#fastest computer build

[alianoralacanta]

What happens when doing it iteratively has completely failed? Sometimes databases and political systems alike are built from scratch. Sometimes they have to be built from scratch (for example, a new company or country). Sometimes, in both cases, they even work in their 1.0 version without significant problems. That's not to say there won't be a 1.1 or even a 2.0 - but that happens either way. (It's harder, but iterative construction has different pre-requisites, and if those aren't being met and the status quo is failing hard enough, then non-iterative change is inevitable, chosen or otherwise…)

I think a lot about how, if the glorious violent revolution happens, every kid with significant medical needs in a hospital where power gets cut will die.

You can decide you're willing to sacrifice your own life, but you don't get to tell everybody else on the planet that they're acceptable collateral damage.

[lappystop]

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

A profoundly stupid case about video game cheating could transform adblocking into a copyright infringement

I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Here's a weird consequence of our societal shift from capitalism (where riches come from profits) to feudalism (where riches come from rents): increasingly, your rights to your actual property (the physical stuff you own) are trumped by corporations' metaphorical "intellectual property" claims.

That's a lot to unpack! Let's start with a quick primer on profits and rents. Capitalists invest money in buying equipment, then they pay workers wages to use that equipment to produce goods and services. Profit is the sum a capitalist takes home from this arrangement: money made from paying workers to do productive things.

Now, rents: "rent" is the money a rentier makes by owning a "factor of production": something the capitalist needs in order to make profits. Capitalists risk their capital to get profits, but rents are heavily insulated from risk.

For example: a coffee shop owner buys espresso machines, hires baristas, and rents a storefront. If they do well, the landlord can raise their rent, denying them profits and increasing rents. But! If a great new cafe opens across the street and the coffee shop owner goes broke, the landlord is in great shape, because they now have a vacant storefront they can rent, and they can charge extra for a prime location across the street from the hottest new coffee shop in town.

The "moral philosophers" that today's self-described capitalists claim to worship – Adam Smith, David Ricardo – hated rents. For them, profits were the moral way to get rich, because when capitalists chase profits, they necessarily chase the production of things that people want.

When rentiers chase rents, they do so at the expense of profits. Every dollar a capitalist pays in rent – licenses for IP, rent for a building, etc – is a dollar that can't be extracted in profit, and then reinvested in the production of more goods and services that society desires.

The "free markets" of Adam Smith weren't free from regulation, they were free from rents.

The moral philosophers' hatred of rents was really a hatred of feudalism. The industrial revolution wasn't merely (or even primarily) the triumph of new machines: rather, it was the triumph of profits over rent. For the industrial revolution to succeed, the feudal arrangement had to end. Capitalism is incompatible with hereditary lords receiving guaranteed rents from hereditary serfs who are legally obliged to work for them. Capitalism triumphed over feudalism when the serfs were turned off of the land (becoming the "free labor" who went to work in the textile mills) and the land itself was given over to sheep grazing (providing the wool for those same mills).

But that doesn't mean that the industrial revolution invented profits. Profits were to be found in feudal societies, wherever a wealthy person increased their wealth by investing in machines and hiring workers to use them. The thing that made feudalism feudal was how conflicts between rents and profits cashed out. For so long as the legal system elevated the claims of rentiers over the claims of capitalists, the society was feudal. Once the legal system gave priority to profit over rent, it became capitalist.

Capitalists hate capitalism. The engine of capitalism is insecurity. The successful capitalist is like the fastest gun in the old west: there's always a young gun out there looking to "disrupt" their fortune with a new invention, product, or organizational strategy that "creatively destroys" the successful businesses of the day and replaces them with new ones:

https://locusmag.com/2024/03/cory-doctorow-capitalists-hate-capitalism/

That's a hard way to live, with your every success serving as a blinking KICK ME sign visible to every ambitious person in the world. Precarity makes people miserable and nuts:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/#fear-is-their-mind-killer

So capitalists universally aspire to become rentiers and investors seek out companies that have a plan to extract rent. This is why Warren Buffett is so priapatic for companies with "moats and walls" – legal privileges and market structures that protect the business from competition and disruption:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-explains-moat-principle-164442359.html

Feudal rents were mostly derived from land, but even in the feudal era, the king was known to reward loyal lickspittles with rents over ideas. The "patents royal" were the legally protected right to decide who could make or do certain things: for example, you might have a patent royal over the production of silver ribbon, and anyone who wanted to make a silver ribbon would have to pay for your permission. If you chose to grant that permission exclusively to one manufacturer, then no one else could make it, and you could charge a license fee to the manufacturer that accounted for nearly all their profit.

Today, rentiers are also interested in land. Bill Gates is the country's number one landowner, and in many towns, private equity landlords are snappinig up every single family home that hits the market and converting it to a badly maintained slum:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/22/koteswar-jay-gajavelli/#if-you-ever-go-to-houston

But the 21st Century's defining source of rent is "IP" – a controversial term that I use here to mean, "Any law or policy that allows a company to exert legal control over its competitors, critics and customers":

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

IP is in irreconcilable conflict with real property rights. Think of HP selling you a printer and wanting to decide which ink you use, or John Deere selling you a tractor and wanting to tell you who can fix it. Or, for that matter, Apple selling you a phone and dictating which software you are allowed to install on it.

Think of Unity, a company that makes tools for video-game makers, demanding a royalty from every game that is eventually sold, calling this "shared success":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

Every time one of these conflicts ends with IP's triumph over real property rights, that is a notch in favor of calling the world we live in now "technofeudalist" rather than "technocapitalist":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Once you start to think of "IP" as "laws that let me control how other people use their real property," a lot of the seemingly incoherent fights over IP snap into place. This also goes a long way to explaining how otherwise sensible people can agree on expansions of IP to achieve some short-term goal, irrespective of the spillover harms from such a move. Hard cases make bad law, and hard IP cases make terrible law.

Five years ago, some anti-fascist counterdemonstrators hit on the clever idea of blaring top 40 music during neo-Nazi marches, on the theory that this would prevent Nazis from uploading videos of their marches to Youtube and other platforms, whose filters would block any footage that included copyrighted music:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/23/clever-hack-that-will-end-badly-playing-copyrighted-music-during-nazis-rallies-so-they-cant-be-posted-to-youtube/

Thankfully, this didn't work, but not for lack of trying. And it might still work, if calls for beefing up video copyright filters are heeded. Cops all over the place are already blaring Taylor Swift songs and Disney tunes to prevent their interactions with the public from being uploaded:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/07/moral-hazard-of-filternets/#dmas

The same thinking that causes progressives to recklessly argue in favor of upload filters also causes them to demand that web scraping be treated as a copyright crime. They think they're creating a world where AI companies can't rip off their creation to train a model; they're actually creating a world where the Internet Archive can't capture JD Vance's embarrassing old podcast appearances or newspaper editorial boards' advocacy for positions they now recant:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

It's not that Nazi marches are good, or that scraping can't be bad – it's just that advocating for the use of IP to address either is a cure that's not just worse than the disease – it's also not a cure.

A problem can be real, and still not be solvable with IP. I have enormous sympathy for gamers who rail against cheaters who use aftermarket hacks to improve their aim, see through buildings, or command other unfair advantages.

If you want to tell a stranger how they must configure their PC or console, IP ("any law that lets you control your competitors, critics or customers") is an obvious answer. But – as with other attempts to solve real problems with IP – this is a cure that is both worse than the disease, and also not a cure after all.

Back in 2002, Blizzard sued some hobbyists over a program called "bnetd." Bnetd was a program that provided a game-server you could connect to with the Blizzard games that you'd bought. It was created as an alternative to Battlenet, Blizzard's notoriously unreliable game-server software that left gamers frustrated and furious due to frequent outages:

https://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd

To the public, Blizzard made several arguments against bnetd. They claimed that it encouraged piracy, because – unlike the official Battlenet servers – it didn't check whether the copies of Blizzard software that connected to it had a valid license key. Gamers didn't really care about that, but they did respond to another argument: that bnetd lacked the anti-cheat checking of Battlenet.

But that wasn't what Blizzard took to the court: in court, they argued that the hobbyists who made bnetd violated copyright law. Specifically, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which bans "circumvention of access controls to copyrighted works." Basically, Blizzard argued that bnetd's authors violated the law because they used debuggers to examine the software they'd paid for, while it ran on their own computers, to figure out how to make a game server of their own.

Blizzard didn't sue bnetd's authors for pirating Blizzard software (they didn't – they'd paid for their copies). They didn't sue them for abetting other gamers' piracy. They certainly didn't sue them for making a cheat-friendly game-server.

Blizzard sued them for analyzing software they'd paid for, while it was running on their own computers.

Imagine if Walmart – one of the biggest book-retailers in America – had a policy that said that you could only shelve the books you bought at Walmart on shelves that you also bought at Walmart. Now imagine that Walmart successfully argued that measuring the books you bought from them and using those measurements to create your own compatible book-case violated their IP rights!

This is an outrageous triumph of IP rights over real property rights, and yet gamers vocally backed Blizzard in the early noughts, because gamers hate cheaters and because IP law is (correctly) understood as "the law that lets a company tell you how you can use your own real, physical property." Hard cases make bad law, hard IP cases make batshit law.

It's more than 20 years since bnetd, and cheating continues to serve as a Trojan horse to smuggle in batshit new IP laws. In Germany, Sony is suing the cheat-device maker Datel:

https://torrentfreak.com/sonys-ancient-lawsuit-vs-cheat-device-heads-in-right-direction-sonys-defeat-240705/

Sony argues that the Datel device – which rewrites the contents of a player's device's RAM, at the direction of that player – infringes copyright. Sony claims that the values that its programs write to your device's RAM chips are copyrighted works that it has created, and that altering that copyrighted work makes an unauthorized derivative work, which infringes its copyright.

Yes, this is batshit, and thankfully, Sony has been thwarted in court to date, but it is steaming ahead to the EU's highest court. If it succeeds, then it will open up every tool that modifies your computer at your direction to this kind of claim.

How bad can it be? Well, get this: the German publishing giant Axel Springer (owned by a monomaniacal Trumpist and Israel hardliner who has ordered journalists in his US news outlets to go easy on both) is suing Eyeo, makers of Adblock Plus, on the grounds that changing HTML to block an ad creates a "derivative work" of Axel Springer's web-pages:

https://torrentfreak.com/ad-blocking-infringes-copyright-ancient-sony-cheat-lawsuit-may-prove-pivotal-240729/

Axel Springer's filings cite the Sony/Datel case, using it to argue that their IP rights trump your property rights, and that you can only configure your web-browser, running on your computer, which you own, in ways that it approves of.

Axel Springer's war on browsers is a particularly pernicious maneuver, because browsers are the best example we have of internet software that serves as a "user agent." "User agent" is an old-timey engineering synonym for "browser" that reflects the browser's role: to go out onto the web on your behalf and bring back things for you, which it displays in the way you prefer:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

Want to block flickering GIFs to forestall photosensitive epileptic servers? Ask your user agent to find and delete them. Want to shift colors into a gamut that accounts for your color-blindness? Ask your user-agent:

https://dankaminsky.com/2010/12/15/dankam/

Want to goose the font size and contrast so you can read the sadistic grey-on-white type that young designers use in the mistaken belief that black-on-white type is "hard on the eyes"? That's what Reader Mode is for:

https://frankgroeneveld.nl/2021/08/24/most-underused-browser-feature/

The foundation of any good digital relationship is a device that works for you, not for the people who own the servers you connect to. Even if they don't plan on screwing you over by directing your user agent to attack you on their behalf right now, the very existence of a facility in your technology that causes it to betray you, by design, is a moral hazard that inevitably results in your victimization:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

"IP" ("a law that lets me control how you use your own property") is a tempting solution to every problem, but ultimately, IP ends up magnifying the power of the already powerful, in contests where your only hope of victory is having a user agent whose only loyalty is to you.

The monotonic, dangerous expansion of IP reflects the growing victory of rents over profits – income from owning things, rather than income from doing things. Everyday people may argue for IP in the belief that it will solve their immediate problems – with AI, or Nazis, or in-game cheats – but ultimately, the expansion of a law that limits how you can use your property (including your capital) to uses that don't threaten neofeudalists will doom you to technoserfdom.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/29/faithful-user-agents/#hard-cases-make-bad-copyright-law

[bun-unit22]

Hear me out:

Huge 20ft supercomputer robot woman who works for NASA or some other large organization. Her build being built for looks and efficiency, sleek and modern but having a screen for a head to show everything that’s needed with multiple plug in ports all over her back.

…and her 5ft robot gf who’s more akin to a subpar gaming computer that streams for a living. Who’s built more like a standard humanish robot body and frame.

The two met when the small one got lost looking for a GameStop and ended up meeting the other on the outskirts of a facility (she sucks hard with directions =p). The small one didn’t k ow what they were and just began talking about her interests and asking where to go. They found it amusing and decided to become friends with them. Mostly because the rest of the bots at her work place were rather boring and only ever focused on work related topics.

One thing led to another and the two now live in a home designed for the supercomputer. With a little corner now accommodated for the other.

In their free time they like to spend time together just laying down while charging or with the small one playing her games on their back. Which allows them to plug in their own computer to have the fastest gaming set up in the world!

Course she doesn’t do this too often since it feels like she’s taking advantage of her, but the other doesn’t mind. She actually likes it since it allows her to watch while she works on her own thing.

As for other ‘activities’…the two found they loved a bit of a reverse role. With the small one being the dom and acting as if she’s superior while the other figuratively and literally bows down to her.

Along with allowing her to have access to her entire body and internal processes, letting the small one tease her as she shuts down the programs that make her run. Causing the other to experience glitching and near crashes which are something she never felt before, and add to the humiliation and pleasure.

They keep going until they begin to overheat and stop for the day, going to cuddle and after care.

God I wish it was me >~<

[reasonsforhope]

Determined to use her skills to fight inequality, South African computer scientist Raesetje Sefala set to work to build algorithms flagging poverty hotspots - developing datasets she hopes will help target aid, new housing, or clinics.

From crop analysis to medical diagnostics, artificial intelligence (AI) is already used in essential tasks worldwide, but Sefala and a growing number of fellow African developers are pioneering it to tackle their continent's particular challenges.

Local knowledge is vital for designing AI-driven solutions that work, Sefala said.

"If you don't have people with diverse experiences doing the research, it's easy to interpret the data in ways that will marginalise others," the 26-year old said from her home in Johannesburg.

Africa is the world's youngest and fastest-growing continent, and tech experts say young, home-grown AI developers have a vital role to play in designing applications to address local problems.

"For Africa to get out of poverty, it will take innovation and this can be revolutionary, because it's Africans doing things for Africa on their own," said Cina Lawson, Togo's minister of digital economy and transformation.

"We need to use cutting-edge solutions to our problems, because you don't solve problems in 2022 using methods of 20 years ago," Lawson told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a video interview from the West African country.

Digital rights groups warn about AI's use in surveillance and the risk of discrimination, but Sefala said it can also be used to "serve the people behind the data points". ...

'Delivering Health'

As COVID-19 spread around the world in early 2020, government officials in Togo realized urgent action was needed to support informal workers who account for about 80% of the country's workforce, Lawson said.

"If you decide that everybody stays home, it means that this particular person isn't going to eat that day, it's as simple as that," she said.

In 10 days, the government built a mobile payment platform - called Novissi - to distribute cash to the vulnerable.

The government paired up with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) think tank and the University of California, Berkeley, to build a poverty map of Togo using satellite imagery.

Using algorithms with the support of GiveDirectly, a nonprofit that uses AI to distribute cash transfers, the recipients earning less than $1.25 per day and living in the poorest districts were identified for a direct cash transfer.

"We texted them saying if you need financial help, please register," Lawson said, adding that beneficiaries' consent and data privacy had been prioritized.

The entire program reached 920,000 beneficiaries in need.

"Machine learning has the advantage of reaching so many people in a very short time and delivering help when people need it most," said Caroline Teti, a Kenya-based GiveDirectly director.

'Zero Representation'

Aiming to boost discussion about AI in Africa, computer scientists Benjamin Rosman and Ulrich Paquet co-founded the Deep Learning Indaba - a week-long gathering that started in South Africa - together with other colleagues in 2017.

"You used to get to the top AI conferences and there was zero representation from Africa, both in terms of papers and people, so we're all about finding cost effective ways to build a community," Paquet said in a video call.

In 2019, 27 smaller Indabas - called IndabaX - were rolled out across the continent, with some events hosting as many as 300 participants.

One of these offshoots was IndabaX Uganda, where founder Bruno Ssekiwere said participants shared information on using AI for social issues such as improving agriculture and treating malaria.

Another outcome from the South African Indaba was Masakhane - an organization that uses open-source, machine learning to translate African languages not typically found in online programs such as Google Translate.

On their site, the founders speak about the South African philosophy of "Ubuntu" - a term generally meaning "humanity" - as part of their organization's values.

"This philosophy calls for collaboration and participation and community," reads their site, a philosophy that Ssekiwere, Paquet, and Rosman said has now become the driving value for AI research in Africa.

Inclusion

Now that Sefala has built a dataset of South Africa's suburbs and townships, she plans to collaborate with domain experts and communities to refine it, deepen inequality research and improve the algorithms.

"Making datasets easily available opens the door for new mechanisms and techniques for policy-making around desegregation, housing, and access to economic opportunity," she said.

African AI leaders say building more complete datasets will also help tackle biases baked into algorithms.

"Imagine rolling out Novissi in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast ... then the algorithm will be trained with understanding poverty in West Africa," Lawson said.

"If there are ever ways to fight bias in tech, it's by increasing diverse datasets ... we need to contribute more," she said.

But contributing more will require increased funding for African projects and wider access to computer science education and technology in general, Sefala said.

Despite such obstacles, Lawson said "technology will be Africa's savior".

"Let's use what is cutting edge and apply it straight away or as a continent we will never get out of poverty," she said. "It's really as simple as that."

-via Good Good Good, February 16, 2022

[ratrrriot]

Do you have any sonic ocs? (Or ocs in general, haha) (totally not asking so I can make fanart, nahhhh….)

The fact that you are considering drawing my OCS when you haven't even seen them yet is very flattering,thank you!!

these are from when i was in highschool lol

This is Spark, They are a Tetraplegic Chao Cream found and brought to Tails,who successfully managed to build a fully functional mechanical body for them to play with. This robot body is connected to their brain and can even fly.

Spark lives at Tail's workshop and they’re clearly very fond of Cream -who regularly visits them to play- and Tails.

Originally,Tails was going to design Spark’s robot body based on his own (for trademark reasons) but since Cream was Spark's “owner” (for lack of a better term referring to someone who takes care of a chao) ,she wanted to participate in the designing part and gave him a few crayon drawings of rabbits, which were so cute that Tails simply had to include them in the final design. This is why they look like a Fox/Rabbit hybrid. (it also makes sense since Spark sees them both as some sort of older siblings)

ofc Spark isn't always inside their robot body,Tails takes them in and out everyday.

Aaand these are some apprentices I designed for the Babylon Rogues! Tundra,Velvet and Ember. They love snowboarding and are developing their skills at Extreme Gear Racing. They kinda need some redesigning...

These three are orphans. They used to live at an orphanage situated in a small town near Snow Valley. Unsatisfied with their lives there (and that nobody seemed to be interested in adopting them) they ran away around the age of 12 to try and start new lifes on their own,resorting to thievery and trickery to get by. Life was hard and unfair for three kids growing up in the snowy streets,but thanks to Velvet's determination,Ember's charisma and Tundra's intelligence they managed to survive. After a year of wandering,they stole 3 snowboards and started practicing the sport ,with the hopes that one day they would become famous professionals who didn't need to resort to stealing. However,by they age of 16, they hadn't just developed great skill and love for what they now consider "the art of thievery" - and a liking for equipment and luxuries most can't afford- but they also had lost all interest on the "safer" version of snowboarding and became addicted to the speed and the danger of racing.

They set on a journey to find their childhood idols: The babylon Rogues, a group of legendary thieves that they heard tales about back at the orphanage's storytime and who's Extreme Gear skills were what originally inspired them to try snowboarding. They traveled far and wide searching for them and once they managed to find Wave,Jet and Storm,they begged them to teach them their ways . After annoying them enough (and practically not letting them alone lol) the trio of professionals finally agreed to train them.

VELVET THE NORTHERN CARDINAL:

Energic,Peppy,Sassy,Optimistic,laid-back and confident. A speed junkie and a little bit of a clown. The fastest of the trio. Jet is his Idol and he'll do anything to impress him. Tries to annoy Sonic to imitate his teacher,but he actually thinks he is the coolest guy around after Jet. He has a big heart and doesn't seem to hate Sonic -or anyone -at all,but he does enjoy some friendly banter at the moment of competing. Jet likes him a lot and is kinda proud of him but he tries not to show it ,as he doesn't want the kid (or himself) to get attached or to think he'll actually pass to him his "Master of the wind" title someday.

The gem-shaped-computer on his neck was a gift he received from Wave after she updated her own and didn't know what to do with her old one. According to her,she handed it down to him cause "it matched his feathers". Now,feeling honored by one of his idols,he wears it with pride.

EMBER THE COCKATIEL:

Cheeky, Rebellious, Brave, Impulsive and Loyal. Doing tricks in the air like its nothing is her specialty. Cares a lot about her looks and is an expert at the art of deception. She is also can be a little bit of meanie. She and Wave share a sister-like kind of relationship. Since they both have strong personalities, they fight a lot and she tends to disobey her,espeally when it comes to the times she tries to teach her about mechanics and "the boring part" of Extreme Gear personalization. However, they always make up and end up gossiping at the end of the day.

TUNDRA THE CRESTED PENGUIN :

Silent, cold, shy, serious, a bit competitive and incredibly smart. Expert at strategizing and finding shortcuts while racing. Has high expectations of himself and doesn't handle failure very well. Being the oldest by a year,he is very protective of his adoptive siblings. Unlike Wave and Jet,Storm didn't have to be convinced to take him under his wing cause he liked the kid since the moment he showed up. tho he is trying to teach him to live a little and be a bit more impulsive at the moment of racing.

[sunnymusingsao3]

The Half-Life of Sixty Seconds

Words: 6626 Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Tim Drake & Lonnie Machin, Tim Drake/Lonnie Machin Summary: Based on Red Robin #16. Missing Scenes and Relationship Building. Tags: Pre-Relationship, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Developing Relationship, Developing Friendships, Missing Scene, Pre-New 52, New Earth, Medical Trauma, Canon-Typical Violence, Coma, Based on Red Robin #16, Comic: Red Robin (2009) #16

Preview:

The problem with thinking like a detective is not actually that thinking like one is too strict or structured. There’s organization on a document, but Tim’s mind is not a bullet journal. It’s not a legal form, it’s not a spreadsheet, it’s not a ledger.

It’s messy and human and creative. Loose, unstructured, instinctual. Detectives aren’t good at solving cases because they work like machines; it’s much the opposite. It’s that creative mess which aids in seeing between the structure of presented facts, reading the code, and then cracking it. It’s like tracing a spider web back to its center. There’s an observable track leading exactly where one needs to go— a veritable method to the madness— but it’s still art, all the same, even to the broom that ruins it.

So, when Tim is presented with a countdown, it’s not just a mechanical, factual understanding of time that pushes hard against the inside of his ribs; it’s a too-clear visual of a digital clock-face, neutral and unyielding, counting down from sixty in his neocortex. Artistic and messy and emotional.

There is only one place to go once one is caught in the web.

00:59:99. He doesn’t even know what’s happening, yet, but dread spreads in his stomach regardless because there was a piece on the chess board that he didn’t see, and now he’s in check.

He grits his teeth and demands information.

By 00:56:19, he has a location, and by 00:54:43, his feet aren’t on the pavement anymore, while Ulysses Armstrong lies there frozen, trapped by Tim’s last-ditch effort to see the guy to justice.

As he takes off, he tosses half-formed instructions to the bystanders who stopped to see Red Robin use a guy to ollie down a stoop, and it’s like he can hear his own voice on a time delay, like he’s listening to both the live scene and the news broadcast at once. It’s shrill and tense, and even in his own head, it sounds like his vocal cords are pulled too tight, like they’ll snap at any minute.

He doesn’t stop to think too hard about that— his brain, while no computer, is still running calculations in prestissimo tempo, flying through his mind as quickly as the freezing Gotham wind passes over his exposed cheeks, chapping the skin there, and on his chin, his lips. He is moving at a blistering pace, and he still won’t make it for another twelve seconds.

00:43:01. He dips his left shoulder and careens through a tight curve, one of the fastest he’s pulled off with the new glider. If he wasn’t counting building numbers like dandelion fluff on the breeze, Tim would pass time thinking about the effects of adrenaline on a trained skill. But he, more than most, has examples plenty of that very thing, dating as far back as when he was twelve and still unable to wear the colors he was training for.

The windows of 515 Roussos Boulevard’s penthouse apartment are splashed in plum and claret from the setting sun, and it’s the perfect target for a bullseye. Tim’s cape slackens.

00:28:03 and he shatters the plate glass with the force of his dive, hitting it with the hardened armor of his elbows and knees first. It isn’t even a contest; the barrier explodes, and his feet crunch on the powder and shards beneath them, and it doesn’t even matter that it all went everywhere because Lonnie evidently wasn’t in any danger of getting hit by it all— because all Tim can see of Lonnie at first is a goddamned metal tube.

It doesn’t feel any less horrifying when he rotates and finds Lonnie’s head exposed at one end. His cheeks are sunken, and he’s so pale that Tim would have thought him dead if he hadn’t been talking to him that very morning.

Red Robin’s voice is sotto voce soft, though when the only other sound in the room is the dull murmur of equipment, it sounds loud as a gunshot, even over the blood rushing in his ears. “Lonnie…”

Two images splinter in his mind. One, his friend now, lying with his eyes shut and a disarmingly neutral expression written into the too-sharp angles of his face— the other, a direct antipode; Lonnie, cheeks flushed high with color, green eyes lit with gold and will, and impassioned words of revolution in no shortage on his sharp tongue.

Like yesterday…

“What did he do to you?”

[Read the rest on AO3] Note: You do need to be logged in to read. Apologies for the inconvenience. Until I can be sure that AO3 is not being used to train AI, my works will remain open to users only.

[sameschmidtdiffname]

i recently had a thought about the reader's online friend!josh futterman, like if these two actually KNOW each other irl but have no idea about it because they use nicknames

i'd really appreciate it if you'd write something like this and I hope my description of it makes sense i used a translator for this lol

in love with your writing btw !!! <3

Bbgirl I gotCHUUUUU

Familiar Strangers

A Josh Futturman x Gender Neutral! Reader Series

Summery: They always say you never know when you'll meet Mister Right. But damn. This is a new level.

Tags: No use of Y/N, no gender specific pronouns for Reader, coffee shop AU, Josh never wins 'Biotic Wars' AU, fluff, meet cute, online friends who don't realize they're friends irl as well, brief mentions of smut, otherwise SFW.

Notes: Alright, first actually planned series! Is it gonna be a slowburn with twenty parts? A mini series? Who the fuck knows! Not me! Let's pray, mfers.

                                 ¤•1•¤

                    °☆>》Maggie's《<☆°

"Please tell me there's a chance for us," she says with baited breath. "Don't tell me you're walking away."

The atmosphere of the small, brick walled coffee shop is calm for 10 o'clock in the morning, but I'm not complaining. God knows I prefer this over the alternative anyways.

"You know that I can't answer that," Oshua says to Tiger, agitated.

This guy, always trying to be mysterious.

"I've waited for you my whole life. You could give me a goddamn-"

The ring of the shop bell tears me from my reading, my head darting up to see who has come to disturb my morning of peace and fiction.

"Hi!" The customer says in overly bright voice. One look at the man and I already know he's the chatty type, not willing to just duck in and out, keys jingling from the black belt on his hip as he flashes a bright, genuine smile, waving his hand enthusiastically while keeping the other in his pants pocket.

Motherfucker.

"Hi!" I try to return with the same bright smile and tone, but I feel irritation spike into my chest as I hear the soft 'click' of my phone shutting off. "Welcome to Maggie's, what can I get you?"

Gentle sunlight streams in through the permanently clouded bay windows of the shop, illuminating the store in its warm glow that just makes a morning feel particularly peaceful. There isn't much foot at this point in the morning, most people already having arrived to work an hour or so earlier, myself included. It was a busy enough part of town, a good location for a coffee shop to thrive, especially with the loyal flow of customers from Kronish Laboratory, a tall, dull building dedicated to scientific research, and the little coffee shop that signs my checks often had the pleasures (read: irritations) of dealing with said researchers and keeping them alive while they work on the miracle cure for herpes. Most of them being particularly rude and short about their orders, usually in a rush for a regular cup of black coffee and swiping it from my hand before storming out to resume their endless work typing away at a computer to log their samples after what must be their too short lunch break. Or maybe too long. Can never tell with those assholes. Most of which I know through mental nicknames. It's partially because I'm no good at actual names. And partially my own form of disrespect and entertainment. Come on, you do it too.

"I don't know," the unfamiliar man says brightly, placing his hands on his hips as he looks at the chalkboard sign hanging behind my head. "What do you like?"

'Whatever gets you out of here the fastest,' I think. But instead I say "Well, what exactly are you looking for? Tea, coffee," the door, "smoothies?"

"Hit me-" gladly. "-with a tea," the bright man says just so... brightly.

Thank you for being so descriptive. "What kind?" I ask, trying to keep my smile sweet.

"Whatever you like," he says with a shrug.

"Vanilla chai?"

"Sure!"

I need to stop being so irritable when someone interrupts my reading. I'm not even allowed to be on my phone at work technically, except the manager generally doesn't care so long as I at least make half an effort to hide it and don't do it in front of customers. And maybe I wouldn't even really care about the interruption except I've been waiting for the release of this part for two weeks, and Nick had been so secretive about the ending he didn't even let me beta read the work before posting.

"What's got you in such a mood?" I ask the smiling man, turning to begin making the drink. Oh, size.

"What do you mean?" He asks, raising his brows, still smiling. Brightly.

"You're like a big... ball of sunshine," I say, gesturing towards him before holding up a small and large cup, now gesturing the two like they were on scales to silently ask his preference.

"Oh, I'm just excited this morning. I'm not usually like this," he says, laughing a little as a small blush grows on his nose, glancing down at the floor before returning his gaze to the cups, pointing at the small.

"Yeah?" I ask, putting the large cup away.

"Yeah. Finished a big project this morning, so I'm like," he shrugs, now scratching the back of his head as he tries to subdue his smile, pressing his lips together and now crossing his subtly built arms across his chest.

"Well, congrats," I say. There's a small moment of slightly awkward silence as the tea quickly brews, both of us not really sure what to say next. This is the part I hate about customer service. I feel bad if I'm not constantly keeping them engaged, but if they're constantly talking I wish they would shut the fuck up. I already can't read regular conversation cues, there's just no winning with this shit.

"I like your uh..." the man I've decided will henceforth be known as Sunshine drawls. "Apron."

I look down at myself, taking note of the dandelion yellow cloth stained with coffee at the bottom from an hour ago when it accidently dipped into a puddle of the stuff while I was cleaning up a spill someone hadn't even told me about only half an hour after opening.

"Thanks," I say, looking back up. "Company issued."

"Oh, we match!" Sunshine jokes, pointing at his grey jumpsuit. Alright, the man may be way too energetic for the morning, but at least he's entertaining about it. I take an actual look at his attire now, a janitors outfit with what I should've expected to be a Kronish Laboratory logo right above his name sewn onto the suit.

"That we do..." I glance at his nametag. "Futturman."

"Fut-turman, not Foot-turman," Sunshine corrects me.

"Oh shit. Shoot. Sorry, man," I laugh awkwardly, offering an apologetic smile as I pour the warm, steeped tea over the ice.

"Iced in Febuary?" He asks, giving me enough grace to not focus on the subject.

I feel my own blush creep onto my skin, a side effect from the name jumble and realizing I hadn't asked his preference. Get your head in the game, idiot.

"I can make you another, if you'd like," I offer sheepishly.

"No!" He blurts, straightening his posture and leaning against the counter. "I mean-" he coughs awkwardly, glancing away. "No, iced is good. I like iced, just uh- figured you... wouldn't have the same preference."

Please, God. It's too early for this.

"I don't like the hot to room temperature texture," I say awkwardly, searching for a lid. "Too... I don't know. Iced to room temperature is better."

"Totally agree," Sunshine says quickly.

Glad to know neither of us can interact with humans properly.

Another moment of awkward silence, except I know what to say this time.

"So, you work at the lab?" I ask. For the small moment I didn't have his attention, he seemed to be surveying the small cakes on display inside the counter beside me, looking at a little white cake with strawberry coating on top before turning back to me.

"Oh! Yeah, no, I just- Carl told me about the place, said I had to try it out," he says, shifting his weight as he stands. "Good vibes and all that."

"Carl..." I say, trying to remember if I've known a Carl.

"Big, like," he gestures his hands long then wide. "Works security, looks like," he makes a sort of stern, almost mean mug face. At that it clicks.

"Oh! Carl!" Deftones Guy. "Yeah, I know him," I say with a more relaxed smile, chuckling a little.

"Yeah, said you guys discuss music sometimes," he says, nodding enthusiastically like he's glad we know the same person.

"A little," I say, placing the drink on the counter. "Alright, Mr. Futturman. $6.70 is your total."

The dark haired man nods, pulling out a green wallet with an emblem on the front from one of his deep pockets. I try to get a clear look simply out of curiosity, but his large, tanned hand covers it too much for me to see what it is.

"Here you are," he says, handing me his card. There's more silence, this time comfortable as I swipe it, our machine beeping twice in decline. At the third beep, Sunshine begins to shift his weight again, licking and biting his bottom lip nervously.

"There should be money on there," he says with a nervous chuckle.

"Oh, it's the machine. It doesn't like working," I clarify. "One sec."

Quickly, I pound my palm into the righthand top corner of the device, right under the chip reader before inserting the blue, cloud covered card once more and waiting for the transaction to clear. At the much more calm, non-nuclear level beep we both breathe a sigh of relief as I return the card to him with a smile.

"Alright," he says with that bright tone to his voice once more. "Now I can see what's up."

We both can.

"I hope you have a good day, Mr. Futturman," I say brightly, still a tad pink from leftover embarrassment.

Sunshine nods and smiles at me, toasting his drink before turning from me and beginning to walk away, taking a sip of his drink and humming in approval, turning quickly and giving me a thumbs up before tripping over his own foot and stumbling into the door like a bit of an idiot, making me giggle slightly before I make myself look away to give him the same grace he'd given me earlier. And with that last exchange he's gone, and I'm free to return to my art.

The tall man looked sadly at- ah shit, I jumped ahead.

"I've waited for you my whole life. You could give me a goddamn answer, Future Man!" Tiger spat in anger and frustration, forcing the emotions she could barely even allow herself to feel overwhelm her in her attempts to communicate.

Emotional angst for my bright morning. God bless, Nick.

-

As I push open the door to my apartment, my phone is buzzing with still silent notifications of what I can guarantee are Tumblr sourced. More specifically, Tumblr messaging sourced. As I push the door shut with my foot, one glance at my old, outdated phone confirms my thoughts.

felinehusband: Okay, give it to me straight.

I smile at the notification, allowing my oversized bag filled with too many items to clatter to the ground loudly, unlocking my phone and responding quickly.

icanfixhimdotorg: Dude.

I walk as I type, entering the kitchen and opening the door to the small freezer to see which cheap meal I'll try not to nuke tonight.

felinehusband: Dude? ,:)

I smile at the message, picking out chicken teriyaki as I hit send.

icanfixhimdotorg: Worth. The. Wait.

I cross to the beaten microwave, the appliance cheap and secondhand from Facebook marketplace. It's honestly a miracle the thing hasn't blown up in my face or given me detectable cancer, but despite the large dent on the side, still usable. Google said if the door still seals and there's no opening, it was safe. And it got that dent from me dropping it on the way inside the apartment on move in day after I already paid $50 for it after getting it from some overworked mom who hardly wanted to even charge that low. I sure as hell wasn't gonna get a refund, or anything functional for cheaper.

I leave my phone on the counter as I open the frozen meal, vent the film and slap it inside. Now to wait for seven minutes.

felinehusband: Oh thank GOD. I've been anxious all day.

I chuckle softly, smiling as I lean against the permanently grimy counter.

icanfixhimdotorg: I don't know why!! You always post such good work :)

felinehusband: Well, I post work that always has good reception.

icanfixhimdotorg: The difference?

felinehusband: ... I'll get back to you on that one lol

I tap my foot against the floor, listening to the muffled echo mix with the loud hum of the microwave as I stare ahead at the mint green, poorly painted wall in front of me.

icanfixhimdotorg: No cervix penetration?

There's plenty of ways to meet friends. I didn't not bank on responding to a request for beta readers for fanfiction for some moderate, slowly dying game fandom to be one of them.

felinehusband: ONE TIME!

The quick response makes me laugh, clicking off my phone as I turn my attention now to my waiting meal that I'm going to devour much too quickly while working lines for my production.

Nick and I started chatting about six months ago. I had already been following him for some of his shit posts, midnight blogging, and when he started posting fanfiction I was one of his first readers.

'Biotic Wars' doesn't have a particularly big following on Tumblr as it used to. When the game first came out, people were going insane over how to beat the final level. The community thrived from memes, overly elaborate theories, fanfiction, you name it. It helped that there was a huge boost in the gaming community in general around the time it came out, what with 'Five Nights at Freddy's' cranking out sequels faster than anyone could keep up with, 'Undertale' breaking out onto the scene a little bit later. The gaming side of Tumblr was alive and thriving, and the amount of overlapping there was between fandoms only made it bigger. That was how I found the fandom personally. That and binging several different speed-running videos.

At the point Nick came onto the scene, most had generally lost their interest in the unbeatable 'Biotic Wars.' The fans that remained did so out of genuine interest or hyperfixation instead of temporary trends, and while good work was still being posted, everyone had at that point either begun to shift their own writing focuses, lost time to post frequently, or shifted to other platforms such as Archive of Our Own and had stopped crossposting to their Tumblr. So a decent, well paced, new angst fic following a lone Wolf and Tiger reminiscing on their old journies together as they attempted to survive a bitter winter night without any supplies other than an old tarp being used as their only attempt of shelter as they attempt to ride out a storm after a mission gone wrong popped onto the scene, people were immediately captivated. And even though it was a one-shot, the work received enough attention that a spin-off fic was posted within the following 48 hours. And once those two had blown up, Nick was quickly recognized in the community for his content, shitposts and fics alike. And he was very lucky to have overwhelming positive feedback. Until his first smut, that is.

icanfixhimdotorg: Nico, baby. It's an important first step for every smut writer.

Oh, it was brutal. First, he decided to go off the deep end by just jumping straight into some tenticle situation for poor Tiger. Now, granted, he did post a poll before hand asking if we readers would enjoy the consumption of some outrageous shit, to which 78.8% of voters said yes, myself included. But when reading a 'baby's first smut' fic, one doesn't really expect... that. But I'll admit, it was surprisingly good quality. Until the cervix penetration.

"Coiling in her womb." Yeah, Tumblr had a fun day with that one.

It took less than a day for him to post that he was searching for smut consultants and beta readers, to which I responded both out of genuine interest and a bit of pity since I was sure his ask box was filling with several new comments. No one was surprised when he ended up turning off anon for a few days. And since I had responded to quite a few of his works/posts already, I was one of the lucky few selected for such a job since he recognized me. And once the doorway was opened for casual chatter, both of us just kind of never stopped. Either by constantly responding to each others posts, automatic reblogs at each notification of a new post, or messaging each other about our days kept us both sane as we tried to just survive each new day as adults.

I look up from my notebook where my tragic script is scratched across the $0.75 college notebook as I lazily attempt to memorize my lines while mostly keeping my eyes trained on the old TV in front of me to check the buzz from my phone, swiping it open to read the new message.

felinehusband: So how's season four going?

icanfixhimdotorg: Dude.

I watch the screen until I feel the phone buzz once more in my hand.

felinehusband: No spoilers!! I'm still trying to push through season three for you ;)

Nick was sweet. Good for a joke, claims he's a little awkward, but a good friend. Sweet enough that about two months ago he'd let it slip he'd begun watching my favorite show simply because "If I have to see you go insane over animated anthropomorphic animals interacting with humans again without context, I'm gonna lose it."

icanfixhimdotorg: Binge it!! You're gonna lose your mind!!

felinehusband: You're gonna delay part 10 lmao

As I take the last bite of my meal, I realize the time, sighing as I begin to do the mental math of how long I have until practice tonight. Knowing how little time I have to prepare, I pause the episode and type one last quick text.

icanfixhimdotorg: If it does, it's worth it honestly. You won't believe this shit, Nick.

As I stand from the sagging, horrendously textured couch I catch his parting message while I stretch, popping about five different spots in my back.

felinehusband: Okayokay, if it means I can read your over the top rants again, it's worth it :)

icanfixhimdotorg: Excellent. Got to go, showering for practice tonight.

I trail quickly through the small apartment, grabbing whatever clothes are passable in public while remaining comfortable enough to sleep in when I immediately collapse into my bed around 11 tonight, an old, tattered, turquoise towel I'd stolen from my parents when I moved out, and grabbing my soap from the kitchen sink before making my way to the bathroom. Listen, Seventh Generation is cheap and works just as good on the human body as it does on dishes, alright? I'm trying to get a mortgage one day.

As I wait for the water to shift from its arctic temperature to something more bearable, I check my phone one more time to quickly reblog a gifset and read Nick's departing message.

felinehusband: Knock 'em dead, Mercutio :)

felinehusband: Also, I need some input later tonight for this like. Slowburn thing. May be an AU. Not sure, we'll see. I'm thinking coffee shop

Ah, yes.

icanfixhimdotorg: A classic.

                             >¤��○《¤<

I'm making no current promises on how frequently I update this series. Hopefully it'll be something I can work on while working and such, but we'll see what happens. My current hope is to post at minimum one request and hopefully one part for this series per week. However I will warn one of my current projects is about to wrap up, meaning I'm going to have to focus on that next week as much as possible, meaning I probably won't get anything done writing wise next week unless I aim for a drabble or headcanons. And even then I'm not sure I'll have time for actually editing and such, so don't be surprised if the only content you get next week is some rambles like I've been doing for Peeta lately or nothing at all. Alright, love y'all!! Stay safe, stay healthy <33 see you next time.

Taglist:

@cassiecasluciluce @gh0u1ishly @joshhutchersons-slut @schmidtsbimbo @sugarevans @wompwompwomp57 . Thank you for your support pookies!!! <3

               •▪︎Masterlist▪︎•

[usafphantom2]

SR-71 “Ichi-Ban” – Buried in the Deepest Ocean on Earth

Throughout the 60s, Lockheed Skunk Works were building some incredible aircraft – the A-12 Oxcart and SR-71 were and still are some of the fastest vehicles ever made. These technical achievements were incredible. Before home computing and the internet, there were aircraft capable of more than 2,000 mph.

But, being on the bleeding edge of technology comes with risks. Either through lack of understanding or difficulty in manufacturing parts to tight enough tolerances, accidents can and will happen. This was to be the unfortunate fate of the SR-71 known as “Ichi-Ban”.

The Lockheed SR-71, known as the ‘Habu’.

SR-71 #61-17974 was based at Kadena AFB, Okinawa, Japan and made quite the scene for the locals who lived close by.

Read More: Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird – The Plane Designed to Leak

The unusual aircraft drew a lot of attention thanks to the unusual shape and jet black paintwork. The SR-71 became known as the ‘Habu’ locally, thanks to its resemblance to the Habu Pit Viper.

The Habu Viper.

The shape of the Habu Viper’s head has a strong resemblance to the SR-71.

As these aircraft were spyplanes, pilots did not become aces in the traditional sense, but with every mission flown a Habu was painted onto the side of the Blackbird. Once amassing 5 missions complete the crew would be considered an ace.

#61-17974 had the most operational missions complete and a large Habu was painted on the tail of the aircraft as a mark of respect. The snake was wrapped around a red ‘1’ and in the local language, ‘number one’ translated to ‘Ichi-Ban’.

The SR-71 known as "Ichi-Ban".

In April of 1989, just like many missions flown before, Pilot Lt. Col Dan House took Ichi-Ban into the skies above Kadena and everything seemed normal.

Nothing was reported by House or by his RSO Blair Bozek that would indicate any issue.

That was until House pushed the throttles on the pair of J-58 engines to maximum power. As Ichi-Ban hit Mach 3.0 the bearing in the left-hand compressor failed and caused the immediate destruction of the engine whilst travelling at over 2,000 mph.

The Wreckage of SR-71 "Ichi-Ban".

The damage from hitting the water was immense.

As the J-58 exploded, shrapnel was sent flying damaging the SR-71 and most critically severing hydraulic lines. Even the best and most experienced pilots ever would not be able to save such a badly damaged plane.

House did not give up, incredibly aware that the death of his RSO and himself was imminent, he managed to steer the Blackbird into a shallow descent and decelerate as quickly as possible.

Ejecting from aircraft is not a pleasant experience for anyone involved and doing it at Mach 3 would have been suicide.

The US could not let the wreckage fall into the hands of the Chinese government.

It was extremely important to recover the wreckage as the technology was highly classified.

However, extreme skill combined with a lot of luck meant that the wounded aircraft found itself below 10,000 at low enough speed for both House and Bozek to safely eject. They landed in the sea where some local fishermen came to their rescue.

Ichi-Ban continued going down and eventually smashed into the waters of the South China Sea.

Despite the age of the SR-71, the US could not let the wreckage be recovered by the Chinese. It was too technically advanced. It was not long before the wreckage had been salvaged and transported back to the Kadena Air Force base.

The tail of Ichi-Ban.

There were several options of what they could do with the wreckage of Ichi-Ban: scrap the aircraft and sell the metal to the highest bidder in Okinawa, send it back to the US for disposal, or bury it.

Typically the fastest and least expensive option was chosen.

Read More: The F-22 Raptor – The Fighter of the Future

But, the story does not end there – the Pacific Air Force would not permit burial of the aircraft at Kadena because facilities were constantly under construction for new tenants. Meaning that it may be a possibility that it would need to be dug up and moved somewhere else.

The SR-71 was an important aircraft to many.

Crews were very fond of the SR-71. Fitting that a full military honours burial was done to see her off.

Burial at sea seemed the most fitting option but required help from the US Navy. After all of the bureaucracy was settled the SR-71 #61-17974 was transferred to a waiting vessel.

Her remains were taken out to sea on Christmas Eve 1989 and buried with full military honours. Pushed off the side of the vessel, Ichi-Ban sank 25,597 feet into the ocean where she lies at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Are there any SR-71 still flying?

Though the SR-71 still holds the record for the highest altitude in horizontal flight, it’s no longer in use. In fact, Clarence “Kelly” Johnson designed this aircraft for Lockheed with the latest technology of the time. The plane’s pilots even required special suits to survive the extreme conditions the planes created. However, the US retired the planes in 1989 for political reasons and would only have brief reinstatement during the 1990s, after which the US permanently retired them.

@Stealthy360 via X

[obscure-entity]

14 species to look at (i worked hard)

Drelym

Drelym are dexterous bipeds in spite of having 3-digits on each limb. They are the bold successors to humans, "inheriting" their use of technology and written-language. 

Drelym were the first to investigate a visiting spacecraft (under the knowledge that other hospitable planets were already found, and that this planet was a mere side-voyage for humans). After quickly learning how to use humans’ technology, Drelym began implementing it in to their own civilizations and wiped the group out. In short: this thing can use a computer!

Presently, they build dome-like structures and travel in groups to kill larger creatures.

Teppet

Teppets are quilled creatures with a dietary-preference for fruit, insects, and unattended eggs. They either burrow or reside in dense forests to keep themselves hidden. 

Their quills are specialized to stun attackers. Not only are they packed with minor shocks, but the microscopic barbs on the tips flake off similarly to fiberglass. Teppets that bide their time correctly escape often.

Tervine

Tervines are massive, disc-shaped, grazing animals that roam in the open. The rocky masses on their backs are both crucial to their protection as well as natural. Plant growth and rock formations can indicate age.

Their offspring retract in to their “shells” to appear like rocks, and they often hitch rides on their mothers’ backs. In more pressing situations, their mothers even allow them to hide beneath them.

Arthrid

Arthrids are skittish hooved mammals. Their split jaws move independently as mandibles. They eat plants and extract nectar with their thin tongues, sometimes using their jaws to tear in to tree trunks for hints of sap. 

Arthrids cover distances in lengthy jumps, and they even bounce around each other to play! The drelym usually tame them as steeds, using them for speedy travels across more difficult terrain. 

Baleon

As some of the most common predators, baleons are dreaded for their lengthy claws. Baleons tolerate each other in unorganized social groups, but they remain alone when raising offspring. 

Their body variations are hereditary, but traits of them can combine. “Masked” baleons have thick, dulled claws and a hard facial surface. “Bald” baleons have furred faces and hook-like, sharpened claws. 

Leorien

Leoriens are extremely solitary predators feared for their presence in trees, crushing bite force, and ambush-hunting nature. They are direct rivals to baleons and capable of killing any lone ones they can find.

They are rarely found in open daylight unless traveling, and they stick to the canopies or denser foliage. Leoriens steer clear of each other, as they are very conscious of territorial spaces.

Bushven

Bushvens are fully-aquatic sentient flora that can be found in swarms.

While feeding, they can appear to the unaware like flowers floating along the surface of the water. This is because they flare the leaves from their bodies and point upward to photosynthesize, only letting their flower-shaped snouts break the surface. They have no mouths. 

Mayskit

The mayskits are tiny, photosynthetic tree-dwellers that skitter along branches to evade threats, being one of the fastest terrestrial animals.

They rely on signifying dangers to each other through their antennae. In confrontations, mayskits can whip their lengthy tails with sharp speed.

Alamoth

An alamoth is a rare and devastating sight, being the most significant threat to all other species including their own. If an alamoth spots another of its kind, it will urgently knock it out of the skies or kill it on sight. 

Their extra pair of eyes are angled downward to improve their range of vision in flight. While they can use their thick jaws and massive talons, their favored method of hunting is quite literally beating their prey in to the dirt with their wings.

Piboa

Piboas are long, lightly-furred nocturnal predators from the trees.

Their limbs are nearly vestigial, but they still utilize them for both leverage and a grip in climbing.

Piboas have a sticky tongue for hunting insects, but for more moderately-sized prey, they use a drop-and-constrict method. 

Blade-Beast

Blade-Beasts were constructed by the drelym and employed to kill predators in the immediate surroundings of their towns.

They are able to run unlimited distances and draw out built-in razors for attacking sensed movement. Their bodies are also encased in hologram-like “force-fields” that keep them essentially waterproof.

In spite of their lethality, Blade-Beasts are easily dismantled, as their protective field can be torn with enough force.

Mavie

The mavies are among the largest herbivores. Their necks enable them to reach fruit and leaves from the trees, while their front limbs give them the extra leverage on branches to stand further upright for a better reach.

Their thickly layered fur and sheer force in a stomp makes them an unfavorable target to attackers.

Mavies tend to migrate to less-populated and colder regions for the sake of having offspring.

Tivid

Tivids are small flying omnivores that roost on trees in swarms.

They fly actively at dawn and dusk to search for fruit, insects, larvae, and carcasses.

Their wings each have a single hooked claw for gripping surfaces and reaching in to narrow spaces.

Urcan

An urcan is a large, mostly-aquatic carnivore. They can be found basking on the shores, but they never stray far from the water where they have more mobility.

It relies on ambushing whatever crosses or drinks the water, veiled by the surface.

Even with a sharp vision, urcans are compelled by motion.

Chart in order of silhouettes:

Tivid

Mayskit

Bushven

Teppet

Drelym

Arthrid

Baleon

Leolien

Piboa

Blade-Beast

Urcan

Tervine

Alamoth

Mavie

[oldguydoesstuff]

Computer companies of the 60s and 70s were not just competing to build the fastest machine. They were also locked in a battle of industrial design, trying to one-up each other on how futuristic and badass they could make their systems look.

Because having a computer then was still a huge flex for a business, and these systems were installed behind glass at the front of the building for all to see in many cases, not in some hidden server room in back.

[stephensmithuk]

The Hound of the Baskervilles: The Stapletons of Merripit House

A mullion is a vertical divider in a window.

A scullery maid was the lowest ranking female servant in the household, who would wash the dishes and sometimes the clothing too. Snow White and Cinderella started off in this role.

It would take Watson around two hours to walk to Grimpen. I've done longer walks and I suppose he would have done so in his Army days.

A grocer is a person who runs a grocery, which in British English is analagous to a general store, where you would buy most everyday items, including the most common newspapers and magazines. We would also distinguish these days between the larger supermarket (grocery store) and the smaller corner shop (what New Yorkers would call a bodega); frequently run by immigrants or their immediate descendants. This is an example of the latter.

I do not know how common it was then, but today it is very common, even in major cities, to have a Post Office counter as part of another store such as a corner shop; these franchised businesses are run by subpostmasters. The Post Office, as well as post, provides banking services for both its own financial business and for other banks or building societies. The computer system that was used for financial transactions by them, Horizon, is currently at the centre of a major scandal.

Dartmoor has many peat bogs. The Ordnance Survey maps give their general location, but their exact size varies depending on conditions. Walkers frequently end up in them by accident or lack of experience; safe routes are marked out, but not always easy to see. The vast majority are not that deep and the worst that will happen is a case of smelly, muddy embarrassment. However, some are deeper, where you can end up with a risk of hypothermia - there are no less than four volunteer Mountain Rescue teams in the area to help people in difficulty.

Then some are straight up lethal, especially to animals. A gallop is the fastest horse speed setting - a horse can run at around 25 to 30mph for up to three kilometres before getting winded. So, not a good idea to do it on boggy land.

Grimpen Mire is believed to have been inspired by Fox Tor Mire:

There are 14 species of bittern. One of them is the Eurasian bittern, which was indeed extinct in the UK for a while when this story takes place and is still only here in limited numbers with its habitat. The species as a whole currently rated "Least Concern" but in decline.

The Neolithic period lasted from c.10,000 BC to c.2,000 BC, being the final period of the Stone Age. There is a timber track pathway in Somerset, the oldest recorded road, dating back to c. 3,838 BC.

Cyclopides was an old name for several species of South African Skipper butterflies. They tend to be found in southern Africa, not Dartmoor:

Miss Stapleton must deem the situation urgent to leave without her hat; people did not as a general rule go hatless in this period, even the poorest usually had some form of cap.

[spicyclover]

Everyday by your side

Summary: Sometimes you need to wait for the right moment.

Hope you’ll enjoy it. Let me know in the comment section.

Thank you! :)

Lots of love, xxx Spicy Clover

You've been with Alex for almost three years now. Your relationship is perfect... almost. There is a detail that has been bothering you for several months. In your circle of friends, all are either engaged or married. Each of them found the soul mate who put the ring on their finger, yet after three years, Alex still has not asked you. Not that you want to or are in a hurry, but hearing your friend talking about weddings and stuff... You want it, too.

You tried to make him understand. After all, this is the third wedding you've attended, and you’ve been a bridesmaid. You sent him pictures of rings, announcements from your friends, and wedding videos, but nothing. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t seem disturbed or concerned about it. He is very busy with his round trips and all the work required to be a Formula One driver…

It’s not complicated to ask a question!

You pester yourself, typing frantically on your computer. Another of your friends just announced her engagement on Instagram. Here you go, one more. You sip your coffee before shutting down your computer and looking around you. You’re sitting at the entrance of Williams Hospitality. It’s Saturday, qualifying is about to start, and you’ve been catching up on some work late enjoying the marvellous Italian sun. People walk back and forth without paying attention. Fans run between the buildings to see the pilots or team members. You watch the journalists make their comments, the photographers take pictures, and you notice one of them taking a picture of you. You smile politely before turning your eyes.

They can be invasive…

You pick up your stuff and grab your bag. You walk to the garage where you’re going to watch the race. You know Alex is already there. The driver parade just ended. You quickly sneak in and pick up what you need before entering the part of the garage reserved for Alex. He talks with his engineers. You join his coach, who smiles tenderly at you before returning to his conversation. You wait for Alex to finish before waving at him. He rushes to you and kisses you quickly before getting in the car.

I barely had time to tell him I love you.

You sulk a little. Qualifying begins, and Alex manages to make good laps, which puts him in a good position for Q2. He gets to do what drives him into Q3. You’re happy, and the team is happy. You feel the excitement of the mechanics. They’ve been waiting since the beginning of the year for the car's excellent performance, and it’s today. You smile while holding the radio close to you. Alex is ready for Q3.

In Q3, Alex gets the fastest lap. He crosses the finish line. There are 3 minutes left when Checo crashes into the wall. It causes a red flag. The cars go back to the pits, and you wait. You all wait. Your boyfriend’s name is still first in the standings. Is it going to be his first pole? You look nervously at the screen. Sergio gets out of his car safely, and that reassures you. He has nothing. You’re not very close to Sergio, but seeing one of them crash into the wall always scares you. You’re afraid they’ll not get out of there in time or ever. The anxiety is tenfold if it’s Alex.

The wait is short as the teams announce it on the radio. Alex is on the front line for tomorrow’s race. The team exclaims joy, and you jump in joy, laughing. You are so happy. Tears even come to your eyes. You will have the team outside the garage and see Alex getting out of his car. His comrades congratulate him. You heard him on the radio, his cry of joy.

He sees you and beckons you to approach. You run up to him and jump in his arms. You are so happy. Right now, you don’t care about the cameras. You’re proud of him. Nothing’s going to ruin that feeling.

"I'm so proud of you." You whisper in his ear. Feeling his chest rising quickly.

"I love you." He says, taking your face in his hands. "I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to live with you. I want to experience life forever at your side. I want to be by your side every day, all day, for as long as I live."

You are moved by this sudden surge of love. You smile despite the tears of joy that flow down your cheeks. Your head caresses his hands. You can’t say anything.

"Marry me!" He says, blurring it out.

"What?" You ask, unsure of what you just heard. He laughs and kisses your lips before repeating it.

"Y/n Y/L/N, will you marry me?"

This is the question you’ve been waiting for months and months. He asks it in the middle of everything, in the middle of his world. The cameras are on you. Yet you’re alone in the world. You think you hear screams of excitement, but you can't hear anything. All that matters is him. Alex, the man you love. The men with whom you share your life, your good and your bad moments, your confidant, your lover, your best friend. You won’t believe this day is finally here. You smile foolishly, unable to say a single word. You end up nodding, tears take over and burst into tears in his arms. Your mouth finds him, and you kiss him. It’s the best day of your life.

"Yes!" You finally found words, laughing when you heard the applause around you.

[jumpywhumpywriter]

Sadistic Hero vs Terrified Robbers

Warnings: sadistic hero playing cat and mouse with robbers, toying with victims, intentional injury (dealt to criminals), humiliation

This event takes place many years after Shadow's alliance with Thomas, when they have finally started getting along better and working together to stop criminals on the streets. Random side-story unrelated to and not included in my main trilogy.

"They're heading Northbound on foot, looks like they're making a dash for that old storage warehouse on 54th. If you cut through Maple street you can cut them off before they get there." Thomas was typing madly at his desk, fingers becoming a blur as he searched maps for the best routes and tracked the two target's locations, while monitoring Shadow's alignment against their coordinates, to tell her the fastest route.

"They just took a right turn on 55th down the alley! Now's your chance to get them!" He practically shouted into the comms, feeling a rush of excitement run up his spine. This was more entertaining than video games, the news, or anything else he could have imagined. He'd always wondered what it would be like to work behind the scenes and man the comms for a vigilante just like they always did in the movies... but he never thought he'd actually get to do that.

And yet here he was, doing illegal vigilante stuff... with a Falkry, of all things. It certainly made things more interesting to have a legendary creature on your side to help stop crime. Almost half of the criminals fainted on sight in shock after seeing Shadow in the flesh. And Thomas couldn't blame them; she was terrifying.

Today's catch would be two armed thieves that had just finished robbing a small family-owned business, and were on the run. They were obviously inexperienced, as they had robbed the store at knifepoint instead of gunpoint, and had chosen to flee on foot instead of in a car, two critical oversights that they were probably already regretting deeply.

It was solidly night, and Shadow blended well amidst the darkness in her black leather suit. Her ghostly white wings were the only thing that could give her away.

"Ah, I've got eyes on." Shadow's voice came crackling through Thomas's computer.

"Go get 'em Shadow!" Lucas was standing behind Thomas watching scenes unfold from the sideline, and mostly enjoyed the excited energy that filled the air whenever Shadow was on a mission.

"I'm going, okay?! I don't need a cheerleader," she snapped back. She glided near-soundlessly down around the back of a building at one end of the alley the criminals would soon be coming through, and positioned herself right behind the corner.

Game time, she thought, preparing herself for action. She didn't have to wait long before the sound of fast footsteps and hard breathing reached her sensitive ears.

"Do you think they're following us!?" A labored voice panted.

"No, I think we lost 'em," a second answered.

Heh heh. Idiots. They have no idea what they're in for, Shadow thought smugly. Their night’s about to get a whole lot crazier. She waited until the two men had almost reached the end of the alley before she stepped around the corner to face them. Both of them came to comically screeching halts, wearing identical expressions of astonishment and shock at the sight of the Falkry.

"Good evening, humans. Have any plans for tonight, besides robbing more stores?" Shadow purred smoothly, smirking.

"What is--" the first man started, then cut himself off. He was wearing a black backpack that Shadow assumed held the treasure they had stolen. The man quickly regained his composure and dropped the backpack on the ground, pulling out two sizable knives and brandishing them threateningly in warning at her, even though his hands were trembling. His partner did the same.

"I-I don't know what kind of monster you are, but if you try anything, I promise you'll regret it!" The first man said. Shadow found it amusing how hard he was trying to appear confident and capable, but she could hear the nervous edge to his voice, along with his racing heartbeat, which gave him away.

"How about this: I'll give you some free wisdom and lessons of life that might help you in the future before I take you both down. That is, if you even have a future after going to prison." She chuckled coldly, and started counting on her fingers. "Firstly, don't make promises you can't keep. Secondly, don't make threats unless you are able to make good on them. Thirdly, don't threaten the dangerous predator who can kill you in a heartbeat. And fourthly, don't bring a knife to a ninja fight. Oh, and almost forgot the last one: Never antagonize me. It always ends very badly. For you. Any questions?"

The second man unexpectedly rushed at her with a shout and his knife raised high; perhaps a side effect of his small brain and sheer stupidity, combined with the effect of the adrenaline flooding his veins, Shadow figured.

What an idiot... She sighed and shook her head in amusement before gracefully dodging to the side and casually tripping him with a foot as he barreled past, sending him sprawling on the hard asphalt.

The first man was apparently equally stupid, as he tried to use his partner's move as a distraction, so that he could attack Shadow from behind. Both of them must have obviously failed school to have such a low IQ.

I don't understand their specific kind of stupid, but I do admire their total commitment to it, Shadow thought, ducking the first man's attack while the second scrambled back to his feet.

Two on one. I like those odds.

"I think you missed the life lesson about 'not' antagonizing me," she chuckled. She was toying with them like a cat playing lazily with a mouse. It wasn't often that she came across criminals willing to take a stab at defeating her. Most of them either fainted on sight, or flight instinct kicked in and they ran away. But in the rare case like this one where her enemy decided to fight back, she saw it as a perfect opportunity to test out her own skills as a warrior. It was good practice, to keep her skills sharp.

Shadow's hands instinctively twitched toward the two daggers nestled in their sheaths at her hip, but she decided against it.

I'm not trying to kill them. I just need to incapacitate them. Which shouldn't be hard, considering that these humans have ant-sized brains. It'll make this fight more interesting if they have weapons and I don't anyway.

The two thieves ran at her from opposite sides, and Shadow snapped her wings out, striking both of them hard in the face, enough to leave a nasty bruise and send them staggering backward in a daze.

"Had enough yet?" Shadow taunted mockingly. The second man was definitely out of the fight, leaning against the alley wall and wiping blood from his nose, which was either fractured or broken from the force of the blow Shadow's wing had delivered.

The second man, on the other hand, decided to make one last half-hearted attack, stumbling clumsily toward her and waving his only remaining knife weakly in the air.

Oops... I think I hit that one a little too hard. Shadow was pretty sure she'd given him a concussion, judging from how he was having a hard time walking in a straight line and was looking a bit disoriented. She sometimes 'accidently' forgot that she had the strength of a Falkry, whereas these were just humans. Regular ol' humans.

Shadow sighed boredly, effortlessly catching the man's wrist in her hand as he took a swipe at her. She squeezed hard; not hard enough to do any serious damage, but just enough to make it hurt, so that he dropped the knife uselessly to the ground.

"I think I've had enough of this now," she muttered under her breath. Then she grabbed the man by the collar of his shirt and slammed him into the alley wall, lifting him up so his feet dangled off the ground. The man's eyes widened in terror at how the tables had flipped, and the fear was plain on his face.

Shadow grinned darkly, tilting her head from side to side, pretending to contemplate choices. "Hmm... to kill, or not to kill. That is the question." She barely managed to bite back her laughter as she watched the man's face instantly pale.

I'm having way too much fun with this.

She would have enjoyed toying with him a little longer, but she was beginning to worry that he might have a literal heart attack because of how fast his heart was beating. So instead she knocked him out with a sharp jab to the head, before carefully lowering him to the ground. Then she turned her attention to the other thief, who was trying to stumble away. With a single beat of her wings, she closed the distance between them and delivered a solid blow to the back of his head. With both criminals unconscious, she walked unhurried over to the backpack and unzipped it to find several stacks of cash.

"Not a bad haul," she said to herself. Getting an idea, she used her unnatural strength to rip the straps off the backpack, and used them to tie both of the thieves' hands together. Then she used a couple more straps and tied one of the mens' feet to his partner in crime, then stepped back to check her work.

This will be rather interesting when they wake up, she thought in amusement. They wouldn't be able to run away since they were tied to each other, and she could only imagine how hilarious it would be to see them sprawling all over the place in an attempt to escape before the police arrived to arrest them.

I call it... 'art!' She chuckled to herself. She could already hear sirens coming in the distance, and so she melted back into the darkness of the night and disappeared without a trace. She imagined the police would be fairly confused to find the two thieves already taken out, and tethered to each other in such a strange way.

I basically did their job for them.

Masterlist #1 - all my main whump stories

Masterlist #2 - all stories specifically involving Shadow and Thomas

@scoundrelwithboba @lumpofsand @isikedmyself878 @iamheretohurt @fleur-a-whump

@ay5ksal @otterfrost @sausages-things @togzy

@whump-till-ya-jump @cravesunconditionallove @whumpwritinglover222

[dandelionsresilience]

Good News - May 8-14

Like these weekly compilations? Support me on Ko-fi! Also, if you tip me on Ko-fi, at the end of the month I'll send you a link to all of the articles I found but didn't use each week - almost double the content!

1. Critically endangered fish with red hands and 'sad toad face' returned to the wild in Tasmania

“Conservationists in Australia are celebrating the return of 18 critically endangered red handfish to the sea after they were taken into care at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) in January to protect them from marine heatwaves.”

2. A rare Australian marsupial is being genetically modified to save it from extinction. Here's how

“Scientists are trying to genetically 'edit' the endangered northern quoll to make it resistant to the neurotoxin of the invasive cane toad. […] Now experts in gene-editing […] say they can introduce genetic resistance to the toxin by taking DNA from a species of South American lizard and ‘edit’ that into the cells of a northern quoll. They have already managed to do this with the cells of the closely related dunnart, another endemic marsupial.”

3. More and faster: Electricity from clean sources reaches 30% of global total

“For the first time, 30% of electricity produced worldwide was from clean energy sources as the number of solar and wind farms continued to grow fast. [...] Some of [the past year’s] new demand was for heat pumps, which are an efficient way to both heat and cool buildings, and for electric vehicles. [... Last year was also] the 19th year in a row that solar was the fastest-growing source of electricity generation.”

4. Standards Established To Improve Health Care For Kids With Disabilities

“Developed by a panel of health care experts, adults with disabilities and caregivers, the plan published recently in the journal Pediatrics […] calls for providers to be trained about caring for those with neurodevelopmental disabilities, improved communication with patients and their families and proactive planning in advance of health care encounters to ensure that patients are at ease and provided accommodations.”

5. Working together to better understand Alaska’s beluga whales

“Beluga conservation efforts depend on an accurate count of whales. Indigenous hunters also need to know how many belugas there are so that they [can] decide how many can be safely harvested. That’s why WWF is bringing together Western science and Indigenous knowledge […. U]sing hydrophones to detect belugas in the Yukon River works—and it is an approach that is both cost-effective and non-invasive.”

6. Robotic system feeds people with severe mobility limitations

“Researchers have developed a robotic feeding system that uses computer vision, machine learning and multimodal sensing to safely feed people with severe mobility limitations, including those with spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis. […] The robotic system successfully fed 13 individuals with diverse medical conditions in a user study spanning three locations[….] Users of the robot found it to be safe and comfortable, researchers said.”

7. Senate Passage of America’s Conservation Enhancement Act a Win for Wildlife

“The Senate’s reauthorization of the America’s Conservation Enhancement (ACE) Act will benefit America’s wildlife and way of life. Led by Senators Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Shelley Capito (R-W.Va.), the bill invests in wetlands and habitat restoration projects across the country as well as strategies to reduce conflicts between wildlife and livestock. […] The passage of this bill shows us once again that Americans are united on the need to protect wildlife and our outdoor heritage,” said Andrew Wilkins, director of land conservation policy at the National Wildlife Federation.”

8. Liberals and conservatives differ on climate change beliefs--but are relatively united in taking action

“The study, led by researchers at New York University, finds that when given the opportunity, liberals and conservatives take action to address climate change at roughly the same levels -- and that this is due to conservatives choosing to take action despite their climate-change beliefs rather than liberals failing to act on theirs.”

9. Democratic state attorneys general are teaming up to protect abortion access

“A group of Democratic attorneys general are working to strengthen state-level protections for abortion, contraception and gender-affirming care. These protections could include expanding the use of so-called “shield laws,” which assert that states where abortion or gender-affirming care are legal won’t cooperate with out-of-state efforts to prosecute anyone who helped provide treatment.”

10. Antwerp gives residents free trees

“The Belgian city of Antwerp has 2,000 trees to give away, and it wants to give them to residents to plant in their gardens [...] with the aim of involving citizens in the greenifying process of the city. [...] What’s more, the city website offers practical advice on how to proceed with planting and caring for the tree so that it will meet the standards set by the municipality. [...] The City makes sure to give dead trees a second life by using their wood in the making of natural kids’ playgrounds.”

May 1-7 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[sockatoothewafflebird]

DUDE I HAD A DREAM LAST NIGHT AND IT WAS INSANE

and i got a really interesting horror idea from it too. the dream is too complicated to explain in a single tumblr post but i will share the horror idea i got from it because i think it's very interesting

it's basicallt a high school hell that's a mix between scp-3008 and the backrooms? and there's a little bit of comedy sprinkled in, because it's a high school, and all of the characters are either high schoolers or teachers that are done with this shit, and it makes no sense (to me) otherwise.

putting it below the cut because it's a long and probably hard to decipher explanation lmao

(tw for talk of mutilation, violence, isolation, probably suicide too... it was a crazy dream man)

basically there's this high school that's as tall as a skyscraper. like upwards of fifty floors. the school is three different buildings arranged in a triangle sort of pattern. there's glass and steel bridges in between each of them, though all the roofs and walls are gone somehow.

for some reason it's completely shut down, with EVERYONE inside it. no one can get in or out. and eventually a bunch of horrible things start happening to people. like some glass thing explodes and a huge HUGE chunk of it gets lodged into some girl's skull and mutilates her face to the point it's unrecognizable, or someone gets impaled and instead of dying their body deforms into the pole-like shape of the thing that impaled them.

the people these horrible disgusting things happen to become cryptids, monsters, horrific creatures that can't even be considered human anymore. some are friendly, sone are docile or skittish, and some have a taste for blood.

on top of having to avoid the monsters, the survivors also have to ration resources and find comfortable places to sleep and live and not go completely fucking insane.

this high school is HUGE, so there's almost every kind of room you can think of. on one floor there's just a bunch of culinary classroons and the cafeteria, on another there's carpentry class, on the next there's band and choir classes and the auditorium, the list goes on. so all you have to do to get the things you need is to go between floors and gather what you can.

the fastest way between floors is the stairwell. but the stairwell is exhausting, dark, cold, and probably filled with monsters that came from people that fell down the stairs or jumped to... get out of the situation. so your best bet is the elevators, of which there are four in each building. they malfunction often (some the maintenance guys became monsters and now only live to fix the elevators for eternity) and a lot of people want to take them, so it takes hours to get yourself from, say, the cafeteria floor to the locker rooms floor.

oh, and, kind of like SCP-3008, the cafetière is always stocked with food, culinary classrooms are always full of ingredients, all the plumbing still works so there's no demand for water... pretty much every necessity is fulfilled here. and as a bonus, all the equipment in all the classrooms are fully repaired and functional- every morning it's all brand new. everything you need to not die here is there waiting, as long as you can get to it before something else gets to you.

the bottom floor is dark, dangerous, and probably reeks of death. tons of people that fell down the stairwell end up at the bottom and their corpses just stay there and rot. it's another reason no one uses the stairs anymore; it smells horrible.

the bottom floor is the most dangerous, and the top floor is the safest (if you don't go running for the edge of the building), but each floor varies in danger and usefulness.

if you're lucky, you'll get the chance to see the computer engineering/graphic design floor, where all the students in those classes just code and build things on computers. this floor is the only floor where electronics work, and most of the time people come here to call their families, check the news and maybe call news outlets to be interviewed and shit, and play some good ol' videogames.

some teachers decided to keep teaching those willing to keep learning, and a lot of the teachers that survived the first wave of creatures have taught themselves and others how to handle the hostile ones. some teachers are just fending for themselves, and some... it's better not to say.

the story follows a small group of allies and friends trying to not fucking die. that's pretty much it.