I don’t have a fully fledged idea yet, but a vague idea that floated through my brain at some point during the day has inspired me enough to open a new document and start typing.

I now know how this story begins and I see where I am going and how it will end, but the question of how I get there sits heavily on my mind.

I stop typing for a moment and think. If I introduce this character now, it might set some other things in motion and that’ll be good for the plot, but I don’t know how to write that character at all and I’m afraid that if I do it wrong, people won’t like me or my story.

I sigh and realize I’ve started almost every new paragraph with the same word. I hate it when I do that. The story starts to feel repetitive and as a non native English speaker I want to prove that I have a bigger vocabulary than that.

How to proceed?

A synonym, maybe? But I’ll have to look that up and I don’t think there is a good synonym for I. Sighing again I scan the page and think. Maybe I could start with a verb to shake things up a bit or a question. No, not a question that would feel out of place here.

Now I’ve written a few paragraphs again, so I could use the word I used before, but since I used it so many times already I want a bit more space between now and the next time I use it. So a synonym it is, I guess, I think as I open my browser to look one up.

…

There is no synonym for I.

Goddammit, I think. Well, it’s no use now anyway. I’ve decided to write this story in the first person, despite knowing I’m horrible at it, and now I have to deal with the fact that I don’t have another word for I.

I start my next paragr- no that’s not right. Backspace, backspace. Moving on to the next- No, not that either. Backspace, backspace. I look at what I’ve written last and wonder why I’ve written something upon which I can’t, hmm, what’s a good word there?

I know I have a good word in Dutch ‘voortborduren’, but when I translate it, it gives me elaborate, which doesn’t fit in the sentence at all. Mentally groaning I recline in my chair as I try to think.

Maybe it’s the sentence itself? Lets see what did I write again? Oh yeah: I look at what I’ve written last and wonder why I’ve written something upon which I can’t- and then I need to find a word. Hm, funny, I don’t know how to go on by the sentence about not knowing how to go on.

‘I look at what I’ve written last and wonder why I’ve written something upon which I can’t’, I whisper it to myself in the hope the right word comes to mind.

First there is nothing, but then! Expand! Not perfect, but it fits, which is good enough for now, maybe when I proof read it a better word will come to me and I can use that.

So, expand. I wonder why I wrote something I can’t expand upon.

Fuck, I’ve spend so much time finding the right word that I have forgotten what I was talking, well writing, about in the first place. Softly swearing under my breath I scroll up and read what came before the sentence with the stupidly hard word to think off.

Ah yeah, it was about the other stupid thing, namely that I am writing this in the first person, which I still cannot do, no that skill has not come to me in the time it took to look up a word. What a pity.

But I have started the last few paragraphs with something other than I from time to time. That at least is something. Wait, should I add punctuation there? That, at least, is something. Looks better, but maybe that is just my love for commas talking. I mean, why write a boring sentence with a dot in the middle, which makes it short and doesn’t give you enough space to play with it, when you can also add unnecessary punctuation, so that you can play with the cadence of how something is read out loud or in someones mind?

Whoops, now that whole paragraph is long, if I want to make this story easy to read I’ll have to make this one shorter. Hmm, is this good? Yeah, probably. Enter.

Now, I’m suddenly wondering, if paragraph is even the right word. In Dutch the word is ‘alinea’ and the word ‘paragraaf’ also means chapter, but not really, only in a school book. It doesn’t really make sense, because you also have a chapter in a schoolbook and that’s divided in paragraphs and each paragraph has ‘alinea’s’

Aaand I’ve distracted myself by thinking about the differences between each language instead of looking up if paragraph is actually the right word and it means what I think it means.

I look it up on Google translate, not the most trustworthy source for sentences, but for lone words it’s alright.

It is the right word, along with indention, but I’m not really familiar with that word, although I can see where it comes from with the paragraphs creating indentions in the text. Still, I decide to stick with paragraphs, cause “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and I live by that.

Looking back to the clock in the corner of my screen I realize that I’ve now been writing this for 40 minutes. It isn’t all that long, but I don’t know where I’m going with this anymore. I had a point when I began and now I’ve forgotten it.

I stretch my arms, by pushing away my chair, leaning forward until my shoulders are at the same height of my desk is. My right shoulder cracks, it has always done that, but the sound snaps me out of my musings and makes me pay more attention to my surroundings.

It is raining outside and I hear people screaming. They sound happy, probably celebrating something and drinking, but I still wondered what they’re doing up so late (ignoring the fact that I am still awake too.)

Right, my word document. I was trying to remember what my point was. No wait, not remember, recall sounds better. I double click remember and replace it with recall: I was trying to recall what my point was.

Although I have found a nice sentences with the best word to describe the action, I still don’t know what comes next. I suddenly begin to doubt myself. Maybe this was a dumb idea. Maybe I’ve read this somewhere before and I am unconsciously copying someone. Maybe I should just delete this and move on to something else.

I mean, come on, who wants to read this? No one. I’m just going to post it, knowing that no one cares and no one will read it. People don’t go to AO3 for original works, you don’t, so why would anyone care about it? It’s going to get five hits tops, with maybe two kudos, three if you’re lucky.

And now I have accidentally switched to a second person perspective, can’t even stay consistent. Maybe if I play it off as an introspection or and internal dialogue no one will notice or think it’s an artistic choice.

Pff, artistic choice. You can hardly call what I’m doing artistic. It’s just fanfiction, a hobby. Yeah, I know that is still good and can be great, even amazing and artfully written, but this isn’t. I have a too direct writing style for that. I’ve only been getting English education for six years and it’ll take so much more practice until I ever reach that level.

I’ve gotten off track completely now. I faintly remember that this started out as a mock internal dialogue of what happens when I write a fanfic, but now it turned into a self deprecating shit parade.

I blink long and hard, trying to get my head back on track and write something better, or at least more consistent.

Realizing that in order to do that I should probably scroll up and read (lets be honest scan) how I started. I don’t have the energy for it, but I force myself to do it with a sigh.

Scroll, scroll, scroll.

Ah, yeah, I began with where I was and then that discussion about language and looking things up. Oh, but I’ve also reflected on what I’ve written before, well, before. Then it was about re-finding what I was doing after I had to look up a word and now it is desperately trying to remember what the actual fuck I was doing in an attempt to make something cohesive, but still. I decide to not do that again.

I still don’t know what my point was when I started this, but I’m making a new one up right now. I think I’m going to call the work ‘behind the scenes’ or ‘the thoughts of a writer’, since I have now decided that this is a way to get readers a peek behind the curtains.

As a reader, I can respect people so much for all the work they put into a story. And of course I’m not saying you can’t do that if you don’t write, no, that would be pretentious, but I do have more respect for them than before I started writing all those years ago.

It is really easy to forget that something you read in a few minutes has taken hours to write. This is not even 2k words long right now. I know I can read that in a few minutes, not even blinking and mostly forgetting, before moving on to the next story, but I have been writing almost nonstop for over an hour now.

I am lucky that I can usually keep the words flowing long enough to make some bullshit up that I can reason into a coherent story in the end, but that has taken practice. A lot of practice.

In order to become a good in writing a story you have to do it so many times and you won’t even notice you’ve gotten better until much later. I know this, because I recently went through all my works and made them better. Got all the typos out there, I fixed vague sentences and I made the lay out better. I also cringed a lot.

Well, I think I have to go with a ‘behind the scenes’ now, because I don’t think I can claim this is my internal monologue when I’m writing. Instead this has turned into a think piece about writing and appreciating it or something.

I don’t even know anymore.

I recall I had a point when I started this, probably thought it out and then my brain decided to throw it away and throw up this garbage instead. It is interesting, I suppose, but not at all what I was going for in the beginning.

Oh well, maybe I can fix it when I proof read it, because I am tired and I think I’m going to bed. I have half the mind to just fuck it and throw it on AO3 without glancing over my own words even once. It’s very tempting to leave others to deal with these honest words and pretend they aren’t mine, but I don’t.

However, I don’t think I will edit this that much, because it was nice to get some frustrations on, well not paper, but on screen. Just order my thoughts, you know?

It is hard to stay motivated when it seems that everyone around you is doing so much better than you. It is disheartening and it makes you want to stop.

I don’t.

I can’t.

Writing is what I do, it helps, it’s nice. I love writing and I don’t think I will stop loving it. But one of the reasons I love writing is because it can get the constant thoughts and ideas to stop swirling around in my head.

Today I needed it to stop, so that I could just go to sleep properly and I feel like this helped. It was honest and I feel better now. Tomorrow can come at me and I will face it like I did today. Maybe my last few fics weren’t to everyones taste and that’s okay, they were my taste and I love them and I am proud of them. For me that’s enough.

I would apologize for ranting, I usually do, but since you could stop at any time and leave, I don’t think I’m going to do that, what I am going to do, is thank you.

Thank you for reading this, despite the fact that it is not a fanfic. Thank you for allowing me to just dump all these thoughts on you. And thank you for being here and clicking it, your support, even if it is only an extra number by “hits”, means so incredibly much to me and I cannot put in to words how grateful I am that you are here.

Since it is now 01:18 and if I recall correctly it was 00:02 when I started, I think I am really going to stop now. Goodnight, or good-whatever time a day you’re reading this!

Goodbye :)

#RR writing #just me thinking #think piece #internal monologue #writing fanfic

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ginnyzero · 5 years ago

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Completely Harmless Appendix 5

The Silver Rose: Silverglade’s Fashion and Equestrian Boutique

The Fashion for the Sterling Rose was one of the biggest, and actually the first, things that I did for this project. I went to school for fashion design and part of my identity outside of “indie author” is “fashion designer.” My love of games and my love of fashion design kind of grew up side by side. So, a job where I could design fashion and have it be in a game is kind of one of my huge dreams. It’s also one of my “responsibilities” in Mystic Riders MMO is to make the different “brands” of the different areas.

I wanted to practice more to prove that I could do clothes on figures that aren’t 9 head fashion figures and have them look good. Star Stable Online’s figures are actually about five and a half heads high. They’re between preadolescent and older teen artistic biological proportions. (An adult being 8 heads and an older teen being 7.5 or so.) I found some concept art on Tumblr and used those figures to basically redress them. I believe (though I can’t be certain) that Star Stable provides blank figures for both horses, equipment, and clothes to their concept artists.

This would save time and is exactly what I would do if I was in charge of the game. This is part of what they call a game document. Game devs love the game document and some won’t work for you if you don’t have it.

So, the clothes and equipment I designed are based off of the Winery Set and Silverglade Clan Riding Outfit and anything that said “Baroness” on it. I selected the purples from the clothes (way too many purples) to be my color palette.

I used their basic blocks (what I call the different styles the texture artists paint the clothes on for the game) and tried to design details that would fit together to create a mix and match line of clothes.

This ended up being 20 total outfits from head to toe including the Baroness’ Riding outfit and the Silverglade Clan Riding Outfit. There needed to be pants, shorts, t-shirts, long sleeved shirts, dresses, hats, gloves, and I also made earrings and headbands because they added them to the game and I can.

I wanted the group to have a jockey outfit, a dressage outfit, a showjumping outfit, and at least one Western outfit (there ended up being two) and redesigned the outfits of a couple of the NPCs so they’d fit with the updated look of the area. Plus, Lin, Pauline, and Tyra are basically triplets and this needs to stop.

I tried my best not to make anything that wasn’t present somewhere in the game already. The details ended up being roses, the sporty racing stripe from the Silverglade Clan set, the dots from the Winery Set, ducks, pearls, and the Silverglade clan swirl like emblem.

I also did what we call in fashion, merchandising, of these items. When you merchandise an item, you take what you believe are going to be the biggest selling items in your collection and you make them in more than one color or material.

Because this is a game and we don’t really have to worry about store space, I merchandised every item to have at least two color swaps (the jockey outfit) to five color swaps. Any more than five and the images started looking confusing. I used the rose shape and filled it in with different colors to mimic the item being merchandised.

Hopefully with these clothes, the player could dress their character for everything from championships to a garden party. And these clothes could be expanded upon later to add more to the store if necessary.

For instance, I didn’t do any fall or winter clothes really because it’s eternal summer in Jorvik! They’ve also added a could new blocks since I did this, so we could do a handkerchief hem shirt and so on.

For the equipment, I merchandised by showing on the different saddles, and blankets of each style what the color combos could be. The clearest probably being the different leg wraps. Because they’re the same colors and to an extent they have the same type of decorations (the Silver Drakes Fancy Gear Set being the exception) you can still mix and match them together.

Merchandising is for the purpose of gaining more sales. Someone might like a style but want it in a different color. Having that color available means that they are more likely to purchase the item. (This is me, now, in Star Stable, going “where is that in black?”)

Then to complete a head to toe look, I researched makeup and hair options because I felt the Baroness would like old fashioned and elegant hairstyles for her ladies in the riding club. Then I tried to come up with makeup looks that were classic fifties or could be worn at night.

Jewelry is all about theme and variation. Take your theme and start mix and matching them together.

Then for fun, I took some of the details and gave them to the ducks. (Yes, I started with their Seagull in the game. It’s now a duck. Let’s not go into what I had to do to make it look like a duck.) Because who doesn’t want a cute fancy duck?

Whew... that is a LOT of images!

FOR THE ACCOMPANYING IMAGES PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE MY WATERMARK AND CONTACT INFORMATION. THANK YOU. I get it. Some of you might get excited and want to see this stuff in the game, especially the clothes, tack, and pets. However, the only way I want to see this in the game is if I get paid for it. If I see it in the game and I’m not paid for it, there will be hell to pay. You think I’m salty. I’d be angry. Personally, I’m not going to send this info to SSO. If you do, leave my contact information there! Don’t give them any excuses to steal.

Now, I’ll know you haven’t read this note if you leave me comments about how ‘salty’ I am about the game and if I hate it so much I should do something else. I am doing something else. It’s called Mystic Riders MMORPG Project. Mystic Riders however is a very baby phase game. You can check out our plans on the game dev blog. (Skills, Factions, Professions, Crafting, Mini-Games, 25+ horse breeds!) If you know anyone who would be interested and has money or contacts about game making, direct them to the blog.

#star stable #sso #star stable online #fashion #character art #fan art #completely harmless #appendix #jorvik reimagined #silverglade reimagined #many nods to ruth westside

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nonton-start-up-episode-15 · 4 years ago

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I would wager that corporate participation in OSM is less about directly monetizing souped-up versions of OSM data provided as modern web services and more about desperately avoiding the existential conflict of having to pay Google for the privilege of accessing their proprietary map data.⁵ Whatever the motivations of these mega-corporations, they’ve succeeded in carving out a niche for themselves within the OSM community whether the hobbyists like it or not. I’d like to highlight a nuance often lost in this discussion — just exactly who are these companies hiring to add data to the map? They are often already-active, enthusiastic contributors to OSM. These are people living the open data fanatic’s dream: getting paid to do a job they find so fulfilling they would otherwise do it for free in their spare time. There’s obviously a lot more to it than just sticking it to Google. Facebook, for instance, has ambitions of building new types of digital experiences that interplay with the real world (as evidenced by their focus on augmented reality and acquisition of novel user interface technology like CTRL-labs). Apple has added LiDAR to its new line of iPhones and iPods allowing customers to scan the 3D world in high fidelity among other exciting uses:

Why Does it Matter? Well, anytime the wealthiest institutions in history are quietly collaborating on something, I think it’s worth noting. I’m not sure there is a precedent for such a collaboration — if you know of a case where otherwise embittered mega-corporations worked with a global community of volunteers on a public dataset…let me know. I’d love to learn about it. The question on my mind is how idiosyncratic this situation really is. Does OSM represent a model for strategic corporate sponsorship of public goods moving forward? Or is it tragically inimitable? For instance: I work for a company called Azavea that, among many noble efforts, maintains Cicero. It’s a database of elected officials and legislative districts in several countries around the world that gets updated daily. You can imagine that this should be a public good — like, doesn’t the government already have this information? Turns out…nah. Cicero requires ceaseless, grueling work to keep updated, and that means serious investment of time and money. One of the key differences between Cicero and OSM is a community of contributors. Community is what makes OSM special. Without it, the project is “default dead,” as they say in Silicon Valley. Much like elected official information, map data goes stale fairly quickly and therefore requires constant life support. OSM’s community seems conflicted about whether or not corporate participation is ok (let alone good) for the future of the project. And yet the community is precisely what attracts corporate contributors. OSM provides two advantages over just buying privately collected data: Existing data is free and growing apace Proprietary data contributed to OSM may be expanded upon and/or maintained at no additional expense by the community Some may squirm at the idea that their contributions to OSM help FAAM…after all, do they really need the help? But what’s beautiful is that FAAM is contributing (rather than passively mooching) because of the compounding value of having any/all data make it into the community’s growing number of hands. I’m kind of shocked to be saying it, but somehow — almost inexplicably — the goals of the OSM community and corporate contributors seem to be largely aligned. They all want an accurate, ubiquitous map of the world that can be maintained in perpetuity as sustainably as possible. It’s the opposite of the Tragedy of the Commons — all of the private property holders, acting in their own self interest, are enriching the common resource rather than depleting it.

#Start-Up Netflix tvN

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