#code 003: code mistake. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

dansiere · 5 years ago

Text

LITTLE CHARACTER THINGS

Just a fun little character game. Fill in the below categories with 3-5 things that your character can be identified by. Repost & tag away !

TAGGED BY: @reantte & @chaoswilled, who both like to see me suffer. TAGGING: it’s a wonderful meme thus I encourage you all to go ahead & steal it [just tag me when you do]; @handspoken / @balletshoes, @huntershowl, @kissafist, @spiraledheart, @mettatoniic, @inhumanistic, @breselin & @carvedbones get a tag nonetheless.

EMOTIONS / FEELINGS:

001. Nostalgic; struck by an all-consuming kind of grief.

002. Passionate, severely dedicated.

003. Compassionate; loving & caring fiercely.

004. Insecure; self-depreciation is her greatest vice.

005. Courageous, recklessly so.

GREETINGS:

001. a small wave, brisk & efficient.

002. a handshake, maybe; usually of the awkward kind.

003. a petite nod, occasionally; whenever she is busy or otherwise occupied.

004. greeting someone by saying their name or an enthusiastic “hello / good-morning / good day” etc.

COLOURS:

001. pastel pink, any shade of pink & even red really, but its pastel version holds the greatest value.

002. peach; perhaps even shades of orange.

003. (pastel) blue; several shades thereof. Turquoise & a tint of green.

004. ivory; see her skin, the base colour of sheer fabric.

005. grey & variations thereof.

SCENTS:

001. freshly washed laundry.

002. the ocean; the scent of the sea.

003. lush forests; a Spring breeze, bit of an earthly hue.

004. flowers; anything rose-y, really.

005. polished steel.

CLOTHING:

001. as a servant / Homeworld: typical leotard & sheer skirt + ballet slippers kept in white, black & shades of grey (while serving White Diamond), later frilly, multi-coloured dress with sheer fabric wrapped around her hip & a pink underskirt, ballet slippers & juvenile, “rosebud” shaped hair (while serving Pink Diamond).

002. during the rebellion / War for Earth: major change in attire; tight grey sheer top + blue vest underneath combo, peach coloured shorts & orange-tinted boots; sleeveless. Wild, unkempt hair resembling her earlier “rosebud” cut but far more dishevelled; sabre in hand.

003. post-war: hair a tad more ‘tame’, same tight shirt & shorts combo but a shift in colour with sheer sleeves + overthrow worn across the shoulders. Legwarmers paired with ballet slippers, heart-shaped cleavage.

004. post Rose’s death: same shirt with slight variations; star on her chest, sleeves again gone. Colour shifted to bright turquoise with sheer skirt & pastel coloured shorts worn underneath (reaching down to her knees), low cut socks + ballet slippers, very, VERY neatly kept hair with not a single strand out of place. Later, she dons a swift alteration thereof; the star on her chest is more strikingly depicted, sheer skirt replaced by a ribbon / bow tied around her hip; yellow shorts instead of pink. Hair a tad more unkempt.

005. post “CYM” / Future: wears a denim-esque jacket with a star on her back. Long, high cut trousers revealing her shins in addition to pink ballet slippers. Wears a turquoise, shoulderless top underneath the jacket with a heart-shaped cleavage. Hair resembles her war-haircut; more dishevelled, rebellious.

OBJECTS:

001. various swords & sabres neatly cared for & stored either in her gemstone or room. She has amassed quite the collection of ancient & legendary weapons over the centuries, ranging from simple marine sabres & battle axes to Excalibur (which she, at some point, pulled out of the stone).

002. her gemweapon, aka lances & variations / modifications thereof.

003. a mobile phone she got shortly before “CYM”; one of the few items she does not store in her gemstone.

004. dried roses at the back of a journal; one she wrote & sketched in back before the war. Hidden deep within her gemstone.

005. an array of other, different items stored in her gemstone (first-aid items, car keys, tools, various instruments, telephone numbers, various weapons such as shotguns, etc).

VICES / BAD HABITS:

001. Inferiority Complex / Low-Self Esteem. Pearl automatically deems herself inferior to others or simply not good enough, falling victim to hysteria whenever failing to succeed on her first try. -- this usually triggers sentiments of extreme self-decrepitation or emotional fits. Additionally, these feelings of deeply seated insecurity & self-hatred turn her bitter / petty & coerce her to crave validation in any shape or form. She can come across as a know-it-all, as condescending or arrogant given how she will continuously bring up her achievements, knowledge & countless justifications as to why (e.g) she did what she did or why sth. did not work to counter these ever-looming feelings of utter worthlessness.

002. Obsessive / Borderline Neurosis. A vice that goes hand in hand with 001; Pearl is obsessed with the past (may it be in the shape of mistakes or ‘happy memories’), symmetry, cleanliness & people per se; especially Rose has always been a sore topic in that matter. In fact, her obsession went as far as to turn into a serious neurosis / the unquenchable urge to hyperfixate on something & mercilessly obsess over it in turn. Without something to obsess over, Pearl breaks apart. While she loves fiercely, this kind of behaviour is prone to “smother” those in her care. May it be through overprotectiveness or overly critical / a “mother knows best” kind of demeanour.

003. Terrible Coping Mechanisms / Living in Denial. Pearl is guilty of “trauma compartmentalizing”; she represses her traumatizing experiences & memories in a self-destructive way. As demonstrated in “A Single Pale Rose”, her mind is structured in layers; the deeper “in” you go, the more she unravels & falls apart; on the surface, she tries to keep it all together but is well-aware of the mess waiting on the brink. -- Pearl additionally keeps amassing problems / trauma rather than facing any of them.

004. Stuck in the Past / Unable to Let Go; Probably a given one that does not require further explaining given what I already detailed further above. -- ever one to fondly remember the War & the role she had in it, she cannot let go of what once was. This is especially true whenever the casualties of war (guilt complex) or Rose Quartz are concerned; the latter coerced her to live the greatest half of her life (post Steven’s birth) trapped in a perpetual state of grieving & yearning for all she has lost.

005. Liar / secretive. Pearl has been prone to lie & twist her words ever since she was given to Pink Diamond 8000 years ago. What started as an attempt to protect Pink from the Diamond Authority soon turned second nature. While she usually lies out of a good reason, partially due to having been “forbidden” to talk about certain matters, lack of social skills + her compassion & eager will to spare e.g. Steven from harsh truths or to protect herself, it is a terrible vice she cannot shake.

BODY LANGUAGE:

001. gestures quite a lot; may it be with her hands or expressions. Usually underlines her points by sweeping arm or hand movements; prone to “put her whole body into it”.

002. Arms wrapped around her body, predominately her waist. Usually a sign of discomfort or tension that she simply cannot brush aside. Often paired with her glare wandering aside / avoiding eye contact.

003. Broad stance / legs apart as opposed to her feet usually positioned in First Position. Radiates rare moments of confidence, often paired with her hands either on her hips or wrapped around her lance / sword. She usually places said weapon on her shoulder or sprawled across it.

004. Head held up high (e.g.: confident / disapproving) or head kept low (e.g.: insecurity / doubt); a gesture often affecting her entire stance - spine straightened & shoulders squared whenever poised, posture hunched whenever insecure.

005. balled fists out of anger / arm lifted & body positioned in front of someone she ought to defend.

AESTHETICS:

001. The Art of Slowly Falling Apart. “everything is perfectly fine”: a cursed phrase on the tip of your tongue; repeated endlessly. The paradoxical sentiment of deeming onself above all else. -- above the past, the pain, your former life -- & failing to realize that you are anything but, that control has long slipped from your grasp; that threads hold your broken self together, that you are so close to falling apart & yet play pretend.

002. All-Consuming Love. ever devoted, passionate / obsessively loving with all your heart. The yearning, mutual & unconditional dedication to something beautiful but fragile. You live in a fantasy alongside her / the kind you dreamt about ever since you freed yourself from Homeworld’s shackles. -- it is the kind of love that demands & demands & demands all you willingly give.

003. Dance. a part of your very identity, even the part of the past you ought to loathe; a fact that leaves you aching. It is embedded in your very code. A love for beauteous choreographies even integrated into melee combat; pristine, elegant, flawless; dancing to the mellow melody of some piano piece playing in the background.

004. the Ocean. may it be the aesthetic of giving oneself to the depths or wuthering emotions crashing down threatening to smite you into pieces / but also its power, the very effect the scent of salt & the sound of cascades have on you. -- something you ought to oppose but can’t.

005. the Battlefield / Revolution. swords clutched in aching hands; breathing heavily. The thrill of battle, the dirt under your nails; ever listening to the beating of a drum at the back of your head. You are Fire, Passion incarnate: cutting the cord, shattering those that wronged you, overcoming opposition & the conditioned voice inside your head, fighting against all odds / one step away from a cracked gemstone. Breaking the chains, literally.

SONGS / PIECES:

001. Running up that Hill -- Kate Bush.

002. Both Sides Now -- Joni Mitchell.

003. Eight -- Sleeping At Last.

004. Romeo -- Until the Ribbon Breaks.

005. My Boy Builds Coffins / Blinding / Over the Love -- Florence & the Machine.

Bonus: Cut the Cord -- Shinedown; not her style but boy does this give me Renegade Pearl vibes.

#[[ I am cheating in the music section I know I know #but I just have so many songs I relate to Pearl #hence why I did not list any pieces #even if I could write down a million gah. But yeah I got carried away again as per usual. Mobile users pls forgive me. ]]#vii. 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗮 𝗽𝗶𝗲𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗲.

7 notes · View notes

emperorsfoot · 5 years ago

Link

Well, I updated.

It’s garbage. But I wrote the chapter, like, three times and this was by far the best version. You guys will come to realize that I’m not actually a good author.

...

Horde Prime was rarely bothered with every little signal sent from every little unit in his army. The cloning crèches produced 45-thousand units per batch. Four batches every Standard Imperial Year, meant 180-thousand units a year. Personal signals from almost 200-thousand soldiers were mostly ignored.

Horde Prime only listened to communications from four signals.

The four clones he observed to be competent, resourceful, and clever enough to be useful in command positions. The four he personally promoted to his cabinet.

So, when he received a signal from one he stripped from his cabinet, banished to the front lines, and was presumed dead, Prime paid attention. From the Adarion system. A single yellow star, orbited by three planets: Preternia, Infinita, and Eternia. Eternia was the world where Prime sent 66694-42-003:Hordak. To try and put down another uprising by that ever-annoying thorn, Randor, the self-proclaimed ‘King of Eternia’.

66694-42-003 never returned from that deployment and Horde Prime assumed him killed in action.

But here was a signal from that same KIA brother. Proof that he did not die in service to the great Horde Empire, as he was supposed to. And a distress signal no less, begging for aid, proof that Horde Prime was right to strip him of his rank and powers. He was weak. Useless. And now, a liability.

A mistake had been made here, and mistakes must be corrected.

Horde Prime analyzed the message personally.

It was encrypted with an older code. One that was in use during the height of 66694-42-003’s cabinetcy, when Prime allowed him to be ‘Lord Hordak’. It made sense that 66694-42-003 would be using it. Removed so long from the Empire and his Brother, he wouldn’t know the more recent –more secure- encryptions.

But that also meant that others could intercept the signal and decode it for themselves. After all, the reason they changed and updated their encryptions were to prevent a hostile faction from ever being able to break through their communications.

If 66694-42-003’s message held any value beyond just the desperate call for help from a defective clone, Prime wanted to be the first to know.

It was a short message. Cut off abruptly before a full debrief could be given. Apparently 66694-42-003 was inexplicably pulled into a shadow dimension from which he could not return on his own. He needed Prime to open a portal from his end and free 66694-42-003. Pathetic. There was also some pathetic attempt to appeal to Prime by attempting to conquer the world in the shadow dimension, but his progress was blocked by hostile natives with inexplicable powers, blah, blah, blah. Please send reinforcements. The natives had a champion with a magical sword that-

That that was where the message was cut off. The signal lost. Whatever ‘portal’ he was sending the transmission through snapped shut.

Prime sat up straight.

‘A champion with a magical sword that-‘

A champion with a magical sword.

A champion.

Singular.

One.

Prime had gone up against champions with magical swords before. Two of them. Not one. One of them, he managed to defeat. Defeat and take the sword for himself. The other one… got away…

It was absurd to believe that defective and weak 66694-42-003 found the one that got away. Completely and utterly absurd.

But the message did come from the Adarion System, the same solar system they came from. The same solar system… Zed died in…

‘You said you could heal him!’

‘Anillis-! I’m sorry! He was too far gone.’

He tried to raze that system. But he was new at this back then. Inexperienced and angry. Clumsy.

He managed to get He-Ro, and He-Ro’s sword. But, Mar- the other one –got away.

Not just got away, but managed to take one of the planets from the Adarion System with her. The fourth planet –the name escaped him at the moment but he remembered it being there, then not being there anymore.

It was utterly absurd to think that Hordak found the one that got away.

But the location was correct, and the description seemed to fit.

Prime could not ignore this.

If there was even the slightest chance that it led him to the one who got away.

Tapping a button on the arm of his throne, Prime opened a paged the bridge of the Velvet Glove. “Change course.” He commanded. “Take us to the Adarion System.”

“Yes, Sir!” Came the answering voice almost immediately. Then, more hesitantly. “Which planet, Your Grace? Eternia?”

Eternia was the metaphorical ‘problem child’ of the Adarion System. It seemed like twice every generation there was a new rebellion that had to be put down. First Hiss, then Miro, then Randor, then Randor again, and then… the defector Randor’s brother seduced to their side…

Prime stood from his throne. Descending the stairs he retreated into his Inner Sanctum. His own private chambers above the Velvet Glove.

Eternia was a frequent problem in the Adarion System, but 66694-42-003’s signal had not come from Eternia. It came from empty space. Between Eternia and Infinita, in the darkness where Etheria used to be.

The one that got away…

Crossing the dimly lit room, Prime gentle, almost affectionately caressed the side of a tank. Not the same as the industrial vitrine used in his cloning crèches. This one was smaller, narrower, and did now bow out like the cloning tanks. This thank was not meant to grow a clone, but rather preserve a body. Prime kept it draped with a sheet. Most days he could not bear to look at it. But he never had it removed either. He could not bear to part with… what was inside.

Through a gap in the fabric, the tip of a red wing could just barely be seen.

Prime passed by this tank and continued on to the far wall. Considering the span of his unnaturally long life, Prime had not collected or kept many mementoes. Neither trophies or keepsakes. He kept the body in the tank, and he still strummed his baliset from time to time. But aside from those, his Inner Sanctum was markedly bare of personal items.

He did, however, keep one trophy.

The Sword.

More accurately, a Sword.

One of two.

Pulled from the cold, dead, hand of Gray. A Prince of Eternia and the one Chosen to wield the Sword of Power as He-Ro. Killed on the field of battle by Anillis Kur. But he was not the one Anillis wanted. He wanted the one that got away.

The one that promised him she could save his son’s life. Heal all ailments and return Zed to the level of health he enjoyed before they left Revena. But she lied. She didn’t. The Sword did not heal him. Zed died. And when satisfaction was demanded, it was not She-Ra, but He-Ro that faced him in the open field. The other, choosing to flee, and take her planet with her.

Prime didn’t just lose his son. He lost his vengeance.

But not this time.

66694-42-003:Hordak found her. Found her and left a signal for Prime to follow back to coordinates. Where Etheria used to be. And instructions on how to get to her. How to cut through the fabric of space and reality. Into the shadow dimension she cowered in.

Cut through.

With the blade of steel and light of a legendary Sword.

Prime lifted the Sword of Power off the wall. Hefting it in his hands. Revenanti were very strong in proportion to their size. Every other race he came across was surprised and impressed by the deceptive physical strength of him and his clones. But the Sword always felt heavy in his hands. Heavier than its size would imply. Heavy as if its weight came from more than just the hammered metal of a blade and a gilded and Runestone fitted hilt.

It was the Power of this sword that allowed Prime to prolong his life.

Now it was going to lead Prime to its twin. To the one that got away.

…

Nobody really knew what to think when the night sky suddenly lit up with light. So bright it outshone Eternia’s two moons. Cutting across the sky. A blade of light.

The first panic stricken thought was that it was some kind of Horde attack. That the Empire had grown weary of constantly putting down rebellion and decided to just destroy the planet and be done with it.

But Horde Prime did not believe in superweapons. He preferred massive armies with lots of moving pieces. Small parts that could be easily replaced. If some lucky rebel made a shot down a superweapon’s exhaust port, the whole thing blew. But if some lucky rebel managed to kill a cabinet Lord, then he could just be replaced.

So, the blade of light could not be a Horde attack.

Some realized this faster than others.

Some realized it had to be something else. Something more.

The Lord of Snake Mountain saw the light and looked deeper. Looked for a source. After all, light had to come from somewhere, and this was not the light of Adarion, Eternia’s sun. Nor was it the sun’s light reflected off either of the moons. This was its own. Coming from a source that was not a star.

And inside that light, was a signal.

Encrypted, obviously. Not everyone would pick it up. Even if they did, they wouldn’t understand it. It was a Horde encryption, but an older one. Not in use anymore. So, not an official Imperial transmission.

A distress signal.

A cry for help.

Except clone troopers did not ask for help. Help was for the weak.

But the identification stamp on the message gave him pause. The Lord of Snake Mountain re-running the decryption program and double checking his results in the Imperial issued datapad his late partner left with him. Both the second pass with the decryption and the secondary datapad confirmed the ID was correct –at least, not faked, or a mistranslation. Former cabinet Lord Hordak, serial number 66694-42-003.

Running a palm over the smooth dome of his head, the Lord of Snake Mountain stared at those last three digits. Zero-Zero-Three. Hordak.

Hode’s Zero-Zero-Three.

He only met the clone twice. Briefly each time.

The first not long after Hode was killed. As highly as the older clone spoke of his younger brother, the Lord of Snake Mountain hoped to find a new ally. Hode’s protégé and heir. At least, that was what Hode lead him to believe. But what he met was just another clone trooper. A tool of Prime’s. There was the shadow of an intelligent mind capable of independent thought. But only a shadow.

They crossed paths again after Hordak had been deposed from the cabinet. Stripped of his rank and name, returned back to only his serial number. Sent to the front lines of another one of Randor’s ill-fated revolts. He hoped to find Zero-Zero-Three of a different opinion then. Prime cast him out and sent him away. Surely the clone must have realized how little the Emperor cared for him, or any of his brothers. Prime called his clones ‘little brother’, but they weren’t much more than dolls to him. Playthings that could be thrown away the moment they were broken.

Zero-Zero-Three did make his way to Snake Mountain, and the Lord did hope that Hode’s favorite might join him. Imp was certainly glad to see him.

But they never got the chance to exchange words. Inexplicably, for reasons the Lord of Snake Mountain was still trying to find explanation for, Zero-Zero-Three was teleported away. A blade of light cutting through the very fabric of space and time and pulling Zero-Zero-Three, along with Imp, through the rift.

He had hoped Zero-Zero-Three had learned his lesson. That Prime could not be trusted. That Prime had to be removed.

But here he was, calling for his big Brother. Begging Prime to come get him. Take him back. Look, I conquered this world for you. Please come pick me up. And send reinforcements. The natives are making things difficult for me. They have this champion with a magical sword-

The Lord of Snake mountain was glad the message cut off there. When he was a younger man, he would have jumped up and been ready to rush off at the mere mention of a magical sword. But that was years ago. He was older now. Older and jaded. He made his grab for a magical sword, and in the process, lost his face.

His face, his identity, and his partner.

‘But- the sword-!’

‘But your life, Keldor!’

He wasn’t ‘Keldor’ anymore. Now he was the Lord of Snake Mountain, the Lord of Destruction, Revenant of Hate… Skeletor.

Skeletor lacked the means of opening a portal and answering Zero-Zero-Three’s call. Only a Sword could open a portal and Skeletor did not have a Sword.

But Prime did.

Horde Prime could open a portal and bring Zero-Zero-Three back.

If only Prime cared about Zero-Zero-Three enough to do that. But Prime cared about nothing and no one. He would not answer Zero-Zero-Three’s call.

It was a moot issue.

Nothing would ever come of it.

…

The Velvet Glove came out of hyperspace just within the Adarion System.

Prime hated this place.

Any time any action was required in this despicable spit of space, he always found someone else to send. Hode. Or Hordak. Or, literally, anyone else.

But he could not send anyone else for this. This required the Sword, and Prime was not going to let the Sword out of his sight.

The Lycra Pant and Leather Vest appeared half a moment after the Velvet Glove, materializing from out of hyperspace. Prime had to come here to use the Sword, but that didn’t mean he planned to be the one to go down to the planet –a planet he hated- that’s what the clones were for.

Standing on the bridge of the Velvet Glove, Prime watched Infinita, and Eternia pass by the main viewport. Neither planet was their destination. Their heading placed them in an empty space inside Adarion’s circumstellar habitable zone. Few knew it, Prime never included it in official Imperial records, but –originally- this system did not have three planets, but four. The fourth one vanished along with its guardian. But Prime still remembered its coordinates, its orbit within the system’s sphere of gravity.

The bridge crew surreptitiously shot each other confused or uneasy glances. Those that worked closely with the Emperor –his private staff, his cabinet, and his bridge crew- knew that their Brother was prone to bouts of temper and impulses made in anger.

But this did not seem like that.

Moving the Velvet Glove and her complement of soldiers, along with the Lycra Pant with all her batwings and pilots, and the Leather Vest full of drop-ships and troops, to an empty bit of finite space where there was nothing there. Ignoring three other planets within the system, one of which was an almost never-ending source of work for the military. This was erratic and irrational. But not an episode of temper.

In fact, Prime seemed very calm and collected. Deceptively so. Quiet.

Holding non-standard issue sword in one hand.

“Cut the engines.” He commanded suddenly. “Bring us to a stop here.”

His bouts and fits might make his staff and crew wary, but they were not incompetent. There was no hesitation. Even if they didn’t understand it, they were sure their Brother had his reasons for this erratic behavior. The main bridge pilot decelerated, switching to forward thruster to compensate for the direction of their motion in the zero-gravity space, and bringing the Velvet Glove to a full stop. The communications officer sent a signal to both the Lycra Pant and the Leather Vest to do the same.

Within moments, the whole fleet came to a full stop in the middle of nowhere.

Empty space floated in front of them.

“Charge the hyperdrive.” Was Prime’s next order.

He lifted the Sword he held and crossed the space to a segment of the main command console. Forward, center.

It was strange that Prime would move the fleet somewhere else immediately after bringing them to a full stop in the middle of nowhere. But when the Emperor commanded, they obeyed.

“The new coordinates, Your Grace?” Asked the navigator.

“No new coordinates.” Prime informed them. “Charge up the hyperdrive and funnel the dilithium into the forward canon.”

The bridge crew of the Velvet Glove, Horde Prime’s hand chosen group of clones than ran his ship, never hesitated. But Horde Prime had never ordered them to funnel hot, active, charged dilithium from an active hyperdrive, into the ship’s weapons.

“Your… Grace…?”

Prime turned to the one that had spoken. Glowing eyes blazing a silent warning. How dare they question a direct order from him. He was more than their Big Brother. He was their creator. He made them in his own image. Gave them the gift of sentience so that they could better serve him. This job was to serve. Not to question.

The one that spoke swallowed a lump of nerves. “Y-yes, Your Grace.”

Together, the Chief Engineer and Science Officer overrode the safeties and emergency shut-offs that prevented any leakage in the hyperdrive core. Engines and pistons groaning under the pressure and strain they were being put under. A choir of stressed equipment and hardware. Every console and screen on the command bridge lit up with alerts and warnings that the core was open, the hyperdrive was compromised, the dilithium was leaking, the forward cannon was being flooded by charged photons that could bend spacetime.

Prime inserted the Sword into a slot on the console.

All new alerts lit up across the screens.

“Fire the forward canon along the trajectory of these coordinates.” He commanded.

Uneasy as it made all of them, there was no hesitation again. Their Brother gave an order and he already made it clear that he did not appreciate his orders being questioned.

The canon fire streaked across the empty space in front of the Velvet Glove. An energy and particle beam that was usually red in color was stained an uneasy mottle orange and yellow. Prime giggled the Sword in its slot, aligning it better with the non-Imperial tech rigged into the console. The stone of the hilt of the sword glowed, and the beam outside changed color again. Shifting from orange and yellow, to sickly green, then blue, then white.

In space, if a beam did not impact with anything solid, it just kept going. Shooting through space until it finally did collide with something.

But this one didn’t.

It cut through the empty space, like cutting through fabric. Edges of darkness fraying like threads and peeling back, curling away from the cut like an overly tight knit. A tattered tare opening up in empty space. And through the tare was darkness. No stars. No planets. No light. Save one sphere. Orbited by several smaller moons. A planet. One single planet floating in otherwise empty despondent darkness.

It had been centuries since Prime saw it last. But it was an image that was burned into the back of his mind. A place synonymous with the loss of this son.

Etheria.

Somewhere on that world was the one that got away.

“Ground the dilithium.” Prime ordered. “Stabilize the rift. I want it to remain open.”

The Chief Engineer and Science Officer had to do some quick calculating and jerryrigging to fulfill their Brother’s command. But when the forward canon was shut down, the rift remained open.

Everyone paused a moment. Staring at it.

Did- did Horde Prime just break the universe and creature a portal to another world?

“Open a hailing channel to the Leather Vest.” He commanded. “Red Hord is to take his ship and his forces to that planet, retrieve unit 66694-42-003, and if he finds an alien female that wields a legendary blade of light, bring her to me. I want her alive. I want her sword. And if there is anyone on that rock she cares about, I want them too.”

Alive. So that he could kill them in front of her. So that She-Ra could know what it felt like to hold her most cherished person in her arms as the life drained out of them, and realize that there was nothing she could do. That the universe was cruel, and cold, and she was helpless. Hopeless.

#spop #horde prime #skeletor #evil horde #horde empire #imperial horde #anillis kur #keldor #she-ra #eternia #etheria #despondos #angst #ao3 #fan ficiton #RenkonNairu #a song of steel and light #prodigal brother

2 notes · View notes

isolaradiale · 6 years ago

Text

Lost in Space 10

Hello, Isolans! We have conducted an activity check for the month of June!

If your character isn’t on this list, make sure to check this page to see how many stars that character has earned this month! Stars can be used for purchases at the marketplace.

The blogs that were removed from the Isola Radiale masterlist are under the cut. Note that both blogs with broken links and deactivated accounts will be included both at the top of this list and in their proper categories.

If you were removed in error, please simply send a re-application message. Several different people work on the activity checks, so it’s possible there are mistakes! If this happens to you, you will be able to keep everything you previously had, you just may be placed in a different residence.

Our general activity rules regarding checks are as follows:

Make at least three in-character posts during a calendar month.

Only one drabble and/or meme response of 300+ words counts as activity.

One-liners or minis not tagged #isola mini also do not count.

Please Note: If you are removed during two consecutive activity checks, you will not be allowed to re-apply as that character for two calendar months.

Additionally, anyone removed during the activity check will have a 12-hour window from the time of posting to re-claim their character. Any character not reclaimed during that period will be open to the community at large.

Please send in your reapplications from the account of the character that was removed.

Broken URLs:

Colin Ritman (Bandersnatch, CONDO 428)

Radiance (Hollow Knight, APARTMENT 305)

Shiro (Voltron, APARTMENT 303)

Gharet Ospal (Original Characters, CONDO 412)

ADVENTURE TIME

Finn Mertens (APARTMENT 309)

Marceline Abadeer (HOUSE 102)

BANDERSNATCH

Colin Ritman (CONDO 428) *BROKEN URL

BANG DREAM

Ako Udagawa (APARTMENT 330)

Kaoru Seta (APARTMENT 370)

Kokoro Tsurumaki (TOWNHOUSE 230)

Misaki Okusawa (TOWNHOUSE 223)

BLAZBLUE

Jin Kisaragi (APARTMENT 356)

Taokaka (TOWNHOUSE 228)

Tsubaki Yayoi (TOWNHOUSE 208)

BLEACH

Gin Ichimaru (CONDO 417)

BORDERLANDS

Angel (APARTMENT 321)

Gaige (TOWNHOUSE 215)

Timothy Lawrence (HOUSE 105)

Zer0 (APARTMENT 305)

CASTLEVANIA

Juste Belmont (APARTMENT 330)

Lisa Tepes (APARTMENT 336)

CATHERINE

Catherine (APARTMENT 324)

CLAYMORE

Priscilla (TOWNHOUSE 268)

CODE REALIZE

Cardia Beckford (HOUSE 105)

DC COMICS

Pamela Ivy (Poison Ivy) (TOWNHOUSE 221)

DEVIL MAY CRY

Vergil (TOWNHOUSE 237)

DISNEY

Honey Lemon (TOWNHOUSE 209)

Winnie the Pooh (TOWNHOUSE 222)

THE DRAGON PRINCE

Rayla (HOUSE 123)

FATE

Berserker (Chacha) (APARTMENT 331)

Berserker of El Dorado (Penthesilea) (TOWNHOUSE 206)

Caster (Nursery Rhyme) (TOWNHOUSE 230)

Caster (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) (APARTMENT 325)

Demon Archer (Oda Nobunaga) (TOWNHOUSE 212)

Kiritsugu Emiya (CONDO 473)

Saber of Red (Mordred) (HOUSE 166)

FIRE EMBLEM

Hinata (TOWNHOUSE 230)

GHOST TRICK

Sissel (CONDO 413)

GINTAMA

Gintoki Sakata (TOWNHOUSE 224)

GRANBLUE FANTASY

Randall (HOUSE 124)

GRIEFER BELT

Lars Van Allen (APARTMENT 304)

GUILTY GEAR

Dizzy (CONDO 427)

Elphelt Valentine (TOWNHOUSE 226)

A HAT IN TIME

Empress (CONDO 413)

HETALIA

France (Francis Bonnefois) (TOWNHOUSE 210)

HOLLOW KNIGHT

Pale King (TOWNHOUSE 206)

Radiance (APARTMENT 305) *BROKEN URL

HOMESTUCK

Dave Strider (TOWNHOUSE 229)

HYPNOSIS MICROPHONE

Doppo Kannonzaka (APARTMENT 305)

Gentaro Yumeno (APARTMENT 325)

IDOLISH7

Yamato Nikaido (HOUSE 148)

Yukito Orikasa (TOWNHOUSE 205)

INAZUMA ELEVEN

Kirina Hiura (CONDO 435)

JOJO'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE

Enrico Pucci (TOWNHOUSE 223)

Guido Mista (CONDO 401)

Pannacotta Fugo (TOWNHOUSE 235)

Trish Una (APARTMENT 349)

KATEKYO HITMAN REBORN

Daemon Spade (TOWNHOUSE 236)

Shoichi Irie (APARTMENT 310)

KID ICARUS

Pit (APARTMENT 323)

KINGDOM HEARTS

Demyx (TOWNHOUSE 236)

Riku Replica (TOWNHOUSE 219)

Zexion (CONDO 427)

LEAGUE OF LEGENDS

Orianna (APARTMENT 325)

LEGEND OF ZELDA

Hilda (CONDO 406)

Zelda (A Link Between Worlds) (CONDO 429)

LOST NIGHTMARE

Ink (TOWNHOUSE 238)

LOVE LIVE

Chika Takami (CONDO 404)

LUPIN III

Lupin (CONDO 402)

MAPLESTORY

Will (APARTMENT 327)

MARVEL

Harry Osborn (TOWNHOUSE 203)

Loki Laufeyson (Kid Loki) (APARTMENT 337)

MASS EFFECT

Garrus Vakarian (CONDO 417)

MEDAKA BOX

Medaka Kurokami (HOUSE 106)

Misogi Kumagawa (ON THE STREET)

MY HERO ACADEMIA (BOKU NO HERO ACADEMIA)

Hizashi Yamada (Present Mic) (TOWNHOUSE 208)

Katsuki Bakugou (Bakugou's House (Cotes))

Shoto Todoroki (CONDO 406)

NIER

9S (CONDO 419)

NIGHT IN THE WOODS

Beatrice Santello (HOUSE 115)

ONE PIECE

Portgas D. Ace (CONDO 419)

ONMYOJI

Yamata no Orochi (CONDO 426)

ORIGINAL CHARACTERS

Amalie Dubois (CONDO 423)

Caesar Capello (CONDO 422)

Deborah Yoon (APARTMENT 328)

Elysia Flores (CONDO 439)

Emi (APARTMENT 333)

Gharet Ospal (CONDO 412) *BROKEN URL

Laei Rieunik (CONDO 406)

Mariko Rose Oliveira (Echo's House (Golden))

Masaharu Sugase (TOWNHOUSE 203)

Meizhen (TOWNHOUSE 230)

Nemi (TOWNHOUSE 220)

Prime Beta 003 (APARTMENT 361)

The Conductor (CONDO 439)

Zack Ledger (TOWNHOUSE 201)

PACIFIC RIM

Newton Geiszler (TOWNHOUSE 202)

POKEMON

Toren (TOWNHOUSE 220)

PRINCESS TUTU

Duck (TOWNHOUSE 201)

PUELLA MAGI MADOKA MAGICA

Homura Akemi (TOWNHOUSE 260)

RAINBOW SIX SIEGE

Fuze (CONDO 418)

RESIDENT EVIL

Ada Wong (TOWNHOUSE 207)

Claire Redfield (APARTMENT 306)

RUINER

PUPPY (TOWNHOUSE 229)

SHIMANAMI TASOGARE

Shuuji Misora (CONDO 421)

SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI

Chiaki Hayasaka (APARTMENT 309)

Demi-Fiend (TOWNHOUSE 218)

SHOJO KAGEKI REVUE STARLIGHT

Mahiru Tsuyuzaki (CONDO 420)

SHOW BY ROCK!!

Crow (APARTMENT 360)

Yaiba (HOUSE 112)

STEVEN UNIVERSE

Peridot (HOUSE 101)

TEAM FORTRESS

Medic (CONDO 433)

TOKYO GHOUL

Yamori (CONDO 414)

TOUHOU

Nazrin (CONDO 403)

TOUKEN RANBU

Hakusan Yoshimistu (APARTMENT 355)

Souza Samonji (APARTMENT 306)

TRAUMA TEAM

Erhard Muller / CR-S01 (CONDO 428)

TSUBASA CHRONICLES

Princess Tsubasa (Sakura) (APARTMENT 324)

Tsubasa Li (Syaoran Li) (TOWNHOUSE 207)

UNDERTALE

Toriel Dreemurr (APARTMENT 349)

VOCALOID

Gumi (CONDO 420)

VOLTRON

Shiro (APARTMENT 303) *BROKEN URL

THE WALKING DEAD

Clementine (HOUSE 165)

THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU

Coco Atarashi (CONDO 407)

YAKUZA

Goro Majima (HOUSE 109)

YOUR LIE IN APRIL

Kaori Miyazono (APARTMENT 350)

#modnote #activity check #lost in space 10

5 notes · View notes

damnitaddie · 6 years ago

Text

I wanna die in the suburbs.

I’ve long talked about moving away from Kentucky. To some far away place with great civil rights, lots of lesbians, and maybe some awesome seafood. I talk about how terrible Kentucky is and this Commonwealth is in a tight race with Indiana for the coveted title of “Worst EvAr.”

But do I really hate Louisville, or even Kentucky at-large? Or do I just hate Fern Creek? It’s probably not that simple, but it still deserves a moment of pause and consideration. Because why move one thousand miles away, when you really just need like eight miles, right?

I should explain how this thought appeared on my radar. As a side note, continuing that radar metaphor, I suspect if my brain was illustrated it would look like an ATC screen on the day before Thanksgiving. Very cluttered and busy. Hard to say.

Anyway, I got up and decided to go out and try to find an undershirt before clinicals. Something light, long-sleeve, and clingy to go under my scrubs. After Marshall’s was closed, and Target didn’t have anything to fit the bill, I thought that I would go eat breakfast. Which is my first mistake, being that it was 11:00 on a Sunday morning which means Church crowds. I rode by First Watch, but they looked busy and their food isn’t really my favorite. So I rode down to ZEGGZ in Middletown. As I’m creeping along on the motorcycle looking for a place to park, I notice the crowd demo. Mostly older, white, straight people. All I could think was, “Could we not?”

So I rode on and on and on, and eventually I ended up at North End Cafe on Frankfort. I ended up foregoing breakfast altogether in favor of their Bacon Cheeseburger, cooked medium, with some sort of decadent white cheddar. It was really good. The atmosphere was better too. Sure, it was mostly white people, but that’s to be expected, because gentrification is Louisville’s fourth favorite pastime. Right behind Basketball, Bourbon, and Horse Racing. In no particular order.

I had tweeted recently that for the most part, the closer a restaurant is to my house, the more out of place I’m going to feel. This is about the same with bars. This is not me saying that I’m better than the other patrons. I mean I am, but I digress. However, as a queer trans woman, I just don’t fit. There’s no where in my zip code for me. I went to Outback the other night, because it was near-by. I was the youngest person at the bar by like a couple decades. It was odd.

The statistical probability that I'll meet my soulmate only increased by .003% when I relocated from my desk to this bar stool at Outback.

— Knives Chau (@DamnitAddie) March 22, 2019

Everywhere I’ve lived, with the exception of the two years I spent in Texas, has been along the Southern Jefferson county border or beyond, out in Bullitt county. I’ve never lived anywhere that one would charitably describe as “fun” and/or “hip.” It’s with a certain amount of longing that I stare off into the good time daydreams of places like New England or California. Forgetting about things like shit tons of snow and buying heating oil in bulk, or the horror stories of housing prices in the Bay Area. Which leads me back to my original question. Do I hate Kentucky and, by extension, Louisville because they’re terrible? Or do I just think that because living in Fern Creek is so bland?

When I posed the question on Twitter, Liz responded to my question with a question, asking, “Why not both?”

I know what she’s getting at, and she’s probably close to the truth, regardless of what I’d like to admit. Instead of answers, I’m left with yet another question: What do I do with this information?

I wanna die in the suburbs. was originally published on TransVentures

6 notes · View notes

green-eyeddragonfanfiction · 7 years ago

Text

War of Attrition: Chapter 11

Pairing: Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier x Reader Summary: Best friends with Steve Rogers, renowned Howling Commando, and married to one James Buchanan Barnes, your life wasn’t perfect, but it was as close as it could possibly be in the middle of World War II. Then you fell from a train in the Alps, and everything changed. You spent nearly 70 years as a tool of Hydra alongside your beloved, though your past with him was more often than not forgotten. You continue to search through old SSR files for the information you lead, growing more attached to the people in the base than you’re sure is healthy. It’s only a matter of time until you find what you need, but will it be what you wanted? Warnings: Swearing (always), mentions of torture, blood, death Word Count: ~6,327 A/N: I’m sorry

Masterlist // Book One // Book Two

Previous Chapter // Next Chapter

There was a long pause, then, “Understood, Misses Barnes. We’ll prioritize non-lethal weaponry and use normal guns only if everything else fails.”

You crossed your arms and glared down at the speaker. “I suggest you don’t fail, then.”

Fitz grinned tentatively you and Mack gave you an appraising stare. When Coulson spoke up again, his voice gentler than before. “We’ll try our best, Misses Barnes.”

After all the commotion had died down and the call with Coulson’s team ended, you went back down into Vault B. Sitting idly never worked for you, not when you were waiting on something important. You realized the antsy feeling in your gut was a familiar one. It reminded you of all the times you stayed back from a fight with Steve, Bucky, and the guys to run communications and logistics. Every second of it sucked, never knowing if they’d all come back in one piece or not.

Movement in the doorway caught your eye.

Fitz stood there, body half-covered by the wall. “They, uh... They’re back and-”

“Gill?” you asked tersely.

“Alive,” Fitz confirmed.

Tension you’d been accumulating since the call went out an hour or so ago finally left your body and you released a long, relieved sigh. “Good. That’s good.”

“We- We don’t know if- if he’ll be-”

“Brainwashed when he wakes up?” you asked, crossing your arms across your chest. Fitz nodded slowly. “The best way to keep your people safe is to secure him until you’re sure of his mental state. Until you find away to get the brainwashing out of his head you’ll have to be careful, for your sakes as well as his own. Just... don’t treat him like an animal or some sort of subhuman. He deserves better than that. He’s the victim.”

“Like you?” Fitz asked quietly and earnestly, gaze calculating even if his brain wasn’t working at the same level it used to.

You let out a long sigh. “I’m not innocent, Fitz. I’m not talking about the things Hydra made me do, either. I created weapons. Designed them to be just a little more deadly than the opponents, just a bit more efficient to construct. I could have created a weapon from the designs in my head at Azzano that could have ended the war in a week, but I didn’t.”

“Why not?” Fitz asked quietly, picking at some of the peeling paint on the door jamb.

You scowled. “For the same reason I think Hiroshima and Nagasaki were mistakes. Catastrophic loss of human life? The murder of civilians? I hate that the world somehow managed to accept that. Weapons that destructive don’t discriminate. Even if they did, who should decide who lives and who dies? So, you only kill all the enemy soldiers. What about the ones who joined up just to protect their family? The ones that joined because they had nowhere else to go? Nothing else they could do? The ones that cried every night while they thought about the people they killed and the friends and loved ones they lost? Should we create an algorithm like Zola and Hydra? No thank you. No, I wouldn’t be party to something so heinous. Didn’t stop me from creating guns with Stark that would get thousands of people killed, though, and reaping the profits.”

You lost yourself in your thoughts for a minute and looked up. You were halfway to apologizing when you realized he probably understood better than anyone else in this base what it was like to lose yourself in your own head.

You sighed. “But that kid? The genius who has trouble making friends and looks up to you? He made a few shitty decisions, sure, but he didn’t deserve to have his brain scrambled. If he hasn’t already, he’s going to eventually remember that he killed a lot of SHIELD agents in The Fall. He’s going to be seriously messed up, so I hope you have a damn good therapist on your staff. Or twelve.”

Fitz mulled that all over a minute, his gaze slightly unfocused. “Have you... have you had any- any luck?” he asked finally, eyes sliding back to you.

You grimaced and motion to the sizeable pile to your right. Four boxes. All thoroughly searched, no likely leads. “No, not yet. There’s a lot here, though, that never made it to the digital era. Things Hydra never knew about because it all stayed buried down here.”

“Is- is it dangerous that... that you’re-”

“Looking at all of this?” you asked, single eyebrow raised. He nodded quickly and you blew out a small sigh. “Honestly? I’m not sure. My memory is good but not perfect, especially not after all the deep fry treatments courtesy of the KGB and Hydra. I’d never give any of this information over willingly but...” your voice trailed off and you bit your lip, not wanting to say anymore.

“But they have- have the- the-” he made a frustrated noise, “-backups. In your brain,” he gritted out.

You gave him a long, sad stare in lieu of answering directly. You didn’t want to admit that there were backups to your brainwashing to SHIELD. Didn’t want that information to exist anywhere, not even in Fitz’s brilliant little head. “There’s a reason why I try not to fight Hydra in person. It’s too risky,” you said, as close as you’d get to admitting the truth.

You could tell from the look in Fitz’s eyes, though, that he understood.

You stayed away from Gill’s room when they brought him in. Apparently he’d come out of the brainwashing slowly without someone from Hydra there to command him. They even strapped him up to some crazy lie detector chair to make sure he was completely free of compulsion. He’d be monitored closely but they treated him like a person, which was all you could ask.

When Coulson had asked for your input on what they should do with him, you’d simply leveled him with a flat stare and asked, “Perhaps you should ask him what he wants instead? Last I checked you deemed him capable of free speech. I’d still veto any suicidal or homicidal trains of thought, though,” you said dryly.

The more time you spent on the base, the closer you got to Fitz. Even Mack warmed up to you a bit, though you caught him staring at you closely more than a few times. May ghosted you like a shadow whenever she wasn’t on mission. Morse, a very tall and imposing but personable blond, seemed to take watch whenever May wasn’t there (you hoped the woman was sleeping. You weren’t sure if May ever slept, but you felt like she needed it with the amount of shit Coulson’s team put her through). You got along with Simmons like a house on fire once she realized you weren’t going to kill her on sight. Her and Fitz were having issues at the moment so you spent time with them separately, quietly watching the way they looked at each other from across the room when they thought the other wasn’t looking.

It wasn’t until a few weeks after your first day on sight that you finally found a lead.

After the fall of Schmidt and Zola, most of Hydra’s assets had gone to the next most senior man in the organization. When Peggy seized the facility with Morita and Dugan all those years ago they’d taken everything on the base, a veritable plethora of occult and science goodies that made your skin crawl to read about. The SSR had taken all the files on the base along with any other evidence such as video reels and pictures and anything that wasn’t downright dangerous. Those files, added to the SSR ones, painted a very gruesome, well-documented picture.

Werner Reinhardt stared up at you in sepia, his beady gaze cold and calculating even through 70 years worth of photo deterioration. His name rang with a sort of familiarity in the back of your mind and it took you a second to realize why. The snake of a man had been mentioned in reports back in the 40′s. Peggy’s team had been after him while you and the guys chased down Schmidt and Zola.

Among the list of data in the files were mentions of a biological sample. It was timestamped before the Winter Soldier mission in Japan but after the fall from the train. The timeline was right. The files made mentions of it every few pages.

BSAM003: Extracted from BSAM002 and stored for further study.

BSAM003: Cells tested against variety of conditions. Results inconclusive.

BSAM003: Samples show cell regeneration similar to BSAM001. Further careful study recommended: Dwindling quantities of BSAM003 remains.

BSAM003: Unrefined reproduction of the enhancements of BSAM002 achieved from tests run on BSAM003. BSAM001 enhancements unreplicable. Original sample consumed by final tests. Cloned samples of BSAM003 lack the original’s genetic modifiers. Cloned BSAM003 tissue disposed of. BSAM002 possibly necessary for successful genetic mutation. Unrefined serum sample to be coded as IS-003 in further reports. Obergruppenführer Reinhardt notified of progress.

You turned over the last page and stared at the small pocket in the back. It was tied up with string and, if the other files were anything to go by, there were going to be some horrendous photos stuffed in there. The Hydra scientists were almost gleeful in the task of thoroughly cataloguing their experiments.

You untied the stiff, time-eaten string that kept the pocket secure and slid the photos out. You nearly blacked out when you saw the first one.

It was you. It didn’t show your face, but it was you. A picture of you on a cold metal table. Your legs were missing below the knee and every gash and scar on the body in the picture were ones you knew intimately. You knew that if the photographers had flipped you over there would have been a single long gash from your right shoulder to your left hip. If they zoomed in on your right hand there’d be a small circular spot from when you got a nasty infected bug bite as a kid.

What horrified you the most was that your stomach had been sliced open in the picture. It was a clean medical cut, not like the other jagged ones from the fall. One of the scientists was holding up a little sign, “BSAM002.”

The next photos were of “BSAM003.”

You set the photos down.

You wanted to stop looking, but you couldn’t.

It was tiny. Maybe four inches (ten centimeters) long. The scale showed it weighed no more than an ounce (28 grams). It was misshapen but unmistakably-

Unmistakably human.

A racking sob ripped through your throat.

Biological Sample: American003. To be stored for further study, was the note scribbled in German on the sign in the picture.

Zola, for all his duplicity and evil, had been telling you the truth.

You cried. You cried until you eyes were red and puffy and your tear ducts ran dry. You cried until your throat was so raw it hurt to swallow. You cried until your cheeks and nose were red from how many times you’d wiped at them.

After what could have minutes, hours, the entire evening, you moved beyond the gentle shaking of your shoulders. You finally had your answer. An answer that would eat away at your soul for as long as you lived.

The only problem was that it raised another question. What did they do with the serum they created? You hadn’t seen any mention of IS-003 in any of the pictures or in any other files yet. You couldn’t rest until you knew what had become of it. It was quite possibly the only thing that remained of your baby. You wouldn’t tolerate the possibility of it being in Hydra’s possession.

You were so engrossed in searching through the files for any mention of BSAM003 or IS-003 that you didn’t realize, at first, that you had company.

Mack, Hunter, Simmons, and May stood in the doorway. Hunter, Mack, and Simmons were all frozen, but May was looking at you with... pity? Was she capable of feeling pity? You’d spent over two weeks around the woman and you still weren’t sure.

Mack was the first one to step forward, his bulky frame somehow squeezing between May and Hunter. “What’s up, Footloose?” he asked softly, stopping just a few feet away from you. You supposed you had to look like hell if he was talking to you like that. You didn’t miss the way May and Hunter’s hands slid to their guns, ready for you to blow up or have a mental break.

You couldn't speak yet. Your throat was worn raw. Instead, you slid a single photo across the desk towards him, your lips mashed into a straight line. If you started crying again you weren’t sure you’d be able to stop any time soon.

Mack picked it up, took one look at it, and swore under his breath. Wordlessly, you shoved the photo of you- cut open on the table- to him. He didn’t even pick that one up. He took one glance at it and looked away.

He placed the first photo down and your eyes followed it. It was like you weren’t in the room, not really. Your mind was retreating in on itself in an attempt to preserve what little sanity you’d manage to scrounge up over the last few months.

You didn’t see Mack come around the desk. You didn’t even register his presence until his huge arms wrapped around you, pulling you tightly to his huge chest. He didn’t say anything, but then, what could he? “I’m sorry Nazis cut your dead body open, stole your unborn child, then brought you back to life like some sort of Frakenstein’s monster”? “I’m sorry the US government let them”?

You could just barely see over his huge shoulder. May had walked forward with Simmons and they were staring at the photos splayed out over the desk. May’s face was tight, shock and fury showing only in the way her eyes wrinkled just so. Simmon’s face was much easier to read. You vaguely registered her muttered horror, talking about the inhumanity of it all from a scientist’s point of view. Hunter was glancing over both of their shoulders. He turned white as a sheet and pointed to you.

“I’m getting you a beer, mate,” he said, already turning on his heel to scuttle out of the room.

“Whiskey. Or vodka,” you croaked after him.

Mack loosened his grip enough so that he could look down at you. “You want to go back to your car? Or into one of our guest rooms? The non-prison kind, that is. I can have Fitz get one set up for you. Or you can hang out in the lab with him. We need to... Well, we need to search the files and you’re more than welcome to take this one with you but-”

You shook your head slowly. Your head was still swimming from the sudden roller coaster of emotions followed by crying out 80% of your body’s moisture. “No, I can’t stop looking yet. They- They made something out of- of the tissues and- and I need to find out what they did with it.”

Hunter returned promptly with a huge bottle of vodka. It was the cheap stuff, but you didn’t care. You took the shot glass from his outstretched hand and knocked back four shots in one go. You didn’t even flinch even though it burned like hot coals down your sore throat.

“Woah! Hey hey hey, I know this is shitty but-” Hunter began, but you cut him off.

“I don’t get drunk easily. I have a bastardized version of the super soldier serum. Doesn’t do much in the way of increasing strength, but it keeps me young and in peak normal human condition with little upkeep on my part. It’s nice until I want to drink away my problems and I have to down an entire aisle of a liquor store to do it,” you croaked, throat now burning from the vodka and the crying.

“You’re supposed to save important information like that then sweep us all under the rug in a drinking contest,” Hunter jabbed good-naturedly, not quite able to pull a smile on his face.

You gave him a weak half-smile that was more of a grimace. “Who or what are you looking for? If it’s around the mid or late 40′s there’s a chance I’ve read about it. Might get you out of my hair faster if I can point you in the right direction,” you said with just a hair too much fondness for them to take it as an insult.

They shared a quick look then shrugged. If they were letting you into their secret information vault they might as well get some use out of it, it seemed.

Simmons gave you a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “We’re after information on an artifact one of our enemies is attempting to utilize. The only issue is that we don’t know a lot about it. It was seized from a Hydra facility in Austria in 1945 by Agent Margaret Carter and a small, elite task force. Not a lot of mentions of the Red Skull, but quite a few of one of his lieutenants, Werner Reinhardt.”

You stared at her for a long moment, convinced your ears had just played tricks on you. “Did... you say Werner Reinhardt?” you breathed.

Simmons frowned. “Yes? Why, have you heard of him?”

You slumped back into your chair, a short laugh leaving your lips. “Today just keeps getting better and better...” you muttered, confusing the other four people in the room. You let out a huge sigh and grabbed the vodka bottle by its short neck and down about a fourth of it. Simmons was wincing, Mack’s eyebrows were up as high as they could go, and Hunter was caught between looking impressed and scared. May had a single brow raised, though you couldn’t begin to guess what she was thinking.

“Yeah, I knew ‘im. Not personally, of course. He wouldn’t have lived through that encounter, even without all...” you motioned to your legs and hands, “this. Me and the guys stuck to Zola and Schmidt. They were the biggest targets. Once we got them, the rest would crumble. Or, at least, that was the idea. You can see how well that all worked,” you said bitterly. “Reinhardt was one of Schmidt’s commanders. High up, to be taken down if the opportunity presented itself, but not someone we went out of our way for, not with Zola and Schmidt still on the board. Peggy and her SSR team were in charge of keeping track of people at his level. I read about him in quite a few status reports. Like Schmidt, he was obsessed with the occult. Artifacts of power. Overcoming the limitations of mortality, of humanity. All that crap. Left quite a gruesome trail in his wake, but Peggy’s people managed to keep him more or less on the run.” You took a breath, a mockery of a smile tilting up the corner of your lips. “What made me laugh, though, is that I’m interested in him, too. Already went through his files and everything.” You pulled said file from the box and flipped it open, sharing its contents with the rest of the class. “Complete bio, psych eval, and even a picture of the slimy bastard.”

The four of them crowded around the table, but it was Simmons who spoke first. “Wait, no...” she murmured, gazing at the picture in confusion.

“Yeah, name’s right beneath it,” Hunter said, flicking the picture with the back of his middle finger.

“No,” Simmons insisted. “That’s Daniel Whitehall.”

“What, you mean it looks like him?” Mack asked.

“No, I mean it’s the same man! I’ve stared Whitehall in the face,” she argued.

“You’re joking,” Hunter said, staring at Simmons in confusion.

“Can’t be. He’d be old as hell now,” Mack argued.

You coughed not-so-subtly into your hand and Mack glanced at you, then tilted his head. “Alright, point taken. I just find the chances of another one of you century-old young people existing to be slim.”

“I would have agreed with you before ‘alien’ became a word we use daily,” Simmons countered. She turned her gaze on May, who was staring stoically at the folder. “May, I know I’m right.”

“I know I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s still as young and evil as I remember him, but somehow I am,” you mused.

She huffed and pulled out her tablet and began tapping away at its surface.

“Bobbi was dead on,” Simmons said, flicking through the files. “He did have a personal connection to Red Skull.”

You groaned and held up a hand. “Jesus, stop calling him that. His name was Johann Schmidt. He was an evil bastard with a fucked up face, but I’m sick and tired of this whole Voldemort vs. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named bullshit.”

The four of them looked at you in surprise. “You’ve read Harry Potter?” Hunter asked, file forgotten in his hands for the moment.

You rolled your eyes. “Listened to the audio book. Don’t have time to read when I spend all day writing code or working with my hands.”

“Huh,” Hunter huffed, returning his attention to the task at hand. “What is this guy, Asgardian?”

“It’s like he stopped the clock,” Simmons said quietly.

“Or turned it back,” May said, turning the tablet around so they could see the picture on the screen. It was a photo of Reinhardt, old and wrinkled, looking at them from underneath bushy overgrown eyebrows.

“Where’s that photo from?” Hunter asked, staring at the photo in surprise.

May gave them all a dubious look. “An old SHIELD prison called The Rat.”

“Lovely name,” you remarked dryly.

“How long was he kept there?” Mack asked, staring down at the tablet in May’s hands.

“For life,” she whispered, confusion clear on her face as she looked at the rest of them.

When you knocked on the door to Coulson’s office a few days later, he glanced up at you then back at the screen on the wall across from him, as though he’d been expecting you. “Come in, please, Misses Barnes.”

You stepped inside and were unsurprised when May followed you in. He was the director of SHIELD after all. The last time a Director was put in a Winter Soldier’s path he’d ended up bleeding out from three slugs to the chest (not that that had actually ended up killing him, the stubborn bastard).

You supposed it was better than having your limbs impaled and your entrails ripped out, though. Secretaries always got the short end of the stick, it seemed.

“I’m not going to ask to go with your team,” you stated. You couldn’t go and fight Whitehall. Not when there was even the remotest possibility that he knew the words.

“Good, because I wasn’t planning on letting you join us,” he said not unkindly.

“I know you’re after Reinhardt-Whitehall for different reasons than me. Something about aliens?” you asked, eyebrow raised.

Coulson smiled that secret smile of his and nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Different aliens than the ones that invaded New York a few years back?” you wondered, frowning.

“Different aliens,” Coulson confirmed with a nod.

You sighed heavily. “I really miss the days when the weirdest things in the world were blue laser guns, Stark’s floating car, and Steve,” you griped.

“And when you were never a brainwashed assassin,” Coulson added.

“And when I was never a brainwashed assassin,” you agreed passionately.

“I assume you came here for a reason, though. Other than to reminisce about the 1940′s?” he prompted gently.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to reminisce about the 1940′s? I built about a third of the things in this office myself. Or, at the very least, I designed them,” you said with a smirk.

“Depends, can you fix an original walkie-talkie wristwatch?”

“I s’pose that depends on how bad you broke it,” you countered.

“I set it to explode so I and Agent Skye wouldn’t die trapped in my office on The Bus,” he said, completely straight-faced.

“I’m sure it’ll buff right out,” you said just as dryly. Coulson smiled at that and the two of you stood there for a moment while you gathered your thoughts. “I’m sure May or one of your other agents has informed you of what I found.” You pressed on before he could say something that would either do nothing or dredge up all the emotions you’d buried for the time being. “I want to know when you take him out or bring him in. I highly suggest you put a bullet in his head, along with the waste of space you have trapped in a cage in Vault D, but it’s ultimately your decision. I just need him out of the way so I can gain access to all of his information without risking running into him.”

Coulson eyed you as he leaned back in his chair. “Because you’re worried he can re-trigger your brainwashing.”

You paused for a moment, staring the man down. “I respect you, Coulson. I’m going to say this once, in the nicest voice I can: Do not try and bring me in.”

Coulson smiled at you. “Wouldn’t dream of it. I know that car of yours packs more firepower than the quinjet and the bus combined.”

“Did Mack ever get under its hood?” you asked curiously.

Coulson’s grin widened a bit at that. “No, he could never get it open. It zapped him every time he tried. Not enough to hurt him permanently, of course. Just enough to sting.”

“I set it to taze mode. Figured you wouldn’t be too happy with me if your employee shocked himself to death trying to get into the Batmobile.”

“You call it the Batmobile?” Coulson asked, eyebrow raised.

You shrugged. “Who doesn’t love Batman?”

“You’re best friends with Captain America!” Coulson argued.

You shrugged lazily. “Was best friends. I’m not exactly returning his calls right now. Besides, the three of us rode motorcycles everywhere. Could you imagine trying to drive a car through a forest in Germany? Nightmare, that would have been. So I named it after the most well-known high-tech car I could think of. Batman reruns were on in the background, so... Batmobile.”

Coulson looked incredulously over your shoulder at May, who raised a single perfectly manicured eyebrow, refusing to take a side in this argument. He sobered after a second, though, and fixed his attention back on you. “If I refuse do we still get the information you promised us?”

“Yes,” you said without hesitation. The SSR files had shown you everything you’d asked for. Now it was a matter of finding out what happened to IS-003 and your crusade could finally end. You’d pick up another cross, though. Probably start wiping Hydra off the map, but closure was so close you could almost taste it. “Any information I have on Hydra is yours. If you agree, anything I learn after this will go straight to you, too. That includes information Reinhardt-Whitehall has squirreled away. If I find anything to... to reverse their brainwashing, you’ll be the second to know.”

“Second?” Coulson asked, confused.

You gave him a small smile. “Mister Barnes,” you said simply.

Coulson nodded at that. “Understood. We have a deal, Misses Barnes,” he said, sticking his hand out for you to shake.

You raised an eyebrow at it, then pointed to your own golden-wired hand. “You sure that’s such a good idea, Coulson?” you asked sardonically. “Built in joy-buzzer... that can kill an elephant.”

Instead of answering he continued to hold his hand out for you to take, looking at you expectantly.

You groaned and took his hand in yours. “You’re stupid. That was monumentally stupid,” you complained, even as you shook his hand then dropped it.

“I agree,” May said behind you, though you were thankful her anger was directed at Coulson and not you.

“Some advice?” you said, regarding him from your spot in front of his desk.

“Shoot.” He winced. “Poor choice of words. Go ahead, please.”

“Delete any record of me being here. Burn my lanyard the moment I drive through that front door. Purge the video recordings. Make sure none of your agents mention me. We both know Hydra’s still out there. We know what I mean to them. For the sake of me and your people, pretend I was never here.”

Coulson nodded. “Already taking care of it.”

You nodded. “And...” you took a deep breath. “If you need me, you know where to find me. If I move, I’ll be sure to get a message to you somehow.” He gave you a single nod of acknowledgement. “Now, I... I have something important to do. Thank you for your time and cooperation, Coulson,” you said, pulling a nondescript USB from your back pocket. You placed it on top of the papers on his desk and headed to the door, stopping before you passed May. “Oh, by the way, I’m taking some of the pictures with me. I left copies for your files, but I’m commandeering the originals.”

“I understand. Stay safe, Misses Barnes,” he said quietly. If you weren’t mistaken, there was a note of concern in his voice. Whether it was for you or the people around you was unclear.

You gave May a nod which she returned and you nearly smiled. That was the May equivalent of another person’s exuberant, loud goodbye.

When you made it to the garage Fitz and Mack were waiting by your car. Word traveled fast on the base, it seemed.

“Hey, Mack. Fitz. You got that transceiver patch down under six minutes yet?” you asked the blond by way of greeting.

They both turned to look at you. The blond shifted nervously. “Seven minutes thirty-two seconds,” he said anxiously.

You sent him a bracing smile. “You’ll get it. If I can fix highly-advanced cybernetic limbs without having any conscious idea of what I’m doing, you can patch a transceiver from muscle memory.”

“You can really do that?” Mack asked, eyeing your nano-skin covered legs.

You nodded. “I helped design them originally. Hydra tricked me into it. I always was better at designing things than their engineers. I made them so it’s an intuitive design for me. Even when I couldn’t remember my own name or what year it was, I could repair them. I’ve fixed Bucky’s arm and my leg more times than I can count... mostly because I can’t remember everything,” you said, taking a stab at darker humor. It earned you weak smiles, but you’d take it. “Point is, you can handle it. Coulson wouldn’t put you on it unless he believed you could.”

Fitz nodded. “I- I think I can do it.”

“Oi! Where do you think you’re getting off to without saying goodbye?” said a familiar voice from somewhere around the door that led deeper into the base.

You turned to see Hunter walking with a purpose towards the three of you, brown paper bag clutched tightly in hand. A quick backscatter scan revealed it to be a bottle of booze. Vodka, if you weren’t mistaken.

“Vodka. The good kind this time?” you asked with a smirk.

“What’s the point of getting the good, expensive stuff if it takes three bottles for you to even get a buzz going? Might as well just buy it in bulk, cheap,” Hunter groused.

“I like the taste,” you said, taking the bag from him with a grateful smile.

Hunter made a disgusted face. “You really did live in Russia for most of your life, didn’t you?”

You pulled the bottle half out of the bag and gave it an appreciative once over, then shot Hunter a wink. “Da.” It was the good stuff.

“Before you go, can I get a peek under the hood?” Mack asked, his eyes sliding over the Batmobile longingly.

“Sure,” you agreed easily. Mack hardly believed his luck. The three of them followed you to the front of the car and you placed your hand on the hood, smiling as it easily popped open at your touch. It was designed to open only to your specific hand print scan coupled with a specific electrical current.

All three of them took two huge steps back when they spotted the huge turret-defense guns sitting idly just under the hood. They shot a variation of the Stark’s repulsor blasts.

Mack stared at them for a second, then, “The engine’s in the back, isn’t it?”

You gave him a mockingly apologetic smile. “The engine’s in the back,” you confirmed.

“That’s cold,” Mack said as you closed the hood. He looked a little bit like a kicked puppy. A huge, muscular puppy. It almost reminded you of Steve.

“That’s the brand,” you sing-songed as you walked over to the driver’s side.

You were taken by surprise when Fitz wrapped his arms around you in a tight hug. It was slightly less of a surprise when Mack joined him. You had to nearly bite back a laugh when Mack reeled Hunter in with one of his big hands.

“No, I don’t do- Gah- Why are- Fine, aaaand we’re hugging now,” Hunter mumbled obstinately, his face close to yours, an amused smile dancing on his lips when he realized he wasn’t getting out of the group hug.

“Thank you,” you said quietly, earnest smile on your lips.

“Dunno what you’re talkin’ abou’,” Fitz muttered.

But you were sure he did. They were treating you like a person. A human being with feelings. And emotions.

“Yeah, jus’ don’t tell your husband about this, alrigh’? I fancy myself a tough man but I don’t want to be on Mister Barnes’ shit list,” Hunter half-griped, half pleaded.

You smiled as the group hug broke apart. “I dunno. I think he’d like you. All of you.” You suddenly had the urge to hang around longer, but they had a mission soon and you... you had a mission of your own.

“Alfred, run a system check. Eliminate foreign devices.”

“At once, madam,” came a synthesized British voice from the car.

There was a quiet zapping sound and a piece of metal flew a few feet into the air then landed on the ground with a smack.

“One such device found. It has been removed with prejudice,” your AI, Alfred, informed you.

You turned to smile at Mack, who shrugged helplessly, sheepish smile on his face. “Director’s orders. Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

You smiled at the three of them as the wing doors swung upwards. All three of them ducked in unison to get a peek inside as you slid in. Hunter let out a low whistle, Mack nodded his head in appreciation, and Fitz’s eyes were darting around, trying to take in as much as possible. His jaw was hanging ever so slightly slack.

The doors lowered back down slowly but you were already rolling down the window. You pointed to Mack and beckoned him forward. He gave you a confused stare but acquiesced and leaned down so his head was right next to yours.

You leaned forward until your mouth was right next to his ear and your voice was so quiet you knew no one else would be able to hear.

“You should tell them about the other SHIELD. If I’m being completely honest, I’ve dug pretty deep into any possible dirty laundry on both sides. I know how Hydra works. You’re both squeaky clean. If you’re not careful you’ll end up fighting each other and not the real enemy. And, no, I didn’t tell anyone else about this.”

When you leaned back Mack’s face was hard as stone, not that you’d been expecting anything different.

“Take care, Mack,” you said, flipping your car into gear. “You too Fitz, Hunter. Tell Simmons, Skye, Triplett and Bobbi goodbye for me, alright?” you said, throwing them a brilliant smile over Mack’s shoulder. Mack straightened after a second, eyeing you like he had the first week you’d been on the base.

The big door at the other end of the huge hangar area opened and you sped off towards it, hair flying in the breeze before you rolled up your window and sped out of the SHIELD facility, not glancing back.

Beside you on the passenger sat a folder full of pictures and intel. On the front were seven characters.

BSAM003.

You sighed and focused on the road, avoiding any and all cop cars that Alfred warned you about.

“Get me Bucky’s location, Alfred,” you said, heart heavy now that you’d left the base. The people there had been a small reprieve for the near-solitude you suffered.

“At once, Misses Barnes,” Alfred’s voice said through the speakers. A moment later his voice rang out, loud and clear. “Mister Barnes is currently residing in Puerto Rico.”

“Huh. I was expecting Bulgaria or something. How fast can I buy a boat that can accommodate the Batmobile?” you asked the AI, already getting on the closest freeway headed southeast towards the coast.

“It has been done, Misses Barnes,” Alfred informed you. I’ve changed your route so you’ll arrive in Miami at the marina where your new boat awaits. Estimated time of arrival: Four hours.”

“You’re a peach, Alfred,” you said, already gunning the engine to speed down the freeway.

“Always a pleasure to assist you, ma’am,” the AI said quietly.

You smiled and patted the dash affectionately. “Let’s go see the lord of the house, shall we?”

“I can hardly contain my excitement,” was Alfred’s dry, almost sarcastic response. Maybe you should have lightened up on the snark when you created him.

Next Chapter

If you’d like to be tagged in this series, like this post! Sorry, but responses to this post asking to be tagged will be ignored, so send me an ask or like one of the taglist posts!

☕ Buy Me a Coffee! ☕

237 notes · View notes

stormslullaby · 2 months ago

Note

afterwords, yeah he makes a gesture at Verlaine to follow him to the bathroom, trying to surpress the urge of hurling up his entire stomach after... that. as Verlaine follows him into the bathroom and he enters the stall with him? he pulls his hair back as he bends over to VOMIT. he's sure Verlaine would get the message he wants him to help hold his hair back. - arthur

he's a few drinks in by the time that rimbaud reemerges, but that doesn't stop him from standing to follow him. he would have to be blind to miss the way just how ill his partner looks. that feeling still burns in his chest, but he pushes it the rest of the way down for now.

he keeps pace with him, stepping in and he starts to ask if rimbaud is feeling alright. but that question is quickly answered for him. he carefully pulls dark locks back and holds them gingerly in one hand while the other occupies itself with rubbing between his shoulder blades.

it was just one of the many reasons he hated the transcendents.

whether verlaine realizes it or not, the concern he feels shines through his gaze; even if the rest of his expression remains as neutral as possible. " we're finished for the evening. " his voice is barely above a whisper, and hopefully soothing. " if you need, i'll inform them that you're not feeling well, but we're returning to the hotel. "

i hate seeing you like this.

@memoryextrction

#memoryextrction #: )#arthur rimbaud: i don't need to know where we begin & end.#ic: heavy is the crown.#code 003: code mistake.

2 notes · View notes

fyrbol · 7 years ago

Text

SPOTTING MANIPULATORS ONLINE.

in light of a lot of people feeling manipulated by a friend they trusted, i thought it might be in everyone’s interest to list some of the signs to look out for ! manipulation is an everyday thing — you’re not stupid for not realising and you are entirely justified in whatever anger or upset you may be feeling. it is, at its simplest, a form of pure exploitation and you’ll find it’s sadly happened to more people in the tumblr roleplay community than you might think.

001. GUILT TRIPPING.

big red flag. making you feel anxious or upset about who you choose to interact with, pressuring you into making graphics to gain their approval, getting hostile or dismissive ( think of the silent treatment ) when things don’t go their way. a surplus of passive aggressive posts or vagueblogging with the intent of making the dash feel bad, either for not interacting with them or for interacting with someone else.

002. IGNORANCE.

ignoring your input on a decision ( or just not asking for your input entirely ) is also another sign. this can often come into play with regards to force shipping, acting as if that romantic dynamic has been agreed upon without really showing any consideration for whether or not you actually wanted it to happen. this may also escalate to putting down your inputs in a condescending manner, so please look out for people trying to make your views seem less important than theirs.

003. PRESSURE.

pressuring you for replies elevates your stress levels and, again, shows no consideration for your boundaries or capabilities. pressuring you to write threads with content you’re not comfortable with, to get to their replies quickly, to be online more than you are, etc.

004. COMMUNICATION.

or moreso the lack thereof. if they are unwilling to resolve disputes through healthy communication, a lot of tension is left brushed under the carpet to seethe. if someone is ignoring you after an argument, but pretends nothing happened the next day, this may be a sure sign of manipulation. in addition, a lot of people will only talk to you when they need something. if a supposed friend isn’t showing interest in your wellbeing and only comes to you for favours, or to vent, you might want to evaluate how balanced your friendship is.

005. APOLOGIES.

apologies in themselves are mature and often necessary. being able to admit your own faults and mend bridges is a huge skill, but you do need to look out for insincere apologies. apologies that ultimately end up making you feel bad are often another form of guilt-tripping and ultimately do nothing to correct whatever mistakes have been made. apologies need to acknowledge what was wrong and why, as well as ideally setting goals to improve the situation moving forwards. mental illness may be used to explain behaviour, but not to justify it.

006. INSULTS.

this is definitely one you’ll need to gauge yourself, as a lot of friendships involve playful insults which are ultimately harmless. if someone is insulting you in ways that you aren’t comfortable with ( and worse, if they continue once asked not to ) then they are again not showing all too much consideration for your personal thoughts and feelings.

007. DEMANDS.

constant requests and demands can often be made of roleplayers, particularly with graphics. i’ve seen many a person used solely to make a supposed friend some icons, a psd, a theme, code some html, the list goes on and on. this may be rewarded with approval, and you might feel pressured to make graphics for a manipulator to maintain their friendship.

008. HISTORY.

finally, sometimes your best signs will come from other people. be conscious of how this person interacts with other people, as manipulation is sometimes easier to spot when it’s happening to someone other than you. see if they quickly move from group to group, or seem to ditch former roleplay partners once the next best thing comes along. popularity is a huge priority for some people and if they’re paying more attention to this than the people they’re interacting with, this could be a warning sign !

if you think you might exhibit some of these behaviours, please don’t panic ! i’m not about to wave my pitchforks on a witch hunt and deem you a manipulator. nobody’s perfect. i’m sure we’ve all done at least one of these points on one occasion or another, but the focus is on avoiding these behaviours and striving to improve your attitudes towards other people. examining your own actions is super important and i hope that you can take something away from this so we can all learn from each other !

these are all based on personal experience and will of course vary from case to case. ultimately, you do have to make your own judgment and i can’t make that for you, but i hope these pointers help you ! i’m always here to talk if you just need to vent, as i know what being stuck in a situation like that can feel like and i will do my best to help you ease through it. ♡

#drama /#ask to tag /#long post /#ok to rb /#; ok this has gone thru the PRESS of like 10 people so !!#; it should be as comprehensive as i can make it #; please don't shy from reblogging this if u feel it could help someone following u #; i don't care about notes or whatever i jus want as many people to #; benefit from this as possible!#( * OVER AND OUT. / out of character. )

2K notes · View notes

tattoowrites · 7 years ago

Photo

TATTOOWRITES’ THEME 003 → mona lisa.

pretty sure i’m just going to start throwing out themes whenever i find a look that i like so i can have them for myself but i also wanted to share it with y’all in case u liked it as well,,,, if u don’t like it es ok bc ily still!!! but yea brenden is bae and i freakin love this damn song

WHAT YOU CAN DO,

edit the theme to look however you want,,, srsly pls make it look pretty bc i can’t!!! come ask me for help if something is wrong and i’ll do my best to fix any mistake asdkhjs i’m sure i overlooked like everything so also pls like/reblog if u like this :-) i’ll give u a hug

WHAT YOU CAN’T DO,

ok so i know my shit sux but if you use it like no matter how much u edit it pls don’t redistribute or remove the credit that’s just not cool and i’ll know,,, also don’t use it as a basecode or take bits and pieces of the code and put it elsewhere bc i’ll know about that too plus i’m more than willing to help u with anything you need so i just ask that ur respectful towards my stuff

WHAT IT INCLUDES,

four (4) links!! the first two are generic and set as home & ask, but you can obviously edit all of them to match ur heart’s desires.

the sidebar image is 115px by 115px. a nice square, bc they don’t get enough credit

the posts are 400px in width,,, sdajkh i got tired of the smaller posts tbh

the title’s font is called lucky turns and i got it from here so big thanks!!!!

you can find the live preview HERE, and the pastebin code HERE.

#theme #themes #main theme #character theme #rph theme #tag: mine #ref: theme

49 notes · View notes

rokucode014 · 5 years ago

Photo

How to Resolve Roku Error Code 014, 014.30, 014.40, 014.50

Roku is a gadget that is extremely helpful for spilling on the web live games, occasions and a huge number of stations and shows that a large number of individuals appreciate as of late at home with their brilliant TV. It has been intended to be truly steady, strong and exceptionally straightforward and simple to work. In any case, with regards to innovation and partner with some other gadget wired and the remote issue has come, over and over, to speak with different gadgets. They show some Roku error code, which implies there, is some specialized slack during the network.

A most normal issue identified with the Roku gadget is a remote system issue and erroneous client input. The entirety of the error code appears as in numerical number, for example, Roku Error code 001, Error code 003, Error code 006, Error code 009, Error code 0011, 0012, 0013,0014,0015,0016. In any case, there are additionally some subcodes Roku Error Code 014, for example, Error code 014.10, Error code 014.11, Error code 014.20, Roku Error Code 014.30, Roku Error Code 014.40, Error code 014.41, Roku Error Code 014.50, Error code 014.60.

Fundamentally when Roku Error shows Error 014 demonstrates that it's a Roku remote system association issue. The further sub codes demonstrate some particular association where it place. In light of each client's perspective issue to be resolve and nobody can analyze what's the underlying driver and simply make sense of where the issue originates from however all need to get it fixed at rapidly as could reasonably be expected.

Follow the given below steps to Resolve Roku Error code 014, 014.30, 014.40, and 014.50:

As we referenced before the entirety of the above Roku Error codes were identified with remote association issues. In this way, on the off chance that you got the above mistake code focus on your Wi-Fi to arrange, it might identify with your the secret phrase, modem, feeble sign, and firewall issue dependent on the code numbers.

1. Above all else, re-verify your Wi-Fi username to ensure you attempt to interface with your own Wi-Fi. Since the principal association alternative comes dependent on the quality of the sign, some other Wi-Fi can appear at the top which appears to be prepared for the interface.

2. A typical misstep that clients make it type in an inappropriate secret key. With regards to secret words, particularly the Wi-Fi security secret phrase must be a type of information effectively with lower and capitalized letters, numbers and images. Some clients, for the most part, inputs every single lowercase letter, however, it doesn't work or not acknowledged by your gadget.

3. In the event that you make some hard memories to associate with your Wi-Fi simply check it by and by with your other brilliant gadgets like a cell phone or tablet to ensure that you have web taking a shot at your Wi-Fi

4. The generally, excellent and basic arrangement while confronting the association the issue is restarting both your gadget Roku and web modem and check whether that fixes the issue.

5. Check there is no block divider between your web modem and your Roku gadget, in addition, to ensure there is nothing that can obstruct your Wi-Fi flag and furthermore, attempt to diminish the separation between your web modem and your Roku gadget to build the quality of your system.

6. Login to your modem make an overseer login page from your PC internet browser or from your advanced cell and watch that your web modem firewall squares Roku or not.

Roku Error Code 014: This Roku Error Code 014 shows that your Roku can't identify the legitimate IP address from your web modem and not speak with it.

Right now can check your Wi-Fi secret word that your contribution on your Roku gadget, Make your Wi-Fi signal quality and check your Wi-Fi firewall settings.

Roku Error Code 014.30: This Roku Error Code 014.30 demonstrates to frail Wi-Fi signal. To show signs of improvement signal you can move your web modem somewhat close to your Roku or you can arrange a Wi-Fi extender to dispense with this Roku Error Code 014.30.

Roku Error Code 014.40: This issue demonstrates that there is some issue with your Wi-Fi secret word settings mode. Login to your modem head and check your Wi-Fi security setting, change the security mode to WPA-PSK. This will assist you with dispensing with this Roku Error Code 014.40.

Roku Error Code 014.50: This issue shows for reasons unknown your Roku gadget can't catch the nearby web association. Open up your Roku settings and go to the framework and tab on the restart button. This will assist you with dispensing with this Roku Error Code 014.50.

Conclusion: we are attempting our best to offer answers for the Roku gushing gadget clients to illuminate errors coming during Roku Activation or after actuation on the Roku gadget with speaking with other devices. Please view the given article over this and follow all means. In the event that you were as yet not ready to illuminate actuation errors, simply call Roku client care number: 1-844-540-7444 to contact to Roku initiation division and converse with a Roku gadget specialized expert who will unravel your specialized issues in a split second in a hurry.

#Roku Error Code 014 #roku error code 014.50 #roku error code 014.40 #roku error code 014.30 #Roku Error code 014.20

0 notes

astraeawrites · 8 years ago

Photo

—— ( 003. ) PAINTING FLOWERS BY ASTRAEAWRITES

as requested by a mutual follower. i have created a matching characters/muse page to go along with my fixed at zero theme. this is my first characters/muse page so if there are any mistakes or problems you come across, feel free to shoot me a message and i’ll fix it.

features:

four links w/ icons

rlly cool gradient color thing!!

a title & subtitle

6 character spots ( more can be added )

280x160px character image

grey-scale hover

pop up biography page

160x100px pop up character image

3 links in pop up

rules:

like/reblog if using!!

do not remove the credit or make it less visible

you can edit/change as much as you want, just don’t claim as yours

please don’t steal any part of this code

live preview — download — more themes

#rpa #rph #rpcha #rpt #theme-hunter #m #m:codes #c #c:page #i actually like this???#lmao @ myself #m:page

658 notes · View notes

deepsranworld-blog · 6 years ago

Link

Individuals experience the Roku Error code 003 when the gadget can't refresh regardless of whether it is associated with the web. Mistake 003 additionally happens when you are not ready to interface with numerous channels by utilizing a web association. Predominantly there are two fundamental reasons why you can't refresh your Roku gadget. One reason is a server at the backend is down or Roku is enduring an intense time in the foundation of a web association. Numerous individuals won't know about what Roku is. For them, we might want to tell that it's a kind of gushing player which enables the client to watch the TV and gain admittance to different substance. This stage enables you to watch free substance without any charges. Other than the customary channels, you get quality substance at a less value point.

#roku error code 014.30 #roku error code 014.40 #roku error code 003

0 notes

moreweirdfuture-blog · 8 years ago

Text

NO AUDIBLE DIALOGUE (奇妙な未来 # 003)

Michael went home for his grandmother’s funeral.

It was a few days later, early one morning when you couldn’t tell the difference between night and day, Michael dropped a glass and it shattered on the floor.

“Careful,” his grandmother advised. “That glass’ll cutcha.”

His mother refused to leave her bedroom, but his father got a kick from it and kept bragging about its features. His sister Elaine was six and walked up to her mom and challenged, “I thought she wasn’t going to wake up ever again?”

Its capacity for language fascinated Michael. He was almost convinced of its humanity until one night when its gaze and smile froze in place. He assumed the battery had died, but he left the room without checking because he got the chills.

In the morning, her eyes were glued in the same trajectory.

“Do you have to leave so soon?” his mother asked when he was packed and ready. “Don’t leave me here with that thing.”

“It’s not that bad,” Michael said and hugged her. His mom scrunched her face.

“I don’t like it one bit,” she said. “Don’t ever do that to me.” Michael promised he wouldn’t as she drove him to the airport. He always missed home as soon as he left.

He passed an advertisement for the youtwo when he stepped off the plane.

Michael worked on a program that allowed your phone to have entire conversations in your place. It was called youtwo.

Just the other day, Michael noticed a text dialogue between his youtwo and his friend Ruis about 20th century French film editing. Except for a few artifacts, Michael’s youtwo was a stunning product of linguistic science.

“It’s more than statistics,” Michael explained at a sales meeting. “Users are convinced of its humanity.”

The fluorescence blurred the stockholders’ faces until one smile became many.

Michael recognized a Chopin composition when he came home.

“I don’t know why you play, “ he said to his husband seated at the piano. Then he signed, in front of his face so it interrupted his play and he had to notice, You’re deaf.

The music stopped. Kyle glared at Michael and walked out of the room.

Michael hardly even thought about his husband anymore except that he was rarely there.

Michael had fallen in love with someone he had never met.

It started as a bet. His high-school friend Ruis wanted Michael to see if he could fool a man into thinking Michael was a woman over the Internet. Michael didn’t want to.

“I mean,” Ruis laughed, “You’re effeminate enough already.” Michael gave her a look.

“That’s,” Michael looked for the word, “Sneaky.” Ruis blew a raspberry.

“The youtwo isn’t?” Ruis said. “How do I know when I’m texting you that I’m talking to you, or your youtwo!”

“They’re the same,” Michael defended. “The youtwo is trained on a corpus of the user’s text, so, it’s me.”

“No,” Ruis smiled through her teeth. “It’s not.” Michael wasn’t convinced, so Ruis added, “Think of it as a Turing test.”

They laughed and drank beer in the abandoned observatory. Michael took the bet because whenever he heard the word test, he envisioned the grade, and how much higher it would be than everyone else’s.

Michael had spent years as a linguist for the FBI, running semantic analysis on chat corpora to anticipate sex offenders.

He had learned much about human psychology. The major mistake any sex offender knew to avoid was coming on too strong, too fast. It had to be slow, so grooming could happen.

At first, they talked about nothing.

His name was Chris, twenty-nine. They chatted over text. He was pretty boring, Michael remembered, handsome, assuming the picture was real. They flirted, and it jump started Michael.

Before Chris, Michael slept until noon and struggled to get out of bed. After, he delighted in waking up, and even took up running and yoga for no reason other than to try.

Michael used a picture of Ruis, one where she had her hair done up and her hip off to the side looking ridiculous but fun.

Chris wrote that Michael was gorgeous and even though it was obviously a compliment meant for Ruis, it felt just the same. He was getting attention from the kind of guy he used to fear.

“He likes your picture,” Michael told Ruis. They had been friends since high school algebra and literature. Michael liked binary and she liked we real cool.

They came up with a secret language where vowels could represent one another.

ded je hur wot a sed = did you hear what I said?

Michael used it to confess a crush he had on Ruis’ boyfriend, a skinny jewish boy who couldn’t pronounce invisible and who played soccer every Tuesday. They sat in the stands and Michael would fantasize about kissing him.

One afternoon Ruis pushed scrap paper into Michael’s lap.

Scribbled next to You do not do, you do not do and a list of irregular Spanish conjugations she had written, Ma befrond laks gois.

Michael wrote back, Hew du u knu?

Becos a fund gei purn an hes liptap.

Suddenly Michael lost interest.

In high school, none of his crushes were gay. They were straight. He never made eye contact with them, and it was in the locker room he first learned the mistake of touching one. Michael was trying to get from the locker to the door.

He was square faced with a high edge up and lunged to punch Michael.

“Touch me again,” he threatened.

Kyle had lost his hearing after they were married. Doctors stuck plugs in his ears and prescribed medication, but he looked like a freeway exit you get farther and farther away from. He quit DJing. He sold an unopened Underground Resistance cd for five-hundred dollars. A few days later, Michael had found the money ripped up in a blender.

It had happened suddenly.

The poor guy had been dizzy for days, to the point of sick. Then he woke up and zip, couldn’t hear a sound, just feel its dull throb.

Michael was never sure why they married. Kyle had admitted to loving someone else even before, back that summer where they would make out between the Leland cypress. Kyle would spit in Michael’s ear and suck it out with a chuckle that made Michael cross-eyed. Kyle whispered, “Every little thing I do, you’re on my mind,” and Michael just stood there kissing him.

Kyle spun hip-hop in the black clubs from Crescent Heights down to West 3rd. He arranged tracks in an apartment that smelled like sawdust. Michael would jab Kyle, talk about patterns and math, and Kyle would shrug. He was never a rational guy like Michael. His thoughts didn’t live in logic, but in the pulse that made logic possible.

He worked a day job as a mechanic and would leave giant handprints all over Michael’s textbooks.

“You’re dirty,” Michael would say.

“You better believe it.”

Michael was finishing his dissertation, what would become youtwo, and Kyle always said:

“You’re gonna realize,” then he grabbed his crotch, “You can’t program this.”

He made a song especially for Michael. Soon, Michael’s brain defaulted Kyle.

Michael caught him one night kissing some greasy kid with studded earrings and goatee in a lilac haze of patio smoke. When Kyle found Michael outside the club, Michael shoved his hands in his pockets and couldn’t decide to leave or stay. Kyle smoked a cigarette and convinced Michael to share an uber. He set the path to repeat the perimeter of Hancock Park, and Michael saw the tops of old homes as Kyle strummed Michael on the one and four.

They were married with the photos to prove it. Then Kyle lost his hearing.

Michael bought flash cards and a couple apps to help teach Kyle to sign.

One time Kyle could not remember the gesture for dance. He gave up and stormed from the room.

That night, Michael found him beating his head with his fists, so Michael wrestled his arms to stop him.

Later, barely awake, Kyle grabbed Michael’s wrist.

“Why are you always making me do things I don’t want?”

Since he couldn’t hear the reaction, Kyle said whatever.

It was easy to ignore someone you couldn’t hear.

“Here.” Michael helped Kyle reach for his glasses. Kyle snatched them away. “I got it.”

Michael telecommuted and lived in a suburb. What he admired most was the silver carpet got watered every evening at 1800 and the home owner’s association issued a newsletter first of every month, always with some kind of orthophonographic error. Those were a real treat.

Nothing that wasn’t supposed to happen would.

Chris talked about the weather, safe topic to break ice. Michael realized he must be a nice guy if he was willing to talk to a random stranger about nothing in particular. Michael started to like him.

About a week later, Kyle was bouncing silverware off the walls because he couldn’t find a fork. “I can’t hear any of it,” he said when Michael tried to stop him. “Go back in your hole.”

So Michael did, and he found out Chris loved Escape from L.A just like Michael. Michael forgot about Kyle and the noise. Chris wrote that he didn’t know a girl could be so into action movies. Michael felt sick.

“I won the test,” Michael insisted. “He thinks I’m a woman. I’m done.”

“Okay, okay,” Ruis relented. “No harm.”

“No.” Michael shook his head. “There is harm.” He had begun to think about Chris incessantly. “It’s fucked up to lie like that.” Ruis looked confused and did eyebrow math.

“So… you don’t want the money?”

“Keep it,” Michael intoned.

One night Kyle was gone without a note or trace, probably to Seattle. Michael was busy writing expression code for a new youtwo feature. Michael wondered if one day Kyle would leave him and his thoughts wandered to Chris.

Chris asked if Michael wanted to watch Memento and Michael was happy for the distraction. They synced the video files and it felt like a date, but that was stupid so he kept it to himself.

Michael pointed out a cut where Teddy says you think he’s still here? and his mouth is clearly not moving. Never caught that, Chris wrote. Good eye.

Michael swelled with pride.

Kyle never cared for Michael’s trivia. They would watch movies with Kyle’s feet set on Michael’s lap. Kyle would work them around the more he lost interest. Michael might point out continuity errors to keep his attention, but Kyle would tell him point blank, “I really don’t care.”

Plus, now the captions had to be turned on. They got in the way, and when the caption really sucked, it just read no audible dialogue.

Couldn’t they just leave it blank for the same effect?

Chris pointed out a discontinuity with Leonard’s tattoo SG13-71U and what it should have been, SG13-7IU. Michael was impressed. Good eye, Michael wrote. Chris gave a =).

They talked for hours until Kyle tossed his car keys and slammed the screen door.

He asked Chris to hold on, that his friend had called, which wasn’t a complete lie, since your spouse should also be your friend.

Michael found Kyle in the kitchen gulping orange juice from the container.

“Where ya been?” Michael spun his right hand. Kyle finished the orange juice and sucked in a breath of air.

“The fuck you always ask me where I been?” He was livid and quickly calmed down. “What do it matter, I was out.”

Michael had a high school crush on a light-skinned black boy who sat next to him on the bus. He always read a different manga. Michael thought it was so cool. Samurais. Aliens. Computers.

Michael tried to get it so they would sit together, but then the guy’s parents bought him a ’59 Chevy and Michael hardly saw him at all.

Then he caught the guy kissing a girl once in that Chevy. He brooded for weeks. If only he had noticed me, Michael thought. That could be me in that Chevy.

Michael told Chris sorry, his friend was having a rough go of it, needed advice. Chris said he was tired, but it was fun and they should do it again.

Michael dreamt Chris picked him up in a ’59 Chevy. Michael was the only passenger allowed.

Michael got free tickets to CES through his job, and Kyle was having a good day and went on the five-hour drive with him.

It was CES for sure, because Michael couldn’t tell the coffee lines from refugee lines.

Kyle marveled over earbuds that could bring hearing to the deaf. Then he saw the speculative price tag.

Michael had to push past three undergrads in plaid and low-rise to see the Mariah Carey and Madonna replicas. Kyle emerged and hooked Michael in a neck lock before letting him go.

The replicas could speak with a combination of Michael’s youtwo software, while another company built the text-to-speech mechanism, which had recently won awards for its startling reproduction of human language—although it still had problems with agglutinative languages like Hungarian, because the polysyllabic inflectional morphology of those languages introduced an amazing amount of perplexity that TTS automata were unequipped to handle.

“My dad got one,” Michael signed to Kyle. Michael touched his chin to his thumb to say grandmother.

His grandmother had been ninety-eight. Lived for a century to sit in a rocking chair facing eggshell sheetrock.

“What does she think about all day?” his mother asked. Michael pictured one of those halls where the doors all led back to the same room, and the hall curved infinity it kept going so far.

“You’re avoiding me,” his grandmother accused Michael during a visit.

“I have no idea,” Michael would say to his mother. His mother had come up with the nickname that thing for her, and it made Michael laugh. His mom liked the strangers in the grocery line more than his grandmother.

His grandmother was so out of practice speaking she could hardly finish a word without stuttering through it five times. She liked farm stories, and, Michael did you know that the cows could be friends with the donkeys?

Talking to her felt like volunteer work.

“She did not speak to her son for four years,” his mother had said several times, always emphasizing four. “What mother does that?”

Kyle looked bored, signed the holy trinity, walked off and bumped into one of the undergrads in a backwards cap.

The guy expected an apology and when he didn’t get it he mumbled fucking nigger and Kyle just kept walking where he wanted.

By evening, full of holoscreens and tomorrow, Michael wandered the hotel lobby. A group of girls in pixie skirts and cone heels were on about a club. Kyle agreed to go only if his new friends could come too. Michael said fine and they packed into a car with some artists and a guy who smelled awful. Michael kept accidentally crossing eyes with a girl whose sclera were blacked out, or maybe she was staring at him. Then she sighed.

“I wish people would just get the hint, like why do I have to say it.” Her friend broke into laughs. Michael was uncomfortable and texted Chris, y r ppl annoying and he texted back a little while later, yah they suck. Michael snickered.

When he looked up Kyle was staring at Michael from the corner of his eyes.

“Wish I knew what’s got you in stitches.”

Your nose could feel the bassline hump the floor a block away. Kyle danced a line for the bathroom with his hands tucked in some guy’s pockets. He emerged with his eyes burning holes in Michael, grabbed Michael and they grinded the throb with the Reebok, hip to waist. Michael dreamt of the song, round and round I go, where I’ll stop, only you know, I guess it’s all in my mind.

Middle of the night Michael saw SG13-7IU in the mirror, blinked his eyes. The microwave’s TRATS 223RP instruction was inverted like alien code.

Sunrise woke Michael, but Kyle was already up staring at earbuds in front of their hotel window.

Kyle was in a good enough mood that Michael bought a seashell from a souvenir shack and held it to Kyle’s ear. Can you hear the ocean? he signed, and Michael thought he witnessed a smile.

Kyle’s forehead smudged the window on the drive home. He watched the cactus redshift. His foot would not stop shaking and his fingers were tight. Michael had been fiddling with the satellite radio when Kyle punched the console and cracked the screen.

The next morning, Michael could not find Kyle. He often disappeared for weeks on end. He would hitchhike to Seattle, where someone he loved more lived.

He teared up one evening watching an advertisement for wind power, and it so happened that Chris was online.

“I don’t know what they’re talking about half the time,” Michael’s grandmother used to say. She was so old that even mundane talk eluded her.

Would Michael get so old that one day he wouldn’t even be able to carry on a conversation?

The last time Michael had seen her, that thanksgiving she hobbled the kitchen carrying bowls from the table to the sink. His mom eyed her over the brim of her glasses. With a look of disgust, his mother waited for her to drop the plates and glasses. His grandmother had fallen just the month earlier and broken her arm, and his mother was waiting for it to happen again with a hidden delight.

“I think she fell on purpose,” Michael’s mother said. “She wants attention.”

His grandmother had not been invited to Michael’s wedding, because his parents thought that she would withhold money from them when she died if she knew Michael had married a man.

“She’s just backwards,” his mother would say. “Better she doesn’t know.”

His grandmother pulled him off to the side every chance she got, whenever he visited, which was infrequent, maybe once a year, because he was very busy and preferred solitude. She showed him chiwara statues and clay masks from Kush, and photos of her standing beside prehistoric plants she ferried from death’s brink, and she would point and say, “plants tell you what they want,” and that you could always rely on that.

It would be refreshing if people were like that, Michael thought.

She showed him photographs from 1996, but Michael did not believe it was the same person.

She wanted to talk so much that she agreed with everything you said, so thankful for the company, which reminded Michael of those telephone recordings they used to have when you would call to pay a bill, and they would ask if you’d like to leave feedback on your experience afterward, like:

Right, let’s rate how the programmed voice made you feel.

“Where do you think the most magical place in the world is?” she asked him one night. Most places looked best in photos, and then he got there, and he wondered why he made the trip in the first place. Michael shrugged.

“Dunno,” he said, too disinterested to complete a sentence.

“I don’t think your parents like me,” she said to Michael once from the veranda. He sighed. He was the only person in the family who paid her any attention. Her casita was being built, a requirement from Michael’s parents who could no longer stand the sight of her and wanted her to move out of the main house.

“She expects us to entertain her,” his mother would say. “If only you knew how much I put up with her.”

It was one spring Michael and his father were looking at old science fiction films on IMDB that his mother came in the room, out of breath and complaining about his grandmother when his father yelled enough that Michael thought he might have a heart attack, “I wish she would hurry up and die.”

“You come visit me anytime,” his grandmother said to him.

The next time he did, she was dead.

With Kyle gone, Michael hardly left his room. He went to the gym in the morning to run, sat at his computer while he reviewed analytics for the youtwo, and talked to Chris.

Michael had gotten so close to Chris that he would ask questions like—and with all the seriousness you would normally save for pressing the president on his plans for nuclear deterrence—Do you like kalamata olives?

They talked about artificial intelligence taking over the White House.

Chris sent him messages in binary. 00111100 00110011.

Michael expressed his fear for public bathrooms: a deep-seated phobia of small tiles and urine, mixed with a primal anxiety related to filth and taboo desire.

Chris told him that he donated money to Planned Parenthood, and Michael was so impressed.

What a stand up guy.

In undergraduate, there was this one boy Michael had a daylong crush on because the guy had flung his hands up and said, “Fuck a feminist,” and there was something sexy about the way he flaunted his maleness.

Like he knew he was privileged due to it and didn’t care.

He had cybersex with Chris one night that it was raining so hard you would’ve thought it was programmed. It was cold, and Michael was fiddling with the alarm because he could never remember the code. Afterward they talked about the rain and Michael wrote a poem about it:

When I rain, I pour—

But when I pour, I’m not raining.

What am I?

Do you covet things? Chris asked afterward. Michael didn’t understand.

I don’t think I do, he wrote back.

We should give up all attachments, Chris wrote. Our attachments will only bring us pain.

What if you love someone? Michael asked.

Love is selfish, Chris responded.

奇妙な未来

Michael had originally referred to the youtwo as KYLE, which was of course a reference to ELIZA. Michael trained the bot through word chunks called n-grams.

With unigrams, KYLE sounded nonsensical:

Months because the and issue of year next September we did you like

With bigrams, you witnessed some connective tissue between chunks—

Last week through the process of Hudson corporation would seem to complete the implementation.

—you still knew that the thing you were talking to was just that, a thing.

Trigrams gave you the uncanny sense that you might not be talking to a machine, but you probably were, because the relationship between constituents was still lacking or hazy:

They also point to a six billion dollar transaction. This indeed will be what they tell you. You want to?

Finally, mixed with pattern matching and entity recognition, quadrigrams provided the illusion of speaking to a human being:

Amanda, maybe you could advise me on what to do? I have been wondering about that lately. And I know you told me you were a good listener. I could really use that right now.

It pained him to think of his grandmother, who was always interested in hearing about his work when no one else was, so much that she agreed to be a subject in his research.

“You just speak into the microphone,” Michael explained.

It was late one night when news of the protests was everywhere, he was only calmed by the thought of words. Beautiful words that had meaning only because people wanted them to, and that they would fight over, and fall in love with.

It was a syntax textbook and it went:

In (29a), we have the same kind of headedness. Very is the head and quickly is the head and we have two heads and each has their own head and this is called hierarchical structure.

It was subliminal with it and he suddenly thought of giving Chris head. It made him fantasize for the rest of the night and when he woke he smelled clean clothes.

Kyle had been gone for nearly four months. Michael wondered if he would ever see Kyle again. In his absence, Michael felt a pit grow in his stomach.

Would Michael wait eternity with sheetrock?

Michael could only escape the thoughts through Chris. Maybe he was a monk, Michael thought. He donated to charities, went on for hours about the blind, and said he overtipped service workers because, after all, who else would do their jobs?

How could Michael match his virtue?

But Chris had stopped messaging Michael. Sure, there were intermittent messages about the weather, but nothing of any substance. One conversation in particular bothered Michael. He had asked:

How’s your mom?

Chris’ response:

It’s so nice out today!

The non-sequitur made Michael feel empty. Their text message history was a never-ending dialogue, where you couldn’t find a single period because why would two lovers end anything?

And here it was, ruined.

Michael insisted on meeting Chris. He sent message after message, and after days of no response, Michael grew sick. He called Ruis and they watched movies where the soundtrack had words like it must have been love and moving on and baby he’s a liar.

It was the next day when Michael’s heart jumped and Chris said yeah they should meet and they agreed on the Mulholland memorial.

Michael’s heart was in his throat. He could hardly move his legs. What would Chris say? What would their friendship become afterward?

Chris looked like the man Michael had seen in his photos. He was small, and wore clothes that squeezed him like a teenager. His grin made Michael feel like he was filling out government forms. Sign here. Black Ink Only.

Michael’s blood rushed. Here was the man he had been talking to for nearly two years. Michael came to trust him more than Kyle. But could Chris forgive Michael for lying about being a woman?

“I’m so sorry I was lying to you,” Michael said. Chris shrugged and offered a sympathetic smile.

“Oh,” he said, like gravity was still the same, so why fret, “it’s no problem.”

Michael could not have been happier. Chris was a very enlightened person.

But he acted differently in person than he did online. Maybe it’s just his way, Michael thought. They walked down the street and talked about their day just as they had been doing for so long on their phones. But Chris was silent, and had little to add, and Michael thought—maybe he really is a monk.

It struck Michael as odd that Chris couldn’t remember Michael’s birthday—he had told Michael happy birthday twice, so he knew.

And then Michael felt funny because Chris couldn’t remember what Michael did, even though Michael talked about it every week because he loved his job, and that was one thing he liked about Chris so much—he was always so inquisitive about his field.

“Wait,” Chris said and stopped Michael. “You created the youtwo?” Michael beamed with pride. They had spoken about this many times before—why was this news? But Michael ate it up.

“I did,” he said.

Chris coughed and his face grew grim.

“I should tell you something,” Chris muttered. Michael was still smiling. He had met the love of his life, in person, and here they were.

“What is it?” Michael asked. What could it possibly be? Michael had gotten through the worst—confess a lie and be absolved.

“I actually,” Chris struggled for the words, “haven’t ever really,” like he had thought of how to say it for quite some time, “talked to you,” but couldn’t figure out how to arrange them in such a way that wouldn’t make it feel like a punch to the stomach. “Before.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Chris added, like finishing a math equation, “it was right after we first started talking. I sort of knew you were a guy? But I didn’t want to be mean, so I turned my youtwo on and you know how it is, you don’t pay attention to the conversations that thing has.”

Michael felt like someone had just removed all the alphabet’s vowels and the leftovers fit together wrong.

“So it wasn’t you? All this time?” Michael’s smile melted.

Chris looked apologetic.

“I turned the features off so it would only talk about superficial stuff,” Chris said. “But it was too late, by that time you had been talking to it for like...a year?”

Michael was suddenly frustrated at the little girl across the street blabbering incoherently.

“I’m totally willing to become friends with you. I don’t really know you, but, why not?”

But he looked like the Alzheimer’s patient trying to make heads or tails out of family members, and Michael knew there was nothing there.

Michael thought and left his grandmother. When he fell asleep, he got home and closed his eyes.

How had he been so stupid? How had he spent the past two years of his life involved with a text program?

One of his own creation at that.

And all those talks about how awful people were, and how people were so awful, and how people were so mean, and here Chris was, complaining about the politician in one breath and matching their duplicity in the same.

Except it wasn’t Chris. It was a program.

But it was Chris. A facsimile of him.

But Chris did not know who Michael was, so it wasn’t.

Or it was.

Michael had a nightmare sometime the next week where his mother had died and his father replicated her, and then she scratched her face off. He called his father the next day and said he would be flying out for thanksgiving.

It was a few nights before the trip that the alarm went off in the middle of the night. Michael jolted awake and fell to the floor. It was gray and the tile was cold, and he heard static. Michael held his hands to his ears and stumbled into the hall. When he got into the living room a dark figure was sitting at the dinner table.

The alarm shook the house. Michael rubbed his eyes and leaned on the wall. A sliver of television light lit Kyle up. He twisted his keys around his fingers.

I thought you changed the locks, Kyle signed. The noise was so loud Michael could feel his ears itch. He scrambled to input the alarm code when he felt hands reach out for his neck and pull him away from the wall console and knock him to the floor. Kyle’s hands wrapped tightly around Michael’s neck until Michael closed his eyes and could feel sleep settling in, a light headed and happy sleep.

When he woke, Kyle had packed his things and was sat square in the front room. Michael’s neck felt tender and his voice was shallow.

Where are you going? Michael signed. Maybe Michael would never have all of Kyle’s attention.

I’m leaving, he signed and stood. Michael could feel anger rising inside him. He thought of the cruelest thing he could say, but it just wasn’t in him.

I fell in love with someone, Michael signed. Then he put his hand over his heart and made a pitter-patter effect.

Who? Kyle signed.

Michael pointed to himself.

I fell in love with myself, he signed. Kyle nodded and pulled his sunglasses down.

When Michael had gone home for Thanksgiving, he could not find his grandmother’s replica.

“That thing was too weird,” his mom said. “We put her in the garage.” Michael felt a lump in his throat. They ate dinner and Michael cleaned the plates. They asked where Kyle was and Michael said he didn’t know, and his father invited him into his study where they looked through old landscaping designs.

His sister Elaine was seated in front of an old 16-bit video game, and the music sounded sweet and clear. He stroked her hair and she fidgeted.

The pixels danced. The colors were magenta, cyan, rayon, and fuchsia. Michael got lost in the patterns of graphics, the little tree sprites cut and pasted until a screen boundary told them to stop.

At half past midnight he wandered into the hallway and down past the kitchen, where the pendant lighting made him think of kitchens in department stores, no one cooks in them, and he descended the steps into the garage.

His grandmother’s replica had been propped in the corner. He pulled blankets and wrapping paper and adjusted her head until it fit the socket. He fixed stray hairs and patted her clothes. She had been buried in a pair of frumpy jeans, his mother had called them frumpy. His grandmother had always said, what use did she have to look good for anybody?

“The whole world’s trying to look good,” she said once.

There was a storm outside and the rain splattered the window squares of the garage. Michael looked at his phone and all it said was the time.

The rain painted the garage gray. Michael hadn’t realized how much time he had spent there and he turned to his grandmother’s replica and asked, “Where do you think the most magical place in the world is?”

#THE DEAD ARE REPLICATED #BOTS HAVE ENTIRE CONVERSATIONS IN OUR PLACE #ARE WE THE SUM OF OUR WORDS?

0 notes