#i'm so happy engineer's on the top three as of voting

[clumsyclifford]

hm hi maybe i will officially ask you if you want to hurt me and write a therapy fic. i vote malum but. you do as— no you know what i'm me this is a malum prompt i'm sending you okay love you bye

hiya taylor i hope you realized when you asked for this that it would be angsty as fuck, so i really can’t apologize for uhh writing something angsty as fuck!! BUT with a hopeful ending because we know how i am

tw for suicide ideation, suicidal thoughts, depression

read it here on ao3

-

Michael is winded from the moment they walk onstage.

He’s been all smiles all day. Somewhere he’d heard that smiling was supposed to trigger some kind of happy brain chemical, a creepy fake-it-’til-you-make-it strategy. It has not worked. Michael is exhausted from the effort he’s put into looking like he’s okay. The smile has become a grimace, and he doesn’t have the energy to make it look more realistic. Cameras capture upturned lips and that’s enough to convince them he’s happy, which is the important thing. 

He doesn’t intend to watch those videos when they’re edited together. He can’t even bear to look in the mirror these days. The travesty of him that stares back out with dead eyes only makes him feel worse. At this point he’d doubted whether or not he could actually feel worse.

Standing in front of almost thirty thousand people, it turns out he can. Or at the very least he can feel equally bad in a different way. He’d been drowning before, but he’s choking now. Dying either way. 

If he died onstage, slain where he stood, what would his band do? What would the thousands of fans do? Maybe it would be a mercy. Michael’s a liability right now. He’s frozen in front of thousands of people at the fucking O2 Arena, for fuck’s sake. The band is supposed to be skyrocketing and Michael is a faulty engine, fuel that’s caught fire. If they keep him around they’ll catch fire too, and then they’ll all be free-falling, instead of just him. 

They’d hate him if he died onstage, though. Michael would hate himself too. At the O2, of all places, really? How much more of an attention whore can you be? Couldn’t have waited for a smaller venue to have a heart attack? Or maybe a hotel room? Someplace you could be alone?

Shit. Fuck. The loud cheering has wavered, and all three of his bandmates are giving him concerned looks. Michael fights for breath and finally — for better or for worse — manages to take in the oxygen he’d been missing. And then he forces yet another smile, for his bandmates — but he can’t look at them, can’t see the looks on their faces, not right now — and for the stadium. The sound of screaming doubles in intensity. Michael is already so tired, and they’ve only just started the show.

Luke yells something lead-singer-y and Michael’s hand shakes against the strings of his guitar until he starts playing, closing his eyes for a moment so muscle memory can take over. 

It’s too loud. One way or another, he’ll drown; his lungs aren’t working the way lungs are supposed to, and if they’re not filling with air they might as well fill with water.

Holy shit, he thinks, because he knows enough to know that these are Dangerous Thoughts. But he can’t deal with that right now because they have a show, and after the show he’s fully booked with Pretending He’s Fine from now until forever.

On the opposite side of the stage, Calum catches his eye, and Michael tries to infuse his hollow smile with warmth, sincerity, anything to make that worried expression melt away, but he’s not stupid enough to think it’s worked, even when Calum turns away. Although Calum does turn away, so maybe it means he knows Michael’s lying and just doesn’t care.

You’re in the middle of a show, you fucking idiot, says Michael’s evil subconscious. They’re not going to stop the show in the middle just because you look like you’re seconds from death. You always look like that. 

Right. Right. Michael’s done this to himself. Calum’s not crippled with concern, and he shouldn’t be; he’s Michael’s best friend, not his fucking therapist. Not that Michael has a therapist. Nor does he want one. No random stranger would give a fuck about his bullshit problems, and neither would a random stranger with a PhD.

Fuck. The crowd is getting louder. Is it possible for them to get louder? Or is that all in Michael’s head? Or is everything all in Michael’s head? Are the in-ears keeping the fans’ screams out, or Michael’s screams in? Fuck. Shit. Oxygen is being awfully unreliable today. It’s so loud. Michael closes his eyes again. He knows this song. He’s played this stupid fucking song a thousand times. He could play it in his sleep. He could play it in his casket. That might be what he’s doing right now.

Fuck.

-

Michael is in a constant game with himself, pushing his own limits just to see where he’ll snap. The way he sees it, it’s like exercising a muscle; wherever he breaks, he grows back stronger so he won’t break there again. At this point his threshold is high enough that when he’s feeling particularly masochistic — although when isn’t he — he really has to work for the breakdown. 

It’s a blessing and a curse to be able to handle this much. It means that even when everything is wrong, Michael doesn’t collapse. Which means that he can still play an entire concert at the O2 Arena without having a meltdown, but also that by the time he actually does break, his insides are charred from all the damage control that hasn’t quite succeeded in containing it. 

At least a hotel room is a better place for it than an arena stage.

He can feel it creeping up on him, and he knows it’ll be soon. It won’t take much. There’s already enough wrong as it is. The hotel room is too cold. It’d been nice for a little bit, immediately after the show when he’d been sweaty from the performance, but now it’s making him shiver.

He has sweatshirts, hoodies, blankets. But that would be cheating. Michael stays where he is, sitting at the chair by the window in the tank top he’d played in, staring outside at the sprawling mass of London with all its flickering lights. Sitting by the window is also definitely not helping the temperature situation, but Michael isn’t shying from the crash; he’s trying to induce it. 

Just then, Calum comes out of the bathroom, still towel-drying his hair, and Michael knows what’s next.

Sure enough: “Hey,” the same way one might talk to a baby animal, like if Calum talks too loud he’ll startle it. “You okay?”

Guess, Michael thinks, swallowing. Take a guess. What do you think? “Fine,” he says, because that’s his line. Calum won’t believe it, as well he shouldn’t, since Michael is lying.

“You don’t seem fine,” says Calum. His voice moves around behind Michael as he gets dressed in joggers and a hoodie. “I saw you when we went on to play tonight. You looked like you’d seen a ghost.” There’s a pause. “Like you were a ghost.”

Michael swallows again, and it’s more difficult this time. His eyes sting; his fingers twist anxiously around the hem of his shirt. “That’s a bit dramatic.”

“Well, you didn’t see yourself,” Calum says. 

“Was probably the lights.”

“Don’t be like that, Michael. It’s not like I think you’re okay. I know you’re pretending for the rest of the world, but you don’t have to pretend for me.”

Fuck.

This conversation is not going to be your breaking point, Michael thinks fiercely to himself. Calm down. He inhales raggedly, although it does nothing for his composure. He’s breathing around thorns only by telling himself that they’re roses, and all the while they shred the walls of his lungs, making it more difficult to cling to oxygen when he takes it in.

I’m not pretending, he wants to tell Calum, but he can’t. “Well, you don’t have to worry about me,” he returns. Fuck. His voice sounds shaky and the lights of London are swimming in his vision.

“I don’t worry because I have to,” Calum says. His voice is closer, but before Michael can figure out what he’s doing, he’s taken the seat across from Michael at the window, dropping a flannel into Michael’s lap. “I worry because I love you. You’re shivering.”

Is he? Michael hadn’t noticed. He looks down but he can’t see anything, but if he blinks then the tears will fall and Calum will notice and Michael will have to admit that maybe this is his breaking point and he doesn’t want it to be but he is cold and when he blinks even his eyes feel cold and he quickly looks back at the window and moves his hands on top of the flannel and Calum says, “At least put it on, it’s cold enough in here without wearing a tank top,” and Michael’s throat closes up because however much he can control himself around cameras and crew members and friends and fans, something about Calum makes him completely unravel.

Maybe it’s not that this is his breaking point. Maybe it’s just that this is a safe place to break.

(Maybe it’s a little bit of both.)

So he picks up the flannel and pulls it around his shoulders without putting his arms through the sleeves, and he sniffles and says, “Thanks,” voice all fucked up and wobbly.

“Yeah,” Calum says softly. “What’s on your mind?”

“I’m tired,” Michael whines, and that’s the last he manages before he’s crying like a little kid, tears streaming — it’s been so long since Michael’s cried and he’d forgotten that tears were this relentless, fresh new ones falling now matter how many times Michael tries to squeeze them away — and Calum moves like he’d just been waiting and pulls Michael into a hug, where Michael hides his face and tries to hold his breath because he’s going to die eventually and it will probably happen soon and Michael would at least like to die in Calum’s arms, while he has the chance. But the sobs wracking his body force him to inhale so that plan falls through almost immediately. Because Michael can’t even die right. Fuck.

“Oh, babe,” Calum murmurs. His arms are tight around Michael. “I’m sorry, love, honestly, I’m so sorry.”

Michael can’t stop crying or else he’d say why are you sorry? even though he knows this is more of a sympathetic platitude than anything. Calum does sound sorry but surely he knows it’s not his fault — that this is Michael, all Michael, Michael’s fucked up brain and fucked up self and total inability to get his shit together like everyone else. The more successful the band gets, the worse he feels, and he knows that’s not what’s supposed to happen and he feels even shittier that he’s not being fucking grateful for everything the band is giving him and all the opportunities he has thanks to this, and instead is so stuck in his own fucking head that he’s tallying the passing days like an apocalypse survivor, counting each one he lives through. Or possibly counting down until his death. 

The wrenching sobs slow to nothing. Calum doesn’t try to get Michael to talk, and that itself gets Michael to talk. The silence is worse, and Calum is here, and Calum is safe, and Calum loves Michael. 

“I am not okay,” he mumbles into Calum’s shoulder, which should be a given at this stage, but Calum only squeezes him a little tighter and doesn’t interrupt. “I know that’s a shock.” Calum hums. “I can’t explain why. I don’t know. I just know that this…isn’t how okay people feel.”

“Yeah,” Calum says quietly.

“I don’t know what to do,” Michael says helplessly. “I don’t — I don’t know. But I keep — like — the things I think, you don’t even…you don’t want to know. If you’re worried now, you definitely don’t want to know.”

“I am worried,” Calum says. “But you can tell me if it’ll make you feel better.”

“I don’t want to. It’s not your job to be my therapist.”

“I’m not trying to be your therapist, I’m trying to be your friend.”

“It won’t make me feel better. I’m not going to tell you,” Michael says, though that just means Calum will draw his own conclusions, which might be worse. Not that anything is worse than Michael’s actual thoughts. He adjusts his grip on Calum, tightening his hold. The flannel is falling from around his shoulders, but he doesn’t want to move to pull it up.

“That’s okay.”

“I hate this,” Michael whimpers. It hits him like a hurricane how true that is. “I don’t like this. I don’t want to not be okay. It’s not worth the effort.”

“I know,” Calum says, rubbing circles on Michael’s back.

None of them are okay, truthfully. That’s why Michael can cry on Calum’s shoulder; he knows Calum would cry on his. It’s possible he’s a little worse than the rest of them, but he’s not alone. There’s a twisted comfort in knowing that he doesn’t really have to explain himself to Calum.

“I’m sorry,” he says mournfully.

“Don’t be sorry, you’ve got no reason to be sorry.”

Michael nods, though he’s still sorry. But they won’t get anywhere if Michael’s always apologising. It’ll only serve to annoy Calum, and right now Calum is all Michael has. If the world got any bigger it would crush him, so he keeps it close; it’s only him and Calum and the chill emanating off the window and the flannel dragging against Michael’s back.

Later, when the world expands again, when Michael can bear it, when he’s expelled all the water out of his lungs and stuck plasters over the cracks in his facade to hold himself together, Calum will sit with him on the bed with his laptop open before them and type up a search for virtual therapy despite Michael’s half-hearted protests. Later, Michael will sort himself out a little, Calum by his side to pull him over gaps when Michael’s too much of a coward to step across. Later, much later, a Michael of the future will write about the Michael of the present like he’s a distant memory, using past-tense verbs to make the most tragic sentences into a success story. That Michael is okay, or at least more okay. 

“I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I really think you’re going to be okay,” Calum whispers into his ear now, pressing a lingering kiss to the curve of his jaw. 

Which doesn’t make anything better in the long run, but certainly doesn’t hurt to hear right now. 

“Thank you,” this Michael sighs, as Calum tugs the flannel back up over Michael’s shoulders. 

“Of course,” Calum says lightly. “I love you.”

“Love you too.”

Present Michael can’t see past this moment, but as he takes his first deep breath in days, inhaling the familiar scent of Calum and warm from Calum’s embrace, he thinks that if the future were to hold more moments like this one, it might just be worth living through.

[silentcoder]

Lilly's Adventures in Toyland. Watching my 3 and a half year old daughter taking her first steps in gaming, I've been observing what she struggles with. I feel there is a real gap for games that are playable by children not yet old enough to read, but beyond the simple activities in gcompris's earlier levels. More-over I'm a big fan of the idea of learning without knowing it - rather than setting out to teach a specific skill, I like the idea of learning things just by playing. And if there is a skill worth learning from gaming, more than anything else, it's simply how to solve puzzles. I've spent the past several days working on the idea in my head, and it's time to write it down. So I have an idea for a game like that. Specifically designed with the idea that my daughter could play it, mostly on her own. Much of the design then, is dictated by the requirements thus imposed, but there is also an original idea. Rather than drawn graphics, I want to use stop-motion sprites created from her own toys. This could be time-consuming but it isn't exceptionally hard to do, just photograph the toys in various pozes (to the extent they are posable) in front of a solid green background that's easy to edit out. You don't need highly complicated animations after all. A simple two or three frame animation in each direction suffices for "walking". Core design ideas: - I think a semi-side-scrolling platformer like the original Super Mario Bros is the easiest to learn - but Mario (and games like SuperTux) are still too complex, some things need to be reduced to fit a 3-year old's abilities. - No jumping. Nothing time-based. The game should be slow, and not require fully developed spatial reasoning to play. It shouldn't rely on fast reflexes either. So all screens must be walkable, and the challenge should come from puzzles that are more about simple reasoning skills than speed. - Controls should be simple. I think controller support is a must, but even then it should consider that the players have small hands which struggle to reach the triggers and top buttons. So a very simple scheme - movement on the left joystick. Actions on the 4 buttons (keyboard variants can be done - I'm not sure if keyboard + mouse is worthwhile, it's too reliant on fine motor skills that aren't quite there yet). Vertical movement should use ladders and slides, concept a three-year-old are already familiar with from the playground. - Only four basic actions. For my game, I'm thinking spells. And you start with just one - more can be added over time as the child gets familiar with the idea. So a simple magical game, in a world of realistic looking toys - on a simple 2-d platform. It's not a nightmare to code, and the work can instead go to the art and level design. - Child-friendly content. Combat, if any, should be on the "My little pony" level of violence only. Instead of a spell to set an enemy on fire, I'd rather have spell to simply turn him into a harmless creature like a mouse, with some implication that the spell is temporary and will wear off sometime after safely leaving the area. While I subscribe to the theory that good fairy tales should teach children that monsters can be killed there is plenty of other ways to learn that, there should be space also to just have fun and learn to solve puzzles and maybe learn that not all monsters HAVE to be killed to be defeated. An equally important lesson. - Backgrounds should reflect the regions the current set of characters derive from. Some of my African landscapes for levels using her animal-toysets, thus teaching (very subtly) a simple bit of geography and the idea that different creatures live in different places. That said, there should be no shortage of fantasy here. This is learning through play - and I think imagination is far too important at that age to focus on realism beyond the scenes based on what is already real. - Everything that is written must also be voiced (I'll need help here), including the opening menu etc. It must be navigatable by children who do not yet know how to read. - A rock solid set of editing tools to allow parents to easily add new levels, and a way to share those levels so that everybody can benefit. This would also allow the game to be much bigger than I could do on my own, and I could ask Caryn to help make some levels. - These tools should give full access to the pre-existing assets and sprites, as well as an easy way to import your own. So level design should be possible without knowing how to do green-screen stock-motion animation, but those who do, should be able to add new creatures. - This rather rules out things like gamemaker or rpgmaker simply because they are too complex. While that is great if you want to create your own game for older audiences, it is overwhelming to a three-year old. - I've set out to create games before, and never finished them because it was too much work on a busy working parent's schedule so on this one I'm setting out also to make the work-load manageable, partly by making as much as possible creation accessible to other people. On the other hand I have successfully finished a game as well (tappytux long ago), and part of why it worked was that it's major additional content could be crowdsourced - there were wordlists in dozens of languages at it's height - and the coding was written in such a way that, once the engine was completed, only bugfixes and optimization was needed - new additions did not require new code. That's a design imperitive now i think (it also helped that, at the time, this was done as part of my job and on company time) - Code should be available however, so parents who can code can make modifications, improvements and customizations for their own kids unique needs, and be freely share-able afterwards. The code will be GPL'd however. While I understand this is unpopular in the gaming community, I want everybody to benefit from every improvement. I am happy to put the artwork under a more liberal MIT license and use MIT-licenses art from other people. - I want the game accessible to as wide an audience as possible, so I intend to use a donation/pay-what-you-want model, which means you can get it for free if you don't have money available. A bit of money from those who can make it would be great but I'm not doing this to make money, I'm doing it to create something for my child. And, in the humble-bundle approach, half of any income recieved will go to a children's charity. - As she ages, more advanced versions introducing new skill requirements would be cool to add. So that a 5-year-old would be able to enjoy their own adventure, which is challenging on their level. These could be level-packs, or require a more advanced engine. That's something for the future. I'm sure more ideas will come out as I start working on the game. But these are the thoughts currently in my head. I wanted to write them down, and get feedback from fellow coders, parents and friends to expand on this before I start writing code and taking a whole lot of pictures of toys :P I'll incorporate the ideas I like (and consider how many likes a comment gets as votes for the idea) and then start working on the actual code. PS. I will gladly accept volunteers who wish to help with any part of this. If you're hoping to get rich it's the wrong project, I don't know if it will make anything, but if it does, I'll share the income fairly with any contibutors. PPS. Please feel free to share this post to any groups where you feel the audience would be interested and able to provide useful feedback or possible collaborators.

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