#cursor mania

[lemoocado]

computer virus gijinkas  💻 

[kickassclefable]

[muddlemore]

how is there no modern safe version of cursor mania :o(

[spaghettiwolf]

Happy memories to me, age 9, being lectured by my dad for downloading Cursor Mania

[isekaisyouwithmyforearmlaser]

ok i did install cursor mania onto the family computer laptop but in my defense i was trying not to make it look lame-o as fuck

[altf4dotwav]

DISPATCH_2

It's sort of common for some people with trauma to say "I wish I never felt ever again," or something to that effect. To never feel an emotion again sometimes would solve almost all of my immediate issues. No more anxiety to disable me. No depressive thoughts. Nothing. I would just float on from one year to the next in ignorant bliss.

I always said that I felt things more intensely than others. One of my best friends is like that too. I remember he was talking about something that really hit him hard and why he reacted the way he did to it. He said, "I'm just a giant pussy," but in a way that meant he owned that. He *is* a giant pussy, like myself, in the way that he is aware that he feels emotions and is effected by them. It was something that I hold onto till this very day. Yeah, I'm a huge giant dripping pussy of emotions. And I'm okay with that. It keeps me from feeling like I never want to experience emotions. It grounds me by reminding me that a person I love dearly can feel the same way as I do sometimes, but they own it and I can too.

Feeling happy is bittersweet. For a long time, I always thought happiness was just a small treat for living life. You got small moments where you're happy, but the rest of life is miserable. And it's hard now to look back and see if I've ever really been happy in my life. I grew up in rough conditions at times and I'm a victim of child abuse. I've been homeless 3 times across the span of my life. I didn't date until I was 19. I've tried to end my own life too many times to count. How do I feel like I could ever be happy if all I've ever known is the worst possible outcome besides death?

What happens when your brain can manufacture that feeling of happiness? How do you know that the joy you're feeling is real or just a symptom?

Mania is a terrifying force while also, ironically, being one of the best feelings in the world. It's almost euphoric. You laugh the hardest at all the jokes and feel uplifted and motivated. There isn't a drug in the world that'll make you feel as good as pure Mania does. You're invincible.

But you're also irrational, easily angered, mean, impulsive. It only takes a small transgression to switch to a Monster. You lash out and hurt others desperately to bring them down to the near bedrock that is your level. You fall off the top of the mountain into a ravine. You end up in a broken pile of anger and impulsive thoughts at the bottom.

YOU MADE ME DO THIS LOOK AT WHAT YOU MADE ME DO THIS IS YOUR FAULT I DID THIS BECAUSE OF YOU BLAME GAME

My Word document closes and the Transmission application pops up in its place. OUT is in grey but IN is pulsing slowly, begging me to click on it. I do and I'm taken to an MSN email box. A single email greets me with the title CLAIM YOUR FREE GIFT!!!!!!!! The mouse cursor hovers over it, my instincts screaming at me to exit out of the window. I click it anyway. There's only one sentence in the body of the email:

EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT READY FOR THE DAY, IT CANNOT ALWAYS BE NIGHT

I look up from the monitor of the computer, startled by the woosh of a fireplace coming to life suddenly from across The Room. The bright orange and yellow light of the dancing flames have lit up The Room enough so I can see its entirety.

It's a bare room with only the desk, my chair, the fireplace, and a picture of a helicopter hanging completely square on the wall opposite from the desk. Under the picture is a sturdy dark wooden door. The handle is gone and a bar welded across the middle let me know the door is basically decoration at this point. The walls are a pale eggshell white with tiny cracks near the top, spiderwebbing out upwards towards the black and infinite chasm of what should be a roof. The Room is small and circular like I'm at the top of a lighthouse, only the windows have been walled over by a slumlord.

A Jenga puzzle of old but pristine wooden planks make up the floor. The old wood had warped and settled over decades, creating small canyons between some boards. By the fireplace, I notice a big cardboard box labelled "TO HELIPORT" stamped on the side is now visible. For the first time since I've been aware of this Room, I feel compelled to get up to see what is inside the cardboard cube.

I'm not even aware of how I got to the box by the time I'm standing in front of it; as if an edit was made between me getting up from the chair and walking a short distance.

The top of the box has a fine layer of dust on it and is sealed with clear packing tape. A box cutter is sitting on top of the tape, taunting me. I feel my heart pick up as my hands start to shake. What is going on? Why am I scared?

YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID 3 TIMES YOU FAILED EVERY TIME NOW YOU'RE ONLY LEFT WITH SCARS OF EMBARASSMENT MARKINGS OF WEAKNESS LINES OF SHAME YOU BLAMED IT ON HER YOU ARE A MONSTER

With the swipe of a hand, I slap the knife into the fire off the top of the box like I was angrily shooing away a fly. The knife flies off the box and lands directly into the fireplace with a burst of embers as it hit the logs. Dust flies up into the air in the aftermath like dull glitter celebrating my beautiful display of hand-eye coordination. Pride washes over me, not only for eliminating this perceived threat of the knife, but also by the aim of the swat. I do a small fist pump.

I realize now that I'm also anxious about the contents of this box. Gently grabbing the sides, I try to lift the box slowly to judge its weight. To my surprise, the box is very light and feels like it's completely empty, but the feeling of something small and flat sliding around told me otherwise.

I set the box down and push the sides in that are at each end of the stretch of tape holding the box together. As both sides come in, it creates enough space for my finger to get in and rip the tape off cleanly. My hands have done this many times and I didn't even realize it was happening until I set the box down.

Dust swirls around in the light of the fireplace as I look at the cardboard square in front of me. I lift the flaps up to find a small electronic device sitting at the bottom. It's black and square with a small screen taking up the top third of the body. A circle dominates the last two thirds under the screen. On the top is a tiny switch on one side and a hole on the other with a wire plugged into it that splits off in two at the end.

It was an iPod.

The metal back of the mp3 player was cold in my hands as I picked it up. The headphones dangled like stiff and dirty strands of hair while I stared at the electronic device in my hand.

This is Mine.

I push the middle of the circle pad and the screen glows to life. My hands know exactly what to do with the iPod as my thumb scrolls through the system to find out what is on this thing. I get to the Artists section and scroll through a list of bands that activate the pleasure centers of my brain. It felt like I scrolled for a lifetime by the time I got to the end. Nothing stood out to me so I went back to see if there were any videos.

There was only one file labeled "themanwhosoldtheworld.mp4" in the Videos folder. This can be either a killer David Bowie song Past Me must have loved or another bit of information on just what the fuck is going on here. I make sure to check out the earbuds to see if they're nasty, and put them into my ears. With a satisfying *click* of the middle button, the video starts playing on the tiny screen.

Static of white noise and the bustle of people could be heard. It looked like the video was shot in a supermarket. The camera pans down, looking into a large, long freezer of various frozen bags of food. Suddenly, the camera stops and whips upwards to a woman's face. The camera person shouts excitedly, "FWENCH FWIES??" to which the woman responds just as excited with "FWENCH FWIES?!?!?!?!" Her face immediately gives me goosebumps, in a good way. She loves me.

Cut to black

A new video starts

The camera is pointing towards a sliding glass door and still. Behind the glass is a wooden porch where two people sit on stools, Me and another man. The porch is elevated, meaning we're on the second floor. We're both dressed in basketball shorts and hoodies on a beautiful fall day. I have a bong in my hand while we're both laughing. There's a cat in a hammock stuck to the glass by suction cups. A dog sits between Me and My Friend, her face blank with pure joy as she looks between us. My heart swells with emotion as my entire relationship with this man flashes before me. These images flick by on the screen for just moments, but I recognize every one of them. Us hugging on a porch while My Friend cries on my shoulder. In a van with desolate winter flying past us as we talk about everything. A kitchen of a fast food restaurant bustles with movement as the two of Us work back to back, talking shit to each other. Us together at a concert, singing in tandem with our other friends to every song. He's the first person who made me feel valuable in my existence. This person also loves me.

Cut to black

THIS IS WHAT MATTERS HOW CAN YOU GIVE THIS UP HOW COULD YOU EVEN TRY THIS IS LIFE AREN'T YOU GLAD YOU'RE HERE

I pull the earbuds out of my ears and look up. I'm back in the chair at the computer and my head feels like it's made of clam chowder. There's an immense pressure behind my forehead as my vision goes black.

My eyes open and I realize I'm facedown on the keyboard with drool leaking out of my mouth. I groan and blink my eyes for a few moments, realizing I don't have enough strength to lift my head or straighten my back to get off this keyboard. Hell, I can't even lift my arms up from dangling next to me like wet noodles. Even if I could, there's no way I could muster the power to push myself off the desk. Tears drip out of my eyes as I feel helpless and weak slouched over the computer. I understand what's happening after a moment and I settle in as I wait for the strength to come back to my body. I'm left with my thoughts the entire time and wish I never felt anything ever again.

The computer makes a short error noise that startles me out of my haze. I drag my eyes up to see if anything has changed on the monitor since I last checked. There's a Word document open that says:

GET TO WORK WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW WHEN YOU'RE DONE HIT SAVE DISPATCH WILL RELAY MESSAGE GOOD LUCK CHOOSE LIFE

A new document opens with the file name Dispatch_2 and a prompt at the top of the clean white digital page:

Have you ever felt happy?

I smile and laugh at how ironic this prompt is as I slowly lift my head up from the keyboard. A snail trail of slobber followed my face up as I fix my posture in the chair to be upright. After a lot of groans and heavy breathing, I'm able to put myself into a position to type.

And I start writing what I know.

It's sort of common for some people with trauma to say "I wish I never felt ever again," or something to that effect.

[jeannebserhal]

You had to be there

[castleinthemist]

more on this game actually: real good sledding mechanics. Took a bit to grasp but like "physically" made sense. As someone unfamiliar with snow (never seen it) the bleak almost foggy expanses of the ice flats was kinda horrifying in that way i can only assume people whoare unfamiliar with it get when they see the ocean...

genuinely some cool stuff going on with the presentation - like i said, jumpcuts yay! used here in a first person horror game they work pretty well to unsettle. and there's some changes in presentation at points to keep it from feeling stale. Actually as a whole they pack in so much shit into this very short game without feeling bloated it's pretty great.

Love the way 'reading' works too - it's the usual point and aim and click interact but you essentially "scan" your cursor over paragraphs of text (which is clusters) so it kinda feels "mechnically" similiar to reading while not being exhausing. pretty neat stuff

story-wise it keeps itself kinda esoteric but i think it's set during 1800s artict mania, so the idea that your companion is perhaps chasing the unatainable and it might lead to our demise isn't like...hard to grasp

I think i mentioned too - the low fidelity visual look and dithering (which can be turned off but it adds so much) really works in the game's favour incredibly well...the deep white/greyness of the snow reminds me a lot of that particular inky darkness that shadow tower has on the ps1...looks great!

that which gives chase: jumpcuts 👍

[stolengraphics]

[magnetictapedatastorage]

I’ve started keeping a list of questions, remnants of a past life that I now need a beat or two to remember, if I can remember at all: What time do parties end? How tall is my boss? What does a bar smell like? Are babies heavy? Does my dentist have a mustache? On what street was the good sandwich place near work, the one that toasted its bread? How much does a movie popcorn cost? What do people talk about when they don’t have a global disaster to talk about all the time? You have to wear high heels the whole night? It’s more baffling than distressing, most of the time.

Full text of the (excellent) article is under the cut. (The Atlantic, March 8th, 2021)

I first became aware that I was losing my mind in late December. It was a Friday night, the start of my 40-somethingth pandemic weekend: Hours and hours with no work to distract me, and outside temperatures prohibitive of anything other than staying in. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to fill the time. “What did I used to … do on weekends?” I asked my boyfriend, like a soap-opera amnesiac. He couldn’t really remember either.

Since then, I can’t stop noticing all the things I’m forgetting. Sometimes I grasp at a word or a name. Sometimes I walk into the kitchen and find myself bewildered as to why I am there. (At one point during the writing of this article, I absentmindedly cleaned my glasses with nail-polish remover.) Other times, the forgetting feels like someone is taking a chisel to the bedrock of my brain, prying everything loose. I’ve started keeping a list of questions, remnants of a past life that I now need a beat or two to remember, if I can remember at all: What time do parties end? How tall is my boss? What does a bar smell like? Are babies heavy? Does my dentist have a mustache? On what street was the good sandwich place near work, the one that toasted its bread? How much does a movie popcorn cost? What do people talk about when they don’t have a global disaster to talk about all the time? You have to wear high heels the whole night? It’s more baffling than distressing, most of the time.

RECOMMENDED READING

There’s No Real Reason to Eat 3 Meals a DayAMANDA MULL

The Pandemic’s Future Hangs in SuspenseTHE COVID TRACKING PROJECT

A Quite Possibly Wonderful SummerJAMES HAMBLIN

Everywhere I turn, the fog of forgetting has crept in. A friend of mine recently confessed that the morning routine he’d comfortably maintained for a decade—wake up before 7, shower, dress, get on the subway—now feels unimaginable on a literal level: He cannot put himself back there. Another has forgotten how to tie a tie. A co-worker isn’t sure her toddler remembers what it’s like to go shopping in a store. The comedian Kylie Brakeman made a joke video of herself attempting to recall pre-pandemic life, the mania flashing across her face: “You know what I miss, is, like, those night restaurants that served alcohol. What were those called?” she asks. “And there were those, like, big men outside who would check your credit card to make sure you were 41?”

Read: Sedentary pandemic life is bad for our happiness

Jen George, a community-college teacher from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, told me she is losing her train of thought in the middle of a sentence more and more often. Meanwhile, her third grader, who is attending in-person school, keeps leaving his books, papers, and lunch at home. Inny Ekeolu, a 19-year-old student from Ireland, says she has found herself forgetting how to do things she used to do on a regular basis: swiping her bus pass, paying for groceries. Recently she came across a photo of a close friend she hadn’t seen since lockdown and found that she couldn’t recognize her. “It wasn’t like I had forgotten her existence,” she told me. “But if I had bypassed her on the street, I wouldn’t have said hi.” Rachel Kowert, a research psychologist in Ottawa, used to have a standing Friday-night dinner with her neighbors—and went completely blank when one of them recently mentioned it. “It was really shocking,” Kowert told me. “This was something I really loved, and had done for a long time, and I had totally forgotten.”

This is the fog of late pandemic, and it is brutal. In the spring, we joked about the Before Times, but they were still within reach, easily accessible in our shorter-term memories. In the summer and fall, with restrictions loosening and temperatures rising, we were able to replicate some of what life used to be like, at least in an adulterated form: outdoor drinks, a day at the beach. But now, in the cold, dark, featureless middle of our pandemic winter, we can neither remember what life was like before nor imagine what it’ll be like after.

To some degree, this is a natural adaptation. The sunniest optimist would point out that all this forgetting is evidence of the resilience of our species. Humans forget a great deal of what happens to us, and we tend to do it pretty quickly—after the first 24 hours or so. “Our brains are very good at learning different things and forgetting the things that are not a priority,” Tina Franklin, a neuroscientist at Georgia Tech, told me. As the pandemic has taught us new habits and made old ones obsolete, our brains have essentially put actions like taking the bus and going to restaurants in deep storage, and placed social distancing and coughing into our elbows near the front of the closet. When our habits change back, presumably so will our recall.

That’s the good news. The pandemic is still too young to have yielded rigorous, peer-reviewed studies about its effects on cognitive function. But the brain scientists I spoke with told me they can extrapolate based on earlier work about trauma, boredom, stress, and inactivity, all of which do a host of very bad things to a mammal’s brain.

“We’re all walking around with some mild cognitive impairment,” said Mike Yassa, a neuroscientist at UC Irvine. “Based on everything we know about the brain, two of the things that are really good for it are physical activity and novelty. A thing that’s very bad for it is chronic and perpetual stress.” Living through a pandemic—even for those who are doing so in relative comfort—“is exposing people to microdoses of unpredictable stress all the time,” said Franklin, whose research has shown that stress changes the brain regions that control executive function, learning, and memory.

That stress doesn’t necessarily feel like a panic attack or a bender or a sleepless night, though of course it can. Sometimes it feels like nothing at all. “It’s like a heaviness, like you’re waking up to more of the same, and it’s never going to change,” George told me, when I asked what her pandemic anxiety felt like. “Like wading through something thicker than water. Maybe a tar pit.” She misses the sound of voices.

Prolonged boredom is, somewhat paradoxically, hugely stressful, Franklin said. Our brains hate it. “What’s very clear in the literature is that environmental enrichment—being outside of your home, bumping into people, commuting, all of these changes that we are collectively being deprived of—is very associated with synaptic plasticity,” the brain’s inherent ability to generate new connections and learn new things, she said. In the 1960s, the neuroscientist Marian Diamond conducted a series of experiments on rats in an attempt to understand how environment affects cognitive function. Time after time, the rats raised in “enriched” cages—ones with toys and playmates—performed better at mazes.

Ultimately, said Natasha Rajah, a psychology professor at McGill University, in Montreal, our winter of forgetting may be attributable to any number of overlapping factors. “There’s just so much going on: It could be the stress, it could be the grief, it could be the boredom, it could be depression,” she said. “It sounds pretty grim, doesn’t it?”

The share of Americans reporting symptoms of anxiety disorder, depressive disorder, or both roughly quadrupled from June 2019 to December 2020, according to a Census Bureau study released late last year. What’s more, we simply don’t know the long-term effects of collective, sustained grief. Longitudinal studies of survivors of Chernobyl, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina show elevated rates of mental-health problems, in some cases lasting for more than a decade.

I have a job that allows me to work from home, an immune system and a set of neurotransmitters that tend to function pretty well, a support network, a savings account, decent Wi-Fi, plenty of hand sanitizer. I have experienced the pandemic from a position of obscene privilege, and on any given day I’d rank my mental health somewhere north of “fine.” And yet I feel like I have spent the past year being pushed through a pasta extruder. I wake up groggy and spend every day moving from the couch to the dining-room table to the bed and back. At some point night falls, and at some point after that I close work-related browser windows and open leisure-related ones. I miss my little rat friends, but I am usually too tired to call them.

Read: The most likely timeline for life to return to normal

Sometimes I imagine myself as a Sim, a diamond-shaped cursor hovering above my head as I go about my day. Tasks appear, and I do them. Mealtimes come, and I eat. Needs arise, and I meet them. I have a finite suite of moods, a limited number of possible activities, a set of strings being pulled from far offscreen. Everything is two-dimensional, fake, uncanny. My world is as big as my apartment, which is not very big at all.

“We’re trapped in our dollhouses,” said Kowert, the psychologist from Ottawa, who studies video games. “It’s just about surviving, not thriving. No one is working at their highest capacity.” She has played The Sims on and off for years, but she always gives up after a while—it’s too repetitive.

Earlier versions of The Sims had an autonomous memory function, according to Marina DelGreco, a staff writer for Game Rant. But in The Sims 3, the system was buggy; it bloated file sizes and caused players’ saved progress to delete. So The Sims 4, released in 2014, does not automatically create memories. PC users can manually enter them, and Sims can temporarily feel feelings: happy, tense, flirty. But for the most part, a Sim is a hollow vessel, more like a machine than a living thing.

The game itself doesn’t have a term for this, but the internet does: “smooth brain,” or sometimes “head empty,” which I first started noticing sometime last summer. Today, the TikTok user @smoothbrainb1tch has nearly 100,000 followers, and stoners on Twitter are marveling at the fact that their “silky smooth brain” was once capable of calculus.

This is, to be clear, meant to be an aspirational state. It’s the step after galaxy brain, because the only thing better than being a genius in a pandemic is being intellectually unencumbered by mass grief. People are celebrating “smooth brain Saturday” and chasing the ideal summer vibe: “smooth skin, smooth brain.” One frequently reposted meme shows a photograph of a glossy, raw chicken breast, with the caption “Cant think=no sad .” This is juxtaposed against a biology-textbook picture of a healthy brain, which is wrinkled, oddly translucent, and the color of canned tuna. The choice seems obvious.

Some Saturday not too long from now, I will go to a party or a bar or even a wedding. Maybe I’ll hold a baby, and maybe it will be heavy. Inevitably, I will kick my shoes off at some point. I won’t have to wonder about what I do on weekends, because I’ll be doing it. I’ll kiss my friends and try their drinks and marvel at how everyone is still the same, but a little different, after the year we all had. My brain won’t be smooth anymore, but being wrinkly won’t feel so bad. My synapses will be made plastic by the complicated, strange, utterly novel experience of being alive again, human again. I can’t wait.

ELLEN CUSHING

is the special-projects editor at The Atlantic.

[leverage-ot3]

notable moments from The Order 23 Job

leverage 2.03

Nate: Nobody wants to see this guy just get a slap on the wrist, Ronald, I mean, but killing him? He's a thief, not a murder.

literally !!! this !!!

I’m not even going to go into current events but no matter what someone has done, ESPECIALLY if they haven’t had a trial yet they do NOT deserve to be killed or murdered or anyone (side eyes the US police system). I said what I said.

- - - - -

Ronald: He was smart, responsible, and Armenian, like us.

Nate: Yeah, well, they call these affinity crimes, people who prey on fellow members of ethnic groups

- - - - -

Hardison: Eddie's new address in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, is the original "Club Fed".

Eliot: He's got his own nine-hole golf course. Vegan menu.

Hardison: This dude can play Frisbee with the guys from Enron in the quadrangle.

Eliot: I hate those guys. 18 months in a country club, this guy.

Parker: Yeah, and then when he gets done, he gets to come home and collect his hidden cash

we love to see the ot3 angry about the same things while sitting close together

+ eliot is wearing a flannel in this one

- - - - -

parker doing a happy dance in the vents when she knocks the guy out

- - - - -

(Hardison unpacks computer monitors and sets up a workstation while a video feed of Parker making the bed plays on a laptop. Hardison plays audio sounds on the laptop)

Nate: Hey.

Hardison: Hey. I put speakers in Eddie's room and every 3 feet down the hallway. So if you want to hear footsteps coming toward you, you slide the cursor this way. (demonstrates) And walking away, this way. I made you a master audio file with all the stuff we recorded, plus the sound effects. You mix them any way you want. You're the dj

that’s actually really smart

- - - - -

Parker: All right, well, here's the stuff from the van plus almost everything from the list. (opens a bag) And by the way, nurses haven't worn skirts with white stockings since the '70s. Sorry.

(hardison and eliot share a look)

dumb idiot boys that think it’d be funny to see their future gf in an old nurse uniform

- - - - -

Hardison: If you don't give me that shirt--

Eliot: Listen to me, son, you need those fingers to type on your little keyboard, don't you?

Hardison: So you know, a bully is just a cowboy with low self-esteem.

Eliot: What was that, now?

Hardison: I said what?

Eliot: My insecure ass is gonna be wearing this shirt

- - - - -

Parker: You're not claustrophobic, are you, Mr. Maranjian? (pushes him down the hall, leaning down to whisper in his ear) Because you've got nothing to be afraid of.

I LOVE IT WHEN SHE FUCKS WITH PEOPLE

- - - - -

(Eliot stops to look at the boy, who looks up at him with tears in his eyes)

Hardison: So, say I mention "The Search for Spock", what do you do?

Eliot: I don't have a TV.

Hardison: Everybody has TVs. Dead people have TVs. Damn it.

(Hardison walks away, but Eliot remains, looking at the boy and his father)

- - - - -

Nate: See, y-you tell someone they have a bunch of symptoms and the information gets processed in the executive center of the brain, right? It's job is to question assumptions, start an argument. But if you suggest symptoms, you can bypass all that.

Parker: Like subliminal advertising?

Nate: It's actually neurolinguistic programming, you know, the gateway to the amygdala, which is the fear center of the brain. You asked what we're selling. That's-- that's what we're selling.

Parker: So we're selling...

Nate: Fear.

Parker: Oh. Fear.

Nate: Yeah.

Parker: Cool.

Nate: Yeah

- - - - -

Parker (looking at monitor): Wait, his nose. Is that...

Nate: real blood?

Eddie: I'm-- I'm bleeding! I'm bleeding!

Nate: Yes. Yes, it is.

Eddie: Hello?! Can anyone hear me?! Please!

Parker: Did you just give a guy a nosebleed with the power of your mind?

Nate: Amygdala mania. Hmm. Almond tonsils.

Parker: Is it just me, or has Nate gotten a little sadistic since he quit drinking?

Sophie: Is it just me, or does that make him even more attractive

- - - - -

Hardison: Eliot, can you talk? What's Charlie doing?

[Hallway]

Eliot: I haven't gotten there yet. (looks into room with Trent and his son)

Hardison: No wonder I couldn't hear you on my coms. Eliot, stop checking out the nurses and get your ass down to Charlie!

Eliot: I'm on my way, all right? Shut up.

(Eliot takes out his earbud and walks into the exam room to Trent)

Eliot: Excuse me, sir. Can I talk to you for a second, please

eliot cares SO MUCH

- - - - -

(Eliot grabs Trent’s arm and bends him over the railing)

Eliot: That bruise on his cheek's a week old. The one on his neck is three days. He get that falling, too?

Trent: You don't believe me? Ask him.

Eliot: Why, huh? So I can hear how well his daddy taught him to lie?

Trent: If you're gonna arrest me, go ahead. I'll be out in five minutes.

Eliot: I ain't gonna arrest you.

(Eliot nearly throws Trent over the railing letting him dangle for a moment before throwing him back against the wall. He opens Trent’s wallet and looks at his license)

Eliot: Randall Trent, 73 Austin Street. (puts wallet in his pocket) I got my eye on you now.

Trent: How many guys don't even see their kids? I bet this place is full of deadbeat dads. But a man who provides for his family, who shows his son a firm hand, he's the bad guy? Go back to your speed traps.

(Trent leaves the stairwell. Eliot looks pissed)

eliot is SO ANGRY I love my kind-hearted man

also high key I really thinks this gives an insight as to what his childhood was like

like,,, he saw the signs RIGHT AWAY. he was primed to notice them. he saw right through any act that man would have pulled because he saw what was truly going on, and things like that hit harder and closer when they’ve happened to you or someone in your life

- - - - -

Sophie: You know, I once had to play six parts in "Nicholas Nickleby" and Mrs. Squeers and Phib had a bloody song together.

- - - - -

on today’s edition of non-weapons-that-eliot-uses-as-weapons, we have eliot using the morgue body cabinet doors and a gross morgue body part (?) bowl

- - - - -

(Eliot puts Charlie on top of one of the bodies in the drawers and closes him inside before putting his earbud back in)

Hardison: You think you can just ignore me, like I don't have any feelings, like I never sat there, never listened to you talk all night about tryin--

Eliot: Hardison, have you been talking the whole time?

Hardison: I wouldn't have had to if you didn't turn off your daggum com

hardison worries about eliot and gets angry when he takes his coms out because he cares

- - - - -

Hardison: Oh, man. Come on.

(Hardison moves to tug Eliot before he heads off. Eliot looks from the boy to the police coming into the hospital before entering the boy’s room and pulling the curtain)

Eliot: Hey. How's the arm, my man?

Randy: It's okay.

Eliot: Yeah? My name's Eliot. What's your name?

(police officers continue to move through the hallways)

Randy: Randy.

Eliot: Randy. Oh, I like that name. (sits on bed) I got an uncle named Randy. There sure are a lot of cops around here, huh? You know, if you wanted, you could go up to one and tell them what happened to your arm. Hey, Randy. You don't have to be afraid anymore.

Randy: Dad knows these cops, you know? They come to my house. They'll drink beer. I mean… I can't

this is so, so sad but also hardison’s casual touching and intimacy with eliot gives me life

- - - - -

this is the one episode parker is tased and not the one doing the tasing

- - - - -

okay but wHO ACTUALLY, IN REAL LIFE, LEAVES THEIR KEYS IN THEIR UNLOCKED CAR

- - - - -

PARKER USED ELIOTS PUNCHING TACTICS (from the last episode) TO KNOCK THEIR MARK OUT

- - - - -

(Eddie uses the stunner to knock Parker out. As soon as he moves away, she gets up, lifting her shirt to show a vest)

hmmm I wonder what type of vest she used to block the electric shock ???

- - - - -

(team walks out of the courthouse and heads down the stairs)

Nate: So, here's everything you need to know about criminal law. Every crime has two elements, Actus reus, the act itself, and mens rea, Literally "The Guilty Mind."

Hardison: Wait. Now you're a doctor and a lawyer?

Nate: Yes. Now, for escape, the prisoner has to both break out of custody and show the intent to escape.

Sophie: Wait, so if, let's say, a prisoner was taken hostage during a jailbreak then he wouldn't be guilty of escape.

Nate: That's a perfect example.

Hardison: Kiss ass.

Nate: Which brings us back to our friend Eddie and how the brain reacts to fear. In the heat of the moment Eddie didn't ask himself a simple question, who would doubt his guilty mind?

- - - - -

Bob: Damn right it is. You and your partner, you're all right. I don't know how to thank you, though.

(Eliot looks at Bob for a long moment, then pulls Trent’s license from his pocket and hands it to Bob)

Eliot: Do one thing for me.

Bob: You got it.

[Exterior Apartment]

(Bob knocks on the door and Randy opens it)

Bob: Randy? I'm Deputy United States Marshal Robert Corville. I'm from Boston. I think you and I need to talk.

Trent: Who are you talking to out there? (pulls door open wider and sees Bob)

Bob: Come on.

(Randy looks at Trent then follows Bob out of the apartment)

Bob: It's all right, son. Come on. You're gonna be okay, Randy.

(Bob gives Trent one last look before moving away. From down the street, Eliot watches as Bob and Randy get into a car and drive away)

eliot watching over to make sure the kid was okay in the end? my HEART

[pajama-han]

someone should bring back cursor mania without the annoying viruses and whatever, just lemme have a flaming little sword or a fairy wand that rains glitter across my screen :(

[kickassclefable]

[muddlemore]

dni if u were never tricked by cursor mania

[tylermorganunit]

Research Artist 3: Dean Herbert

Dean Herbert is a Software developer and games designer who is known for developing and publishing the rhythm game Osu!. It was originally released for Microsoft Windows on 16 September 2007 but throughout the years been ported to many different software's including macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. The game has 4 Different game modes them being Standard, Catch the beat, Taiko and finally mania. Osu standard is the most original of the 4 being a whole new idea to the rhythm game scene where you use your mouse as a cursor to click cirlce that will appear on your screen in rhythm to a song that is playing in the backgroud an image will be below.

Where as the other gamemodes are based off other rhythm games that already exist here are a list of games that influcend the gamemodes of osu  Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, Taiko no Tatsujin, Happy Feet, Beatmania IIDX, Elite Beat Agents, O2Jam, StepMania, and DJMax.

Osu! Was originally only made by Dean but other time has has made a little team that helps him make the game better. From what we know dean works from home communication with his worker through the internet and Deans only current focus is working for the new osu launcher called osu lazer which he has been working on for years to finish the final product.

[slug-sweat]

That cursor mania moodboard has been deleted for over a year and every few months it drags its ass back out of the grave to torment me like the ghost of a victorian bastard child that got drowned in a lake rattling the cupboard doors to scare me into repenting for my sins