#i spent 2 hours in the sandbox doing this shit

[co5oo]

ultrabrawl : aka me fucking around with the sandbox

i'll put you in context for the nonscreenshotted story. so basically i decided to pitch in enemies against enemies (blind enemies beforehand so the stalkers dont pre-sand the contestants + enemies ignore player + enemies attack each other + invencibility in case some projectiles or attacks hit me + flight to see the fight from all angles. also + infinite wall jumps but thats just a preference)

first one was a general battle. all against all, 1 of each (2 gabriels, 2 V2's the only exceptions ALSO no big johninator because i never beat him...yet). it was surprisingly heated! the minotaur lasted longer than i expected and the battle was slightly tied against druid knight and sisyphus so i had them fight in a small room. sisyphus won! barely tho... so, from this point u should know sisyphus can win ANYONE

...except the flesh prision and panopticon. for some reason once the eyes are defeated the enemy just. doesnt attack The flesh itself! so theyre invalid

ok, fast foward, made a bunch of random battles (fun fact that the guttertank can instakill the gutterman, and consequently, maurice can instakill guttertank)...blah blah, ok

so, i made a small civil war then, yeah? several numbers of ALL enemies. that battle lagged the game so hard my wifi turned off. im serious

and after that? here comes the illustrated experience.

i decided to pitch in. around 12 gabriels of each (12-ish act 1, 12-ish act 2. i wasnt counting)

it went on like this for a good 3 minutes probably. my chest still hurts from all the laughing. i wish i recorded it instead because hearing them all talk overlapped was honestly hilarious

goes on... goes on... and then... the act 2 gabriels (most of them) come out victorious. youd think well! the npcs stop there because they have no one else to fight!

WELL YOURE WRONG

they decide to FUCKING WANDER WHO KNOWS WHERE LITERALLY OUT OF BOUNDS

THEY LOOKED LIKE THEY WERE FIGHTING SOMEONE BUT?? THERE WAS NO ONE...

i tried following them but i gave up when i almost got lost and also they just kept flying further away...

a sole survivor... got stuck in a fighting position with no one to attack...

fear not my dearest husband replica number 43,

i shall accomodate those needs.

you think this was over? NO!!!

you mightve already guessed whats going on here. (5 minos, 3 sisyphus)

immediate seconds after they start battling ALL of them except these two go out of bounds, never to be found again. im serious. they straight up disappeared

except for this guy here. hes grounded

decided to noclip to try and find the other minus and sisyphi and...

i found gabriels! from. before the 12vs12 pitch. probably from the civil war

they pushed him thru the wall. still grounded

another discovery! the cummulus of the civil war

after that i decided to chase a golden strike shooting upwards, but...

i got lost.

and thats it! thanks for sticking with me til the end. this was wild. i might repeat it

[alligatorjesie]

Hey that's alright you can block me as much as you like but it wont change anything man. You said some shit things so I'm going to say some shit things to you.

You know what that's fine we can just repost that whole comment so people can see what a shitass you are @blessyouhawkeye

Hey real quick you do realize that reylo is just a really vanilla ass enemies-to-lovers ship if you have a problem with it well good luck man this shit is literally everywhere in media.

Almost like it's a popular trope. Have you never watched a rom com? Woof. I got some news for you brosph.

but you know what since we're on the tangent of 'weird people' in fandoms let's talk about that for a moment.

You wanna know what's weird? There's a lot of finnreys in the reblogs acting positively feral about their ship not being canon

(which idk I watched TRoS that was pretty open ended if your still mad about reylo by the end of that movie that shits on you)

and upset they don't have book deals like the reylos but IDK man maybe the reason finnreys ain't got book deals is because they spend all their time online bitching about how their ship got shafted instead of writing that fucking fanfiction.

You know when the reylos got shafted with the shit show that was EP9 instead of spending the next 3 years complaining they just trucked along in their own fucking sandbox completing their own fucking projects for their own fucking friends.

Fuck Disney we'll make our own reylo with blackjack and hookers and sex scenes.

You mean to tell us you've had more problems with reylos who were just excited to see the story concepts they predicted from The Force Awakens coming true in The Last Jedi and making positive content to reflect that joy compared to the actual nazis on YouTube who flood the platforms with 3 hour long hate videos over how Bree Larson is somehow personally responsible for their dicks falling off?

You remember that one time ethan van sciver said he wanted to kill Chinese people? He's a really popular star wars/comic book YouTuber and he's way more problematic than anyone I've ever met in the reylo fandom.

And guess what he also hates reylo what a shock!

You wanna talk about some unhinged weird behavior allow me to direct you at a rabid finnrey who has told me graphically to kill myself at least 5 times now for the sin of enjoying the wrong part of star wars according to them.

That shits fucking unhinged

Here's some of those death threats these are 100% real by the way:

Obviously Death Threat Warning some of these are quite gnarly.

This user still has an active account.

I've reported them several times but I sometimes feel like the only thing that will get you banned on this hellsite is being trans I swear to fucking god.

This user has spent over 7 years shit posting hate directly into the reylo fandom's tag instead of doing literally anything else to make their own fandom more enjoyable for themselves.

That's weird shit.

What has been hellish is being in this fandom for over 9 years and dealing with the amount of uncalled for vitriol at this very fucking plain flavor baby's first enemies-to-lovers ship.

I only started keeping track of the death threats back in September 2022

It's not even been a full 2 years and I'm nearing 1000.

This is the header for my Tumblr. This is a real number by the way I have every death threat I've gotten since starting this documented on my computer.

It's actually 955 because thepettycunt here just sent me a new death threat so now I gotta update the banner.

fun!

One day I'll make a master post.

Today is not that day.

But let's be very honest here the real number of death threats I've personally gotten are well into multiple thousands across multiple platforms over 9 years.

Just for enjoying reylo.

And I'm a furry and have been since the 90s. I'm use to being told to kill myself from strangers on the internet so color me confused when I join this really basic bitch of a fandom ship only to find the hate towards it somehow fucking worse.

That's some fucking weird unhinged shit.

I know you made this shit post just to be a shit poster so don't take this too personally I'm sure at this point you already think I'm unhinged and rightfully so

maybe I am

but after the 100th death threat I just stopped giving a fuck so you'll just have to forgive me but it's real buck ass wild to be called 'weird' when I've never sent death threats to people over fictional ships and none of my reylo friends have done that shit either but I am almost 99% sure if you look though the history of any single person who reblogged this post bitching about reylo you'll find they have a history of doing that shit.

You can pick any one. Odds are they have anti reylo posts going years back and at worst some of them have straight up told people in this fandom to kill themselves.

I can look through YOUR history OP and see You're a huge pile of shit towards reylos!

Go on pick one out at random and have a go. It's a fun horrible way to spend a afternoon.

And before anyone brings it up because people who hate reylo always do;

'what about that one time reylos harassed John Boye-'

a group of women telling John Boyega the things he's saying are sexist towards his female coworker who had already been harassed off social media a few years prior and asking him to do better isn't the harassment you think it is.

You can find that 'reaction' video John made to the reylos on google and watch it yourself. No one is being racist but they are all asking him to stop making sex jokes on his female coworkers behalf and expressing disappointment in him. In fact he even had to reused quite a few of the quotes because I think about halfway through making the video he realized he just didn't have that much material and the things people were saying were pretty fucking mild.

And I'm not sorry. Asking a adult man to hold himself accountable for the shit he says is not on the same level as the far fucking worse shit the over arching star wars fandom has done well before reylo was even a twinkle in anyone's eye

Lastly one more thing and I'm done I swear and I'm going to apologize in advance because I'm gonna sound really spicy and I guess I kinda am but not in a mean way more in a really fucking confused way

but what the fuck do you mean jenny nicholsons reylo videos are unhinged?

They're the fucking same as the rest of her videos.

Is there something less unhinged about a nearly 4 hour long video about a failed fantasy RPG theme park over a 1 hour long video about how star wars episode 9 was absolute dogshit?

Jenny makes cringe videos about cringe shit. That's her brand.

She's voiced her enjoyment of reylo very early on... I think back in The Force Awakens days? So why are you surprised she would talk about the subject at length in detail? She bought a stuffed porg larger than herself and documented collecting it on video for her channel.

Yeah man she probably likes reylo.

Most people who like TLJ do.

What... what the fuck do you mean her reylo videos specific are unhinged?

I'm sorry but if known racist and sexist YouTuber doomcock can spend 6 hours complaining about TLJ because Rey don't make his dick hard like Luke Skywalker does and he's going to make his refusal to reflect on that issue our fucking problem I don't think Jenny is unhinged for complaining about the inarguably bad movie that was the rise of skywalker for less time than the movie's total runtime.

I'm not even mad I'm just really confused by your statement.

[alligatorjesie]

Hey real quick you do realize that reylo is just a really vanilla ass enemies-to-lovers ship if you have a problem with it well good luck man this shit is literally everywhere in media.

Almost like it's a popular trope. Have you never watched a rom com? Woof. I got some news for you brosph.

but you know what since we're on the tangent of 'weird people' in fandoms let's talk about that for a moment.

You wanna know what's weird? There's a lot of finnreys in the reblogs acting positively feral about their ship not being canon

(which idk I watched TRoS that was pretty open ended if your still mad about reylo by the end of that movie that shits on you)

and upset they don't have book deals like the reylos but IDK man maybe the reason finnreys ain't got book deals is because they spend all their time online bitching about how their ship got shafted instead of writing that fucking fanfiction.

You know when the reylos got shafted with the shit show that was EP9 instead of spending the next 3 years complaining they just trucked along in their own fucking sandbox completing their own fucking projects for their own fucking friends.

Fuck Disney we'll make our own reylo with blackjack and hookers and sex scenes.

You mean to tell us you've had more problems with reylos who were just excited to see the story concepts they predicted from The Force Awakens coming true in The Last Jedi and making positive content to reflect that joy compared to the actual nazis on YouTube who flood the platforms with 3 hour long hate videos over how Bree Larson is somehow personally responsible for their dicks falling off?

You remember that one time ethan van sciver said he wanted to kill Chinese people? He's a really popular star wars/comic book YouTuber and he's way more problematic than anyone I've ever met in the reylo fandom.

And guess what he also hates reylo what a shock!

You wanna talk about some unhinged weird behavior allow me to direct you at a rabid finnrey who has told me graphically to kill myself at least 5 times now for the sin of enjoying the wrong part of star wars according to them.

That shits fucking unhinged

Here's some of those death threats these are 100% real by the way:

Obviously Death Threat Warning some of these are quite gnarly.

This user still has an active account.

I've reported them several times but I sometimes feel like the only thing that will get you banned on this hellsite is being trans I swear to fucking god.

This user has spent over 7 years shit posting hate directly into the reylo fandom's tag instead of doing literally anything else to make their own fandom more enjoyable for themselves.

That's weird shit.

What has been hellish is being in this fandom for over 9 years and dealing with the amount of uncalled for vitriol at this very fucking plain flavor baby's first enemies-to-lovers ship.

I only started keeping track of the death threats back in September 2022

It's not even been a full 2 years and I'm nearing 1000.

This is the header for my Tumblr. This is a real number by the way I have every death threat I've gotten since starting this documented on my computer.

One day I'll make a master post.

Today is not that day.

But let's be very honest here the real number of death threats I've personally gotten are well into multiple thousands across multiple platforms over 9 years.

Just for enjoying reylo.

And I'm a furry and have been since the 90s. I'm use to being told to kill myself from strangers on the internet so color me confused when I join this really basic bitch of a fandom ship only to find the hate towards it somehow fucking worse.

That's some fucking weird unhinged shit.

I know you made this shit post just to be a shit poster so don't take this too personally I'm sure at this point you already think I'm unhinged and rightfully so

maybe I am

but after the 100th death threat I just stopped giving a fuck so you'll just have to forgive me but it's real buck ass wild to be called 'weird' when I've never sent death threats to people over fictional ships and none of my reylo friends have done that shit either but I am almost 99% sure if you look though the history of any single person who reblogged this post bitching about reylo you'll find they have a history of doing that shit.

You can pick any one. Odds are they have anti reylo posts going years back and at worst some of them have straight up told people in this fandom to kill themselves.

I can look through YOUR history OP and see You're a huge pile of shit towards reylos!

Go on pick one out at random and have a go. It's a fun horrible way to spend a afternoon.

And before anyone brings it up because people who hate reylo always do;

'what about that one time reylos harassed John Boye-'

a group of women telling John Boyega the things he's saying are sexist towards his female coworker who had already been harassed off social media a few years prior and asking him to do better isn't the harassment you think it is.

You can find that 'reaction' video John made to the reylos on google and watch it yourself. No one is being racist but they are all asking him to stop making sex jokes on his female coworkers behalf and expressing disappointment in him. In fact he even had to reused quite a few of the quotes because I think about halfway through making the video he realized he just didn't have that much material and the things people were saying were pretty fucking mild.

And I'm not sorry. Asking a adult man to hold himself accountable for the shit he says is not on the same level as the far fucking worse shit the over arching star wars fandom has done well before reylo was even a twinkle in anyone's eye

Lastly one more thing and I'm done I swear and I'm going to apologize in advance because I'm gonna sound really spicy and I guess I kinda am but not in a mean way more in a really fucking confused way

but what the fuck do you mean jenny nicholsons reylo videos are unhinged?

They're the fucking same as the rest of her videos.

Is there something less unhinged about a nearly 4 hour long video about a failed fantasy RPG theme park over a 1 hour long video about how star wars episode 9 was absolute dogshit?

Jenny makes cringe videos about cringe shit. That's her brand.

She's voiced her enjoyment of reylo very early on... I think back in The Force Awakens days? So why are you surprised she would talk about the subject at length in detail? She bought a stuffed porg larger than herself and documented collecting it on video for her channel.

Yeah man she probably likes reylo.

Most people who like TLJ do.

What... what the fuck do you mean her reylo videos specific are unhinged?

I'm sorry but if known racist and sexist YouTuber doomcock can spend 6 hours complaining about TLJ because Rey don't make his dick hard like Luke Skywalker does and he's going to make his refusal to reflect on that issue our fucking problem I don't think Jenny is unhinged for complaining about the inarguably bad movie that was the rise of skywalker for less time than the movie's total runtime.

I'm not even mad I'm just really confused by your statement.

i genuinely hope in my lifetime to never experience anything like the reylo phenomenon ever again. something about that ship either attracted people who were weird or made people weird, and either way existing on internet spaces while it was at its peak was hellish.

[sapphic-scylla]

I don’t think people have a firm understanding of how BAD the toxicity pervading the Destiny 2 community has gotten and how much of a hellscape Destiny 2 has become for solo players. Let me break it down for you:

LFG has become a nightmare. This raid has been out here for two days and people are already asking for clears when it comes to raid groups. Not only that, but people are always asking for only the people that know what to do and flat out REFUSE to teach newcomers how to run the raid which, and I don’t think they’re aware of this, significantly lowers their ability to not only find players, but makes it infinitely harder for them to find people in the future because no one can find people to teach them the raid, further lowering player population.

Griefing. Players are actively getting people into groups so they can finish them and then kicking them to orbit at the end of them, effectively wasting hours of work and leaving players salty and disgusted to have all of their work thrown in the garbage to get a weapon or catalyst or clear, again, further lowering the player population.

Players and streamers can continue to believe that it’s the @bungieteam that is ostracizing its community, but as someone who has spent over 15,000 hours in this game, mostly as a solo player, you’re dead fucking wrong. Bungie has their fuck-ups, but at the end of the day, despite everything the Bungie devs are doing, there will still be a community through sandbox changes, meta switch ups, and off seasons.

If the Destiny 2 community doesn’t get their shit together, the community will destroy itself.

[riathedreamer]

Sorry for the essay I'm about to submit. I haven't watched any rvb0 yet, but I think the change in direction may be for a few reasons; 1- buying time so they can figure out what to do with the OG RVB cast without rehashing the same stuff, doing justice to their characters AND appeasing the fans who demand a Red based season (am one such fan).

[continuation of ask] 2- To attract new fans into the series. Ye Olde RVB jokes and running gags were considered typical, if not an accepted form of comedy for it's time. Whilst some people will be able to see it as a product of it's time, those jokes definitely will hit wrong with a younger audience now, and We've had the opportunity to grow and change ourselves and our opinions alongside the show. The action heavy stuff has a broader, if not safer appeal, so bringing in new fans will be easier. I miss the dumb idiots playing in a box canyon, and I agree that rvb shouldn't be driven by action. A bunch of idiots with guns and fuck all else to do is the very basis of the show, but those idiots have outgrown their sandbox and the writers seem to be reaching the end of their idea rope on giving them shit to do. Don't be scared to express your opinion here either, you are definitely far more polite about it than some others I've seen. [end ask]

It’s pretty funny to receive this ask today, because literally spent hours preparing a review of Zero today. A review I of course won’t post until after the entire season is out, because I cannot judge anything before that, and I will of course revise due to this and so much of it still needs to be written, but there are main problems I could address already now, or at least prepare a draft for. So pardon me that I copy paste part of the review here, I just like some of the points I made, and then I don’t get to rewrite thoughts I’ve already had.

It makes sense to have more time to prepare for a quality season. I do not know if that’s the case. I hope it is. I get wanting new viewers, but I feel like this doesn’t necessarily means *more* viewers because people interested in the new season are literally being told they don’t have to watch the previous seasons, while fans who prefer the old style of RvB are being told this season is not for them. So if the Reds and Blues ever return, the people interested in Zero are gonna be so confused, I suppose. Urgh. No reason speculating about that until we know. As for the old humor – yeah, I get that, but I feel like there’s starting to be a great divide between “RvB” and “Zero” and that worries me. So if it’s just to make time for planning a season with Reds and Blues, I keep asking if Zero is necessary.

I would feel way better about Zero is it just presented itself as a spin-off, but for some reason, they cling to it not being a spin-off. This confuses me to no end, and so many of the issues would be solved by officially stating this divide from canon material. My main problem with Zero right now is this: [taken from the unfinished, unrevised review] “Zero forces its story into existence by ignoring established content rather than adjusting to it. Let’s call this for the hotdog-too-big-for-the-bun syndrome solely for the sake of the bow-chicka-bow-wow that’s coming now. Bow-chicka-bow-wow.” With this I mean like this story forces its way to exist at the cost of canon content. Examples of this being the sudden new inclusion of AOD which we’ve never heard about before, that sorta takes the place of UNSC, but is so big, but we’ve never heard about it? Another being how the very first lines erase the consequences of the previous season by fixing Wash’s brain damage. It’s literally ignoring established plot with quick-fixes so this new story can work. Another example how I feel like Wash and Carolina are just there for the sake for the new characters. I don’t dig how they’re written, it feels like they are just props the new characters use to build their own story. Carolina’s used to basically introduce and explain the new characters instead of letting them explain themselves, and Wash is just a damsel in distress, holy shit Wash, RvB is never kind to you huh. I just feel like the existing RvB is twisted into something else or ignored, so that this story can exist, and I am left feeling: why?

It’s obvious they wanted something *new* which leads me to another issue for me: [taken from the unfinished, unrevised review] “remember the philosophical question: if you replace all the parts of a ship one-by-one, is it still the same ship when you’re done?” If it doesn’t include the Reds and Blues, if it ignores previous plot, if the old characters feel miswritten, if it values animation over dialogue, if it values fight scenes over comedy, if it wants to be Fast and Furious instead of Red vs. Blue – is it still Red vs. Blue? Because it doesn’t feel like it for me.

As I said earlier, some of this could be forgiven if it established itself as a spin-off, but it won’t despite fighting against the original characters and material. At least, that’s how it feels like to me. We’ve had spin-offs before. With new characters and stories.

 Some people say that RvB should end. I can’t comment on that. Some say the Reds and Blues have run out of things to do. That I disagree with. [taken from the unfinished, unrevised review] “I mean, if we were discussing pretty much any other show, I’d probably agree that they were running of out content. But for the Reds and Blues… I think the PSAs nailed it this year! I’m not kidding, I had more fun watching the Reds and Blues discuss how to do laundry than Zero. You could literally give me an hour of the Reds and Blues trying to bake a cake or clear a gutter or simply setting down with an ordinary life, and I would trust them to make it worth the watch.”

I’m not saying Zero can’t be enjoyed. I’m not trying to spoil anyone’s fun. But for me, there are some obvious problems that I simply can’t come to terms with, and I will post my opinion, of course always trying to stay civil. I’m glad you enjoy my thoughts (so far, at least. I hope I haven’t pissed anyone off with this), and as always: I can only speak for myself.

[lady-writes]

So @energievie ask for 18 + 59 in the book of Nile mashup fic meme.

Due to my own Butterfingers I lost everything that I was typing over the past few hours so now I'm just going to read dictate this to my phone because I am tired of typing and I am at The Hangry Stage of sleep deprivation but my brain won't let me eat till I finish this which would have been fine if I had an accidentally deleted everything

SO! 18 + 59 is Circus Au + interrupted Declaration of love( which I kind of took differently because it was easier for where my brain went)

And this is going to be weird now since I'm talking about it instead of typing it out but I'on't give a fuk.

This also borrows a ton from the circus Au that we talked about weeks and weeks ago in the group chat but I don't care because it was awesome and I'm going to just keep building in the sandbox

The meme

So Nile is freaking out a little bit, but she has decided, finally, as of tonight, this night she is going to Do The Thing.

and Nile is a brave person right like she's a former Marine she's an acrobat and she's been doing this conservation circus thing for 3 years and 2 years ago this Burly taciturn sadman who was terrifyingly capable of impressively  functional drunkness a ridiculous amount of the time and definitely spent more time talking to animals than people became her Catcher And she went ahead and went with that because she didn't really have a choice at that point in time.

Point being Nile is not risk averse and this is barely even a risk she just would love it if for maybe 20 minutes she could get time alone with her boyfriend somewhere in the literal circus of tents and animal enclosures and trailers and shipping containers that they all collectively live their lives out of.

But none of that matters anymore because Niall is letting go of the idea that she's going to be able to do this perfectly with privacy and like all the bells and whistles that she may have imagined in her head she's letting this go because she needs to do the thing.

All the pent-up potential energy that she has is making her antsy and she feels Like she has moths in her stomach all the time and it's honestly throwing her off kilter and given the fact that her job is flinging herself through the air and being suspended on ribbons and Hoops that are on tent rigs... being off balance really isn't an option ever so these past two weeks have been insane and she is not letting her nerves get between her and either of the things she loves.

So Nile is pacing outside of Louis XVI enclosure and just waiting for Booker to return. She didn't even bother trying to change out of her costume because she knows that there is a brief window Calm before the Whirlwind of getting all the animals and equipment squared away for the night starts followed by all the social things that come with circus life and she would like to at least have a minimal audience

Things unfortunately start to go wrong right off the bat because Nile did not account for the fact that wearing a sparkly spangly dress in semi dapples lighting around an adolescent lion might be a problem. Because as soon as Louis Sees her he's absolutely entranced with all the little refraction coming off of her dress and next thing you know Nile had a 280-pound force field between her and Booker just kind of gamboling around her feet, which is adorable but not what she needs right now.

And of course Booker is laughing because he loves this cat like his son and he's essentially watching his son like be a little shit. And as much as Niall likes to look at him laughing it's really not the best moment for her. And then the sound of his laughter draw the attention so Andy and Quynh pop their heads up from The Stables where they're dealing with the horses and see what's happening and they both walk out as well in they're sparkly costumes to kind of play with the lion that is obviously having a great time. It's a cat and people love playing with cats and light. This almost would have worked out a Niles favor if it hadn't been for the fact that Louis is still not quite used to the size of his feet so when he tries to bound around Nile to go investigate the two new shiny people he absolutely tripped over his own Paws and because Murphy's Law does not rest he takes Nile down with him. Nile doesn't even have time to register how hard she fell before she's out like a light.

so Nile comes to on the ground everyone leaning over her while she's laying there Louis is in his enclosure and you know like people are worried. Booker is next to her "looking all sad and teary which is suuuuuch a Good look on you" and Niall might be a little bit concussed but she doesn't know that and therefore she didn't even think twice or feel any nerves at all she just rolls with it and keeps talking out loud because she might as well "I love the fuck outta you and I wanna wife you like a week and a half ago but people keep interrupting me when I try to Repose and you're lying and just knock me out so you better fucken marry me because I I fucking deserve it"

And that's how Booker and Nile get engaged.

[warriorsredux]

RE: Feedback for the Redux.

(I wanted to give you really in-depth feedback. Unfortunately, it ended up being way longer than I anticipated. I figured it would be easier to send this as a submission rather than breaking it up into a million smaller asks. I hope that’s all right!)

Note: I put this under a readmore to save space, but I have read it all and thoroughly agree with it. Thank you so much for the feedback, man!

Before I get into the nitty-gritty, I want to briefly talk about my personal relationship with Warriors - not because I want to talk about myself necessarily, but because I want to provide some relevant context. You see, I was first introduced to these books in 2004, about when I was nine years old. You could argue, in some ways, that these books defined a large part of my childhood, and were extremely influential into my teenage years and early adulthood. When I wasn’t fantasizing about colonies of talking feral cats, I was gleefully writing fanfics and roleplaying online. Those were my first tentative forays into writing, and would ultimately set me on the path to refine and hone those skills in the years to come. I was obsessed with the mythology and lore of this world, with the sprawling cast of characters, with the steady publication of new entries into the series.

Now, kids tend to not have the best critical thinking skills. Which is why it took until my late teenage years to realize that my cherished books were really, really not that great. The mythology and lore that I’d praised were starved of any creativity, steeped in the cliches of the fantasy genre, and prone to collapsing under their own weight when subjected to even the smallest amount of scrutiny. The characters that I adored? They were blighted with similar cliches, lacking in any sort of growth or development or depth; sustained only by archetypes and whatever retcons the authors thought would sell the most books, either through hype, drama, or fanservice. Exacerbating all of this was the publisher’s insistence on milking the franchise for whatever profit nostalgia could still yield. They weren’t writing more books because they had new, interesting ideas they wanted to explore - they did it because this series was (and still is) fucking lucrative. As I thought about these things more critically, and became more informed on social issues, it became impossible to unsee the uglier aspects of the franchise - the ableism, the queerbaiting and lack of representation, the depiction of minors and adults (Dustpelt and Ferncloud, Thistleclaw and Spottedleaf) having romantic or sexual relationships, the blind nationalism and eugenics/persecution of minorities (non-Clanborn cats) and characters of mixed descent (half-Clan cats). People far more informed and far more eloquent than myself have discussed those issues in-depth elsewhere, but suffice to say, I was understandably upset by these things. No amount of nostalgia could blind me to those flaws.

And yet, for some reason, I never really stopped loving Warriors. Or put more accurately - I never stopped loving the potential of Warriors. That was the thing that I kept coming back to. The wasted potential of a series depicting the lives of feral cats, and their brutal struggle to survive in the wilderness, all the while deeply immersed in their own complex societies and cultures. It became painfully clear to me that the thing I loved about Warriors was the sandbox nature of the franchise, and all the ways fans were able to explore that untapped potential. With that realization now achieved, Warriors slipped into the back of my mind, accruing cobwebs as the years passed. Occasionally those dormant thoughts stirred whenever I saw a piece of fanart on my dashboard, or I passed a new release while browsing the local Barnes & Noble. Sometimes I even entertained the fleeting thought of writing AU fics again. But by and large, Warriors had been retired from my thoughts.

And then, in 2017, I found the Redux.

While writing this segment I had several false starts, in no small part because I didn’t know what to talk about first. It was like someone had gone through my thoughts with a steel-toothed comb, and took every disappointment, every what if, and turned it into a reality. Holy shit, look at this blog! Look at the meta commentary! Look at all of the worldbuilding! I could clearly see just how much passion and attention to detail was put into developing the plot and the characters. How many hundreds of hours went into correcting the broken genetics of the canon characters. Suddenly, the Clans had culture - real, living, breathing culture! There was a pantheon of deities and demigods. A deliberate intention behind the naming tradition beyond slapping two words together because they sounded pretty or made for a trite pun. This. This was the story Warriors should have been. This lone blog managed to conceive an original lore for the Clans, while further developing the canon plots beyond their base elements. What three authors failed to do, one person achieved on their own.

You made forgettable characters interesting. And you made interesting characters unforgettable.

I lived for every scrap of content you created - the asks, the deconstructions, the amendment posts, the art, even the fucking shitposts (because they were just genuinely wholesome and funny). The Redux wasn’t just a source of entertainment, either - it introduced me to the idea of writing an AU that was sustained by meta-analysis, and grounded in critical reception of the series’ flaws (both technical and social). Your work eventually inspired me to create my own Redux-style worldbuilding/AU blog for a series that has similar issues to canon Warriors.

The Redux deserves all the praise it gets, and you should be extremely proud of what you’ve accomplished. Even if the Third Arc wasn’t finished or the Fourth started, it was still a helluva ride, one that I’m so glad I got to participate in.

But, of course, you asked for feedback, so I can’t spend the entirety of this post throwing roses at your feet. So, onto the constructive feedback.

I think a lot of my thoughts are going to echo what other people have previously said, but for me, the biggest setbacks in the Redux were the following:

[1] Pacing. This is going to sound weird, but this isn’t a criticism of the Redux’s length. Rather, it’s more about how that time was spent. While I really like how you adjusted aspects of the Redux’s plot in order to still tangentially align with the books’, it sometimes felt like the chapters were there just to connect points A and B. I knew this was a retelling of the original series, so I already had a vague idea of what the general storybeats would be. What appealed to me was how the story would get to those points. Let me give you an example: in Arc 1, we’re told in chapter 10 that Murkpelt is roaming the territories, and poses a threat to the Clans. Immediately in chapter 11 we’re taken to the scene where Firepaw finds her while escorting Spottedleaf. We’re told about ThunderClan’s efforts to track her prior, and about the looming tension in the wake of this invisible threat. But that’s the thing - we’re told that by the narration in just a paragraph or two. We’re not shown what that looks like. The setup is supposed to be everyone being on edge, but Bluestar’s lounging by the stump when the scene begins. It’s a little dissonant, and it has the unfortunate problem of contradicting the narration. It would’ve been so cool to see a chapter or two where Firepaw’s still trying to immerse himself into Clan life, and his questions are met with terse answers or impatience. Undercut his (and the reader’s) learning with other characters being brusque with him, or short-tempered, or something. And then that could lead into Greypaw or Ravenpaw consoling him and explaining why the situation is so serious. Then Firepaw could ask something like, “Have there ever been instances like this before with rogues?” Which could organically lead to a conversation where Greypaw or Ravenpaw bring up relevant lore/worldbuilding. It’s little stuff like that which would’ve helped with immersion and pacing. I think it would have balanced the two out, by providing pseudo-downtime where the audience experiences the world as the characters do. (If that makes sense.) Or, to provide another example: we never get to see Tres Idiots mentoring Snowpaw. In chapters 5 and 6 of Arc 3, we see Raventhroat struggling to develop a signing system he can use with his apprentice; and then, after a few chapters he’s perfectly narrating the Bright-Eyed Crow to Snowpaw. I think that showing us scenes where the two were actually working out the kinks would have done more to develop Raventhroat’s character arc. He went from being a meek, timid apprentice to an eloquent warrior, and him becoming a mentor is supposed to be a definite part of that journey. It would’ve have been so cool to have plot-relevant scenes broken up by smaller ones where we watch Raventhroat gain confidence through each small success he makes with his apprentice. I’m not sure if I’m conveying exactly what I want to say, but I guess the TL;DR would be something like - I would’ve gladly welcomed either more chapters, or longer ones, if it meant we got more scenes like this.

[2] Utilization of the worldbuilding. You mentioned this already in response to another ask, but if you could go back and change anything, it would be incorporating more lore/adhering the Redux to its lore more strongly. Your worldbuilding is perhaps the strongest part of the Redux by far. You gave us a conlang, traditions, folk stories, Clan stereotypes - so much fascinating material - but it feels like its integration was based solely on whether or not it was relevant to the plot at hand. Unless there was a reason why it was brought up, then we’d never get to see a ThunderClan cat freaking out near a ShadowClan seer and refusing to approach them at a Gathering. Or listen to Mistfoot share a poem with Greystripe and Fireheart (after being goaded into it by Silverstream). Or watch as Redtail politely interrupts the elders and asks for their opinion on an important matter. Or listen to the Clan getting together after a loved one dies and share stories about their life. Or watch as Sandpaw/Dustpaw use their age and seniority over Firepaw to terrorize him with stories of Yrrun and Terror. On one hand, I absolutely understand why a lot of lore was relegated exclusively to the Amendment section - it’s important to strike a balance between what’s interesting versus what’s relevant. You don’t wanna just throw worldbuilding trivia at the audience apropos of nothing. On the other hand, I really wish I’d seen a much larger integration of your worldbuilding into the story, because it’s so fascinating and so god damn good.

[3] Utilization of the characters. One of the things you tweaked, that I absolutely loved, was choosing to introduce Silverpaw in Arc 1 at a Gathering. Not only does it create a realistic basis for her friendship with Tres Idiots, but it fixes the canon’s issue of her saving Greystripe out of nowhere and then developing a relationship on that alone. That was fucking great! Same thing with Rainpath - it was so awesome for Fireheart to get a friend in another Clan (ShadowClan, of all Clans). It broke the mold, and their interactions were just delightful. But outside of those examples, sometimes it kinda felt like the side characters didn’t really exist? I remember an old piece of writing advice, but I can’t recall who it’s attributed to: “Treat your side characters like they think they’re the main characters.” Because they absolutely are. I might be some passing stranger in another person’s life, barely a blip on their radar, but I have my own vibrant story. Everyone does. In the Redux, it sometimes felt like minor or side characters weren’t living their own lives outside of their interactions with Fireheart and his friends. Mousefur’s the most fluent speaker of Fang in ThunderClan? Cool. How did she learn that skill? Who taught her? Does she have a friend in WindClan who’s been teaching her new words at Gatherings, or whenever they happen to cross paths while on border patrols near Four Trees? Not only is that character trivia interesting, but it could provide foreshadowing/become relevant later on. When the Clans meet to discuss how to deal with the dogs in Arc 3, perhaps someone suggests having their most fluent Fang speakers act as interpreters/diplomats, and try to broker some sort of peace/understanding with the dogs. Things like that. Basically, it would’ve been nice if Fireheart’s life intersected more with the goings-on of his Clanmates, or if his own goals/agenda were sometimes inconvenienced by the goals/agenda of others.

I think those are my major criticisms. More integration of lore, a slower/steadier pace that accommodates showing over telling, and finding ways to have the personal lives of minor characters interact with the story. Maybe adding in some additional subplots that are congruent with the main plots, and occur simultaneously, in order to keep chapters busy. That sort of thing. I hope what I provided wasn’t overwhelming in any way, and ends up being useful for either the Redux or any of your other writing projects.

As an aside, thank you. For creating this humble niche community within an even larger fandom. For asking for feedback from your readers. For being someone who makes mistakes, but eventually endeavors to learn from them, and ultimately, become a better person. I know this sounds kinda sappy, but I really do mean it. <3

(For the record I wrote this at like five in the morning, so if there are any grammatical errors I’ll be kicking myself in the ass for those.)

[miathefroggy]

Why I spent 4K hours on Garry’s mod

Starting in 2013 I�� got the game for $2 or 3 on sale only a year after Garry’s mod 13 was released and didn’t  really know much about it.  But like a lot of people I got into it from the videos watching people like,  kitty0706 ( RIP), Eltorro64Rus and of course the DasBoSchitt’s Idiot box series.

After getting into it more I would stay up for hours on sandbox servers with friends sometimes even going till 4am In the summer, I met a lot of people on servers some amazing and some terrible and was admin for a few servers till they shut down.

But this isn’t about my life story, that’s just what counts for like a good chunk of playtime the others chunk are what make the game So special to me, the rest may take some explaining.

Community creators: the most important element of the game itself. without it Gmod wouldn’t really have much to do. But Because of modders, artists, animators and video creators  we have alot of stupid and impressive stuff to mess around with and there’s always something fresh and new to find  because of the hard work they do.

Game modes: if you really don’t like sandbox all that much there’s still alot to play with the most famous being TTT, DarkRp and prop hunt even though you might have to download shit, figuring out game modes or failing  miserably with friends is one of my favorite things.

Easy on the specs(mostly): before I had an actual computer I had a shitty laptop that couldn’t really run much, so Gmod was one of my go 2s now a days you have to spend hundreds on hardware to play fuckkin anything. but I can play Gmod with friends who’s CPU’s are outdated Af with ease for the most part.

Gmod Art: While I'm not very good at it yet, coming up with scenes and ideas for pictures taught me a bit about how things are more complicated then they seem and you will not always stick to or perfect the idea you had in your head. I’ve uploaded some of my stuff to my dash but a lot I end up not posting. 

Influence: being A modified version of half life 2 it was bound to get some attention but gmod has inspired game makers and content creators alike even to this day you still see it’s influence With Among us being pretty similar to TTT and Tower Unite being started from a Game mode,  Gmod has inspired many skilled creators from all different places and never knowing what new thing will come out of it is what keeps me hooked.

That, My friends is why I have 4K hours in the funniest, dumbest and most inspiring sandbox and Community I've ever been apart of.

~Frog

[lowkeyaesthvtic]

Evil Karma - Chapter 5

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4

Word Count: 2,096

Summary: Basically the first scene with Uma in D2 but with a little extra

Pairings: Harry x Uma x OC, platonic!OC x Gil, platonic!Harry x Gil

Rating: T

Warnings: just swear words I think

Tags: @descendantofthesparrow @newtshairdryer @kirbiejayhook @amityravenclawelf

From then on, the crew knew that the three of us were not to be messed with. We never came right out and called the three of us a ‘couple’ per se, but they knew that being ‘first mates’ had a special meaning to it. Before us, dating was never really a thing on the Isle. At least, that’s what Harry had told me. “Our parents told us all the time that love was a weakness, and you can’t have weakness if you want to survive here.” Uma brought a tray of pickled egg yolks and grilled fish bits to where Gil was sitting before joining us at our usual spot at the long, wooden table in the back of the restaurant where I had met Uma my first day on the Isle. Only six months have passed since I arrived here, and man oh man have I gone far. After news of Daughter Gothel’s death spread across the Isle, lost boys and girls outside of Uma’s crew finally started to know my name. But it wasn’t my name that made our relationship the ‘exception’ to the supposed rule of love equaling weakness, it was Uma’s.

“Since when did we want to be just like our parents? Since when did we care about what they’d try to teach us? Even Gil hasn’t spoken to Gaston in months and he’s doing fine.” The three of us glanced over at Gil chugging down egg yolks and telling one of the pirates his ‘first time sword fighting’ story for the millionth time. “I mean, for evil’s sake, Sofi sent her father six feet under and arrived at the Isle on her own. Look how she’s doing!”

“Devious as usual,” I responded as she danced her fingers through my hair. Harry smirked at my response as he stood up and walked to where we were sitting, squatting down between us to keep eye contact with his girls.

“Are you feeling devious enough to run a quick errand then, duckling?” Harry asked. Since becoming a first mate, Uma often sent Harry and I on certain ‘errands.’ I never like the use of the word because it makes it sound like some kind of chore, like I don’t have any fun doing it. In reality, any time I get to cause some chaos with my favorite people is time well spent. “The kitchen’s running out of fish and I’m in the mood for a bit of money grabbing. Care to come with?” I look to Uma, silently asking permission. When she nods, I quickly stand from my seat and take Harry’s hand into mine.

“I’ll grab my dagger on the way out.” As we’re walking out of the Chip Shoppe, Harry grabs his sword from the ‘sword check’ barrel by the front door and places it in his sheath.

“You know we should get you a sword too, right? You may not be able to get close enough to use your dagger everytime.”

“Uma said she’s working on it. Apparently Scar’s armory is having some kind of shortage of metal so the only weapons they’re selling are bows and arrows, staffs, you know, all the primitive shit.”

“That damn lion never knows where to get the right shit, does he,” Harry teased. We finally made our way into the bazaar. With dried up fruit stands on our left and cash filled bakeries with molded bread on our right, the opportunities for us were endless.

After about an hour and a half of robbing marketstands, helping ourselves to some fish for the Chip Shoppe, and fighting off street rats trying to graffiti over some street tags that our crew had previously planted, Harry and I made our way back to the Chip Shoppe. People stared, as usual. Harry and I would push them off or threaten them with our weapons, again, as usual. But the pirate territory was not too far from the bazaar we had been stealing from, and everybody knew that if they tried to mess with us, Uma wouldn’t hesitate to throw them to killer sharks.

“Home sweet home,” I hinted towards the broken down green doors and the dilapidated sign above us. I gripped the arch of Harry’s rusted silver hook as the two of us strutted inside. Harry slipped his dark black encased sword into the barrel while I took a quick stroll to the kitchen to place my jade and gold dagger into its private shelf. Other than the obsidian chain that I carried with me everywhere, this dagger was the only weapon I had on the Isle until Uma could get me a sword. It took a little bit of begging to Uma and quite the argument from Ursula herself, but I managed to get my own place for it.

By the time I was done placing my dagger in its home, Harry was close to that table that the three of us had ruled before we left for the bazaar. He pushed a rookie pirate out of the way before climbing on top of said table and laying his hook down. With his now unhooked hand, he turned a tiny knob and switched on the tv. I quietly growled and rolled my eyes when Mal’s face was the first to come onto the screen. With her purple hair replaced by a bleach blonde and King Ben now always attached to her hip, she had faded even more into the fake princess poser act. Just the thought of it alone made me sick. This bleached out, boy crazy bimbo not only gets away with killing an entire island’s worth of innocent young boys, but gets called a hero for it and is on her way to a crown.

Almost immediately after the TV switched on, Uma walked out with a tray of broiled crab legs, small grisly pieces of fried salmon, and tartar sauce that looked like a five year old had wiped their fingers through it. Harry started to chow down, slightly moving his right arm downward to give me room to take a few bites. Uma nudged Harry’s other arm before grabbing a piece of fried fish and chucking it at the screen with an angry shout, aiming directly for Mal’s face. “Poser,” she muttered.

“Traitor!” Harry shouted and chuckled mischievously in response.

“Fucking murderous bitch…” I growled, throwing another piece of fish at the screen. Seconds of silence pass before Uma turns to the rest of the crew sitting at the table with a dangerous glare.

“Hello?!” Uma shouts, causing a storm of screams and flying pieces of fish to fly towards the television. I strut up towards the screen and wipe off a piece of crab with my finger before taking it into my mouth.

“I’d do anything to see her get what she really deserves…”

“Wipe those smiles off their faces...you know what I mean?” Harry finished my previous thought with his own little blurb, leaning his elbow onto the table and returning to the crab on his tray. Uma’s glare seemed to fixate on Gil, who continued to shove pickled egg yolks down his throat as if they were the last thing he’d ever eat.

“Gil.” He looked up at Uma like a confused puppy. “Do you wanna quit choking down yolks and get with the program?” His eyes grew wider in realization.

“Hmm? Yeah, what they said,” Gil mumbled through the food in his mouth.

“That little traitor. Who left us in the dirt.” Uma turned to her crew, riling them up in anger just as she had been since getting with Harry and I.

“Who turned her back on evil,” Harry and I simultaneously added as I swiped a piece of crab from his tray.

“Who said you weren’t big or bad enough to be in her gang!” Only the squawk of a parrot could be heard as Gil practically shouted his response. Despite the tens of glares aiming at him from Uma and the crew, Gil kept going. “Back when we were kids. Come on, you guys remember. She called her Shrimpy and the name just kind of…” Gil’s words began to drift when he made eye contact with Harry, shooting him a scowl strong enough to kill. “..stuck.” Uma sighed and turned to me, placing her hand on my arm.

“That snooty little witch, who grabbed everything she wanted and left me nothing.”

“No, she left you that sandbox, and then she said that you could have the shrimp --” I swiftly interjected Gil’s response, gesturing toward the front doors of the shoppe.

“Do you really want to finish that sentence, Gil?” After switching his glances back and forth between me and the broken green doors, Gil shook his head and continued eating. Harry momentarily stopped eating and gestured toward the restaurant, then the TV.

“Look, we have her turf now. They can stay in Bore-adon--”

“Harry, that’s her turf now!” Uma stomped toward the TV and switched it off, finally ridding our eyes of the bimbo’s plastic face. “And I want it too.”

“She’s got a point, Hooky. We shouldn’t be getting her leftovers. We deserve more than that. We should be over on that island wreaking havoc while she should be here begging the street rats for rotten apples!” Uma smiled before wrapping her arms around Harry, Gil and I.

“Son of Hook, Daughter of Pan, Son of Gaston, and me, most of all, Daughter of Ursula!” I could sense what was coming, and I loved every second of it. Uma turned to me and gently placed her fingers under my chin. “What’s my name?”

“Uma.” My response glistened with admiration and obedience, something I didn’t show often but something I knew she loved. Uma turned to Harry and gripped the arch of his hook, which had since been placed back onto his right hand.

“What’s. My. Name?”

Harry swept off his pirate hat and got down on one knee, as if hailing to his Princess of the sea. “Uma..”

The three of us turned to Gil, hoping he would know the right answer. “What’s my name?”

“Mm. Uma?” Gil was once again caught choking down yolks, but he realized what he was supposed to do.

Uma was an amazing singer and an alluring dancer. So when she brought up the idea to turn her name into an anthem for the crew, I had never been more intrigued and honestly felt a little aroused at the idea. The crew quickly loved it as well, especially Harry. The two of us even made up this little verse that said ‘yeah she’s the Captain and everything, but if you mess with her, you mess with us..and that’s lethal.’ This time, like the other times, the anthem had ended in laughter. The crew was riled up and a bit angry, but in the best way. We were all quickly startled when a long, purple tentacle came railing across the table. We all ducked as Uma jumped to prevent being swept to the ground like a pile of dust. “Shut your clams!” That voice was all too familiar to this crew.

“Mom!” Uma grunted, showing the small part of her that was still young and still a rebellious teenager.

“These dishes ain’t gonna wash themselves!” Some of the pirates, Harry included, were ready to grab their swords from the barrel when Uma shook them off, quickly changing back to her powerful self.

“It’s fine. It’s fine. Cause when I get my chance to rain evil down on Auradon, I will take it! They’re gonna forget that girl and remember the name --”

“Shrimpy!” Gil shouts with excitement, pounding the table. After a slight nod from Uma, Harry looks to Gil and begins to lead him out of the restaurant. This had become a usual punishment for when Gil said something a little too dumb, so none of us were too worried about his well being. As Harry led Gil out, I extended my hand to help Uma down from the table.

“Have you thought of it yet?” I walked with Uma to the kitchen, planning to help ease her work load on the dishes.

“Thought of what?”

“Your plan to rain evil down on Auradon, have you thought of it yet?” She shrugged her shoulders and let out a short laugh.

“Maybe not yet...but I’m guessing you have.” I smiled and turned to her, leaning close to whisper to her.

“What if I told you..that we could give the Isle of the Lost a taste of Neverland magic?”

[twodaysintojune]

The Tale of the Kidnapped Maidens 4

Supernatural, Warnings-None Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 Long Stories Masterlist, One Shots Masterlist Find me at AO3

“Come on Dean!”

Dean huffed. “No Sam!”

“Deeeeean!”

“No!”

“Just a little!”

Dean turned to look at his brother annoyed, not without realizing the few people around them were already looking at them. “You’re doing this on purpose, aren't you?”

Sam ran towards him and hugged his torso, looking at him from below, doing his best puppy dog eyes.

“Pleeeeease!”

Dean groaned. “Alright, alright. But you’re gonna let me take some pictures later for Rowena.”

“Deal.”

Sam let go of his torso and Dean turned his back to his brother and kneeled down. Sam ran towards his brother’s back and threw himself on it ready for the piggy back ride he had managed to get. Dean grabbed his legs with ease and stood up once more. Unable to avoid it, Sam began to giggle. Dean moved his head in reprobation but he couldn’t stop smirking as well, listening to Sam. His very young brother’s giggles felt like suddenly finding an oasis after walking tirelessly through a desert.

Sam let his chin rest on his brother’s head, arms tight around his neck. It had been a spur of the moment thing and he didn’t regret any part of it. 

Dean carried Sam all the way to the Impala but instead of dropping him on the ground once more, he crossed the street.

“Dean?”

“If you’re making me carry you like a kid then I’ll take you where the kids go.”

Saying this, he strode towards the playground and unceremoniously dropped Sam. Sam looked around at the currently abandoned place that promised to be for his entertainment only, the rest of the children still at school and only a couple of toddlers in the sandbox.

“Are you kidding me?”

He felt Dean pushing him forward softly.

“Come on Sammy, I thought you wanted to be a child!”

Sam turned back and was about to call him something nasty when he saw his brother already glancing at a group of ladies apparently doing a stretching session before their run. He frowned and felt the frustration grow inside. If Dean thought he was the only one that was going to get away with stuff he was going to be rather disappointed.

“NO!”

He screamed, startling Dean and calling the ladies' attention.

“I want to go to the swings!”

“Well then go to the swings!” Dean was frowning already, motioning at the swings dismissively.

“But I want you to push me!”

“Wha— You don’t need me to push you!”

Sam ran towards Dean’s hand and began to pull with all his limited strength. “I want you to push me! DADDY PLEASE!” 

Dean stumbled forward a couple of steps, he looked sadly at the group of ladies that were currently looking at him very judgmentally and then gave up frustrated when he realized that even if he threw Sam at the playground none of the girls would pay him attention anymore. 

“Urgh, Alright. Alright I say!”

Sam sent him a shit eating grin and ran towards the swings laughing. Dean pressed his fingers over his frowning forehead and sighed. He was definitely going to make Sam pay for this one.

When he finally reached the swings, Sam was already sitting very properly on the middle one, waiting for Dean to push him and giggling.

“You better get ready for this, Samantha.”

Dean pushed Sam so hard that Sam could only let out a high pitched, surprised yelp. When he got himself together from the scare he gruffed.

“That’s not a way to treat a lady!”

Dean huffed “Well I’m so sorry princess, I thought you liked thrills.”

Sam glared at Dean the moment the swing went past him all the way back and showed him the tongue. Dean answered back with a cheeky smile. Despite everything, Dean kept pushing Sam a lot more softer.

“This is too slow...”

Dean raised his eyebrow and pushed him harder until Sam was effectively going up and down in a pendulum motion.

“Higher! I wanna go higher!”

“You’re going to fall”

“I won’t!”

Dean pushed even harder and couldn’t stop smiling when Sam began to laugh wholeheartedly. He had never been able to push him that high when they had been at the playground age and he was feeling some sort of redemption from that particular guilt he’d had.

Sam on the other hand was elated. He was basking in the feeling of being able to do something he had not been able to do so many years ago; regaining a part of that childhood that he’d had to leave behind so fast and he liked it. In the middle of his reverie, he briefly wished from the bottom of his heart he could stay like this forever.

Suddenly, he heard a high pitched cry and a rumble and saw movement on the edge of the woodsy area beyond the park, but it wasn’t a shadow. it was the complete opposite of shadow; it was pure flame and shimmer and he could not believe what he thought he was seeing.

He jumped from the highest point of the swing and almost tripped when he landed but he didn’t stop looking at the thing and began to run towards it despite Dean’s initial call. In the middle of his sprint, he couldn’t find the thing anymore and stopped panting a little. A second later his brother was by his side. 

“Dude, what’s up?”

They both heard again the deep rumble that reminded them of a finely tuned motor ready to burst into speed getting away from them and froze for a moment. Sam looked at Dean confused and then back to the edge of the forest. Trying to gather his thoughts, he took a deep breath, grabbed Dean’s hand and walked towards the unknown. Once they were a couple meters into the place, Sam looked around puzzled, obviously searching for something. Dean stopped him with a soft tug.

“Sam... Sam, I can’t follow you if you don’t talk.”

Sam looked at his brother and huffed a bit frustrated, “It’s just… I think… I think I saw a… bird?”

“A bird?”

“Yes, a bird. Or something like it… It was, it was flaming red and freaking huge! But I think it went away, it disappeared before we heard that noise.”

“Well, I didn’t see anything take flight. Bet I would catch that too if it’s as big as you say.”

“What if it can shapeshift?”

“What? Like dragons?”

“Yes! I… Let’s ask Cas, see if he finds anything about shapeshifting birds.”

“Okay.”

The brothers walked away from the forest while a soft blur of red peeked from behind a large trunk, far behind them. Before stepping out into the park, Sam heard a ruffle of leaves and a rumble once more. He looked back but saw nothing. Frowning, he turned back to follow his brother back to the Impala.

They spent the rest of the evening waiting for Castiel’s call back while Sam was desperately trying to find something better than just three paragraphs on the wiki of any given bird-like creature. An hour later Dean sighed and gave another swallow to his beer.

“Dude, knock it off, it’s easier for Castiel to find something. Come on, let’s see what we find on the tv.”

Sam stopped typing and sighed, “I’m sorry Dean I just… have you wondered if those girls are still alive? Maybe we’re letting them die while stalling in here.”

Dean got up with a groan and moved towards Sam, “I know Sam, but Castiel is doing all he can. Now come on over, let big brother pamper the princess a bit.” 

Sam frowned at Dean in question while his brother gave him a shit eating grin. In a flash, Dean shut the laptop and picked Sam up from the chair before he could react. Sam squealed.

“What are you doing!?”

Dean laughed and threw Sam at the bed and then himself, he manhandled Sam until he was half laying on top of his chest, an arm surrounding him. 

“Alright, what do you wanna see?” Dean began to click the remote. “Night of the Living Dead? Mad Max?” He looked at Sam, who was fumbling, arms crossed around his chest. “Alright, Casa Erotica it is then.”

“Dean!”

Dean laughed, eventually finding a channel doing reruns of Scooby Doo and left it. After a couple of episodes Sam was feeling less upset, Dean's grins and barks of laughter shaking the both of them and causing the younger brother to giggle as well. It felt good, and more importantly, it felt safe to be in his brother’s arms like that. He wondered for a pained second if his brother had ever wanted to do these simple things with him when they were young, if he had actually refrained from doing so because he had to be there for him as both father and mother. He looked upwards to glance at Dean’s profile for a moment and turned back to the tv blinking hard to stop his eyes from tearing up. Unconsciously, he cuddled himself more in the nook between Dean’s chest and arm and hugged him, a leg thrown over his brother’s huge thighs and sighed. Dean stiffened slightly when he noticed the change in Sam’s humour.

“Sammy?”

Sam looked up, he wanted to tell Dean that he loved him, that he hated him sometimes, most of the time some days but deep inside he loved him unconditionally, that he would do anything to stay by his side, that he knew Dean would always do the same and more for him. But he knew Dean, and he knew himself, and he knew that none of those words were ever going to be said out loud between them. He sighed, and then, he looked back to the talking dog on the tv screen.

Dean was about to ask him what was going on when his phone rang. He stretched his arm and fished the phone from the lamp table.

“Cas?”

“I have looked for a couple of matches but none fit the description of the monster entirely.”

“Wait a sec, I’ll put you on speaker.”

Sam had already turned the tv off and was eagerly looking at Dean while he placed the phone between them.

“There ya go. Can you hear us?”

“I can, can you hear me?”

“Hi Cas!”

A pause of doubt came from the other side of the line.

“Sam? Is that you?”

Sam and Dean snickered.

“I’m twelve right now.”

“Is that the way you pretend to lure this creature?”

“Pretty much, that’s the plan, yeah.”

“Sam please forgive me but I don’t think—”

“We know Cas” Interrupted Dean, “It’s a calculated risk, now tell us about the creatures.”

Castiel sighed, you could sense his frustration seeping through the line. “As I was telling you, I have found several files, I’ve gone through eight so far but I don’t believe it’s any of them.”

“How come?”

“Well, for starters, none of these beings appear in a negative concept on their respective myths.”

“Same with the phoenix and he was a real douche, killing everyone that wronged him.”

Sam hummed, “But that one died, remember?”

“Do we know if there are more phoenixes around?”

“If these files are correct, there’s a colony in Malta but I would daresay there is no reason they should travel away from their own flock.”

“There’s an entire flock of phoenixes!?”

“Sam, geeking.”

“Right, uhm,” Sam coughed, “So we should leave the phoenixes aside.”

“There’s not much about the feeding habits of the creatures I’ve found so far but none of them seem to be inherently human flesh inclined, or carnivore at all. Most of them seem herbivores or they feed on completely different matters. I have not found anything about any rumbling sounds yet either. It would be of great help if I had at least one more clue.”

Sam and Dean sighed. They were going back through their days trying to find something more that they could use. Sam went once more through the experience of catching a glimpse of the thing in the woods. The flash of bright red and gold, flowing in between the treeline like the flow of a hippie skirt. His eyes widened and he felt chills going through his body.

“Look for Chinese or Japanese birds, possibly Vietnamese? Any country with a large population of people with epicanthic folds.”

“Got it.”

“I’m sorry, epi-what?”

“Epicanthic folds.” Sam rolled his eyes when Dean kept the same puzzled look. “Slanted eyes Dean!”

Dean formed an “Oh” with his mouth and quickly put together Sam’s mental process, Sam could tell the moment everything began to fit. 

“Wow, wait a second, you think it’s Mei?” 

“Mei?”

“The librarian.”

Sam was about to nod when he gasped in betrayal.

“You got her name? I don’t believe it! You were only a couple of minutes in there!”

“Dude… Asian,” was the only thing Dean could muster as an apology.

Sam groaned. 

“Uh, anyways, Mei sounds Chinese so maybe start with the Chinese lore?”

“I’ll get to it. Take care Dean, Sam.”

Sam could feel the stress on his name. Castiel was bad at cueing his feelings but was still able to convey quite a bit of sternness to his voice when necessary. He flinched.

“Alright, we’ll be waiting for anything. Call us asap.”

“Bye Cas.”

The line went dead, the brothers sighed. A little bit tired, a little bit annoyed, a little much frustrated about the fact that they were still at square one. 

“Hey.” Dean turned towards Sam. “Wanna go back to the park?”

Sam sighed, it was a long shot but they didn’t have much else to do.

[baeddel]

really, really long reply, under the cut

So like, I think the correct answer is definitely “no” fdgsdfgdfgs and the reason is like... Since returning, over the past month and a half, I’ve put about 350 hours into the game, and I’m still at the beginning. like... the very, very, very beginning. I haven’t even got going. I’m still doing everything I need to do to get set up for doing things in the future. So the answer is like, no, you don’t have time. The only people who can really play Runescape are NEETs, who in all cases cease playing when their situation changes, and people with serious disabilities with more time than energy. I fall into the latter category and I still feel like I don’t have enough time to play Runescape.

But yeah it has... a lot going on lol. Like... a LOT. Its an open world sandbox CRPG that has undergone continual development without cessation for over twenty years. Right now its updated weekly, and thats a relatively slow pace compared to its history. No other game has the same immensity of size, scope and scale, and every single dimension of the game interacts with every other part. Its a game of such combinatorial complexity that it takes years to really even begin to understand. I have.... kind of a handle on it, and I started playing in 2003. Players three times my level with, probably, ten times my playtime, regularly add me to ask me questions because I seem to know a lot about the game.

There are definitely more complex games, but they’re rare. My gf always talks abt EVE Online as like a similar game in terms of the enormity of scope and systemic complexity, which I think is definitely the bigger game, and I think most bigger & more complex games are going to be space traders & space simulators and shit like that, some of which require knowledge of real-word physics. Dwarf Fortress is more complex due to the level of its simulation and possibly infinite outcomes, and some roguelikes definitely get close. But Runescape isnt just enormous on the macro-level, but also on the micro-level, like...

Runescape is all ‘grinding’, but the grinding is like... for the most part, very high APM. You can do less intense methods, and not everyone plays the game like this, but if you’re playing the game seriously, it looks something like this:

(crafting lava runes - video is 1hr long dont watch it all lmao)

(catching black chinchompas - this is btw located in the ‘wilderness’ where players can attack you, and this spot is camped heavily by player-killers, so doing this method involves pvp!!!!!!)

(mining granite)

(woodcutting at teaks)

Apart from the first, all of these involve a technique called ‘tick manipulation’, which is almost like an animation cancel - other techniques (like telealching and stunalching) do involve animation cancels. In the last video, he’s manipulated two birds to attack him at slightly different intervals so that it interrupts the woodcutting animation, allowing him to attempt to cut wood every 2 ‘ticks’ (units of game time) instead of the usual 5. The APM is really high compared to most games, although obviously theres no or relatively little decision-making involved; the closest gameplay experience I can think of is practicing combos in the training mode of a fighting game.

And this is just ‘skilling’! There’s also bosses that have pretty complex mechanics, a very complex economy, multiplayer minigames that can be anything and everything, theres PVP, theres... yknow... a shitload. There’s stuff like this:

(speedrunning the ‘fight caves’)

and also like, quests, which are - mostly awful, but the good ones are awesome, they can be like little Sierra adventure games with really bullshit puzzles dfgsdfgs. And quests can take anywhere between 4 and 10 hours to complete.

There’s so much shit in the game, most of the game is like... ‘routing’, the logistical challenge of working out what way you want to do things - to minimize expense, risk and time spent - since its totally open world & free roaming... its easy to succumb to analysis paralysis; having any one thing helps a lot to do some other thing, and vice versa. So it can be really hard to decide on what you want to do and when. It has a kind of suffocating level of freedom & its the combination of the immensity of scope & the absolute level of freedom that makes runescape really unique, as well as its weird hardcore gameplay that isnt like anything else.

Anyway, I love runescape a lot. Like, a whole whole whole whole lot. But I don’t know that I could inflict it on anybody fkhgsdghdfhgfd

[poipoipoi-2016]

Since Google Plus is going away,  I’m going to back up Steve Yegge’s platform rant.  And confirm the opening paragraph.  

One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies -- an impression that has been reinforced almost daily -- is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right.  Sure, it's a sweeping generalization, but a surprisingly accurate one.  It's pretty crazy.  There are probably a hundred or even two hundred different ways you can compare the two companies, and Google is superior in all but three of them, if I recall correctly.

Looooooong text below the cut

Stevey's Google Platforms Rant I was at Amazon for about six and a half years, and now I've been at Google for that long.  One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies -- an impression that has been reinforced almost daily -- is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right.  Sure, it's a sweeping generalization, but a surprisingly accurate one.  It's pretty crazy.  There are probably a hundred or even two hundred different ways you can compare the two companies, and Google is superior in all but three of them, if I recall correctly.  I actually did a spreadsheet at one point but Legal wouldn't let me show it to anyone, even though recruiting loved it. I mean, just to give you a very brief taste:  Amazon's recruiting process is fundamentally flawed by having teams hire for themselves, so their hiring bar is incredibly inconsistent across teams, despite various efforts they've made to level it out.  And their operations are a mess; they don't really have SREs and they make engineers pretty much do everything, which leaves almost no time for coding - though again this varies by group, so it's luck of the draw.  They don't give a single shit about charity or helping the needy or community contributions or anything like that.  Never comes up there, except maybe to laugh about it.  Their facilities are dirt-smeared cube farms without a dime spent on decor or common meeting areas.  Their pay and benefits suck, although much less so lately due to local competition from Google and Facebook.  But they don't have any of our perks or extras -- they just try to match the offer-letter numbers, and that's the end of it.  Their code base is a disaster, with no engineering standards whatsoever except what individual teams choose to put in place. To be fair, they do have a nice versioned-library system that we really ought to emulate, and a nice publish-subscribe system that we also have no equivalent for.  But for the most part they just have a bunch of crappy tools that read and write state machine information into relational databases.  We wouldn't take most of it even if it were free. I think the pubsub system and their library-shelf system were two out of the grand total of three things Amazon does better than google. I guess you could make an argument that their bias for launching early and iterating like mad is also something they do well, but you can argue it either way.  They prioritize launching early over everything else, including retention and engineering discipline and a bunch of other stuff that turns out to matter in the long run.  So even though it's given them some competitive advantages in the marketplace, it's created enough other problems to make it something less than a slam-dunk. But there's one thing they do really really well that pretty much makes up for ALL of their political, philosophical and technical screw-ups. Jeff Bezos is an infamous micro-manager.  He micro-manages every single pixel of Amazon's retail site.  He hired Larry Tesler, Apple's Chief Scientist and probably the very most famous and respected human-computer interaction expert in the entire world, and then ignored every goddamn thing Larry said for three years until Larry finally -- wisely -- left the company.  Larry would do these big usability studies and demonstrate beyond any shred of doubt that nobody can understand that frigging website, but Bezos just couldn't let go of those pixels, all those millions of semantics-packed pixels on the landing page.  They were like millions of his own precious children.  So they're all still there, and Larry is not. Micro-managing isn't that third thing that Amazon does better than us, by the way.  I mean, yeah, they micro-manage really well, but I wouldn't list it as a strength or anything.  I'm just trying to set the context here, to help you understand what happened.  We're talking about a guy who in all seriousness has said on many public occasions that people should be paying him to work at Amazon.  He hands out little yellow stickies with his name on them, reminding people "who runs the company" when they disagree with him.  The guy is a regular... well, Steve Jobs, I guess.  Except without the fashion or design sense.  Bezos is super smart; don't get me wrong.  He just makes ordinary control freaks look like stoned hippies. So one day Jeff Bezos issued a mandate.  He's doing that all the time, of course, and people scramble like ants being pounded with a rubber mallet whenever it happens. But on one occasion -- back around 2002 I think, plus or minus a year -- he issued a mandate that was so out there, so huge and eye-bulgingly ponderous, that it made all of his other mandates look like unsolicited peer bonuses. His Big Mandate went something along these lines:  1) All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces.  2) Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces.  3) There will be no other form of interprocess communication allowed:  no direct linking, no direct reads of another team's data store, no shared-memory model, no back-doors whatsoever.  The only communication allowed is via service interface calls over the network.  4) It doesn't matter what technology they use.  HTTP, Corba, Pubsub, custom protocols -- doesn't matter.  Bezos doesn't care.  5) All service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up to be externalizable.  That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to expose the interface to developers in the outside world.  No exceptions.  6) Anyone who doesn't do this will be fired.  7) Thank you; have a nice day! Ha, ha!  You 150-odd ex-Amazon folks here will of course realize immediately that #7 was a little joke I threw in, because Bezos most definitely does not give a shit about your day. #6, however, was quite real, so people went to work.  Bezos assigned a couple of Chief Bulldogs to oversee the effort and ensure forward progress, headed up by Uber-Chief Bear Bulldog Rick Dalzell.  Rick is an ex-Armgy Ranger, West Point Academy graduate, ex-boxer, ex-Chief Torturer slash CIO at Wal*Mart, and is a big genial scary man who used the word "hardened interface" a lot.  Rick was a walking, talking hardened interface himself, so needless to say, everyone made LOTS of forward progress and made sure Rick knew about it. Over the next couple of years, Amazon transformed internally into a service-oriented architecture.  They learned a tremendous amount while effecting this transformation.  There was lots of existing documentation and lore about SOAs, but at Amazon's vast scale it was about as useful as telling Indiana Jones to look both ways before crossing the street.  Amazon's dev staff made a lot of discoveries along the way.  A teeny tiny sampling of these discoveries included:  - pager escalation gets way harder, because a ticket might bounce through 20 service calls before the real owner is identified.  If each bounce goes through a team with a 15-minute response time, it can be hours before the right team finally finds out, unless you build a lot of scaffolding and metrics and reporting.  - every single one of your peer teams suddenly becomes a potential DOS attacker.  Nobody can make any real forward progress until very serious quotas and throttling are put in place in every single service.  - monitoring and QA are the same thing.  You'd never think so until you try doing a big SOA.  But when your service says "oh yes, I'm fine", it may well be the case that the only thing still functioning in the server is the little component that knows how to say "I'm fine, roger roger, over and out" in a cheery droid voice.  In order to tell whether the service is actually responding, you have to make individual calls.  The problem continues recursively until your monitoring is doing comprehensive semantics checking of your entire range of services and data, at which point it's indistinguishable from automated QA.  So they're a continuum.  - if you have hundreds of services, and your code MUST communicate with other groups' code via these services, then you won't be able to find any of them without a service-discovery mechanism.  And you can't have that without a service registration mechanism, which itself is another service.  So Amazon has a universal service registry where you can find out reflectively (programmatically) about every service, what its APIs are, and also whether it is currently up, and where.  - debugging problems with someone else's code gets a LOT harder, and is basically impossible unless there is a universal standard way to run every service in a debuggable sandbox. That's just a very small sample.  There are dozens, maybe hundreds of individual learnings like these that Amazon had to discover organically.  There were a lot of wacky ones around externalizing services, but not as many as you might think.  Organizing into services taught teams not to trust each other in most of the same ways they're not supposed to trust external developers. This effort was still underway when I left to join Google in mid-2005, but it was pretty far advanced.  From the time Bezos issued his edict through the time I left, Amazon had transformed culturally into a company that thinks about everything in a services-first fashion.  It is now fundamental to how they approach all designs, including internal designs for stuff that might never see the light of day externally. At this point they don't even do it out of fear of being fired.  I mean, they're still afraid of that; it's pretty much part of daily life there, working for the Dread Pirate Bezos and all.  But they do services because they've come to understand that it's the Right Thing.  There are without question pros and cons to the SOA approach, and some of the cons are pretty long.  But overall it's the right thing because SOA-driven design enables Platforms. That's what Bezos was up to with his edict, of course.  He didn't (and doesn't) care even a tiny bit about the well-being of the teams, nor about what technologies they use, nor in fact any detail whatsoever about how they go about their business unless they happen to be screwing up.  But Bezos realized long before the vast majority of Amazonians that Amazon needs to be a platform. You wouldn't really think that an online bookstore needs to be an extensible, programmable platform.  Would you? Well, the first big thing Bezos realized is that the infrastructure they'd built for selling and shipping books and sundry could be transformed an excellent repurposable computing platform.  So now they have the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, and the Amazon Elastic MapReduce, and the Amazon Relational Database Service, and a whole passel' o' other services browsable at aws.amazon.com.  These services host the backends for some pretty successful companies, reddit being my personal favorite of the bunch. The other big realization he had was that he can't always build the right thing.  I think Larry Tesler might have struck some kind of chord in Bezos when he said his mom couldn't use the goddamn website.  It's not even super clear whose mom he was talking about, and doesn't really matter, because nobody's mom can use the goddamn website.  In fact I myself find the website disturbingly daunting, and I worked there for over half a decade.  I've just learned to kinda defocus my eyes and concentrate on the million or so pixels near the center of the page above the fold. I'm not really sure how Bezos came to this realization -- the insight that he can't build one product and have it be right for everyone.  But it doesn't matter, because he gets it.  There's actually a formal name for this phenomenon.  It's called Accessibility, and it's the most important thing in the computing world. The. Most. Important. Thing. If you're sorta thinking, "huh?  You mean like, blind and deaf people Accessibility?" then you're not alone, because I've come to understand that there are lots and LOTS of people just like you:  people for whom this idea does not have the right Accessibility, so it hasn't been able to get through to you yet.  It's not your fault for not understanding, any more than it would be your fault for being blind or deaf or motion-restricted or living with any other disability.  When software -- or idea-ware for that matter -- fails to be accessible to anyone for any reason, it is the fault of the software or of the messaging of the idea.  It is an Accessibility failure. Like anything else big and important in life, Accessibility has an evil twin who, jilted by the unbalanced affection displayed by their parents in their youth, has grown into an equally powerful Arch-Nemesis (yes, there's more than one nemesis to accessibility) named Security.  And boy howdy are the two ever at odds. But I'll argue that Accessibility is actually more important than Security because dialing Accessibility to zero means you have no product at all, whereas dialing Security to zero can still get you a reasonably successful product such as the Playstation Network. So yeah.  In case you hadn't noticed, I could actually write a book on this topic.  A fat one, filled with amusing anecdotes about ants and rubber mallets at companies I've worked at.  But I will never get this little rant published, and you'll never get it read, unless I start to wrap up. That one last thing that Google doesn't do well is Platforms.  We don't understand platforms.  We don't "get" platforms.  Some of you do, but you are the minority.  This has become painfully clear to me over the past six years.  I was kind of hoping that competitive pressure from Microsoft and Amazon and more recently Facebook would make us wake up collectively and start doing universal services.  Not in some sort of ad-hoc, half-assed way, but in more or less the same way Amazon did it:  all at once, for real, no cheating, and treating it as our top priority from now on. But no.  No, it's like our tenth or eleventh priority.  Or fifteenth, I don't know.  It's pretty low.  There are a few teams who treat the idea very seriously, but most teams either don't think about it all, ever, or only a small percentage of them think about it in a very small way. It's a big stretch even to get most teams to offer a stubby service to get programmatic access to their data and computations.  Most of them think they're building products.  And a stubby service is a pretty pathetic service.  Go back and look at that partial list of learnings from Amazon, and tell me which ones Stubby gives you out of the box.  As far as I'm concerned, it's none of them.  Stubby's great, but it's like parts when you need a car. A product is useless without a platform, or more precisely and accurately, a platform-less product will always be replaced by an equivalent platform-ized product. Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo).  We all don't get it.  The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood.  The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought.  We had no API at all at launch, and last I checked, we had one measly API call.  One of the team members marched in and told me about it when they launched, and I asked:  "So is it the Stalker API?"  She got all glum and said "Yeah."  I mean, I was joking, but no... the only API call we offer is to get someone's stream.  So I guess the joke was on me. Microsoft has known about the Dogfood rule for at least twenty years.  It's been part of their culture for a whole generation now.  You don't eat People Food and give your developers Dog Food.  Doing that is simply robbing your long-term platform value for short-term successes.  Platforms are all about long-term thinking. Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product.  But that's not why they are successful.  Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work.  So Facebook is different for everyone.  Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars.  Some spend all their time on Farmville.  There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there's something there for everyone. Our Google+ team took a look at the aftermarket and said:  "Gosh, it looks like we need some games.  Let's go contract someone to, um, write some games for us."  Do you begin to see how incredibly wrong that thinking is now?  The problem is that we are trying to predict what people want and deliver it for them. You can't do that.  Not really.  Not reliably.  There have been precious few people in the world, over the entire history of computing, who have been able to do it reliably.  Steve Jobs was one of them.  We don't have a Steve Jobs here.  I'm sorry, but we don't. Larry Tesler may have convinced Bezos that he was no Steve Jobs, but Bezos realized that he didn't need to be a Steve Jobs in order to provide everyone with the right products:  interfaces and workflows that they liked and felt at ease with.  He just needed to enable third-party developers to do it, and it would happen automatically. I apologize to those (many) of you for whom all this stuff I'm saying is incredibly obvious, because yeah.  It's incredibly frigging obvious.  Except we're not doing it.  We don't get Platforms, and we don't get Accessibility.  The two are basically the same thing, because platforms solve accessibility.  A platform is accessibility. So yeah, Microsoft gets it.  And you know as well as I do how surprising that is, because they don't "get" much of anything, really.  But they understand platforms as a purely accidental outgrowth of having started life in the business of providing platforms.  So they have thirty-plus years of learning in this space.  And if you go to msdn.com, and spend some time browsing, and you've never seen it before, prepare to be amazed.  Because it's staggeringly huge.  They have thousands, and thousands, and THOUSANDS of API calls.  They have a HUGE platform.  Too big in fact, because they can't design for squat, but at least they're doing it. Amazon gets it.  Amazon's AWS (aws.amazon.com) is incredible.  Just go look at it.  Click around.  It's embarrassing.  We don't have any of that stuff. Apple gets it, obviously.  They've made some fundamentally non-open choices, particularly around their mobile platform.  But they understand accessibility and they understand the power of third-party development and they eat their dogfood.  And you know what?  They make pretty good dogfood.  Their APIs are a hell of a lot cleaner than Microsoft's, and have been since time immemorial. Facebook gets it.  That's what really worries me.  That's what got me off my lazy butt to write this thing.  I hate blogging.  I hate... plussing, or whatever it's called when you do a massive rant in Google+ even though it's a terrible venue for it but you do it anyway because in the end you really do want Google to be successful.  And I do!  I mean, Facebook wants me there, and it'd be pretty easy to just go.  But Google is home, so I'm insisting that we have this little family intervention, uncomfortable as it might be. After you've marveled at the platform offerings of Microsoft and Amazon, and Facebook I guess (I didn't look because I didn't want to get too depressed), head over to developers.google.com and browse a little.  Pretty big difference, eh?  It's like what your fifth-grade nephew might mock up if he were doing an assignment to demonstrate what a big powerful platform company might be building if all they had, resource-wise, was one fifth grader. Please don't get me wrong here -- I know for a fact that the dev-rel team has had to FIGHT to get even this much available externally.  They're kicking ass as far as I'm concerned, because they DO get platforms, and they are struggling heroically to try to create one in an environment that is at best platform-apathetic, and at worst often openly hostile to the idea. I'm just frankly describing what developers.google.com looks like to an outsider.  It looks childish.  Where's the Maps APIs in there for Christ's sake?  Some of the things in there are labs projects.  And the APIs for everything I clicked were... they were paltry.  They were obviously dog food.  Not even good organic stuff.  Compared to our internal APIs it's all snouts and horse hooves. And also don't get me wrong about Google+.  They're far from the only offenders.  This is a cultural thing.  What we have going on internally is basically a war, with the underdog minority Platformers fighting a more or less losing battle against the Mighty Funded Confident Producters. Any teams that have successfully internalized the notion that they should be externally programmable platforms from the ground up are underdogs -- Maps and Docs come to mind, and I know GMail is making overtures in that direction.  But it's hard for them to get funding for it because it's not part of our culture.  Maestro's funding is a feeble thing compared to the gargantuan Microsoft Office programming platform:  it's a fluffy rabbit versus a T-Rex.  The Docs team knows they'll never be competitive with Office until they can match its scripting facilities, but they're not getting any resource love.  I mean, I assume they're not, given that Apps Script only works in Spreadsheet right now, and it doesn't even have keyboard shortcuts as part of its API.  That team looks pretty unloved to me. Ironically enough, Wave was a great platform, may they rest in peace.  But making something a platform is not going to make you an instant success.  A platform needs a killer app.  Facebook -- that is, the stock service they offer with walls and friends and such -- is the killer app for the Facebook Platform.  And it is a very serious mistake to conclude that the Facebook App could have been anywhere near as successful without the Facebook Platform. You know how people are always saying Google is arrogant?  I'm a Googler, so I get as irritated as you do when people say that.  We're not arrogant, by and large.  We're, like, 99% Arrogance-Free.  I did start this post -- if you'll reach back into distant memory -- by describing Google as "doing everything right".  We do mean well, and for the most part when people say we're arrogant it's because we didn't hire them, or they're unhappy with our policies, or something along those lines.  They're inferring arrogance because it makes them feel better. But when we take the stance that we know how to design the perfect product for everyone, and believe you me, I hear that a lot, then we're being fools.  You can attribute it to arrogance, or naivete, or whatever -- it doesn't matter in the end, because it's foolishness.  There IS no perfect product for everyone. And so we wind up with a browser that doesn't let you set the default font size.  Talk about an affront to Accessibility.  I mean, as I get older I'm actually going blind.  For real.  I've been nearsighted all my life, and once you hit 40 years old you stop being able to see things up close.  So font selection becomes this life-or-death thing:  it can lock you out of the product completely.  But the Chrome team is flat-out arrogant here:  they want to build a zero-configuration product, and they're quite brazen about it, and Fuck You if you're blind or deaf or whatever.  Hit Ctrl-+ on every single page visit for the rest of your life. It's not just them.  It's everyone.  The problem is that we're a Product Company through and through.  We built a successful product with broad appeal -- our search, that is -- and that wild success has biased us. Amazon was a product company too, so it took an out-of-band force to make Bezos understand the need for a platform.  That force was their evaporating margins; he was cornered and had to think of a way out.  But all he had was a bunch of engineers and all these computers... if only they could be monetized somehow... you can see how he arrived at AWS, in hindsight. Microsoft started out as a platform, so they've just had lots of practice at it. Facebook, though:  they worry me.  I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure they started off as a Product and they rode that success pretty far.  So I'm not sure exactly how they made the transition to a platform.  It was a relatively long time ago, since they had to be a platform before (now very old) things like Mafia Wars could come along. Maybe they just looked at us and asked:  "How can we beat Google?  What are they missing?" The problem we face is pretty huge, because it will take a dramatic cultural change in order for us to start catching up.  We don't do internal service-oriented platforms, and we just as equally don't do external ones.  This means that the "not getting it" is endemic across the company:  the PMs don't get it, the engineers don't get it, the product teams don't get it, nobody gets it.  Even if individuals do, even if YOU do, it doesn't matter one bit unless we're treating it as an all-hands-on-deck emergency.  We can't keep launching products and pretending we'll turn them into magical beautiful extensible platforms later.  We've tried that and it's not working. The Golden Rule of Platforms, "Eat Your Own Dogfood", can be rephrased as "Start with a Platform, and Then Use it for Everything."  You can't just bolt it on later.  Certainly not easily at any rate -- ask anyone who worked on platformizing MS Office.  Or anyone who worked on platformizing Amazon.  If you delay it, it'll be ten times as much work as just doing it correctly up front.  You can't cheat.  You can't have secret back doors for internal apps to get special priority access, not for ANY reason.  You need to solve the hard problems up front. I'm not saying it's too late for us, but the longer we wait, the closer we get to being Too Late. I honestly don't know how to wrap this up.  I've said pretty much everything I came here to say today.  This post has been six years in the making.  I'm sorry if I wasn't gentle enough, or if I misrepresented some product or team or person, or if we're actually doing LOTS of platform stuff and it just so happens that I and everyone I ever talk to has just never heard about it.  I'm sorry. But we've gotta start doing this right.

[teashadephoenix]

11 Questions

I got tagged by @pomegranate-belle <3 I'm sorry this took for fucking ever?!!??

I’ll tag @lioness--hart @fox-in-the-library and @whitegodiva if you guys want to do it? And anybody else, obvi <3

1. How long have you been writing?

Actually sitting down to type stories out? Eight years old. I've been making shit up since I could talk. I have it on good authority I am entertaining to listen to.

2. What are the major themes of your current wip(s)? LONG ANSWER

omg I really dont know. I spent several hours over several days banging on this question in my head both in front of the computer and away from it only to come to the horrified realisation that I Don't Know. *gay panic*

I know the things I like to write about. I like to write about free exchange of culture, of mutual respect and fraternity with your fellow humans (which leads to themes of unity, unconditional love not only of people but of the world, and the gray area of what it means to protect those things without giving in to hate, indifference and intolerance. THE GRAY AREA IS WHERE I THRIVE.)

I like to write about intergenerational relationships (which leads to themes of obsolescence, changing of the guard, and how people, in general, not individuals, never really change. Like, there's For a Good Time graffiti on the walls at Pompeii. That is HILARIOUS.)

I write a lot about family, both born and found. (Everybody has a place and everybody is loved.) I write about mental illness and being queer (which all by itself leads to themes of not knowing your place in the world even if you have one. Frequently comes up against the previously mentioned theme)

So yeah. I don't know. My big WIP, the Aalee Rise series, is about a young woman on the cusp of adulthood going out into the world for the first time. It's her idealism vs reality. The other main characters in that cast are all foils re: various facets of societal structure and ideologies. One challenges her idea of government, another her idea of religion. She falls in love, her loyalties to her brother and parents are tested, she makes mistakes, she fights monsters and saves the world. A lot.

tldr; It's my sandbox and I just wanted to build castles in it. I don't really know if the castles will mean anything when I'm done. I hope they do.

3. What do you want people to take away from your story once they’ve read it?

My greatest ambition is that I could ever write a hero as beloved as the heroes I read about growing up, figures that reminds not to give up hope, to get back up when we're down, that the dark times ahead of us will come to pass.

At best, if I've done that, I'll be ecstatic and satisfied.

At worst, as long as you had a good time, if you didn't throw the book across the room in disgust, I'll take it.

4. Would you be excited if people write fanfiction about your wip(s)?

YAAAAS. I would literally never read it because Im terrified of accidentally absorbing someone's ideas and making them my own bc Christ alive that's a legal nightmare, but yes that would make my life.

And you can have my firstborn if you send me fanart.

5. What’s your go-to writing beverage?

Tea. Really strong and sweet. I make a fresh quart each morning and usually go through it by the end of day.

6. Who is your favorite oc? Tell me about them!

OMG ALL OF MY CHILDREN ARE PRECIOUS. (it's Aalee.)

Aalee Dering is the eighteen-year-old protagonist of my Aalee Rise series.  When we meet her in volume one (Worldwalk) she and her twin brother are setting off on their coming-of-age journey around the country. Her people, the Noruahai, have defended humanity for generations from unearthly creatures called asmic, and if she wants to become a licensed Marshal like her famous mother (and wow, she really, really does) she'll have to prove herself on her Worldwalk.

Aalee thinks with her heart first and always. She loves beautiful things, and all things are beautiful to her. She's quick to cry and struggles with anger, as well as distraction; she has trouble keeping focus. Good for getting into trouble. Not so good when it comes to being a responsible adult.

It would probably be easier if she wasn't of two minds on every single decision she has to make. She empathises with everyone, which can be paralysing-- how can she fight someone whose point of view she gets?

7. Do you feel that mistakes are important learning tools in the writing journey?

Mistakes are learning tools of life, darling. In writing they generally aren't the types that will destroy friendships, health, financial status, etc, which means they're generally easier to bounce back from. Unless you commit career suicide in some way...

8. Rank your ocs by their capability in a footchase (either running after or from smth, your choice)

1. Fall from the Aalee Rise series. He's a complicated human. Without getting into the context of the world he's from, he's hard to explain; but the short version is he's half-ghost so he can basically turn himself into the wind.

2. Rosie Frey from Color of the Stars but only when she's a lion. In her human form she's pretty normal.

3. Lynn Blythe (or any of the other vampires) from Echoes of Eden, because they're cheating cheaterfaces who use mystical vampy powers to be stronger and faster than humans

4. Sendmarshal Henley from the Aalee Rise series. Probably the fastest regular human. Imagine the most beautiful, tall, leggy black woman you can, all lean muscle and elegant grace, and now imagine her scooping you up and zipping out of danger with an easy smile on her face... *fans self* I stan.

5. When running headlong into danger to save someone? Aalee Dering. When running away? Frustratingly, satirically slow. She's one of those idiot heroes who stops to make sure everyone got away okay so Fall's always running back to grab her ("MOVE, IDIOT" "But that little old lady--" "FIRE-BREATHING MONSTERS. MOVE.")

9. Does your wip have romance? tell me about it!! if not tell me about a friendship/important relationship in your wip!! MORE LENGTHY BLAH

Relationships are the driving force of my writing. How one loves or is loved by other people, how they relate and engage with others, is how one grows, in real life and in fiction. There are a number of relationships in all my series that I'm fond of for various reasons. (For instance, even though she cannot STAND him, I'm eager af to write Eden and Lynn's relationship in Echoes of Eden because of how complicated it is.)

And as a rule all of my characters are queer or questioning unless otherwise stated, and I ship everybody with basically everybody else, and almost everybody has a love story in their history. (at least, their parents certainly do because I am a gross vile romantic and these fuckers came from somewhere.)

That having been said, for the sake of brevity I'll stick with Aalee Rise and limit myself to the Big Three: Aalee and her brother Elles, Aalee and her best friend Norah, and Aalee and Fall.

FAMILY: Aalee and Elles are twins. Born together and never separated, which stands out in a world where families are broken up by chaotic circumstances and random death on a regular basis. Aalee is easily distracted and has difficulty communicating her thoughts, so she tends to act on impulse; Elles is forever the cool head and the hand grabbing her by the back of the shirt to stop her from walking into danger. And after eighteen years of this... he's tired of it. He loves his sister, but he longs to see the world on his own terms, walk his own path. And Aalee doesn't share that sentiment. Not only doesn't share it, but is blown away when it comes into play. Her partner in crime wants to break away, and she does not take it very well. The first volume (Worldwalk) explores how their relationship suffers, grows, and changes due to this break.

FRIEND: Aalee's best friend of ten years is Norah. They met as little girls in a monster-ravaged town; Norah was entertaining the youngest orphans with a story and Aalee joined in. The pair of them spent a long night keeping civilians from panicking while Marshals battled asmic beyond the walls of the bunker. They exchanged addresses and became penpals over the next few years, since both of their parents travelled and they were rarely in the same place at the same time. That changed suddenly when Norah lost her father. Since then, Norah's family and Aalee's have lived in the same town. Norah is her warm hand in the dark, her shoulder to cry on, the first person she tells any good news. for Norah, Aalee is the only person (at the beginning of the story, anyway) with whom she can be her real whole self. They love each other no matter what.

ROMANCE: And then there's Fall. Aalee meets Fall when she rescues him from being murdered in a back alley-- except, oops, turns out it was a sting operation to catch the killer because he's not actually the helpless filthy vagabond she assumed he was; he's actually a powerful Marshal who was on assignment. Stuck together for various reasons, he becomes a mentor to her on her worldwalk, while she blatantly digs into the mystery of who he is, which turns out to complicate their lives, the lives of their friends and families, randos they happens across, their enemies, and also God's. To say they fall in love with each other is an understatement of cosmic proportions. They choose each other.

10. Do you believe in the advice kill your darlings?

Yeah but I take the advice as intended; which is not, as most assume, kill your fave characters, but to get rid of that which does not work, even if you love it. That pearlescent line of dialogue, or that golden bit of allegory? Doesn't matter how much you love it and how proud of it you are, if it does. not. work. it HAS. TO. GO. (save it in a new file to reread when you feel down and scrap that shit from the main file.)

that said re: killing characters, in my youth I was very much of the George RedRum Martin camp of "KILL THEM ALL" but as Ive gotten older my main focal point has been "What purpose does their death serve?" Death is not the only sacrifice worth writing. So while I am not afraid to kill my characters, I do take the nature of their deaths in the writing very seriously. There has to be a point.

11. Do you prefer plotting or worldbuilding? Why?

WORLDBUILDING MANYEXCLAMATIONPOINTSGOHERE! Plotting is like the maths of writing. It's measurement, it's brickwork, it's demolition when the wall you put up last week is three feet too long and now you have to scrap it and start over. Vital. But not my favorite part.

Worldbuilding is the art. It's the music your OCs hum and the stories that they treasure and the faith that holds them up when the crap you throw at them might tear them down. It's the story behind the jacket they wear and it's the reason they nod to the altar when they enter a place of worship and it's the meaning of their names. It's the magic. How the world works, the little details that make it real to the reader because it's real for your characters, is my favorite part of writing.

[sapphic-scylla]

NF/Luna’s Howl Nerf Thoughts:

This is to present thoughts from my views as a hardcore player with a wife who doesn’t play as much.

IT NEEDED IT. No one is ever happy with Bungie and people will always bitch about whatever they do because that’s APPARENTLY how this player base works. Do you know how many people in the community are tired of seeing that gun pop up in the feed? NOT EVERYTHING CAN BE ABOUT THE HARDCORE PLAYER BASE! You are driving out the hardcore player base by fighting against this decision. Why? Because people don’t want to become hardcore players when most of their time in crucible is being spent getting three tapped by a gun that takes hours upon hours of play time to get. People don’t have that kind of time.

Yes, I understand it’s a pinnacle weapon. Yes, I am aware of how much grinding goes into getting NF. Believe me. But let’s be real here. What fun is a sandbox where it’s only hardcore players three tapping with the same weapon? My wife does not enjoy crucible anymore because she is tired of getting slaughtered by a weapon she doesn’t have the time, energy, willpower or patience to grind for. SHE WANTS TO LOVE CRUCIBLE. BUT SHE CAN’T. Because with Luna’s and NF at the level they are now and with the amount of the population that has the Luna’s at least, there are very few solid counters for the weapon.

Pinnacles are supposed to feel strong. I know, some have been underwhelming, but with a hand cannon that has one of the highest TTKs in the game, it is taking the tactics and fun out of the game.

You can fight me on this, but the base of the matter is seeing it from a new players perspective. If they saw Destiny 2 in the store, bought it, tried it out, and got shat on by a Luna’s over and over again, would he ever play Destiny again? Probably not. In fact, most of the people I know are driven away from the game every day and I’ve run out of good people to play with and all that’s left is toxic, elitest 12 hours a day destiny League sweat players who “don’t have time for mistakes or noobs.” Do y’all want that?!? I sure as hell don’t.

I respect the effort you put into NF. I think you are a god tier player for putting up with that kind of shit that happens on the high end of the Comp playlist, but if Bungie does not help their casual/newcomer/midtier players, there goes 60% of their player base.

So try to understand, they are not devaluing your effort to get those weapons. They are making it possible for less able players to still enjoy the game. They are doing their best, guys. Stop hating on Bungie because YOUR fantasy of being a god in a crucible match without actually trying isn’t working out.

[imaginetonyandbucky]

Post civil war. Tony gets kidnapped (maybe by Ross?) and thinks the team won't come for him - and he's right. For whatever reason the rest of the team isn't going to save him. So color Tony completely dumbfounded when someone does show up to save him - the last person he ever expected to see. Bucky Barnes.

What Happens in Moscow (Part 1)

A/N: Part 1 of 2. This story contains mentions of HYDRA, references to violence and torture, blood and injuries, nightmares/PTSD, and psychological issues like insomnia and dissociative identity disorder. Many thanks to @folklejend for beta reading!

At first, Tony thought it was a dream.

To be fair, after enough time spent tied to a chair, everything felt like a dream. Those ropes around his wrists and his ankles - were they real or imaginary? Was it pain or numbness radiating through his jaw? Was it anything at all? Tony felt like he was floating, suspended in midair, or maybe lying on his back in the water, the current carrying him away as the world turned dark.

“Stark.”

The darkness shrank back. Someone was saying his name, someone whose voice he’d heard before. Who was it? Tony blinked, forcing his tired eyes to focus. Steve? Couldn't be. Steve wasn't coming. Wouldn't come, not for him. Besides, it didn't matter who came for him. None of this was real. Tony blinked again, the streaks of light finally combining into an image. And then, Tony was sure it was a dream. Long, dark hair. Bright blue eyes. Unmistakable metal arm. Someone must’ve repaired that, Tony thought to himself. It looked newer. Cleaner. Probably made of Vibranium.

Focus, Stark.

Right. Barnes. Bucky Barnes. What was he doing here? Was this part of Ross’s plan? Was the Winter Soldier here to finish what Ross had started?

No. Tony could tell that wasn’t it. Barnes’s eyes were bright and focused, not hard and glassy like they’d been that first time he’d been triggered. This was Bucky. And that begged the question again: what was he doing here?

(Watch out for the break!)

“You with me, Stark?”

Damn it. Had Tony been fading in and out? Probably. But if this was a dream, did it even matter?

“Yeah. I’m here. I’m awake.” Tony’s voice came out low and rough. Shit. He’d tried so hard not to scream. Screaming meant they were getting to you. But screaming was better than giving up.

Bucky knelt down in front of him. “Do you know where you are?”

Tony met Bucky’s eyes, then shook his head. “No.”

“This is the Sandbox. Old SHIELD facility turned HYDRA.” Bucky paused and looked Tony over, his eyes dark with concern. “Do you know how long you’ve been here?”

“No,” Tony said again.

“Forty-five hours.” Well. That would explain this whole thing feeling like a dream. Tony hadn’t slept in over two days, barring whatever time he’d spent unconscious.

“Can you tell me what they did to you?”

Tony squinted. “Torture. Can’t remember the specifics.”

Bucky’s expression hardened, and Tony flinched.

“Hey. Easy. I ain’t gonna hurt you.”

Tony swallowed, trying not to feel panicked when Bucky disappeared from view. “What’re you doing?”

“Untying you.”

“Oh. Okay.” Tony let his head fall back, his eyes closing. God, everything hurt. He was getting too old for this.

“D’you know who took you?” Bucky asked, working on the knot around Tony’s left wrist.

Tony thought back to that damn tranquilizer dart, how it had lodged itself into his shoulder before he’d even had time to react. “Ross. Ambushed me in my office.”

The ropes finally came loose, and Tony hissed in pain, drawing his arm up to his chest.

“But he ain’t the one who hurt you.”

“No.”

“Then who?”

Tony’s other hand came free, and god, what a relief. He slouched forward, elbows resting on his thighs, fingers sliding into his hair. “A couple of big guys. Shaved heads, combat armor.”

“I already took care of them.”

The noise Tony made wasn’t quite a laugh, but it came close. “Of course you did.”

Bucky was down near Tony’s ankles now, and those knots weren’t as tight; no point when Tony hadn’t been able to reach them. They were undone in a matter of seconds, and then Tony could finally breathe. He gasped, a loud, embarrassing hiccup, then exhaled, lifting his face out of his hands. Damn it. Tony hated being restrained. The torture, he could take; but when Tony was tied up, people died. Usually right in front of him.

“Hey.” Bucky looked up at Tony, his expression soft and serious. “You okay?”

Shit. Those weren’t noises people made when they were okay, huh? “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

Bucky nodded, standing up and taking a step back. “Can you walk?”

“Well I’m definitely not going to let you carry me.”

Apparently, Bucky wasn’t as much of a hardass as Tony thought. Tony saw the joke land, one corner of Bucky’s mouth tilting just slightly up.

“Wasn’t gonna try.” Bucky crossed toward the door, and Tony was suddenly afraid that Bucky might leave without him. He forced himself upright, ignoring the way his body screamed at him-

Except that didn’t quite work, because somehow Tony ended up on his knees in the dirt, his legs refusing to cooperate, his muscles trembling with the effort of holding himself up.

“Stark.”

“Sorry. Sorry, I'm coming, I promise.”

Bucky was next to him again, so close that Tony swore he could feel heat radiating off of Bucky’s body.

“Here.” Bucky helped lift him up, sliding an arm around Tony’s waist. “Arm over my shoulders. There you go. C’mon.”

Tony did as he was told, letting Bucky haul him to his feet. “Sorry. Just… tired.”

“Don’t apologize. Just keep movin’.”

Those were instructions Tony could follow. He kept his weight braced against Bucky’s shoulders and moved one foot in front of the other, watching his step as they crossed through the hallway he’d been dragged down days before.

There were so many bodies. Dead bodies, Tony was sure. Bucky, unlike Steve, didn’t take chances with things like that. Blood didn’t normally bother Tony, but right now, the sight was making his head spin. He closed his eyes, fighting against the heaviness in his own limbs.

“You okay, Stark?”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

~

When Tony woke up next, he and Bucky were in the quinjet.

“Ugh.” Tony rubbed a hand over his face. “I passed out again, didn’t I?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, nobody saw me carryin’ you.”

Tony groaned, covering his eyes with his hands. That was just perfect. Not only was Bucky Barnes coming to Tony’s rescue - which he really needed to ask about, but one goddamn thing at a time - but Bucky was carrying him like a damsel in distress. He was not a damsel.

Tony sat up, trying to get his bearings. He was lying on a makeshift cot, some coats thrown over three small wooden crates. “Um. I-”

“You got questions,” Bucky interrupted. “Let me try to answer ’em before you hurt yourself thinkin’ too hard.”

“Okay.” Tony didn’t have the mental capacity to argue. “How did you find me?”

“You still had the burner. Idiots were stupid enough not to destroy it when they searched you.”

“Alright.” Tony rubbed a hand over his face, as if that would help him think more clearly. “If you knew where I was, why did you come alone?”

“Steve wanted to hold a fuckin’ meeting and come up with a plan. It was gonna be hours before they started movin’, if they decided to come at all.”

“So you came after me without telling them?”

Bucky nodded. “Wasn’t worth wastin’ time over. You never know how long will be too long.”

Tony didn’t know what to say to that. He blinked, staring at Bucky, his brows drawn down into a frown. “Is that just some soldier thing? Did you wait too long once and now you’ve decided you’re never doing it again? Or do you actually give a shit what happens to me?”

“Both.”

That answer didn’t make Tony any less confused. Tony had tried to kill Bucky the last time they’d met. It hadn’t exactly been a friendly exchange. What reason would Bucky Barnes have to care about him?

Bucky narrowed his eyes. “Did you mean to ask that out loud?”

Fucking damn it.

“I really didn’t,” Tony said helplessly. “But now that it’s out there, maybe you should just answer it so I’m not sitting here wondering.”

Bucky considered Tony for a moment. “You’re a good person. You’re important to a lot of people. And you were tryin’ to help Stevie in Siberia.” Bucky paused, looking down at his hands. “’Sides. I owe you.”

Tony frowned. That was - huh. That part about trying to help was actually true. He'd somehow forgotten that he’d gone to Siberia to help Steve, to do the right thing. All those good intentions, and everything had still fallen apart.

No good deed goes unpunished, right?

“Sorry,” Tony murmured. “Sorry, I just got sidetracked for a second there, brain’s not firing on all cylinders yet. Mental tangents, you know. You said - you said you owe me. For what?”

“Your parents.”

Tony forced himself not to look away. He’d had plenty of time to think about this, to work out in his mind who was really to blame. The Winter Soldier might've been the weapon, but HYDRA had chosen to wield it. HYDRA had given the orders. None of it had ever been Bucky’s fault.

“You were brainwashed,” Tony said.

Bucky looked away. “I still did it.”

Just then, that was a little too much for Tony to process. He pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. His joints ached. His wrists and ankles burned. Everything else was a dull roar underneath the pounding that had started in his head.

“Do you know where the medkit got to? My head is killing me.”

Bucky didn’t say anything as he got up and retrieved the medkit from underneath the ship’s main console. He pulled out a water bottle and packet of pills, passing them over.

“We’re landing in less than an hour. Any injuries that won’t keep till then? You bleedin’ anywhere I don’t know about?”

“No. No, just the headache. Everything else can wait.” Tony tore open the packet and swallowed down the pills, chugging the water until half the bottle was gone. “Where are we going, exactly?”

“Got a place in Moscow,” Bucky replied.

“Moscow. Okay.”

~

Moscow, as it turned out, was freezing. Even with two coats, Tony's sweat turned to ice as they walked the half mile to the motel. He had expected something more secluded, but he wasn't about to argue. Unless Ross had put some kind of homing device on him, this was probably the last place anyone would come looking, anyway.

Tony wrapped his arms around himself as they stepped into the entryway, feeling a shiver crawl up his spine. “This place is fucking cold,” he said, and maybe it sounded whiny, but his patience was just about shot.

Bucky was already busy adjusting the thermostat. “Give it a minute to warm up. I promise, in a few hours you’ll be beggin’ for me to turn it down.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

Bucky crossed the room, opening one of the dresser drawers. “Should be some things in here that are about your size. Bed is yours - I’ll take the couch.”

Tony nodded, struck by a fresh wave of exhaustion. “Okay.”

“I got a better medkit in the bathroom. You should let me take a look at you before you sleep.”

“Ugh,” Tony groaned, wondering how many more times he’d have to use that word before the day was over. “Is that really necessary?”

“You still don’t remember what they did to you?”

Tony shook his head no.

“Then yeah. It's necessary.”

~

Tony stepped into the bathroom, already feeling too exposed under the harsh lights. He took a deep breath, trying to relax. This was due diligence. He still didn't remember anything. He might very well be more injured than he thought.

He managed to peel off his socks and his jeans, but the shirt refused to cooperate. Well. It wasn't the shirt so much as his arm. He vaguely remembered someone doing something to his shoulder, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember what. Something painful, obviously. Something that made it impossible to get all the way undressed, which meant he was standing stupidly on the bathmat in nothing but his boxers and a Black Sabbath tee. Tony scowled.

“Before you say anything about me not following directions,” Tony said, pausing when Bucky met his eyes from the doorway, “I actually couldn’t get the shirt off.”

“How come?”

“Shoulder,” Tony said. “Left one.”

“I can help you take it off. Or I can cut it, if-”

“No,” Tony said quickly. Then, feeling just a little embarrassed for being so attached to a stupid shirt, “No, just… help me take it off.”

“Okay.”

Tony hadn't expected Bucky to be so gentle. Bucky lifted the right side of the hem slowly, peeling it off of Tony’s right arm and turning the shirt inside out as he eased it over Tony’s head. It slid down over Tony's left shoulder without any resistance, and Tony breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thanks,” Tony said, wishing he had something to cover the arc-reactor scars on his chest. He shouldn't have worried. Something else had stolen Bucky’s focus, something on his back that he couldn't see. Tony craned his neck to look in the mirror behind him.

Oh.

“They whipped me.” Tony licked his lips, his mouth suddenly dry. He arched his back, the motion totally involuntary, remembering the sting of the leather snapping against his skin.

Tony glanced back at Bucky. He was flexing his metal hand, his eyes as dark as his expression.

Tony frowned. “Bucky. What-”

“Killed ’em too quick,” Bucky said in a low voice. “Should’ve let ’em suffer.”

That was some kind of intense. Bucky looked every inch the Winter Soldier, cold and calculating and lethal, ready to snap someone's neck with no effort at all.

“Why do you care that they did this to me?” Tony asked, positive he hadn’t earned that kind of reaction. “I mean, aside from the normal, human reasons. Why does this upset you so much?”

A muscle worked in Bucky’s jaw. “I ain’t upset.”

Tony wasn’t falling for that. The look in Bucky’s eyes was murderous. Strictly speaking, Bucky had already committed murder for Tony. Tony had a right to know why.

“Hey.” Tony reached out and grabbed Bucky’s wrist, only realizing after the fact how dangerous a move that could’ve been. He forged ahead, determined not to lose his nerve. “I’m putting a lot of faith in you here. I’ve cooperated with everything you’ve asked me to do, and sure, part of that is because I’m tired as hell, but I don't normally just do what people say.” Tony loosened his grip just a fraction. “Explain to me why I matter so much.”

Bucky looked at the ground. “It’s stupid. It won’t make sense to you.”

“You obviously have no concept of how smart I am.” Tony released Bucky’s wrist, willing himself not to sound frustrated. “Try me.”

Bucky sat down on the edge of the tub. “The Soldier wants to protect you. I can’t really control it.”

Tony raised his eyebrows. “The Soldier.”

Bucky nodded. “I think it’s… What do they call it? Dissociative identity disorder.”

“You know what that is?” Tony asked, blinking in surprise.

“Sam gave me a copy of the DSM-5 when I ran outta books to read. Self-diagnosed a couple things.”

“I imagine.” Tony thought he probably had a few undiagnosed psychological disorders himself, not that he was about to consult the book about them. “So… The Soldier wants me - what? Safe?”

Bucky shrugged. “He likes you. I ain’t in a position to tell him what to do.”

Tony huffed, biting down on his lower lip. That was too much information and not enough at the same time. Bucky couldn't tell the Soldier what to do; that meant the Soldier probably wasn't just some small side personality. Hell, maybe the Soldier had equal real estate in Bucky's head.

“Did the Soldier tell you to come find me?” Tony asked.

“Yeah.”

Briefly, Tony closed his eyes. The Winter Soldier had told Bucky to save him. That was maybe the craziest thing he'd ever heard, and still some part of him was flattered. Confused, and maybe just a little bit terrified, but flattered nonetheless.

“Okay.” Tony nodded once, opening his eyes. “What’s next?”

“Huh?”

“Well, you answered my question. I figure that means I owe you a minute or two of cooperation before I start being a pain in your ass.”

Bucky smiled so briefly that if Tony had blinked, he would’ve missed it.

“Oughta get you cleaned up,” Bucky said, crossing past Tony to pull down a towel from the cupboard. “Bath or shower?”

Tony considered the question. Given his recent track record with maintaining consciousness, staying vertical was probably the best plan. “Shower,” he replied.

~

[cherrynika]

It’s nice to see Alex again though he usually avoids former partners. It’s simply been long enough since their breakup that no trace of awkwardness is felt, simply a sense of familiarity. He’s more or less the same, having decided to keep the facial hair Jipyeong had always hated. It’s as sleazy-looking in real life as it is in the instagram photos he pretends he’s not scrolling through. That’s a pointless exercise that makes him wonder if he’d be more successful if he had chosen to stay in San Francisco, or if he’d still be the same person but with shittier fashion sense. It does, however, answer many questions that he’d like to ask (have you neutered Tim Tam yet, yes), prefer not to (are you married, 2 girlfriends and what was probably a sugar baby later, the answer is no), and never wondered (Crossfit is indeed life-changing; hot yoga gives you 10 more IQ points!).

Alex is cordial and professional at the Sandbox, offering Jipyeong nothing but a handshake before they sit down to grade the baby startups. But he lingers conspicuously in the meeting room after all the other judges leave. Jipyeong fingers a piece of his hair that’s come loose despite the pomade and waits.

“You look fluffier. Fatter.” Of course Alex’s first words are about his weight.

“I started eating rice again. I hated low-carb.”

“Rice or tteokbokki?” Alex smiles. “Anyway, it’s not a bad change. Let’s go to Gotgan. I have a reservation for 7pm.”

“You made a reservation for two?” Alex has always been overly confident, but that’s his charm.

“If you say no, I’ll ask Dongchun.”

Jipyeong considers him, looking almost exactly the way he did when Ms Yoon first introduced them 5 years ago. She’s always been able to look right into him and see what he wanted. As much as he respects her, he’s never wanted to tell her that her matchmaking attempt worked. Nothing he does today will have the tiniest effect on the future. All that’s in the past. All that’s waiting for him are Yeongsil and his big silent bed. So he gathers his notes into his satchel and fishes out the keys.

“Let’s take my car.”

“Let’s take the subway. It’s not far and we’ll probably get drunk.”

__

They stay sober. While getting drunk is fun, Jipyeong’s most regrettable moments (bar one that has surfaced intermittently for the last fifteen years) have all occurred when he was intoxicated (crying at a class KTV when Mrs Choi’s favourite song came on, dancing to Wonder Girls in front of a girlfriend’s parents). Staying sober is for the best.

Alex makes some noises about heading back to his hotel room. They both know he doesn’t mean it.

“I want to show you my new place,” Jipyeong says when they’re halfway there. He’s forgotten how private the sidewalks can be at night, cars on one side, the river on the other, blanketed in the dark. “It’s bigger than the one I had before I went to America.” Waves of headlights wash over them, illuminating Alex’s face before dipping them back into darkness. Everyone is rushing somewhere that only they think is important.

“I’d be surprised if apartments could be any smaller.”

“They’re always getting smaller.” Jipyeong jostles against him to avoid a woman on a bicycle. Alex puts his arm around him and doesn’t let go. In San Francisco this is what couples do. In Seoul they’re just old friends. Skinship, being a mentor, being a sunbae--these are all great excuses for what Jipyeong really wants to do. Even through two shirts and a lined blazer his body wants Alex’s body.

They walk in silence though the lobby, past the doorman whose chief qualification is knowing when not to look and float skywards in the lift.

--

“We have to take our shoes off, I just want you to know. You can leave them over there. Yeongsil, lights please.” The lights flicker on, Yeongsil is clearly having a good day.

“You know, I don’t let people wear shoes in my house either… That’s not Alexa.”

“It’s Yeongsil, it’s an AI speaker. It’s one of Ms Yoon’s more promising startups. It’s… more interesting than Alexa.” Jipyeong says, taking off his jacket and leaving it on the table. “It told me you were coming last week.”

“No, no, I told you that I was coming.”

“Yeah, but before I got your email. He tells fortunes too and he told me someone from my past was coming.”

“Everyday you meet someone from your past. And you shouldn’t let it listen to everything you do. It’s going to get hacked.”

“Astrology is in, everyone is going to love that feature,” Jipyeong shrugs. “Nothing I do here is worth any money, they can just hack my bank accounts.”

“You’re not paranoid enough for someone who works in tech.” Alex says, as he almost fondles Yeongsil.

“I’m actually trying to reduce my paranoia.” Jipyeong takes Yeongsil from Alex and stuffs him under the jacket. “Does that make you feel better?”

“No.” Alex continues to touch the other things in his apartment without permission. “Is every photo here of yourself? I know you don’t have family photos but that’s so vain. You should’ve kept some of the gang at 2STO or at least something to remind you of me.”

“The internet is filled with pictures of you. Anyway I still have the Grandpa Rudin you lent me, it’s more useful.”

“Did you really finish it?”

“I just wanted to know why everyone complains about it.”

“Well, now you know I guess. If you liked it don’t tell me.” Alex has moved on to the cardboard sign that proclaims Jipyeong the 2001 winner of the Inter High Schools Investment Competition brushing a finger over the scratch mark Tim Tam made on it before Jipyeong decided it would be safer in his closet. “I like the lamps. Are you into art now?”

“The seller had it staged, I just decided to buy it the way it was. I think it looks very cohesive.”

“So that’s why it looks like no one lives here. It’s like you don’t have any stuff.”

“No, I have the plants and I keep the EXO and Apink merch in the walk-in closet, it’s too personal to have it out here.”

“Red Velvet is better. I wish it weren’t so bloody creepy to be an uncle fan.”

Alex is still the only man with whom he can talk about Eunji and Kyungsoo and not feel dirty. He’s stumbled upon Dongchun’s Twitter (which is, in his own defense, a fascinating read) and knows too much about his deep love for TWICE. There is something a little unsettling about ajusshi fans, even if he is one himself.

“I think there’s something more interesting we can do here.” he takes the sign and puts it back on the top shelf. “I haven’t been laid in 6 months. I’m going to burst.”

“Couldn’t you have picked someone up at a nightclub?” Alex is smiling in such a familiar way; they both know this old dance.

“They’re full of university students.” Jipyeong says while helping Alex out of his jacket, which surprisingly, is only GAP. “You smell like metal.”

“It’s Sartorial, remember? From Penhaligon’s? It’s got that magnesium note.”

“You still haven’t finished it?” Jipyeong bought it as a gift while in London for him. It was so long ago, almost like a dream. He’s had dreams, whenever he’s been alone for too long, of undressing another person, but he can never remember what happens afterwards. The dream-person’s shirt has no smell, no trace of sweat. He slips Alex’s shirt off his shoulders. No undershirt as expected.

“Nope. I bought another bottle. It’s different from all the other man-perfumes. It doesn’t just smell like tonka bean.” He slips a finger over Jipyeong’s mouth, smearing his summer lip balm before dipping inside and scratching his gums lightly with a fingernail. “Your mouth is as lovely as you are horrible. Have you learned anything since we split up?”

“Test me,” Jipyeong says.

The only light in the bedroom is light pollution from the city below. It’s still more than enough to see by, despite the fact that Jipyeong’s night vision has gone to shit from more than a decade spent staring at a computer screen.

[this part not written yet]

--

He dozes off without meaning to and wakes up to the sound of engines. Alex is playing F1. He must have gone through his closet and found the playstation Jipyeong has been trying and failing to quit.

“You’ve got some very impressive beard burn on your jaw. ” Alex says as he overtakes Rosberg. He’s chosen the Singapore circuit. Onscreen the city is cloaked in darkness, the only thing that exists is a winding silver road and cars driving nowhere at 300 miles an hour.

He leans over and takes the controller from Alex, crashing into a Ferrari before spinning out into the barriers. “Are you bragging?”

“No, I’m just being honest.”

It’s a strange mirror of their early days when he would wake up to Alex on a coding binge, the clacking of the keyboard starting and stopping with his thoughts, the weak light of his laptop throwing huge shadows on the wall.

Jipyeong rolls forward on his belly; he wants to see Alex properly. “What do you like about Samsan Tech?”

“I like their engineering. Dosan’s incredibly talented. Their CODA algorithm builds on existing knowledge, and is an improvement on it.”

“And that’s your professional opinion?”

“What else would it be based on?” Alex fixes him with a look.

“Well. People say that you can’t be emotional as an investor. But how can it not be emotional?”

“Jipyeong. I’m excited in the way that I am when I see something beautiful. I wish you could see it too. I still can’t believe you’ve gotten so old without learning to read code.”

“I can code.”

“I don’t mean using OCaml to code a model.”

“There’s only so many hours in a day.” He rolls over and watches the dead light from the screen play across the ceiling. “I can always ask an expert.”

“I’m going back to America after Demo Day, you know. As fun as it would be to stay here and pretend we don’t know each other I have a job I have to get back to.”

“I meant other experts.”

“There are none like me.”

“Well. Talking to you is more fun.” He tangles his fingers with Alex.

“You’re not still posting loss porn on Wallstreetbets are you?”

“I just did. Lost fifty thousand on Apple puts.”

“You’re going to end up living in a corndog stand again.”

“Actually, I won’t. I didn’t tell you yet but I found her last month. She’s in a food truck now. So there’s nowhere I would go.”

“Can I meet her?” Alex perks up. He’s always loved a good story. “I want to know what you were like as a kid.”