#i feel like the math would make more sense for it to be billions of romulans dead but the transcript says millions

[curator-on-ao3]

Hey, Curator. I wanted to do this by ask instead of by comment on AO3, because I have *so* much respect for your work on Autobigraphy of Kirsten Clancy. Your creation of Martian culture? Exquisite. Your depiction of a healthy relationship between two peers striving to be part of the same organization they love and also raise a family? Fantastic. Your depiction of grief and trauma? Amazing. So since my question feels a bit critical, I wanted to emphasize that I'm not trying to start an argument or score points - I genuinely, privately want to know.

I could say nice things about the story all day. But one thing in it that I felt disappointed by was the decision not to just challenge the moral attitude of Picard and the Romulan relocation effort, but to actively change the facts of it. I think the question of whether the Federation should be allowed to break up over saying a billion lives or more is a serious one, and one that deserved the argument between Picard and Clancy. Having a narrative that says "Well, nobody really died because the Romulans evacuated them using their own resources" seems to really gut the whole moral concept of the argument - as if to say Clancy can't win it on those terms so we have to change the facts, when frankly I think she *can* win it.

Do you mind me asking what your thoughts were behind making that change? Is it supposed to be the product of unreliable narration on Clancy's part, or are you describing a different universe?

Anyway, thank you again for a wonderful story.

Oh my goodness, @ruckafangirl, your praise for that story means so much to me — and the elements you mention are quite close to my heart. Thank you, thank you! ❤️

I welcome questions (I feel like it’s an author’s dream to be asked why they made writerly choices), though I must admit I was confused at first by yours. The narrative in that story is 100% in our universe with those millions of Romulan deaths happening. Clancy’s argument with Picard following the destruction of Mars and Utopia Planitia — and her view that the Federation can save either itself or the Romulans, and the Romulans should have the resources to save themselves — is meant to be in light of readers knowing that Clancy won the argument at the cost of the future of the Romulan relocation effort since the Romulans did not turn out to have (or use?) the resources to save themselves.

I went back to the story to try to figure out what could have given you the impression that the Romulans didn’t die. Because you’re exactly right that Clancy is an unreliable narrator. She doesn’t lie whole cloth, though, and she’s painfully aware that most of her life is documented via official records and logs. I therefore worked to make her omissions both visible and sensible (e.g., she only reveals the extent of her closeness with Edward Jellico in the acknowledgments because, as she explains, he didn’t want her to talk much about him in her book). I wonder, was it Clancy’s press conference following Picard’s TV appearance that suggested the Romulans didn’t die? Because the journalist’s question, “What is your response to Picard’s critique of Starfleet’s decision to cancel the Romulan rescue?” is a fair one. And Clancy’s answer, “Starfleet is proud to have successfully handed off the Romulan evacuation to the Romulan government, which ensured the safety of its people,” is truthful, yet glosses over what “its people” means. Not all people. Not most people. And what about that handoff would have been proud in any way? I attempted to show the unreliable nature of Clancy’s glib, soundbite-oriented, political theater press conference answers by immediately having Clancy reflect on her training for press conferences from both Admiral Brand and her mother. Clancy, per her explaination of that training, focuses her press conference answers on what she views as “relevant information” while knowingly avoiding mention of deeper, uncomfortable truths — including what she perceives as Picard’s erratic behavior and his need for a brain scan (begging the question: Does Clancy know about Picard’s Irumodic Syndrome diagnosis or are her instincts that good?). Clancy correctly believes that the Romulan government took over the relocation. She possibly incorrectly believes that Starfleet therefore has no responsibility for the relocation’s failures. So she doesn’t mention them.

I hope all this makes clear that I wholeheartedly agree with you, @ruckafangirl: the moral concept of Clancy’s showdown with Picard requires those Romulans to die. And they most definitely do.

Note because of the times we live in: The Romulans die due to canon consistency. Their deaths are not a statement on my personal beliefs, their deaths are a fact of the Trek universe.

[nyaagolor]

What's going on with Nemona's wrist?

this is mostly just me putting down all my thoughts about this hc I have. Below the cut bc it's long as usual but read on if ur interested in like. orthopedics

I think Nemona has fatigue and some kind of wrist Issue because 1. She implies she has decreased motor function in that arm (can't throw pokeballs well, supports her arm with her other hand during battles) 2. She wears a brace 3. She gets winded easily / needs to catch her breath more than other characters / hates stairs So that got me wondering what the cause could be. I work in an orthopedic office and my shifts are 12 hours so sometimes when it's slow and I'm bored this is what my mind wanders to

Option 1: It's carpal tunnel and she's out of shape This is the most obvious answer since carpal tunnel is a repetitive stress injury and she's wearing a brace that looks almost identical to irl braces for that problem. Throwing pokeballs over and over, especially incorrectly, would be the most likely cause of an asymmetrical injury like that, and is actually reasonable for someone of her age and activity level. The winded thing is just because she's out of shape and has no underlying cause. Or maybe she just has some kinda chronic pain / fatigue disorder. That's not my department idk

Option 2: Oligoarticular JIA (juvenile idiopathic arthritis) This very long name is just describing chronic joint swelling in children that affects less than 5 joints. It's an autoimmune disease, and actually not that uncommon all things considered. It causes stiffness and pain, which would explain the stamina issues and motor skill issues. Plus, the constant flexion and extension of the knees from staircases certainly would explain her distaste for them in particular. That shit hurts. Occasionally people will use a brace for JIA-- it's highly unlikely her wrist would be the worst considering the typical presentation patterns (it usually affects bigger joints first like the knees) but hey. It's possible! This condition also affects young girls more often than other groups so. Math checks out

Option 3: Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hypermobility type) Figured I would include this bc I've seen a few people hc this and wanted to give it a fair shot myself. This is a heritable connective tissue disorder that causes hypermobile joints, chronic pain, fatigue, and a whole host of other things. Specifically tho, this disorder used to be called EDS type III and is now considered part of the Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders, but that's a can of worms for a post that's not this one. While the symptoms do match, and honestly quite well (a brace for stabilization makes perfect sense and the fatigue symptoms feel pretty on the nose) the disease usually causes very stretchy skin and vascular issues that she doesn't seem to have so I'm a tad on the fence

Option 4: Cervical spinal stenosis Despite this being the first thing that came to mind for me (since I see it a lot in the office) I'm now less convinced this would be the case. This disorder is basically a narrowing of the spinal canal that pinches the nerves in the neck. It can cause pain, weakness, numbing, and pain that radiates down the body. If most of the compression was on the C4 and C5 nerve I can see it affecting one arm / wrist especially rough (since the pain is typically bilateral but asymmetrical) but also this occurring in people under the age of 50 is SUPER rare so eh. It's possible it was congenital or caused by an injury but I wouldn't bet on it. As for the stamina issues, the neurological issues caused by the compression would likely be the cause of that, especially radiating down the back and legs. Felt worth it to include even if I'm not 100% convinced

I'm saying "options" here bc these symptoms are super vague and there's like 80 billion things that could cause it, I'm just racking my brain for different possibilities. If anyone has other hcs for the underlying causes of Her Whole Deal lmk I'm curious

[lobotomy-lady]

It would've been crazy weird if in this whole Universe with infinite galaxies we were the ONLY ones alive and sentient. Like it doesn't even make any sense

yeah I feel like ppl who think the idea of alien life is outrageously scifi shit just do not comprehend the true vastness of the universe, which is understandable bc it's literally mind boggling. 100 thousand million stars in our galaxy, most w/planetary systems of some kind. 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. then there's been billions of years of TIME elapsed since the big bang, which is billions of years of potential civilizations that predate humanity by millennia. do that math & it's by all accounts actually impossible for life to have never developed elsewhere.

the fermi paradox has always been stupid to me for this reason bc first of all, there IS evidence, boatloads of it-but even if you operate under the assumption that there isn't, that still doesn't mean shit bc planets are so spread out that aliens would have to be able to travel at light speed at a MINIMUM to reach us, or have found a way to create an artificial wormhole of some sort. there could be & imo probably are thousands of civilizations that are either around our level of technological development or less advanced, that just have no way of contacting us or knowing we exist, just like we have no way of reaching them. plus the likelihood that there are many more planets full of primitive life more similar to what earth was like millions of years ago. no sentience but it's still alien life.

I also hate when ppl are like "but the conditions for life to form are so specific & rare" first of all there are so many planets in the Goldilocks zone of their respective stars that we have ALREADY discovered in our quadrant of the milky way, second of all we know extremophiles exist even on earth (tardigrades for example, or creatures that live at the bottom of the ocean/in thermal vents), who's to say life couldn't adapt to the conditions of a planet that would be hostile to us? scientists are so married to the notion that all life must be carbon based & require water to live, it's ridiculous.

[schismusic]

In the shadow of the horns: meditations on Team ICO's works – 2. ICO

[Disclaimer: as always, spoilers for ICO are to be expected, and so are spoilers for Shadow of the Colossus since we've already discussed that one. Reader's discretion is advised.]

This one I wrote in a massive rush, because I only realized that I hadn't written anything about ICO yet right about when the time came to actually post this piece on here. I wanted this to be out before Christmas, see, not for any specific reason – I just wanted to make sure I was writing stuff that makes sense, more or less. I'm still taken aback by how much time it's taken, considering my Shadow of the Colossus piece was written more or less entirely between Colossus 2 and Colossus 6. As such, that particular piece contains a glaring mistake, that Tumblr user @crooked-mantis thankfully pointed out. Mantis's intervention is as follows:

While I did know the voice when Wander is transported back to the Shrine was supposed to be Mono's, I did not remember her calling Wander by name, specifically – and after reaching Colossus 9 and Colossus 14, I was pleasantly surprised to hear exactly what Mantis mentioned. So, again, thank you for pointing this out, and I'm glad you still enjoyed this piece that I titled after a song by Darkthrone just so I could make a stupid joke.

The beauty of Ico lies in the fact it seems to disregard the conventions of an average videogame, if you're not looking too hard. The first thing I did after completing ICO again was to put on some Kraftwerk – Computer Love, to be exact – because that same exact comment could be made with regards to their post-Autobahn production almost as a whole. Trans Europe Express and Radio-Activity, at least to an extent, tinker with that divide between their profoundly poppish writing style and that weird, destructured, post-1968 thing where even a pop song's structure can be broken down into something more than just function and role. All the same, ICO (Kraftwerk's music) is tightly designed, with recognizable hooks and welcoming moments that allow the player (listener) to immediately understand what they have to do. Here's a bubbly cursed boy. Here's a girl who's spent her whole life in a cage. They're trapped in a castle and evil shadows want to kidnap the girl. Have you done the math yet?

Right before I went back to the game myself, I happened to catch a friend of mine – @alexswordsman – as they streamed part of their first playthrough on Discord. I was struck by the realization that I had absolutely no recollection of a lot of moments from the game; but what truly surprised me is just how much of the game I did keep in my memory, and not just story bits (that would be easy, considering the campaign's length) but also entire rooms' worth of environmental puzzles, fights against the shadow children, the genuine sense of dread when leaving Yorda alone or when hanging from some iron pole, a good hundred meters above any solid ground. As I spent some time thinking about this, and a good couple of weeks after actually going through the game again in something like two and a half sittings, I realized that it really did take me a loooooong time to realize just for how long ICO was a game about the story, for me. The answer was of course quite a fucking lot – a whole year after my first playthrough or something, specifically. I remember telling some girl in my class about it, back in 2019, because I was an insufferable bastard who felt really alone but could not relate to other human beings on any fundamental level. Poor girl, I think she actually did feel some modicum of attraction towards me, but unfortunately I was very much not prepared to return it. The point being: for the longest time, apart from when I replayed it back in 2020, I genuinely thought of ICO as a story to be told, something to be read off of a Wikipedia page a billion years ago. As the previous piece (and, if you've read them, my other pieces about Team Ico, the Italian ones) might have clarified, of course, coming back to the games with a slightly more informed outlook has worked wonders for me.

Where Wander's core moveset would focus preeminently on violence and hostile action, Ico's was softer, less specialized, harder to describe. R1, which you have to hold down, allows you to hold Yorda's hand (or call to her, if she's away from you – much like Agro and Trico after her, buttons used notwithstanding); Square swings whatever blunt – or edged, or spiked – object you've got in your hand, but Ico is canonically like nine, so it's safe to assume he's not a fighter, or a climber, or a horserider. The one thing he can convincingly is seek out human contact: the one thing he is denied, as a horned kid. Yorda, on the other hand, has no such preconceptions: she may actually have no preconceptions, period, apart from her knowledge of a certain power and a certain purpose assigned to her. At the same time, Yorda starts out basically clueless but learns very very quickly: you explode the pillar holding the bridge up, then next room over you have to blow up some wood planks blocking the way forward and – assuming you've seen the bombs and the open flame right near the entrance – Yorda runs up to them and points at them, which is very clever foreshadowing of the second act's climactic moment. If Yorda is seen by her captors as a machine, built entirely as a means to an end – becoming the Queen's new body – then it has to be a fully functional one, shoutouts to Lieutenant Commander Data, but this has the side effect that she can learn trust. She can learn affection.

No surprise then that R1 would be the key to hold Yorda's hand and call out to her. R1 is where the important stuff is in Team Ico's games. You hold R1 to core-mechanic your character into winning, i.e. into exerting emotional stimuli over the player, and it's no surprise that as such every time you're doing the R1 stuff the games tend to give you incredibly strong and constant sensory feedback. The controller vibrates, almost mimicking a heartbeat, as you're holding Yorda's hand. Alessio called it a "sensory nightmare" and deactivated the feature: not that I blame him, it can get annoying, but I actually sorta love it myself. It's the closest thing they can do to allow the player to perceive warmth, touch, life on their very skin. If Shadow of the Colossus is "a game about letting go", then ICO is a game about holding on. As such, it is necessarily much shorter than SotC: something you can quite literally burn through, like a friend you mad on that one week by the seaside when you were nine and had no mobile phone so you have no idea where that friend is now, what they're up to, what they're doing. You can only replay it, understanding its actions and words a bit better everytime but forever retrospectively, forever crystallized.

It's a short and immensely sweet experience that ends on a bittersweet note to say the least (Fumito Ueda himself refers to the post-credits scene as a dream that Ico has going back to civilization, which means Yorda did not of course escape the crumbling castle) and yet manages to conjure deep feelings of beauty and warmth. It doesn't make any fucking sense to discuss the plot of this game, because honestly as narrative-driven as this game is, it already takes the shape of an experience that prefers player stories as the driving principle for the player to go on with the game, more so than its own narrative. I mean, Shadow of the Colossus is probably better at this – considering the even more bare-boned nature of its plot and the open ended lore that the player is left to to toy with – but something has to be born once already, in order for it to be reborn.

P.S.: yeah, I'm assuming I might have to write something about that TGA trailer, you know the one. Since I'm most likely not going to be able to play it on release – because I will not be buying a PlayStation 5 just for one game, not right now anyway – I figured I should at least put something out analysing the thirty seconds flat of footage we've got. I'll see if I can squeeze out some coherent thoughts after fangirling for another while and report back once I do.

[moonsidesong]

HI!!!! I WANT TO TALK ABOUT BFDI RECOVERY CENTERS!!!!!!! IM DOING IT UNDER THE CUT BECAUSE IM GOING TO RAMBLE!!!! I THINK ABOUT THIS TOPIC WAY MORE THAN ANY OF THE WRITERS EVER HAVE!!!!!!

sometimes i like to wonder how recent of an invention recovery centers are. bc like,,, we've seen time and time again in bfdi that these objects are inherently afraid of death/dying, like thats an instinctual thing they still have, but also they dont seem to care that much about it once it actually happens and sometimes dying -> recovery is seen as the most convenient option LOL

and i feel like a lot of the time these characters dont like, understand the concept of oblivion? whenever they're scared about a lack of recovery centers it comes off more like the kind of grief of a friend suddenly moving away more so than someone being Gone From The World Forever, if that makes sense. they're definitely still really upset, but it seems more like "noo i cant spend time with this person anymore nooo"

its hard to get a read on this stuff because outside of referencing real-world time between episodes they basically only use comically large or small numbers for time (like saying gb wrote a book a billion years ago or callling gelatin six years old because bfdia was six years old at the time). and i also really dont think these characters are coded to be a specific age group, but i personally like to think of most of these characters as part of a recent generation(s?) where recovery centers have been abundantly accessible their entire lives, so they've grown up not really worried about it, but at the same time haven't been around long enough for like, an instinctual fear of death to have entirely left. if that makes sense. theyve also been around long enough for them to just be tossed around anywhere i guess considering firey recovery centers being in the ground is just a completely acceptable theory LOL

i also like to think algebralians were part of the invention process somehow. cause imean. its been shown that recovery is a well known (albeit difficult) skill for them to learn naturally, so a powerful enough number/function would probably have a pretty good understanding of How it actually works, and also uhmmmmm uhh math is a part of engineering or something. Yeah. anyway uh thanks for reading my post im turning reblogs off because im EMBARRASSED because this is just WORD VOMIT maybe someday ill post like, an actually good form of this because i think about recovery centers and bfdi's death psychology way more than i should. if anyone reading this has their own hcs about RCs they should tell me teehee

[sublimepizzastarfish]

Pirate Software's "rearchitecture" for Stop Killing Games

There's been a lot of fascinating drama around Stop Killing Games. Go read the initiative here:

It is a good initiative, and anyone who is a consumer that can, should absolutely go support it.

Jason "Thor" Hall, CEO of Pirate Software, recently had a few, let's say, "takes" on the matter (I'm trying and failing to remain neutral), which began on a stream. The stream's VOD has since deleted on his YouTube channel.

Louis Rossmann, who you might know as the largest Right to Repair activist in the US, made a response to a section of the releevant stream here:

Thor, CEO of Pirate Software, made two videos to clarify his points:

There is an argument in the video at the 2:08 mark that I will reference later.

(I recommend watching all these videos on 2x speed. You will get the same info out of them all, because especially video 2 is a lot of repetition)

Now, as mentioned above, there is one particular technical argument that bugs me about what Thor, CEO of Pirate Software, is making. Here is the full quote:

How would you keep League of Legends in a functional, playable state? You'd have to rearchitect the entire game. The game is what is called "client-server". So, in client-server models, there's a server, there's a client, and all of the math, all of the game, everything happens on the server. The client just displays it. And the reason we want to do it that way is so that you can't teleport around and do a billion damage. You don't trust the client. You trust the server. The client just displays what it's told. Right? So, if we wanted to rearchitect this, we would have to take all of that server logic, push it back out into the client, and somehow make that playable in a multiplayer-only video game. That doesn't make sense to me. So this doesn't work for all games. Why is [the initiative] calling out all games?

So, first off, yes, most games do client-server architecture for multiplayer logic, because you do trust the servers. It is an important step to curbing an entire class of cheats. It doesn't necessarily mean the client isn't malicious (for example, there are cheats for League of Legends that show a growing circle when an enemy leaves the fog of war in the minimap). However, it does mean the client doesn't know 100% of the game at any time when information is selectively fed to each client based on something like the fog of war. That's awesome.

Some games, like PlanetSide (rest in peace) and Overwatch (2) use what's called client-side hit detection. Some games, like Halo 1, employ more selective hit detection models, where only certain weapons use client-side hit detection (see https://c20.reclaimers.net/h1/engine/netcode/). Client-side versus server-side hit detection can change the overall feel of a game, and it's one of the things game developers decide on in multiplayer-only games that require it. In the case of an massively multiplayer online first person shooter (MMOFPS) like PlanetSide (2), the server simply can't calculate thousands of people's math in a reasonable amount of time, because otherwise the hit detection would otherwise feel very crappy to play, and so the math is offloaded to the client and the client says "hit" when they hit.

However, there are a few counterexamples to the specific technical argument that keeping the game playable after end-of-lifing it requires rearchitecting:

Games with dedicated servers exist - Command & Conquer: Renegade, Starsiege: TRIBES

Games where one client also hosts the multiplayer server exist - Half Life 2, Warhammer 40k: Space Marine

Private server hosting exists - World of Warcraft

Some of these games, particularly the examples with dedicated servers that can be run on user hardware, can also run as the second example.

To say keeping a multiplayer-only online game requires rearchitecting a game like League of Legends means a lack of imagination. More relevantly, it means a lack of systems thinking.

To me, it is very strange for someone such as Thor, CEO of Pirate Software, who is self-described as being a 20 year veteran of the games industry to say. I won't say skill issue, because I think there is an ulterior motive at play.

Just to hammer the point home, I drew up some crappy diagrams in Inkscape because this extremely wrong technical argument bugged me so, so much.

Here is what a client-server model looks like:

Here, you have 10 clients, each being a player of the game. Then, you have the server, run by Riot, the developer and maintainer of League of Legends.

Here is the imagination of Thor, CEO of Pirate Software, had to say on the matter on the required way rearchitect it:

Those who know their network models would understand this looks very much like a mesh network, or a peer-to-peer model. And, to be fair, some games might attempt it.

However, this isn't *usually* how games described using a peer-to-peer (P2P) model work. Most peer-to-peer models, like the architecture used in Space Marines, are often used for matchmaking. Once you are in a game, one of the clients also serves as the host (selecting by some algorithm, like randomly or whoever has the best hardware).

P2P is nice, because the company doesn't have to run servers for matchmaking at all during their lifespan (and sometimes a matchmaking server might be spun up to serve as a relay to help with network issues or help other clients find clients quickly). As we'll get into later, a client machine will also serve as the host machine. It is a perfectly fair and valid, although it comes with it's frustrations (mainly in the realm of network address translation (NAT) traversal, because your computer behind a router is not usually exposed to the wider Internet, though sometimes routers have universal plug-and-play (UPnP) set up, which makes NAT traversal much easier here).

If you've ever seen a message in the game "migrating host" because the host left, they likely use P2P matchmaking, but still use a client-server model. They can just migrate the game data to a new host using the data on the other clients as a seed for the data.

This is likely their setup for actual gameplay:

One of the clients now has a server on the same machine. Sometimes, this could be the game itself that would serve in singleplayer. However, most often, this is just a server that's lightweight enough for the client to connect to and they play that way (it's also really nice to develop and QA this way, because many server bugs will also be seen by the client).

Now, one of the disadvantages here is: Can all remote clients connect to the host that the server (and one of the clients) is running on? Again, NAT traversal issues usually play a role here. In the first few days of any game that uses this, and only this, there will likely be a lot of issues with connectivity.

Another disadvantage: The host won't have latency issues. This is why in the case of, for example, Among Us, the client host can see certain things happening (like someone is dead the moment they hit a button or reported a body), but remote player hosts might not.

Okay, so, maybe it's not possible to rearchitect something like League of Legends like this. It could reasonably be a lot of work. Here is another solution:

Looks very similar to the first architecture, doesn't it? It is! The difference is that the text "Riot" was changed to "not Riot".

This is how World of Warcraft and Pokemon Go private servers work.

The vast majority of games that would not run without private servers simply do not require rearchitecting to keep in a reasonably playable state when the servers shut down.

[gothicprep]

maybe there’s another year that fits this bill if you adjust for inflation or do something else with the numbers (like budget/loss ratios or something) but I feel like this has been a summer of box office flops in a way we haven’t seen ever. the flash is shaping up to be one of the biggest money losers of all time – I think the current projection is somewhere around a $200 million loss. the new transformers is also probably going to lose somewhere around 9 figures. dial of destiny had a better opening than either of them, but it’s looking like this doesn’t have legs either. the little mermaid cost $250 million to make, which means it’d have to make, at a minimum, $650 mil worldwide to break even. and elemental? $200 mil budget, $250 mil box office. fast X cost a third of a billion dollars to make and it’s box office gross was $740 mil. whether these end up breaking even upon moving to streaming or something, well, the way this is all determined is way too opaque for me to speculate. but a quick refresher on the math for this – production budgets don’t include publicity costs and box office grosses don’t take into account the cut held by theaters (that’s about half of it). so fast x, at $340 million, more realistically cost a half billion, which means it’d have to gross roughly a billion to break even from box office. like obviously there are other revenue streams so I can’t say “they will all definitely lose money”.

but the problems with all of these are the same! they’re too expensive!!!

I think in some senses studios have worn out their welcome with bloated IP projects like the fast & furious and marvel movies. so now they don’t know what audiences want anymore, and they’re stuck on this business model they’ve relied on for so long. studios aren’t really built to shift on a dime to like an a24 business model.

I think a studio might have to go under for this to all stop, but I don’t even know what *that* would look like because all the studios are tied into massive conglomerates. paramount is part of cbs-viacom, enterprise-universal is part of nbc, disney is its own massive thing, warner brothers is part of wb-discovery.

so like, really, who knows?

[sravtheshark]

Network Pt.2

Part 1:

Dr.Hethen first noticed the smell, even before the door was opened. He doubted he smelled any better though. Dr.Jeev opened it fully, and stepped into his lab and rushed to his desk in a desparate attempt to clean his desk before his guest. Hethen doubted there was any physicist -or scientist for that matter- whose desk wasn't a mess right now.

Hethen looked around the room, taking it all in. Random papers and chinese takout covered every inch of every surface. He picked up a family photo of Jeev and placed it carefully back on the desk. Jeev cleared out the desk and stuffed everything into the overflowing trash. "Sorry for the mess", he sheepishly aplogised. "No problem, you should see mine," Hethen responded.

For the past week, no one had left their rooms, except for the occasional bathroom breaks. Jeev had talked from scientists from over 30 different countries in the past week, each more confused and frustrated and sleep deprived than the one before. Everyone was desparate for answers.

Jeev hurried to his coffee kettle and poured two mugs and handed one to Hethen. Hethen took a sip of his and studied Jeev. His brown hair was a mess and eyes looked bloodshot with dark circles. But he could feel a glint of excitement beneath them. Hethen put down his mug, "so you had something to show me ?"

"Oh yes," Jeev exclaimed and rush to the whiteboard. "I got access to the Theta Lab SuperComputer for the past day." Hethen was surprised. Every top scientist was fighting for every supercomputer that existed for the past week. Jeev must have presented something good. Jeev excietedly picked up papers and thrust it into Hethen's hand. Hethen studied them carefully.

"... what is this ?"

"Admitedly, approximations," Jeev replied. "But I think I successfully extrapolated the entire structure."

"How ?" Hethen ruffled through the papers. The distance scales were in millions of light years. The numbers were ridiculous. And in his mind, Jeev's claim was even more dubious.

"Machine learning and neurological common sense," Jeev said. "Again, I know it's not accurate, but it's pretty much as close as we can get."

"Jeev, if this numbers are even close to being accurate... this structure, this brain... It's almost a hundred billion light years in size."

Jeev nodded. "It is."

"What sort of creature would need a brain of this size ?"

"God ?"

Hethen slapped the papers on the desk and sat down on the ground, exhausted. "God ?"

Jeev shook his head. "I don't know. This size. It's beyond our wildest imaginations. Its beyond our maths, physics, science."

"So you turned to philosophy and theism ?"

Jeev laughed and sat down beside Hethen. "Hey, a man needs answers. And nobody has anything good so far."

"Fair."

Both men sat in silence for some time, trying to make sense of everything that was happening. It all seemed so inconceivable, so much beyond them. A secret humans were never supposed to know, much less understand. It was a Lovecraft story, come to life.

"Are you gonna publish soon ?" Hethen asked.

Jeev took a sniff of himself. "I need a shower before." Hethen chuckled.

"Are you scared ?" Jeev asked suddenly.

Hethen turned to him and thought. "Scared ? Maybe. Intrigued more. Why ?"

"Cause I keep thinking... this neural network, brain, whatever you want to call it is obviously thinking. And judging by its size, it may even have a conscious."

"So ?"

"Well... if all it does is think, its not very much frightening. Awesome, yes. But not scary. But what if it acts. But what if.. it's an actual organism, creature of that size, scale and omniscience ? What are we before it ?"

"I think you read one too many of those Aristotle wannabe articles."

Jeev didn't laugh. "It could kill us all if it wanted."

"I like to think such a huge thing would rather do a hundred more things than go after a bunch of puny apes," Hethen replied.

Jeev stared straight ahead. "Somehow... thats even more terrifying."

[gayspock]

guys im peckish

something that always kinda.... i dont wanna say it frustrates me, bc i understand WHY its the case & i know its the better choice for most works... but i suppose, kind of? itches at me??? is the way AI in sooo much fiction is solely ever used with regards to comparing it to Humanness. and tht makes total sense- its not always abt exploring AI conceptually in of itself, but moreso using that as a means to explore deeper Human themes and again sometimes thats just better to leave it as that

but nonetheless it itchessss sometimes, yknow, from like a worldbuilding perspective to me. & also just... i dont know. when i hear ppls conception of what AI is in general- and in all fairness, AI in of itself is such a nebulous term - i get well. frowny. bc again its always such a ... human lense.... and idk maybe im being #autistic #compsci girlie but it sometimes just feels so... LIMITING and detrimental, and kind of misunderstanding like- when it comes down to it, ai? its math... ITS MATH. you know that right? all the way top to bottom its just freaking mathematics, its algorithms...

but anyway it just feels like. its HOLES in the fictional world sometimes. like- the actual sophistication behind developing something that's intelligent enough, and ON PAR with a thinking, feeling, freaking person... and for that to become, like, a widespread THING... like it sooo rarely ever lines up with the rest of the technology within the world they set it in?? bc theyy clearly on ever thought- mmhm mhmm (nods) thinking machines. they just programmed people immediately. went from A to B. and sometimes there's like in-universe reasons for things but like other times its crazzzyy like...

bc before we'd ever get to THAT point so many other, complex things would already have commonplace AI applications does that make sense. one billion specialised problems that could have been solved ten times over. or well maybe solved is the wrong word but it would have changed the face of technology soooo much... and i guess sometimes there IS in-universe reasoning for it- it could be a limitation of resources, it could be an issue of knowledge and understanding, it could be other societal influences that stop it, things such as policies that prevent it from being totally pervasive- but thats literally kind of what i mean, like... bc those are GOOD points but not always present . and they could be rlly interesting points of discussion and contention just there that kinda gets neglected

like im watching BSG and i keep thinking abt the only reason the galactica survived is because its more "out of date". and its like if eel like theyre always so vague about what technology theyre actually compromising on, here. or like... hell what technology did all of humanity compromise on after thefirst war... wheres the lines? is it JUST cylons? or were there compromises on everything? and how did they reel shit back?

like im thinking even just roslin and her cancer. already, like... in real life... ai has a LOT of medical applications. idk-i still kinda want to do a PHD in some sort of bioinformatics one day, LOL, if i'd ever get there but like... whilst i guess its mostly diagnosis and screening rn, my point is, i cant imagine how much more medicine could have advanced??? surely ir'd be unrecognisable. even just in terms of developing drugs, and medicine- genomics being sooooooo data dense, there's leaps and bounds that can be done with AI, or even research facilitated by ai. like if you have the capabilities of programming something as sophisticated as human consciousness, with that level of logic and reasoning....

LIKE ... its like again sth very human. this human idea of intelligence and what that means, and thinking of ai in a totally human capacity when its like. idk how to describe ittttt. i guess its like- there are so many tasks that a human cannot do that a machine could do, BUT it would be easier to have a machine implement those tasks, THAN achieving sentience with a machine??? like... no. a person could not piece together a human genome from data BUT a machine could quite easily.

and even just that like- squitns. i think im talking in circles my WHOLEEEE point is just... AGAIN. worldbuilding wise i feel like sooo much drops the ball there like bc writers dont rlly understand the full applications of artifical intelligence and what it can do and wahgh... im sniff... im just rambling arent i [goes into a corner embarassedddd]

[yoshimonster]

Blog #7: I’m Back After About a Month of Not Posting

Hello again world! I should try to sound excited once more for this grand comeback post, which I believe will just be as ordinary as the last time I posted.

So, life moved on, I guess – I actually did my exam for circuit again which I was really glad to have had a chance to do it again considering how stupid (by stupid I mean I was just being a plain idiot and not doing things I already knew how to do) I had been the first time around. It was definitely really easily passable/more than passable if I am being honest and also this was sort of proven with the make up test I did. I did way better and got 85.5% actually compared to the abysmal 38.25% (and even managed to score an extra point during my remark, but the cut off was 40%) and you wouldn’t even know it looking at my transcript. I guess I should have been really mindful the first time around and definitely could have achieved a Credit/Distinction if I really tried hard. Same thing also happened with a coding subject I did last semester, just plain not understanding the vibe caused me to pass by 2 points rather than if I actually just read the question/understood the topic much better I would’ve been fine and potentially scored much higher like a Credit/Distinction. But yes, I’ll just stop with the recap here – I definitely have mentally moved on given the new semester has well and truly started. My maths still remains one of my weakest subjects and I definitely need to majorly brush up on it for this semester’s algorithms course I’m taking. Again, I’m lightening my course load and taking less subjects in general and less subjects with exams (aka group project courses) so as to really brush up for this/also apply for more jobs.

I actually found out about this opportunity recently via my parents and it sounds extremely exciting given the capability/calbre of the job program. As I was putting my application together I just realised how much time I wasted on experiences that could have been something more – sort of like when you handed something so valuable yet you don’t know what you are actually holding. I think you can liken this to going to a museum and being handed some really valuable artwork (from the time era) but disliking it because you don’t understand it or even care to understand it. I’m hoping this analogy makes sense – but wasted potential essentially.

I have enjoyed putting things together this time around, much more than the usual job application anxiety I have because I managed to know myself so painfully thoroughly these past few years that I almost feel numb talking about myself. It’s such a weird combination of acceptance and fear. I have no clue what will happen going next but I do feel much better these days. I think that’s also sort of reflective everywhere – situations/people that were really disappointed in me have improved slightly at the very least and I’m pretty thankful for that. I don’t really want to take it for granted again.

Again, the Taylor Swift saga is well and truly over, I don’t think my sister or I are getting tickets unless we find them on some resale website or friends we know hand us those tickets. I’m sure it will be really fun for people who do get to go, especially since I’ve been seeing posts everywhere of people purchasing tickets in other countries – spots in Asia are particularly popular from what I see. I also sent in my email to a local radio station as a last-ditch effort in the middle of this. I’m definitely not going to get it, my reasoning to get the tickets was way too generic I would say.

But yes, this month has been fun – no major friendship drama, though I’m sure it will start up again as quite a few of my friends are graduating soon. I also finally had the chance to catch up with many of my older friends within a short period of time since I was studying all of July essentially. The highlights being: Barbie movie broke a billion, Korean food is bejewelled, and I probably won’t be going to that Thai place again. Socially, things are still able to maintained somewhat too and I’m really trying to (still) figure out a balance.

-yoshimonster-

[rgvrollo]

Clearly, #spacex feels their launch was a success!

I would agree to a certain extent, but it's failures alarm me! Here's why:

When NASA, was been placed on the back burner for deep space enthusiasm, Elon has gone somewhat rogue. This can lead to serious consequences for People, Environment, and Sea Life.

NASA spent billions of Tax-payer dollars that funded the research of its launch facilities to accommodate the Saturn 5 Rockets, and The Space Shuttle. Although the fuels, and oxidizers may be different, the concept remains. Very high heat at launch, and lots of down force blast at take-off. NASA has it down. Elon chose Boca Chica, built his own dreamy launch system, and his incredible Merlin engines. Clearly, He didn't account for, or neglected the math. Not only did his launch facility fail at its most Basic design, but destroyed his craft. There was tons of fine silica particles from sand, and concrete blasted even smaller into the Atmosphere in the huge dust cloud after take-off. The prevailing winds carried the Dust Cloud up towards South Padre Island, and West, NW of the Launch site. This would encompass The Entire Rio Grande Valley, and up to Central Texas(San Antonio). This alarms me more than a launch failure. Elon, who has Tesla, a green car company, isn't concerned about Air Quality?

Something to consider, is the fact that Mexico deliberately burns their trash dumps during these predictable winds from the Gulf Coast, that blows carcinogens, and toxic metals, directly into the above mentioned regions. We cannot control Mexico, aside from an invasion, which I will mention in upcoming posts. What we can control, is What We Are Doing Here!

Also, The Ripley Sea Turtles, which many scientists still believe to be highly endangered, nests right on the Beach next to SpaceX launch facility. Often consumed in Mexico for it's eggs, meat, and prized oil for cosmetics; This turtle continues to be challenged for survival! We can't control Mexico, but we can control Our coast! Not Elon! He has tunnel vision!

Why then, would a billionaire, build a launch facility, not up to NASAs well researched standards, and in the Center for breeding of a protected species, like the Ripley Sea Turtle? Good question! Its clear, that something made it easy for him!

The Rio Grande Valley is a predominantly impoverished region of either Extreme Wealth, or Extreme poverty. The same as in Mexico! Very little is gained via legal routes to success. Basically, if you got money; Anyone in politics here, can be bought! Look up RICO arrests in Hidalgo, Willacy, and Cameron counties for the last 50 years..Much higher than anywhere else in the country! Why? Greed! The levels of success are envisioned by The car you drive(important), and the boat you have! Notice I didn't mention the home? That doesn't matter here! Success is what people see outside of the home! A shanty area will have homes worth >30 grand, with a 80 thousand dollar truck parked in front. Those may be street level thugs(Drugs, human smuggling). My fear is that under this highly volatile mixture of greed, and corrupt politics; Elon got his launch pad...No oversight, no further discussions! A Carte Blanche to thrill the world with explosions, and failed attempts to launch! Why, when Elon, and his Money could go to NASA, and SHARE their Well-built, and Launch proven facilities? It's called negotiations! Sadly, in the RGV, pay under the table, and now we're friends, is Daily business! Elon knew he could go to The RGV, and Brownsville to accept his offer. I'm sure he thinks we are just dumb Mexicans here! Yes, we have about a 50% or greater illegal population than anywhere else, and the border is highly porous; yet vastly militarized, in presence...Nothing makes sense here!

Folks, I am NOT against Elon Musk, and his Ventures! I actually support him immensely! My issue is the Environment after this last failure, and detonation of hundreds of thousands of tons of contaminated sand blown into our Air! The long-term effects on an arguably near-extinct Sea Turtle, and most importantly; The shoddy construction, and design of its launch pad facilities. Who was the code-enforcer on this one?

Mexicans build this countries roads, homes, and buildings. They later cut the grass, and clean those homes, and buildings! We feed the Country by picking their fruits n veggies, and working their farms. They process the meats you eat! When no one will, and no one can? Ask a Mex-I CAN! They will try. One thing for sure, and after watching the work crews at SpaceX; They don't know Rockets, or understand why NASA had sterile environments... Hence, it will never succeed there!

NASA needs to allow a merge of facilities to SpaceX for launch purposes! We know this Rocket can go up, yet no one considered the downward thrust, and high temperatures of its 33 Merlin Engines. Unprecedented! So testing continues till success? At what cost to the poor, and uneducated? They don't understand the extent of damages it actually costs. All this to line the pockets of a very few...

In closing, I urge you to voice your thoughts! Good or Bad; It's time to go beyond a shoddy Environment Impact Study by the FAA..Dig deeper; it smells worse than methane!

We now need to #investinelon, and provide a BETTER launch facility; One that may have already seen a Moon trip... Hence, NASA! It's already built, it's elsewhere, and it's proven!

Win/Win!

Good day!

[onsomekindofstartrek]

And to be clear, I said "a Larry Niven novel" because it's punchy, but this was a huge, huge segment of the writers that made it big in sci-fi in the 20th century. I almost said Orson Scott Card but his gender and sexual issues are much weirder and more obvious even to sexist old men. I could have said Heinlein but... actually, the same applies. Sometimes. Heinlein is the place where the falling angel briefly glances in the direction of the rising ape. I have sympathy for him for some goddamned reason.

I think Niven is the perfect example because he stands at the brink, right? Like, when he was writing his most famous works, the New Wave had begun and women and gay men were writing weird science fiction about sensitive subjects like sex, gender, race, mental illness and social ostracism. In a sense this was a microcosm of the whole modernism-postmodernism conflict. And to his credit, Heinlein kinda halfway took to it? A little?

Whereas Niven, for all his technical brilliance, was a reactionary in that conflict. He didn't want to examine women's issues or anything like that, he wanted to write about the cool guy who solves fantastical problems with math and fisticuffs. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's a very modernist kind of story and that has its place. But I feel like he dug in his heels and got even weirder about women.

Compare: Ringworld? Okay, so Louis Wu starts the novel by fucking a woman who's like, 1/10th his age (he's 200-something), and she ends up being this terrible, dangerous, almost non-sapient creature, a person selectively bred to be so lucky that the universe conspires to protect her and she doesn't actually have free will. Later, he has a bunch of kinky handjobs with an alien woman who's so good at sex that it's addictive. Sure. Whatever.

The weird sexism is like 10% of the novel.

Ringworld Engineers? Okay, so the kinky alien woman is brutally fridged to give Louis Wu a reason to be a junky (but a cool junky who still works out and takes care of himself). Louis Wu fucks literally all but two of the named women in the novel, and several that don't get names, because the whole plot is contrived to put him in situations where he needs to have all this weird interspecies sex to achieve his goals. Niven constantly makes hay out of how unemotionally this dude can have sex with aliens. It's so boring for him because he's had so much pussy of both mundane and alien varieties. The girlfriend from the first novel comes back as the main antagonist, having been transformed into a monster without free will (completely separate from how she didn't have free will before). Louis Wu ends up coolly and rationally killing billions of people to save trillions, and is mostly only sad about the various women he fucked in his adventures who are now probably dead.

The weird sexism is easily like, 75% of the novel.

Now, if you're a dude, as I sometimes am, your instinct is to be like, well, that's unfortunate. Me, I could still enjoy it for all the other stuff, it's just unfortunate that it's sexist.

Now imagine you're a socially-awkward teenage girl in the 80's with very nerdy interests. I didn't think of myself as a girl back then but I can imagine what it was like.

Imagine the emotional progression of getting into this series as a young woman. Like, up until a point, it's the boiling frog thing, you know? It's such a slow progression of bizarre misogyny that you get acclimated to it. By the time Louie is a sexual thrall of an alien con-woman, you're still not consciously aware of the specific gender politics of it. Then at a certain point you would have to realize... oh wait, this fantasy isn't meant for me.

(I think it would be at about the point that Louis Wu compares the woman that he's dispassionately fucking to a cow.)

I just wonder what I could write that would have the same slow buildup and sudden turn, but for a cishet casual misogynist in his 40's. It would have to have some genderfuckery, I guess. I don't know.

Like, I don't think this is profoundly feminist or even deep, but I want to write a sci-fi novel that gives older sexist male sci-fi fans the exact experience of being a nerdy teenage girl and reading a Larry Niven novel.

Like, it's not even that it was a failure of progressivism, the way those novels treated women, it's just that you get halfway or less into all these novels and realize that the author is truly incapable of being normal about women, that the aliens are more human than the women in this man's inner world.

I want to create the equivalent for grown-ass men who like Warhammer and Dune. A novel that leaves a forty-five year old libertarian Heinlein fan like... well, that's an amazing vision of the future, but why does the author think I'm... icky?

[louscufflinks]

solitaire lines that make the world make more sense:

“without organisation, we descend into chaos.”

“whatever happens in hell can’t be much worse than what happens here.”

“for most people, normal is their default setting.”

“one day i’m going to forget how to wake up.”

“i could die right now and it wouldn’t matter.”

“but you like biscuits. everyone likes biscuits.”

“just because something doesn’t matter doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.”

“there doesn’t need to be a rainbow for it to be beautiful.”

“all friendships are selfish. maybe if we were all selfless, we would leave each other alone.”

“shit happens to the wrong people.”

“if you can’t accept things you don’t understand, then you’ll spend your life questioning everything.”

“why are there no happy people?”

“you have solidly proven that everyone and everything is shit.”

“protect the unprotected. justice is everything. patience kills.”

“maybe i’ll die when i’m twenty-seven.”

“it’s so easy to assume you know everything about a person.”

“what now? i ask. i’m not quite sure which ‘now’ i’m talking about. this minute? today? the rest of our lives?”

“i don’t want people to try and understand why i am the way i am, because i should be the first person to understand that. and i don’t understand yet.”

“everyone is okay with hurting people.”

“i just sit here, doing nothing, assuming that someone else is going to make things better.”

“snow can make anything beautiful.”

“snow is romantic i guess, but it just makes things cold.”

“you can’t always rely just on yourself, even though it can seem like an easier way to live.”

“i knew it was coming, but i didn’t do anything. i didn’t even say anything because i thought i’d been imagining it.”

“i have been looking for you forever.”

“the last thing i remember thinking before i pass out from the cold is that if i were to die, i would rather be a ghost than go to heaven.”

“all maths does is give you a false sense of achievement.”

“we’re so used to disaster that we accept it. we think we deserve it.”

“i think a lot of people wish for disaster because it’s the only thing left with the power to turn heads.”

“some people get no attention. you can understand why they’d go seeking it. if they’re waiting forever for something that might never come.”

“it’s all fake. everyone is fake. why does no one care about anything?”

“basking in the light and glory that comes with not giving a damn about anything in the entire universe.”

“approximately one hundred billion people have died since the world began. did you know that? one hundred billion. it’s a big number. but it still doesn’t seem like quite enough.”

“extraordinary is only an extension of ordinary.”

“do you think that, if we were happy for our entire lives, we would feel like we’d missed out on something?”

“sometimes, i want to express the emotions that i’m actually feeling instead of having to put on this happy, smiley facade that i put on every day just to come across to bitches like you as not boring.”

“if i fall accidentally, the universe will be there to catch me.”

“we all need saving really.”

“just because someone smiles doesn’t mean they’re happy.”

“some people aren’t meant for school, that doesn’t mean they aren’t meant for life.”

“one person can change everything, and you have changed everything for me.”

“i don’t want to make any more mistakes. and i know that this is not a mistake. you are not a mistake.”

“i really would die if i don’t…if i don’t hold him”

“i think i’ve loved you since i met you, i just mistook it for curiosity.”

“i can’t say that i feel happy. i’m not even sure if i would know if i was.”

“all of the snowflakes are exactly the same.”

“we’re all waiting for something to change. patience can kill you.”

“one day it’ll end. it always ends.”

“all i know is that i’m here. and i’m alive. and i’m not alone.”

- alice oseman, solitaire

[nayruwu]

ons unsolved

(because after years and years of research i've come to the conclusion that i still know nothing)

are they serious about the whole "reviving humanity" thing? literally everything is destroyed so this would really only make sense with like, time travel or something. where are you supposed to put 7 billion humans out of nowhere??

what's gonna happen to the demons/vampires? can they be turned back? krul's goal kind of implies they do

in the books it said there was already a catastrophe before this one. what the fuck is that all about?

what really happens to demons when their hosts die? some of them have said that they will disappear along with them, but we've seen crowley use the cursed sword of a dead soldier to cut his finger. also, byakkomaru is still going - and since the experiment couldn't revive shinya, it's unlikely it would have revived byakkomaru. did he just chill in the void for a bit?

ok yeah shinya. literally what the fuck i have SO MANY questions about this one guy alone. where did he come from. why is he here. why his demon act like that. why the failed resurrection. why he so pretty. why the whole fiancée thing. why.

is kagami bad with numbers and math or is it the translators?

does time stop for a demon user when they go talk to them in their mind?? because we've seen people do that in the middle of a battle and resume fighting after it as if nothing happened (e. g. chapter 83) but we've also seen kimizuki and yuu taking literal hours to do it.

if there's only 7 seraphim, who were all the children in the hyakuya orphanages? shouldn't they be all over the world if there's so few? if yes, how do you find them?

why weren't all of them activated when the catastrophe happened? it seems only the poor guy with the horsemen got taken over by the angel, while mirai got "sick" and the others didn't seem affected at all. is it because the catastrophe failed?

where did yoichi and shinya learn how to aim because yoichi was mostly a normal boy and i can't really imagine a five year old using a rifle. although i can't imagine a five year old killing another five year old either so there's that

why is vampire reign demon guren so tame?? he's a lapdog compared to the absolute terror catastrophe demon guren was.

P L E A S E just tell me what's so cool and different about children with the mikaela gene

why was guren so concerned about mahiru growing up in the hiiragi family but never really paid any mind to his literal best friend growing up in the same exact family while having it infinitely worse than her

what the fuck was that demon mito's ancestor supposedly defeated? we've only ever seen the cursed gear demons and they look like regular human beings with slight modifications so the classical demons displayed in catastrophe seem VERY out of place. (also love how the fuda are never really explained. there's just magic there. yup.)

when will ons stop playing with my feelings

what happened to the sixth trumpet?? did they take him somewhere to recover? who even is he? where'd he come from? did he just sprout wings and spawn a trumpet when the apocalypse happened and start summoning horsemen? tell me more he's interesting!!!

how the fuck does saito's chain go into shinya and come out of kimizuki? how does shikama's scythe go into kiseki-o's coffin and come out of shinya??? HOW IS SAITO USING THOSE CHAINS AS A FUCKING TELEPHONE

[chudleycanonficfest]

Washing Machine Heart

Day 22, Story #2 is by @rosequartzstarswrites​

Title: Washing Machine Heart Author/Artist: rosequartzstars - @rosequartzstarswrites (Because of Tumblr settings, this is posting from my main blog, but it’s me!) Pairing: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley (and background Ron Weasley/Hermione Granger) Prompt: 5+1 Rating: T (only for some strong language and non-explicit insinuations) Trigger Warning(s) (if any): none apply! 

“I can’t believe I’m going through with this,” huffed Hermione, struggling to keep up the brisk pace Ron was marking on the sidewalk.

“You never believed you’d have to, did you?” Ron said gleefully, seemingly unaware of just how hard his long-legged strides were to keep up with.

“You never told me you were that good at chess!”

“No, more like you never thought anyone could be better than you at anything!”

Despite only having been friends, close friends, with them for a semester, Harry had already become accustomed to the constant bickering between Ron and Hermione, to the point even of endearment. Coming from the Dursleys’, arguments and rebukes were something he was used to, but the undertone of friendship with which Ron and Hermione faced off was a welcome change (and a very entertaining one). Still, he tended to side quietly with Ron, and this particular time was no exception: part of him was delighted at the prospect of seeing Hermione get a tattoo.

This had all started from a ridiculous bet, born of boredom in the lounge of their dorm building. Ron had eyed the communal chessboard, battered and chipped from years of usage, and challenged Hermione to a match.

Hermione had scoffed: “Only if you want to lose, Ron.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Ron had said, exchanging a look with Harry as a sly smile crept onto his lips.

“I’m completely certain.”

“Certain enough to bet?” Ron had prodded her.

The competitiveness that, before becoming friends, was all Harry had known of Hermione had flared up in her eyes. “I’m listening.”

“When you lose—”

“If I lose, and I won't—”

“When you lose,” Ron had reiterated, “you have to get a tattoo of my choosing.”

Hermione had smirked. “Game on.”

In Hermione’s defense, Harry thought, she hadn’t ever considered she might lose. There really was no way of expecting how good Ron had turned out to be at chess, especially since —Harry thought— Hermione had based her certainty on how abysmal his grades were, against her own straight A’s, in their proofs-based mathematics class, which relied entirely on strength of reasoning. But, as it turned out, Ron was actually a master logician, if only somewhat lazy at his math classes, and this he had proved by absolutely obliterating Hermione with the fastest checkmate Harry had ever borne witness to.

And that is how they had come to find themselves out on the streets of their little college town that night, wrapped in their scarves and their winter coats to battle the first of the December chill, walking to a tattoo parlor Ron knew in the area so Hermione could be forever reminded of her loss by a tattoo Ron would choose. And if Harry knew Ron well, and knew how much he relished teasing Hermione, the reminder would be a strong one.

“I didn’t even want a tattoo,” Hermione was mumbling, more to herself than at either of them. “I never wanted one— did you know that you might not be eligible to donate blood if you have a tattoo? I mean, not that it’s impossible, but it’s a factor against you, like your weight and your age. And my family has a history of needing transfusions— oh, God, what if my grandfather needs a donation, like, tomorrow? The three-month period of eligibility won’t have elapsed, and my father can’t donate, and– and–” She froze in the middle of the sidewalk. “Oh, God, have I killed my grandfather?”

“Relax, Hermione,” Ron said, throwing a fraternal arm around her shoulders and squeezing her half in an attempt to get her walking again. “You’re halfway across the country from home. You wouldn’t be able to fly out on such short notice anyway.”

Harry had to stifle a laugh at how Hermione gaped at Ron then, a billion other dire possibilities to worry about racing through her head now. Ron, however, was less successful at keeping down a chuckle. “I’m kidding, Hermione. Besides, a tattoo will make you look badass.”

“I don’t want to look badass!” Hermione squeaked shrilly. “I’ve never been remotely interested in looking badass!”

“Well, interested or not,” Ron said as they came up to a dark brick building with a neon sign reading LOVEGOOD’S flickering above the door, “it seems like you don’t have much of a choice, because we’re here.”

Hermione let out a noise that sounded somewhere between a gasp and a whine as she looked up at the storefront that, to her, was synonymous not only with her doom but apparently that of her grandfather.

“Ron, please?” she said meekly.

Ron, however, looked gleeful and would not be deterred. “A bet’s a bet,” he declared, grabbing her wrist and beginning to march her up the three or so stairs that led up to the door of the tattoo parlor from the sidewalk. Harry lingered behind for an instant, watching the backs of his two friends as they waddled up the stairs, smiling as he listened to Ron debate whether he would make Hermione get a skull or a sailor’s “Mom” arrow-pierced heart, and Hermione pleading shrilly with him not to do either of those things. Watching them, Harry’s smile widened. He was lucky to have them as friends, that much he knew, despite the short time he’d spent knowing them. Why he hadn’t found them his freshman year was beyond him— but now, now that he had these wacky outings and constant bickering to enjoy, he felt overwhelmingly lucky that they had found him.

“Harry, are you coming in or what?” Ron beckoned him. He had stopped on the topmost step and was still gripping Hermione, whose face was a mask of pure, crystallized terror.

“Absolutely,” Harry said, hurrying up the steps with a little hop. “This I’ve got to see.”

Ron pushed open the door to the parlor with a little too much gusto, and Hermione cringed at the metallic sound of the chimes above the door as they tinkled with the announcement of their entrance. The front of the shop, sealing off the rest with a counter that had seen better days, was empty, the backroom separated by a beaded curtain.

“Hellooo?” Ron called into the backroom, marching right up to the counter. “Is anybody here? We bring a very eager customer!”

Hermione began to protest, but just as she did, an employee came out of the backroom to stand behind the counter. Catching a glimpse of her, Harry felt as if the wind had been knocked out of his chest: she was stunning. She was tall and slender, her toned arms visible through the ripped-off sleeves of her vintage Hole tee, with a curtain of straight orange hair pulled back into a long high ponytail. Her bright brown eyes glimmered atop a button-like nose that matched her small, round mouth perfectly, the pale fine face finished by a spattering of freckles. Even before she had spoken a single word, Harry felt the confidence coming off of her in waves, simply by how she propped her elbows up on the counter and eyed their party somewhat playfully. He was frozen to his place with the sight of her, hoping his jaw hadn’t dropped as low as it had felt in the wake of his awe.

Upon seeing her, however, Ron had had exactly the opposite reaction. “Ginny?” he said incredulously.

“What are you doing here?” the woman —Ginny— said without any greeting, returning Ron’s frown.

“I thought you weren’t working today!”

“I’m covering a shift for Demelza, she had a gyn appointment today.”

“Well, if I knew that, I wouldn’t have come in,” grumbled Ron. The tips of his ears were beginning to pink, a sign Harry had learned to recognize as a hint of extreme emotion in his friend.

“Well, you’re here now, so… what can I do for you?” Ginny said. “I mean, you can’t possibly be the one getting inked, Ron. You’re too much of a wimp.”

“Shut up, or I’m telling mom you got your helix pierced. That’ll make for a fun Christmas greeting when we’re back home, I’ll wager.”

Then the similarity became apparent to Harry: the freckles, the aggressive red of their hair, the same glint in their eyes… Ginny was Ron’s sister. Somehow, he didn’t know whether that was something he should feel good or bad about.

“Tattletale,” Ginny said, swatting at him. “And it’s called an industrial piercing. Not that you’d know.” Only then did she seem to remark on the rest of the party.

“Harry Potter,” she said, and Harry gulped as she crossed her muscular arms over her chest and leaned back, surveying him. “Come to get a sixth tattoo?”

“A sixth— how do you know?” Harry said, befuddled. Out of all the opening lines he would’ve expected her to use, this had not been one of them.

“You can credit the rumor mill at school,” Ginny shrugged, still eyeing him with interest. “You’re a topic of interest. Or at least among the soccer teams.”

“Oh, am I?”

“Romilda swore you had a griffin tattooed on your chest, but I told her I’d heard it was a dragon. Much more macho, I thought.”

“Thanks,” Harry said dully. What else was he supposed to say?

“Don’t mention it,” Ginny gave him a conspiratorial wink. “And if I were you, I’d find out who on the boys’ team has been giving you the eye in the shower enough to count your tats. I bet it’s Ron.”

“It’s not!” Ron said angrily, the red from his ears bleeding out onto his cheeks.

“I bet it is,” Ginny mouthed to Harry, giving him another wink. “But it’s not you?”

“Pardon?” said Harry, for whom the ‘it-is-it’s-not’ exchange had grown somewhat confusing.

“For the tattoo?” Ginny said, and Harry felt like an idiot. “It’s not you who’s getting it?”

“No, ah, actually— it’s Hermione,” Harry was knocked back into his senses as he gestured toward Hermione, who had stood, utterly baffled, throughout that whole exchange.

“Hermione Granger?” Ginny said, and Harry was almost glad when she turned her gaze away from him and toward Hermione. “As in, Scamander Fellow Hermione Granger?”

“The one and only,” Ron declared proudly, happy to be back off a topic that bothered him (teasing Ron) and back on a topic that delighted him (teasing Hermione).

“I wouldn’t have chalked you up to the tattoo type,” Ginny said.

“Oh, she’s not,” Ron said, his face lighting up as if Christmas had come early.

Ginny’s eyes darted between the dismal face of Hermione and the cheerful face of Ron, her eyebrows rising as she took it in. “Okay, I’m not going to ask about whatever this is. What am I doing on you?”

“I’m designing it,” Ron said brightly. And if Harry had thought that Hermione’s face couldn’t get more desolated, he’d been wrong.

“Christ, Hermione, what has he got on you?” Ginny said, already opening a drawer on the counter to pull out a sketchpad and a pen.

“I’m such an idiot,” Hermione grumbled.

Ron pored over the sketchpad, shielding the paper from Hermione’s eyes as he sketched. When he was done, he handed it to Ginny with a quick flick of the wrist that, much to Hermione’s dismay, ensured she couldn’t even catch a glimpse of what was on it. Ginny looked over whatever it was Ron had drawn and then looked up at her brother with a frown.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Okay, then,” Ginny shrugged. She lifted the counter to open a gap through which Hermione could walk. “Follow me.”

Looking like a lamb led to the slaughter, Hermione looked up to heaven as if making one last, futile plea before scrunching up her nose and following Ginny through the beaded curtain to the backroom. Because yes, she hated the idea of getting a tattoo, but she hated the idea of letting Ron hold one over her even more.

Ron watched her leave delightedly, relishing in the jangle the beaded curtain made as it swallowed Ginny and Hermione into the backroom. “This is going to be good,” he said, rubbing his palms together. “Oh, this is going to be so good.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you had a sister?” Harry blurted out all of a sudden. He startled himself as much as Ron when he said it, though he was glad he’d been able to pare down the question from what was actually swirling around in his head: Why didn’t you tell me you had a sister that looked like THAT?

Ron looked at him and shrugged. “I don’t know. It never came up.”

“You told me about every other one of your five brothers, but not the sister.”

“Nope.”

“Not the sister that seems to be about our age.”

“Nope.”

“Not the sister that seems to be about our age and plays soccer.“ And is hot.

"Nope.” Ron paused and frowned. “She’s a year below us, anyway.”

“Oh, then that explains it,” Harry said sarcastically.

“It seemed like more of a second-semester-of-friendship revelation.”

“I see.”

Harry held the silence between them for a few moments more before he allowed the next question out. “She plays soccer?”

“One more of the long line of Weasleys that get athletic scholarships to Hogwarts College. Except for Percy— no, he was a disgrace, he got in on an academic grant.”

“The family disappointment, truly.”

Harry wanted to ask more about Ginny, but he held his tongue. His friendship with Ron was the most precious thing his sophomore year of college had yielded him, and he didn’t want to jeopardize it by prying further or making it seem like he had the hots for his sister. Even though he did. He suffocated that small voice at the back of his mind: he hadn’t even spoken properly to Ginny, just stood there like an idiot and let her quip freely about his tattoos— which, mind him, apparently were fodder for locker talk back at Hogwarts.

The buzz of the needle in the backroom as it started up brought Harry out of his thoughts, just in time to see a shit-eating grin appear on Ron’s face.

“I wish I could see her face right now,” he said gleefully, and Harry let himself stop thinking about Ginny to join Ron in picturing what Hermione Granger must look like seated in a tattoo parlor chair.

“It really wasn’t so bad,” admitted Hermione as they exited the tattoo parlor and went down the little steps back onto the sidewalk.

Despite his pretensions of malice, Ron’s nobility (which had never been in question, even despite his teasing) had shone through and yielded a considerably modest tattoo: a small, capital “R” in his own handwriting. Hermione, who had almost cried with relief after Ginny showed her the design, had chosen to get it on her left thigh, on the side and at the very top, right under her hipbone.

“Why did you get it there?” Harry asked as they resumed their brisk walk back to campus.

“It’s not a place you usually show. That means if a sleeve shifts or an interviewer sees, I don’t know, my ankle or something, they won’t notice it.”

“As if a tiny ‘R’ would disqualify anyone from a job, let alone you,” snorted Ron.

“Professionalism is a virtue, Ronald,” Hermione huffed, though her cheeks had gone red. “Besides, since that part of me is always covered, I’ll save myself from having to explain the story behind it to anyone that spots it.”

“Yeah, except the bloke that eventually undresses you and sees you in your panties. Try explaining what that 'R’ means to him,” said Ron. But Harry suspected Hermione wouldn’t have to: from how Ron’s eyes had widened and his gaze had lingered when Hermione had pulled down the side of her jeans ever so slightly to show them the finished product, exposing a sliver of her underwear, Harry could almost wager that Ron would be the bloke in question.

They walked in animated chatter for the rest of the way, the tattoo forgotten until Ron made a quip about Hermione now having crossed the gateway to joining a biker gang and Hermione going positively beet-red in the face with outrage. Then Harry, his hands in his pockets, simply smirked to himself and resigned himself to their bickering for the rest of the walk, knowing he was no longer needed in their exchange. Instead, he let his mind drift to Ginny. She hadn’t really spoken to him again, merely ducking out from the beaded curtain backroom and instructing Hermione on how to take care of her tattoo, saying only a general goodbye to the three of them as they exited the shop. There had been nothing in Ginny’s manner to suggest that she might be thinking of him as strongly, as irremediably, as he was of her, and yet there he was.

The main quad was mostly deserted, except for a few scattered groups of late-night library frequenters or sneaking couples, as the three of them crossed it to get to their dorm. Ron and Hermione didn’t stop arguing as they climbed the four flights up to their floor (the elevator, as usual, was broken), and only broke it off because Hermione reached her room before the boys reached theirs, slipping inside it and shutting the door before Ron had a chance to get the last word in.

“Well, that went well,” Ron shrugged as he and Harry kept walking down the hall to their room.

“You actually got her to get a tattoo,” Harry said with some admiration as they reached their door.

Ron grinned as he swiped the key card. “I may drive her crazy, but if anyone was going to get her to do something like that, it was going to be me.”

Ron pushed the door open and let them into their dorm room. He closed the door and, without taking off his coat, immediately flopped onto his bed— or, well, what could be seen of the bed under mountains of dirty or otherwise discarded clothes. Away from his mother’s chore-mongering for the first time, Ron had let himself go wild and go to the other extreme, but even Harry had to admit that the army of socks draped over the foot of his bed was beginning to smell a little stale.

“So,” Ron said, propping his head up, “no parties tonight?”

“Well, it’s a Wednesday,” Harry said.

“So what? There’s no party spirit around here?”

“Ron, it’s the last Wednesday before final exams. People are studying.”

“I wasn’t aware I was rooming with Hermione,” Ron grumbled. Harry had to admit she might have gotten to him a little. However, Ron’s irritation was short-lived, a grin appearing on his face again. “Wait, but we’re not people. We’re not studying.”

Harry surveyed the room and, despite his desire to throw in the towel for the night and have fun with Ron, felt a pang of dismay at just how much grosser it would be if they caved and did that (last time they had, they’d had a Pringle-eating contest, with devastating results for their sheets, which still had some crumbs). “No, Ron. We’re doing laundry.”

Ron groaned. “Jeez, now I’m rooming with my mother.”

“Okay, fine, you don’t have to do the laundry. I’ll do it for the both of us.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, go hang out with Dean and Seamus or whatever, see if you can get Hermione to do her second wild-card act of the day and make her stop studying to hang out with the guys.”

“Now I’m a man with a mission,” Ron said, perking up in delight at the prospect of teasing Hermione, or even seeing her once more that night.

“Just shove your clothes in the laundry bag before you go, won’t you? I don’t want to touch your nasty briefs more than I have to.”

Ron obliged, tossing all the clothes on and around his bed into his orange laundry bag and pulling the drawstring to close it. “I’ll update you on the Hermione thing,” he said cheerfully, hurrying out of the room and down the hall to the left to the room they’d left Hermione in.

Harry laughed to himself, wondering how long it was going to take Ron to realize why exactly he always seemed so eager to do anything Hermione-related, as he too threw his dirty clothes into a checkered drawstring laundry bag. Then, he hoisted one sack over each of his shoulders and opened the door using his ankle and leg to let himself out, his hands full with the laundry bags. He stifled a smirk as he passed Hermione’s room and heard the familiar bubbling sound of she and Ron rowing. If Harry knew her at all, he knew however much she might argue she’d be out of that room in an hour tops.

He groaned as he looked down the stairs, and rued the day he had been placed in the dorm with the shittiest elevator on campus. Resigning himself, he began to walk slowly down the poorly-lit stairs to the basement, where the laundry room was. However inconvenient this descent was, Harry was at least comforted with the knowledge that the laundry room would not be crowded, which would be the greater inconvenience once the elevator was fixed.

The basement was even dimmer, the white lights flickering and buzzing with electricity as Harry walked to the laundry room almost at the end of the hall. Sure enough, the laundry room was deserted, oddly quiet with none of the familiar hum and rattle of the machines as they worked. Harry knelt in front of a washing machine and began unloading the contents of the laundry bags into it, cramming them in so they’d fit because he sure as hell wasn’t shelling out quarters for two washers. When he’d made it all fit (which had involved the use of force to jam the door shut), he went to the shelf that held the communal detergent and poured it into the soap compartment. With that done, he dug out eight quarters from his pocket and inserted them into the washer’s slot, pressing the “Start Cycle” button when he heard the clink that let him know his quarters had been accepted. The washer rumbled slowly to life, jets of water trickling out as it began to spin in one direction and then the other, and it was a couple minutes before it was spinning at a hearty pace.

Rising from his crouch (he had always liked to watch the washing machine as it booted up to wash in earnest), Harry took the laundry bags and turned to head back upstairs, already thinking of what he might do to pass the time in the hour he had before he had to switch the clothes to the dryer.

He was so caught up in thinking of this that he didn’t see the person entering the laundry room at the same time as he was exiting, which ended in an awkward clash between them.

“I’m so sorry,” Harry blurted.

“No, it’s fine, I’m sorry too— Harry?”

Only then did Harry realize who he had bumped into, and only because she kept standing there did he believe it. “Ginny?”

She still wore her Hole shirt, but had discarded the ripped jeans, combat boots, and round-the-waist flannel he’d seen at the tattoo parlor. Instead, she wore frayed gray sweatpants and flip-flops, her hair pulled up from the long ponytail into a messy bun. She, however, somehow still managed to look almost unbearably beautiful. What’s happening to me?

“What are you doing here?” he asked, the only thing he could think of right that second. Spotting the laundry basket she was cradling, he added: “No laundry in your dorm?”

“No, yeah, there is one, but it’s always too crowded, it being a freshman dorm and all.” Harry nodded: his first year, he too had done entirely more laundry than he had to, and was thankful by the quarters he saved just by realizing he could wear a pair of pants more than once before they were dirty. “So I use the one here. Much quieter. I know Ron’s ID and password—”

“You do?”

“He gave it to me once so I could pick up his books from the library. And my memory’s great.” She gave him a half smile and looked beyond him at the laundry room. “Doing laundry?”

“No, I just like the ambience down here. The shitty lighting and bleach smell are really my style,” said Harry. Ginny laughed, and Harry felt a rush of pride at what was probably the first witty thing he’d ever said to her. “Need a hand?”

“I’d appreciate one, sure,” Ginny said, again smiling at him. Harry moved so she could walk into the laundry room, and watched her pick one of the washing machines that lined the wall. When she’d settled on one, he crouched down next to her and help her lob the clothes into the maw of the machine.

“Tattoo parlor let out early?” he asked as they placed the clothes inside.

“More like you guys came in really late. You were my last customers— I just cleaned up and closed after you left.”

“And you work there?”

“Sure beats a regular work-study, doesn’t it?” Ginny grinned. She tossed in a Tide pod that was left at the bottom of the basket, closed the door to the machine, and rose to find the quarters needed to activate it. “Oh, shoot, I left my wallet in my other pants—”

“I got you,” said Harry, digging for eight more quarters in his pocket. For once, he was glad of his bad habit of carrying an excess of loose change in his jeans, something Hermione already got on to him about (sometimes, like when she’d gifted him a money purse, not too subtly).

“Thanks,” Ginny said, picking the laundry basket up from the ground.

Harry listened for the telling clink and then pressed the button. The washing machine whirred to a start, but for once, Harry didn’t feel compelled to watch it boot up: instead, he turned to Ginny. “So how did you come to work there?”

“At the tat shop?” Ginny asked, hopping to sit on the top of the washer where her clothes were spinning. “My friend Luna’s dad, Xenophilius—”

“Gesundheit.”

“Shut up,” Ginny said, but the hint of a laugh was (to Harry’s satisfaction) visible on her lips again. “Anyway, Xenophilius owns the place. He set up in a college town because he knows college is the first time kids are truly free to make rash, impulse decisions.”

“Like getting a tattoo?”

“Exactly. And besides, all the college students love his New Age bullshit, they think it’s very 70s, so his shop is always full. He got a big boost after he started placing crystals in the shop windows.”

“He’s in with the kids, then?”

“Don’t tell him that, he’ll be mortified. But he’s great, really. A little eccentric, but great. He knows me from when Luna and I took an art class together in 10th grade, and he’s always complimented my art, so he helped me get my tattoo artist license as soon as I turned 18 and hired me.”

“Is Luna the girl with the shaggy blond hair and the weird glasses?”

“That’s her. Though I’m surprised you didn’t know her by her bottlecap necklaces. That’s usually what people comment on.”

“Does she work there too?”

“Yeah, though not as an inker, she’s useless with a needle. She designs a big chunk of the tattoos, though, both original designs and commissions or requests.”

“That’s awesome,” Harry said. He realized that was the first time through the whole conversation that he had stopped. He’d never hesitated on what to say next: conversation with Ginny had flowed easily, naturally, and he hadn’t had to think too hard to keep it going. Still, he was a little disappointed that it had stopped. Ginny, however, seemed to share in this, because rather than say goodbye and take her leave, she opened up a new topic.

“So how long have you and Ron been friends?”

“Er– since the start of this school year, actually.”

“Really? You’d think from how he talks about you, he’d known you forever.” Harry felt a flush of happiness at hearing that Ron talked about him.

“Well, I got him for a roommate this year, and we just clicked. Then it turned out we had a lot of the same classes. And we’re both on the soccer team, so it just got better from there.”

“It seems strange that you never crossed paths your freshman year.”

Harry shrugged. “I mean, freshman year is weird for everyone. I certainly felt like I was just bouncing from one place to another. I still hang out with a lot of the guys from last year, but my friends have changed. It makes sense— the first year, everyone is trying to meet as many people as possible, as if it’s a race, but by sophomore year you know more of what you want and what you’re looking for. In a way, I’m glad I met Ron now that I’m in a more stable place, now that I know my way around the college and have a better grip on things. I have a feeling he’s a friend I’m gonna keep.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear you’re sticking around the Weasleys,” Ginny said, and Harry felt a tingle run up his spine. Was she… flirting with him? “And Hermione?”

“Oh, Hermione’s great, Ron and I would be dead by now if not for her— I don’t know how I got through a full year without her.”

“But she’s very different from you guys, isn’t she?”

“Well— on the surface, sure, but not in the things that matter. The fact that she went through with the tattoo tonight when she could’ve kicked up a fuss and bailed out tells you all you need to know.”

“So what I’m hearing is that Scamander Fellow Hermione Granger is as much of a bonehead as my brother at heart?”

“Stubborn, is the word I’d use. And only when Ron’s involved, actually.”

Ginny smirked. “Idiots. They haven’t even realized it.”

Harry knew exactly what she meant. “You think it too?”

“Oh, I’d bet on it. Ten bucks says they’re together by the end of the year.”

“Hey, did our visit by the parlor today teach you nothing about bets? They can be dangerous.”

“But I’m betting against you, aren’t I?” The way she said you made Harry’s heart skip a beat. “Fine, not ten bucks. But I’ll bet you a load of laundry, how’s that?”

“Deal,” said Harry, taking Ginny’s extended hand to shake it. The touch of her palm, with its long, slender fingers, sent warmth coursing down from his hand and the length of his arm. They let go and dropped hands, and perhaps it was just wishful thinking, but Harry thought he detected a certain reluctance in Ginny as they did.

Harry leaned against the washer, his propped elbow almost brushing up against her thigh. “How about you? How’s your first year going so far?”

Ginny winced. “As well as you’d expect, I suppose. Lots of people still behave like it’s an extension of high school, and I’m very much over that. But as things go, I’m having a blast. Being on the soccer team certainly helps.”

“Congratulations on that scholarship, by the way.”

“Thank you,” Ginny said, her wide smile revealing a row of perfect, square white teeth. “You’re on a scholarship too, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. My aunt and uncle would’ve never paid a single cent for me to go to college, so it was the only way. But I’m sure they were glad to be rid of me anyway.”

“They sound like lovely people,” Ginny said sarcastically.

“I should introduce them to this Xenophilius sometime. My uncle Vernon would have a stroke just walking into that shop.”

“Well, if you ever swing by, you have an insider contact,” Ginny offered, and Harry loved the implication of something, even something as simple as an 'insider contact’, between just the two of them. “I’d be happy to arrange a meeting, especially for such esteemed patrons.”

“I might take you up on that, if I ever planned on seeing them again,” Harry said. The words came out a bit more harshly than he’d expected, and the second silence in their talk set in, brought on by the darker implications of his family situation. Desperate to break it, Harry cleared his throat and geared up to talk again: “So, do you have any tattoos?”

He was relieved to see the smile, that coy, almost lopsided smile, appear on Ginny’s face again. “Actually, no, not a single one.”

“Do you think you’d ever get one?”

Ginny thought for a second. “I might, if something meaningful enough came around. And only if I was 200% sure. But really, I feel like one tattoo would lead to another, and then I’d never stop and run out of room on my skin. So it’s more of a containment mechanism, really.”

Harry smirked. “Hm. Interesting.”

Ginny broke out onto a full grin as she watched him. “What?” she asked, but when Harry’s smirk only deepened, she shoved him playfully, her touch on his shoulders eliciting the same warm sensation as the handshake. “What, Potter, tell me! Why is it interesting?”

“I mean, since you work at a tattoo shop, and you’re wearing a Hole t-shirt, I just thought you might be the type—”

“The Hole tee? Oh, don’t tell me you’re gonna gatekeep it, like you’re the type of guy who’d be like 'name three songs'—”

“No, not at all. As a matter of fact, I don’t know a lot of music by Hole. I really only know who they are because of that one Fall Out Boy song Courtney Love was featured in—”

Ginny winced. “Not Fall Out Boy, please.”

“Why? What’s wrong with Fall Out Boy?”

“Harry—”

“I know they get a lot of shit, but really, their first albums are pretty good—”

“Harry, you’ve gotta stop right here, or you’re going to make me stop finding you so attractive.”

And just like that, there it was, out in the open. Harry felt stun: he felt his mouth open to offer a witty retort, but no words came out. Because the girlish grin had evaporated from Ginny’s face and turned into a different, more mature look, her eyes smoldering slightly and her mouth slightly pouted.

“What about you?” she asked, her words slower, as if she was choosing each one individually. “If the soccer team gossip is true, I know you have five tattoos.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, his voice having dropped as well. “Yeah, there were a few tat shops around my neighborhood where the rules were pretty lax.”

“What are they?” Ginny asked.

“The tattoos? Well, the first ones I ever got were my mom and dad’s birth and death dates, on my wrist,” Harry said, rolling up the sleeve of his shirt to display two small lines of numbers, in plain black ink, on his forearm.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ginny said softly.

“Don’t be, I was really small when it happened. But I still wanted to pay them homage. Anyway, I’ll not bore you with my family history right now.”

“But tell me sometime?”

Harry was ecstatic at the implication that Ginny wanted to spend even more time with him. “Yeah,” he said, smiling at her. “Yeah, I will.” He moved on to the second tattoo, shifting the other sleeve up a bit to show Ginny a small black paw print in the center of his wrist. “This was my third one. My godfather was the only person my aunt and uncle would let me see while I was growing up, and even then only because he threatened them. And he had this huge, black shaggy dog, I think it was a Newfoundland, that looked almost like a bear, named Padfoot. I loved that dog, and every time I think of the happiest moments growing up, Padfoot’s in a lot of them. So when he died when I was sixteen, I got this to remember him by. It seems like a tribute to my godfather, too, so I like it doubly.”

He didn’t need encouragement from Ginny to keep going. He raised his left leg and propped it up on the washing machine by where Ginny’s legs hung, rolling his sock down a bit to show a green, line-art tuft of grass snaking above his ankle. “I got this when I got the soccer scholarship to come here. I wanted something to commemorate soccer, seeing as it’s not only, y'know, my passion, but also what got me out of that damn house for good. But I thought something like a soccer ball or a net or even the pitch outline would be too cheesy, so I got a bit of grass, y'know, as in the field…”

“Tasteful,” Ginny nodded her approval, and Harry felt newfound appreciation for that tattoo. “That’s three down, Potter.”

“I’m getting there.” Harry brought his leg down from the washer and turned his back to Ginny, taking his hand up to the nape of his neck and using it to shift the hair there upward to reveal the back of his neck where it turned into his back. “Can you see it?”

“The little lightning bolt?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s the story of that?”

“That was my second one. To be honest, I was a little ink-happy after my first one, so a couple of weeks after I got it I went back and got this.”

“But why a lightning bolt?”

“I don’t know,” Harry admitted, turning back around to face her. “I guess it was just cool.”

“Oh, very,” Ginny said, and the edge in her voice let him know she was teasing him. “That leaves us with one, then. The emblematic chest tattoo.” Again, the playfulness disappeared from her face and was replaced by that strange look, the one Harry couldn’t really decipher but really, really liked. “Tell me, then, Harry— is Romilda Vane right?”

It was only because of the suggestiveness in Ginny’s voice and the permanence of that look on her face that Harry did what he did next. His movements slow, he pulled his shirt off over his head, setting it on the washing machine right by where Ginny sat. He heard Ginny draw in a breath and it hitch in her throat as she saw him, her eyes moving over his bare skin to spot the ink blot that had brought this all on. Curled above his right pec was a small, S-shaped dragon, colored in red and gold.

“I win,” Ginny said, her voice still husky, as she extended her left hand to touch the dragon with her fingertips.

“Are you going to tell Romilda?” Harry said, his own right hand settling lightly on Ginny’s thigh.

“No, actually,” Ginny said, her palm now coming down flat on Harry’s chest. Her other hand had also drifted to him, and she had placed it on Harry’s left side, right below his ribcage, as if to hold the side of his torso. “I think I’d rather keep this moment to myself.”

And then she was leaning in and kissing him, touching her lips to his first with tentative softness that turned into a stronger, more determined fire as the kiss deepened. With both of Ginny’s hands on Harry, and one of Harry’s on Ginny’s thigh and the other supporting the weight of the kiss against the solidity of the washer, they leaned into one another. Harry’s mouth sought out Ginny’s eagerly, overcome by the fiery feeling pooling in his stomach and rising up to his throat through his chest, by the fact that everything he’d thought about on their walk back from Lovegood’s was coming true much sooner (and much better) than he’d expected. He felt Ginny’s tongue nudge at his lips and opened his mouth to let her in, engulfing more of her lips with his as he did so. Ginny kissed passionately, her tongue meeting Harry’s even as her teeth dug lightly into Harry’s lower lip, making him kiss her more deeply. With her this close, he was invaded by the flowery smell of her hair, by the soft feel of her skin, by the low humming sound she made as she kissed him. And everything was coming together, making the fire in his chest grow, and it was a good kind of burn, better than whiskey, better than anything—

The loud ding of the washer as it announced it had concluded its cycle startled them, and they pulled back from the kiss looking a little dazed, that one upbeat chime having been all they needed to bring them reluctantly back into the real world. Still Ginny didn’t take her hands off Harry, and Harry felt less than inclined to move his from her leg.

“I should, uh, switch to the dryer,” he said, the only thing that popped into his mind there.

Ginny tightened her hold around his middle and moved her hand from his chest, wrapping it around his upper back to draw him closer. “Oh, let it wait,” she said, and then she was kissing him again, and Harry was finding that the dryer could wait for hell to freeze for all he cared.

The sleepy sound of the chimes above the door didn’t even make Ginny raise her gaze from her stats study guide, which she’d pulled out to make the best of the not-too-busy lull at Lovegood’s. “We’re almost closed,” she announced to whoever had come in.

“You can’t make room for one last customer?” a familiar voice said, and only then did Ginny perk up immediately.

“Harry!” she said brightly, shutting the stats book as it became all-but-forgotten. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to add one more tattoo to the five I’ve already got,” said Harry. “Think you can give me my sixth?”

Ginny didn’t even need to say yes, just opened up the lift-up counter door and disappeared through the beaded curtain. “Flip the door sign to 'closed’ before you come through, will you?”

Harry obliged and flipped the sign before following Ginny to the backroom. He sat patiently on the tattoo chair as Ginny milled about, getting the supplies ready.

“Y'know, you never did tell me the story behind your dragon tattoo,” Ginny commented as she went through the sterilization procedure for the needles. “Seeing as we were, um, otherwise occupied…”

The memory of the kiss flooded through Harry with the same fire that he’d held in his chest ever since, the flame growing to engulf his whole body just hearing Ginny mention it. “Should I tell you now?”

“I’d like to hear it.”

“I got it as a tribute to my old headmaster back home, Albus Dumbledore. Funny old man, and incredibly cryptic, but he’s the one that first gave me the idea of applying for the scholarship and helped me get all my grades and papers in order so I could make it here. We were very close, and he had this saying that he used to tell me whenever I ended up in his office for getting into trouble— 'never tickle a sleeping dragon’, he’d say.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Harry laughed briefly and shrugged. “Hell if I know. But it was his catchphrase. So after I graduated, I wanted to get something to commemorate him, so I got the dragon from his favorite saying. He came with me and got it too.”

Ginny turned to him and eyed him quizzically. “Your headmaster got the tattoo along with you?”

“I told you he was a funny old man.”

Ginny pulled a pair of black latex gloves over her hands and rolled a wheeled office chair over to Harry, the needle in hand. “So by what I’m hearing, you only ever get tattoos of things that are extremely meaningful to you, right?”

“That’s right,” said Harry.

“So, Mr. Meaning, what’ll it be this time?”

Harry smiled. He grabbed his shirt and pulled it slightly upward, just enough to uncover his lower trunk. He pointed to a spot on the left side of his torso, right under his ribcage— right where Ginny’s hand had been, where her touch had been burned into his skin. “Right here,” he said. “I’d like a little washing machine.”

[olivia-anderson-fanfic]

Canary, Part 6

First

Previous

Tim had been watching her out of the corner of his eyes for a long time. It wasn’t that he was trying to be creepy or anything, he just… didn’t know why she was there. It didn’t make sense. She was relatively low on funds according to what he and Oracle had dredged up, and even Tim in all his billionaire-ness recognized that this place was more expensive than average…

So, why had she come? It wasn’t even close to the motel she was staying at.

The vaguely paranoid -- cautious, he was cautious -- part of him worried that she had somehow known he was there, but there was no way she should have been able to know that. Hell, he hadn’t known he was going to this particular cafe until he’d gotten to work and realized that there were now cameras in the breakroom and his office to make sure he didn’t drink too much.

But, really, it seemed like she was just using the free wifi that the cafe provided to write up a resume.

He relaxed and sunk back in his chair with his laptop while he did his work.

… he didn’t get to work for long.

He picked up on the slight gravel of someone putting on a voice with ease. It was high and sweet, a voice he commonly heard from customer service workers. He chanced a look back at the barista and frowned when he saw her on her phone. Not her, then.

He looked around the tiny coffee shop and cringed a little when he realized what was going on. Shady guy approaches a woman who’s drinking coffee alone? Yeah, that’s never a good thing.

He pushed his laptop into his bag quickly, slung it over his shoulders, put the cap back on his coffee cup so the guy wouldn’t be able to tell that Tim had been there for a while, and rushed over.

He rested his hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Hey, bud, she said no.”

Tim watched both of them tense and their gazes were pulled to him in an instant.

Marinette glanced him up and down once. He watched her eyes lock onto his coffee cup for a second and he carefully turned his hand a little so she could see the name.

She smiled. “You’re late, Timmy. Don’t tell me you got caught up in another meeting?”

He shrugged innocently. “You know how it is.” Then, he split into a grin. “Maybe I should be the one that’s upset, though. Can’t believe you didn’t save me a spot.”

“I tried!” She whined. “He insisted!”

The man chuckled awkwardly. “I see. I’m sorry, I thought you were alone.”

She rolled her eyes. “I told you I wasn’t. Can you move, though?”

“Actually,” Tim said, because he didn’t want to sit in the window where Duke might happen to see him while on patrols. “There’s a free table back this way.”

Marinette tipped her head to the side a little before nodding. “Sure.”

She closed her laptop with a snap, gathered her things into her bag, and followed him back to his table.

That should have been the end of it. Unfortunately, the guy was still watching them. It looked like they weren’t going to be able to do work for a while if they wanted to keep up the pretense that they were friends.

She seemed to know it, too, because she sighed and rested her head on her hand with a small frown. “Guess we have to talk.”

He huffed. “Don’t have to sound so upset about it.”

“Alright. Fine.”

“Not sounding much more excited.”

She rolled her eyes and then brought a bright smile to her face. “Sure, Timmy, sounds great! Can’t wait to have a super fun conversation with you!”

“... nevermind. That’s weird. Why did that almost convince me? I knew it was fake.”

She let herself lean back in her chair, her face falling back to a slightly smug grin. “I’m Parisian,” she said simply.

Yeah. That made sense. Every Parisian Tim had had the (dis?)pleasure of meeting had had an almost unnerving amount of control over the way they presented their emotions.

He snickered. “Why the hell would you move here, then?”

She rolled her eyes. “Our psychopath was so boring. Like, dude, we get it, your wife died or whatever, that sounds like a you problem. Now, a guy deciding to become a jewel thief purely for the gimmick? Way more interesting.”

“Moral grayness is so twenty years ago,” Tim joked.

“Exactly! Give me dumbasses who are evil purely to be evil and good to be good!”

He grinned. “I can see why you like Harry Potter.”

She blinked.

He motioned to her cup. Scrawled across it in the barista’s messy handwriting was ‘He Who Must Not Be Named’.

She relaxed a little, grinning. “I just finished the books so I’m a bit obsessed. Also, every time I tell them that my name is Marinette they misspell it.”

“Don’t feel too bad, baristas are just like that. Heck, they’ve misspelled my name before.”

“... your name is Tim.”

“They spelled it with a y.”

“... why?”

“Yes. Exactly. A y.”

She giggled a little. “No, I mean why would they do that?”

“Oh. No clue. I hope they were just messing with me.”

~

The barista was wiping down the tables. It was nearing closing time and Marinette was feeling more and more sorry for the poor workers the longer they stayed. She knew that, when she had used to work at the bakery, she had always especially hated customers that were there around closing time.

Only two tables remained occupied.

She sighed when she glanced over and saw the guy was still there.

Oh well.

She looked over at Tim. “Care to walk me a few blocks in a random direction to see if we can get rid of him?”

“Certainly,” he said.

“‘Certainly’? I may not be super great with American customs yet but even I know that’s weird,” she teased.

He huffed a little. “Listen.”

“I’m listening.”

His nose scrunched. “No, wait, you weren’t supposed to call me out on the fact that I didn’t have an excuse.”

“Oh. Okay, we can try again.”

“Alright.” He cleared his throat. “Listen,” he said again, this time in a tone that mocked the one he’d said it in the first time.

Convenient. She was intent on mocking him, too: “I’m listening.”

“You’re the worst,” he complained.

She laughed. “I am so not. Joker exists.”

“You’re worse than him,” he said in his most serious voice.

She laughed harder. “No one is worse than him.”

He grinned. “I thought you liked people that were evil purely for being evil.”

“But he’s not,” she argued. “The man just decided one day that he liked the weird guy who dressed like a bat and figured that the best way to get that guy’s attention was to murder people.”

“Gotta admit, it works,” said Tim.

She shrugged, grinning. “Yeah, it does. Makes me wonder what would happen if the Big Bad Bat didn’t come, though.”

He tipped his head to the side slightly and then shrugged. “I don’t know, actually. He usually stops it in time.”

“I think he’d freak out.”

“Absolutely.”

She grinned and stretched lazily, head tipping back.

“He’s still following us, isn’t he?” Asked Tim.

“Yep,” she said, popping the ‘p’.

He groaned a little. “Great. Looks like we’re heading to the library.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You go to libraries? You could probably buy every ebook in existence and have a few billion left over.”

“One of my sisters works there, I can ask her to get rid of the guy,” he explained. “But I like libraries. There’s something quaint about them.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, it’s nice to see how the common folk live sometimes.”

He returned her eye roll. “Not like that. I spend a lot of time staring at screens, I have a special appreciation for regular old books.”

“That’s nice. I wish I had time to sit down with a physical copy like that.”

“You see, I have this genius strategy for making time: not taking care of myself.”

“Go on, this is intriguing.”

“Well, eating and sleeping, right? Everyone thinks they’re totally necessary things otherwise you’d die or whatever. But, listen, that’s just a hoax made up by the government to perpetuate capitalism.”

She nodded eagerly. “Totally totally totally. What’s your solution?”

“Coffee communism.”

“Yes, you should use your rich boy money to lobby Congress.”

He grinned. “I totally should. But I can’t run it by my family.”

“No way! You never know who's capitalist anymore, they could be plants placed by the sleep industry to ensure that you don’t go through with it.”

He gasped. “No! You think? My own family?!”

She nodded grimly. “It’s always the ones closest to you that betray you.”

And then he broke character, snickering behind his hand. She beamed.

They reached the library and he smiled as he held the door open for her. He asked her to wait while he talked to his sister and she waved him off casually, telling him to take his time.

She pulled out her phone and pressed her lips together thinly as she made a note to head over later that night to give the man -- Henry -- his money. She’d give him a little tip because, for a moment there, she’d almost forgotten that they were just acting. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to purposely trigger herself for the sake of believability but, hey, if she was going to try and dupe one of the smartest businessmen alive into talking to her, she needed to go all out.

Speaking of Tim, she updated the file of Tim’s favorite cafes plus the probabilities of him visiting each one. It was for his oldest brother, Richie Wayne. She didn’t know why Richie was the one to ask for it seeing as he spent most of his time in Bludhaven and therefore likely wouldn’t find much use in it, but no one ever really knew why Richie Wayne did anything. The man famously had almost as much cotton between his ears as his father.

But, Richie Wayne was also just as rich as his father, so… she’d give him his file later that night after checking her math with her favorite graphing calculator.

A redhead in a wheelchair rolled past Marinette and she absently held the door open for her, only to be surprised when she cursed out Henry.

She watched as Henry held his hands up and started backing away from the woman in the wheelchair, and then he ran down the nearest alley.

(… she’d give Henry a bigger tip. The man had just wanted a tiny side job to help pay for his wife and kids that wasn’t being a henchman, he didn’t deserve this.)

She opened the door for the woman on her way back inside and mumbled her thanks. The woman nodded once and continued on her way.

Marinette leaned back against the wall again and scrolled through Twitter as she waited for Tim to reappear. Apparently, Poison Ivy was already back in Arkham. Something about an intern at the botanical gardens watering plants wrong. Wild.

Marinette felt someone sidle up beside her and, after a quick glance confirmed that it was Tim, pocketed her phone.

He smiled at her, a tote bag over his shoulder.

“Did you go grocery shopping while I wasn’t looking, somehow?”

He hesitated before holding it out to her. “It’s the French dubs of the Harry Potter movies.”

She blinked as the bag was thrust into her hands and looked down at it. Yep, that was Harry Potter in French. She also, vaguely, noted the tiny slip of paper his phone number scrawled across it.

She slung the bag over her shoulder.

“I’m never going to return these. You’re going to rack up so much debt.”

~~~

NightwingsAss9384: does anyone know why nightwing and canary hate each other?

ScareCrane: She stabbed Batman once on accident and somehow got away with blaming it on him

Daylightwing: She refuses to let B adopt her.

RiddleMeThis: They think it’s funny when their stans fight.

SignalOfficial: They said ‘I’m the only flippy bitch allowed in New Jersey’ and have been fighting ever since

Yummmmmm: He has to or else Robin will get jealous because he’s the only stabby sibling allowed

Oracle: They’re fighting over who gets to change their name to ‘The Dodo’ first.

DeadHood: Nightwing is jealous that Canary was the first one of us to think to have a full-on bird mask.

TheBetterCanary: every time i go into the batfam tag to try and avoid them all i see is his fancams

SpoilerAlert: they’re both convinced that they’re the hottest bachelor/bachelorette in gotham

NightwingsAss9384: im beginning to think no ones going to tell me.

BlackBat: :)

~~~~~

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