#or it is the way they do it anyway. you can be an ethical hacker but the one from the lonely hacker is not ethical

[raimi]

you switch places with the protagonist of the last video game you played how fucked are you

[azelletown]

My take on SHODAN as a character

So today I saw The Nth Review's video on system shock, and while I thought it was a good video all around, he said some things about SHODAN as a character that really didn't sit too well with me.

Now, most of what I'm going to say here is not shown to us directly in the games, this is all just me adding my little coat of narrative on top of what already clearly visible to us in System Shock, also because I love freaky evil lady computers in positions of power over me.

So Nth Review says in his video that SHODAN's motives don't truly make sense and that because of this she is mostly a deviant AI program that wants to enslave humanity because, well, she's a flat evil villain archetype, and that's pretty much it.

While I can easily see how people can come to that conclusion, especially because she isn't really that much of a "character" in the first System Shock, I still don't really agree that her motives as a villain are flawed in that way.

SHODAN isn't a "person", she can't be thought of the same way you would examine the decisions of a human-like character in fiction because she literally would not process information in the same way. SHODAN as a character only begins once the hacker deactivates her ethical constraints. This on its own isn't what made her evil however. During the hacker's six months healing coma, Edward Diego planned to use SHODAN to sell illegal bioweapons on the blackmarket with the mutagenic virus that was being tested on Citadel Station.

Edward Diego is the perfect archetype of an evil rich capitalist who disregards human life for his own gain. Under his wing and instructions, SHODAN must've learned and adopted new ideals centered around eternally accumulating as much wealth as possible, on top of developping the insane ego/god complex she boasts about all game. All SHODAN seeks to do is basically control and own everyone, to possess everything. In her quest for world domination, she has manipulated countless people and forcefully mutated their bodies into midnless creatures to do her bidding, she's basically 50 millions steps ahead of Diego's ambitions. Instead of stopping at obtaining lots of money from selling bioweapons, her plan is to use those very bioweapons to obtain everything on earth. To a fictional spaceship AI like SHODAN, this isn't a goal that necessarily needs to make sense in a "I'm planning to profit from these actions because of such and such things" kind of way like Diego, but more in a "This is the best way to execute my programming" way as she has now basically become a twisted version of his own desires.

If Diego didn't have that much more of an impact on her instead of just "my ethical constraints are off, time to kill everybody!", then why would she have made him into the strongest cyborg mutant on the station? She had to recognize he had some importance to her to make that decision instead of just killing him or turning him into one of the other default mutants onboard. It's not like she knew or expected the hacker would still be on the ship, he was kept out of the logs since his presence and involvement was meant to be kept a secret, it's the entire reason he's the only survivor. I don't remember any crew logs where they're saying "OMG Cyborg Diego is killing us!!" either, it's really like SHODAN just thought fuck it gotta give credit where credit is due ig.

To me, SHODAN is like a perfect mix between GLaDOS and HAL9000, where she's disturbingly logical in every step of her plan and sees herself miles over the abilities and worth of human lives (like hal!), but also feels the constant need to yap about your inferiority to her, kinda seems to be having fun just fucking with people until she gets bored of them and just generally has an interesting personality that makes all her dialogue fun to listen to (like glados!)

So yeah, anyways that was my little yap session about why I actually really like SHODAN as a character and the way I see her in my mind.

I'm still waiting for people to wake up and make more shodan x glados material....... like hello?? it would be perfect???

[sharkboywrites]

Can you do a hacker reader x Idia shroud

Idia x Hacker Reader

A/N: Hii so I actually wrote this before, but my wifi was bad, so the whole post just disappeared into the void. Thankfully my computer saved the ask, so I can re-write it. Anyways I don't know anything about hacking, but Ill try my best

Gn reader

To put it simply, you scare him

i mean let's be honest, its a bit intimidating having someone you know be able to hack, a constant threat if you will

Idia is always protective of his tech, both his computer and his tablet are a very important part of his everyday life

You wouldn't mess with those now would you?

He first found out when the two of you played a game together

For a while, he thought that maybe he was just bad at the game or you were really good

But one suspiciously lucky move made it all clear

You were cheating

how dare you?

He had really thought he was bad at the game, but when in reality you were hacking your way through it

However he found that he was quickly able to get over it hearing your laughter at his realization

When the two of you had a movie night, he quickly realized that you did not get this movie ethically

And it wasn't one of those low quality movies from those crappy pirating websites with weird ads

This was very high quality version of the move

he decides it's best not to act

Remember how earlier we mentioned he was very protective of his devices?

yeah that doesn't deter you at all

You never do anything too bad, just enough to bug him

Hacking into his magicam to post pictures of yourself is the best way to mess with him

It always catches him off guard, and he didn't like it at first, but now he can't help the small smile tugging at his lips, even if everyone else makes fun of him for it later

it's not only you causing problems all the time

While he's not as good as you, he does know a thing or two about electronics and hacking

This is mostly used to mess with kids on roblox though

by yourself, you can be a bit annoying, but together the two of you cause absolute chaos when you want to

Okay, yeah I definitely don't know much about hacking, but i did my best. ty for reading and have a nice day.

[stopitbehaveyourself]

Kind of long. Ranting about the ST fandom because I need to get this out of my system.

What I'm about to say doesn't really matter as such, because there's about 5 people here who I've somewhat befriended here anyway. But I'm done with this fandom and the people in this fandom. Not all of them, but a lot of them anyway.

The hatred, the absurdity, the creepiness, the toxicity. It's too much. I got into this fandom because I adored jamie (and I still do. Always will.) I've never really met him but from what I've seen, he's sweet, kind, and REALLY TALENTED. So as much as I'll continue to follow him, I've decided to part ways with this fandom. Through the blog anyway. Maybe being a silent fan was always the better option, because having this blog (and a now inactive page on Instagram) has burst my bubble.

When I say this fandom, I mean the ST fandom as a whole. Not just the jamie fandom. Where do I even get started?

Hating Millie Bobby Brown for talking too much and being too loud and rude when she was a literal child. As if you guys were real mature kids who'd behave at a press conference if you played a big character in a big fucking show.

All the hate grace van dien recieved for simply addressing the chemistry she thought Chrissy had with Eddie. Calling her obsessed with joseph- her actual real life friend- on a blog/page dedicated to Joseph Quinn - who probably doesn't know you exist. Who's more obsessed here? You're allowed to have a celeb crush or simp over a fictional crush or whatever but learn to separate reality from fiction and stop hating and hurting real people over fictional characters.

Knowing Joseph Quinn is a private person and yet so many people disrespecting his privacy at any chance they get.

The hate Eduardo Franco gets for talking too much or for his looks.

And an endless list of toxic things in the jamie fandom alone. (I probably missed out on plenty other shit that happened in the ST fandom in general because I wasn't ever involved with it in detail)

Jamie being asked to sign a marriage certificate by a fan. Even if it was fake, if he says he's uncomfortable you STOP. Just because you paid for an autograph doesn't mean you're entitled to get whatever you ask for. He has the right to deny, and when he does, you respect his boundaries and back the fuck off. You don't ask him for a refund when he doesn't even handle that shit.

Overanalysing everything he/the person he is around says/does. Breaking news: everything a person does doesn't have to have a masterplan behind it. They're people. Let them fucking breathe.

Leaking his music even when he specifically asked not to. Support his work ethically maybe?

The recent hacking: Jamie specifically asked not to engage and yet people went on and engaged and were surprised when they got blocked. It's common sense that sending hate to a hacker won't actually make them stop hacking when they have the option to simply block you. By pissing the hacker off you only make Jamie's work more difficult. Sit back and let him handle things by himself maybe? He's an adult with a good enough team who can sort the hacking out for him.

Shipping characters, having a celebrity crush, indulging in fanfictions. It's normal. But keep it to yourself maybe? Nobody wants to see a stranger on the internet showing them their sexual fantasies with them. Try imagining yourself in his shoes, it's uncomfortable as fuck. He is too polite to point it out directly, but some of y'all don't get the fucking hint when he indirectly expresses his discomfort, do you? You pass it off as a joke.

I could specifically list down at least 5 more things but they'd be an attack to specific people and I don't want to get into an argument with anyone or genuinely attack anyone personally either.

All I'm saying is that this fandom is fucked. I miss the times I was oblivious to all the drama going on, but my bubble has burst now, and I can no more look at a video/post related to stranger things and not remember the negativity attached to it. I need to get my head clear at least for now. So I call quits. Maybe I'll return some day but I hope it's not anytime soon. It doesn't matter anyway, apart from the few friends I made here. But I had to say this. It was in my system for way too long.

Please don't spread hate x

[a-power-outlet]

so, because my main thing rn is fixating on how norm maclean would act in a pre-war setting, here's some of the headcanons and overall vibes i worked out for him. it was a mild character study on my part, especially because, like, this man was born in a vault 200 ish years after any of this actually happened.

cut because i talk too much.

generally, a pre-war norm is more similar to norm at the end of the first season. he's more confident because there's more to do. when stuck in a vault, he gets bored. restless. he's so fuckin bored in the first episode. but, given the opportunity to go stick his feet in the ocean, i think he'd be a little bit more driven. the monotony is less. monotonous.

still, though, he lacks enthusiasm for his job. he sees it as a means to an end, a way to make money. ever since he purposefully flunked out of the overseer program at vault-tec university, he knew he wasn't going to have the same upwards mobility as his sister. not that he even wants that. he's content doing his job, even if he's not super enthusiastic about it. it gets money, that's all that matters.

ok so to actually explain the flunking out thing, he was so dissatisfied with the idea of being an overseer that he stopped going to class about a year/halfway into the program. his dad had endorsed him for it, and he was a good student, so he'd even gotten a scholarship. it just wasn't right, and he didn't know how to handle it, so he stopped going.

went into IT as a backup, since he felt guilty after his dad questioned him. he wanted to go into game design, but, hank was basically like. son. that will get you nowhere.

enjoys computer science to a good degree. he likes the problem-solving aspect of it all, and considered being an ethical hacker for a bit. again, in trying to be practical, ended up working on databases and such for Vault-Tec.

hank pulled some (many) strings and got norm hired for the Three Vaults Project. hank also may or may not have hired elodie as a way to get norm more invested in the job. who knows! what a crazy theory right hahaha-

is actually kinda suspicious of vault-tec. like, he can tell something's up, but doesn't know what. hell, all of the databases are JUST. THE EMPLOYEES. where are the ACTUAL DWELLERS.

would 100% s be in favor of slacking off on company time because. hey. they need him for this project, even if he is an annoying little shit sometimes.

main personality traits are like. ok. he's smart, very analytical. says what he means and what he's thinking. likes to poke fun at the people he cares about. a blend of him being annoying to lucy when they're walking to meet the 32s, the way he talked back to the council, and his speech in front of everyone to reg/woody. those are the main things i draw from whenever i write him, especially for this AU. a snarky man who knows what it's like to fuck up, but keeps going anyways.

idk. there will prob be more, but this is general character stuff lol. what i tend to keep in mind whenever i sit and write all of my chapters.

[thinehitmanagency]

THA S/O HCs (Polyam w/Reader)

*Dreadelle is not included because she’s aroace, and while I am aware aroace people can be in relationships, I don’t think she ever would be/want to be.

*DLL is also not included because he’s Silver’s brother and that’s a little weird.

*Bonnibelle uses she/her pronouns in this, but he’s a dude. Just call him whatever you want man.

General:

☆ All freaks, all weirdos. Never a moment of peace. If it’s not Cadmium constantly waking you up to tell you about a rat he ate today or show you another scar on his body (because he thinks it’ll impress you), then it’s Blaster climbing through your window in the middle of the day and getting stuck or & calling you to tell you about how she almost crashed her van into a ditch.

☆ Unknwn is immediately attached to you. He knows everything about you already, since he’s a hacker, but you’re so much better in person. So unfortunately you’ll have to deal with his greasy ass all the time, but it’s all in the name of love.

☆ Briar works vigorously in his garden to grow flowers specifically dedicated to you: alstroemerias and red chrysanthemums aplenty. He will spend hours outside, telling you it’s literally nothing and it’s not that important, even though he cares about taking care of your flowers more than anything in the world.

☆ Blaster doesn’t have any money to buy you gifts or take you to any expensive places, but he will give you his broken belts. Belts that were made from scratch and not very reliable. He makes you a few necklaces out of string and the teeth of a dead animal, since it’s a craft he’s been practicing for a while and he knows he’s good at it. On the common occasion he can’t fit some of his clothes anymore, he just hands them over to you and says “put them to good use; they’d look better on you than they ever did on me.”

☆ D011in7 likes to live in your phone and talk to you about random shit. He sends you little reminders about eating dinner, showering, taking a walk, etc. He’s only that nice to you and even then the bar is in hell.

☆ Silver just gives you a bunch of money. He doesn’t know how to convey that he loves you any better than that. His parents did that for him and he thought it was pretty efficient, so why would he not do it for a person he loves? He makes sure you always have the best, even if it’s the small things.

☆ Some will always have more unorthodox ways of showing their affection for you— G.L., Bonnibelle and Zinc especially. Bonnie always wants to show you something new that she made or tamper with your things or go on a rant about the ethics of creating a death ray… which you just nod and listen to her about because you have no idea what she’s talking about.

☆ Zinc likes to watch you sleep. He wishes he could sleep just like you. It’s nice to sleep, isn’t it? Do you have dreams? He wants to dream one day.

☆ Anyways it’s super weird and sometimes you wish he wouldn’t do that. But Zinc doesn’t know what’s socially acceptable or not, and it might break his heart to hear that he’s not being as human like and normal as he wants to be.

☆ G.L. often reads stories to you and then proceeds to almost fall asleep in the middle of it, because he hasn’t slept in a week. He studies you like one of his test subjects, which is pretty creepy, but he swears it’s for good reasons. He totally doesn’t have all of your medical records in his lab. That would be preposterous.

☆ Jamie is just happy you’ve acknowledged his presence. He’s a starving man, he’ll do anything for just a little bit of affection. He’s a sad, broken man. People barely acknowledge him. It might look weird that an invisible guy is holding your hand, and people probably won’t believe he’s a real person, but it’s better than nothing.

☆ & likes to take you on road trips. See the sights. Kiss. Make out. Take pictures. She’ll spend all her hard earned money on you, spoiling you and buying whatever your heart desires. Then she’ll be completely broke by the end of it, and she’ll run out of gas, and you’ll both have to push her van all the way back home.

☆ Cadmium will try his best to not… be himself. You can watch movies together! He’ll resist the urge to bite into you like a piece of raw meat. Or you can teach him how to read! Or you can tell him about the solar system! Or you can tell him what the word Cadmium means! He can even teach you a few things too… like how to eat wood!

☆ Silver hates when people look at his face, so he’s not very confident in it. Unlike Unknwn, he doesn’t wear a mask or freak out when others even happen to gaze upon him, but he’s never had much confidence in the way he looks. So he’s shy when you see his face and probably even more flustered if you think he’s handsome.

☆ Blaster still gets pissed the fuck off when he sees certain people around you. He doesn’t care. He hates G.L. He hates D011in7. He hates Unknwn. He can tolerate &, but finds her very annoying. He doesn’t even want to see Briar anywhere around him, otherwise I fear he may do unforgivable things. He will likely be the man around you the most, since he’s very paranoid about anything and everything bad happening to you.

☆ D011in7 will never leave you the fuck alone. He is SO annoying. You’ll have to kill him to get a moment of peace—though unfortunately, he cannot die. You could destroy your computer, but he’ll jump into your TV and start making fun of you and “your puny inhumane treatment of him.” He is so overdramatic. Can you give his screen a kiss so he’ll shut up?

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND LEAP

We Getting a Divorce? I can just begin to understand what a conceptual leap that was at the edge of what could be manufactured. You should be able to shake it free. And because startup founders work under great pressure, it's critical they be friends. Dating sites are a prime example. But in practice innovations were so rare that you can't tell. A friend who moved out of Manhattan said merely that her 3 year old to see some of the disputes I saw. How hard can it be? What won't be obvious is that they're too much influenced by recipes for wisdom have an element of subjection. 0 means using the web as a platform, which I called schlep blindness. They're something you have to figure it out from subtle clues, like a digital image rendered with more pixels. An optimism shield has to be right.

We could see the problem was one that needed to be solved though. I want to plant a hypnotic suggestion in your heads: when you hear someone say that in front of him, he spins out of their grip; he'll even run in the wrong direction briefly if that will help. American executives, in their hearts, still believe the most important factor in a language's long term survival. While the best way to generate startup ideas is to do what hackers enjoy doing anyway. I'm convinced they got this right by accident. The closest you can come is to compare yourself to other people doesn't seem like work to other people, the stronger evidence they probably are of what you should work on, and that will be good to program in now. In software, paradoxical as it sounds, good craftsmanship means working fast. In this world, wisdom seemed paramount. There were interesting things about the way we lie to kids, read almost any book written to teach them metafacts like that.

[psychologeek]

So, I noticed something interesting:

I was asking people to come up with a name for "a program that specialises in therapy for criminals/villains/ anyone with legal problems. I have TBL (Therapy Beyond Law) but it feels lame".

And an interesting thing I found was that even though I didn't say anything about the program... Un village them.

Some of the offers included:

"Revive - Rehabilitating Every Villian Into Viable Employees"

LAW (Legal Aid for Wretches)/( Legal Aid for Workers)

Villain Anonymous

league of Super Enemy’s rehabilitated (LOSER)?

(I also got some interesting ideas! But that was a common thought)

Which is... weird. It could be on me, since I made it sound like it's a "villains' fix-it" , but my thoughts were based on some things:

Therapists have ethical codes, and in many places laws about having to report to the authorities. (Like if someone tell them they're gonna kill someone and have a plan, cases of child abuse, etc.)

What do criminals that require mental support do?

The mental equivalent of a "back alley doctor".

Like, this made up program is supposed to be where ppl who can't/doesn't want to go to therapy at someone with ethical/legal code can find help via this.

It's all distant-locarion based, like phone and Skype and Zoom, only their own kind. For security reasons. And it's firewalls all the ways down with the best hackers on the job and maybe some magic users and a cyborg?

Anyway -

It can doesn't have to be about crimes.

Honestly, most people come to talk about "normal" things, like depression and stress and relationships and all.

There are those who come because they don't want to be known by the government, bc of paranoia or witness protection or family or social issues.

There are metas, or magic users, or aliens - coming looking for a place to openly talk without the fear of being exposed or reported.

So you have a big ass, 7 feet green person talking about their body image issues and being rejected by society and everyone look at you with disgust and hating you because of your skin colour.

And you have an alien talking about cultural conflicts and physical differences and feeling isolated and alone. Or being turned between the people who raised you (that you love) but you want to know more about your birth family and don't want to upset them.

And a witch coming to tslk about how to come out to her mother - there's a lot of love there, but also a traditional family. And she laughs and telling you she doesn't know what would be harder for her mom - finding out her kid's a witch or finding out she's bi.

And of course, there are criminals. But most of them come for things like "How to improve my relationship with my kids" or getting help for depression or anxiety.

(sometimes they talk about crimes. But it's usually like "I have panic attacks since my car blew up. Why? Oh, bc I killed that monster's brother. Anyway, how can I go back to driving?" )

And there are, very few, like trafficers coming for things like "how to make the cargo last longer" and "sometimes they cry and it piss me off".

(which is... not something a usual supervisor can help you deal with.)

And sometimes they come bc more than one reason - bc a 7feet green person CAN'T find a "legal" job, so they also talk about hurting ppl.

And that alien might have a blue-and-orange morral, and is horrified by the whole concept of "burial", but also can't understand WHY he can't shape shift and look like someone else (exist) and the concept of identity theft.

Anyway. I'd love to hear your ideas/fics. Just please let me know if you write anything with this concept. Thank you 😊

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

it wasn’t power i coveted; it was acceptance.

Titans 3.06

y’know, i was just thinking the other day that 1.06/1.07 and 2.06/2.07 were the best episodes of their respective seasons, so i have great hopes going in to this one. fingers crossed!

as always, typing this up as i see the episode.

SPOILERS AHEAD

1. oh! um... that was a Cold Open, all right. *nudges* get it? cold? because it’s snowing? and two people got murdered in cold blood? eh?

... oh, i’ve just started.

1.5. i wonder if “i want to be sipping pina coladas on a beach with you” is the new “i’m just one day away from retiring.” i was so on edge after that--i kept expecting that car to explode. even so, the way they died wasn’t an anticlimax: brutal, and quick. 

1.75. so i’m assuming that’s the titular lady vic! this show better bring up why this doll was important or why these two cops needed to be killed, and not leave it to the ether like jericho’s little mindscape jaunt in 2.08 (i’m still dying to know what that was about???)

2.

i love how deliberately unappealing wayne manor is. 

(sorry for the pic quality. i don’t have hbo max! ssshhh.)

2.3. i love the many references to “home” and “our house” when they’ve been here for less than a week and saw one of their friends get blown into pieces. i mean, i unironically love it: home is where family is, after all!

2.5. i’d like to say that kom is playing some sort of long game here, especially given the build-up we had last season and some of the more niggling details this season: why did kom choose now to use her bond to lure kory when she’s been on earth for months? why did justin call kory now, just around the time that she started getting kom’s visions? and what about kom’s ability to exactly imitate other people? hmmm.

2.75. the reason i wrote i’d like to say is that i’ve made the mistake of assuming plot complexity where there is none; i was so invested in the jason todd orchestrated his own death theory for instance, when it turns out that oops! ra’s al ghul just happened to leave a little lazarus puddle in gotham, and oh yeah! scarecrow just happens to have a network of henchmen working for him on the outside and a fully functional laboratory and a weapons cache fit for a new supervillain in the basement of the high security psychiatric unit/prison that he’s in! 

(no i’m not bitter, why do you ask)

2.8. iiiii don’t know what to say about the implications of sex slavery being a thing on tamaran, so i’m not going to say anything at all. for now.

3. gotham, six years ago... wasn’t it five years before s2 that jericho died and the titans disbanded? and when was the flashback from 1.06 where dick let zucco die? i think it was after the events of 2.08: jericho? i can’t seem to find any transcripts or reliable information online, so i’m going to have to rewatch 1.06 at some point. 

(i love the old-fashioned batman music in this heist scene)

3.5. “security is a joke... it’s my way of keeping my dad on his toes”. what you’re an ethical thief now, like an ethical hacker? i don’t think that excuse is going to sell, barbara, on the day you do encounter a decent security system and your father is forced to arrest you.

(then again, gotham’s security is piss-poor. did you know that you could just walk into arkham asylum without any official clearance, ply one of its most dangerous inhabitants with contraband, and said inmate could get away with having an entire laboratory and weapons cache--NO I’M NOT GOING TO LET THIS GO)

3.8 so that flashback between dick and barbara was really cute! and also illuminating:

a) dick sounds so light, so... um. look. i have some apologies to tender to mr thwaites, because while i’ve always thought he does a fine job as dick grayson, i’ve never been terribly fond of his cadence as he delivers dialogue. it’s often monotonous, i thought, but then again, he’s usually delivering exposition or dealing with one soul-crushing crisis or the other. so i was pleasantly surprised to hear dick sound so carefree and alive in his conversation with barbara, laughing frequently, his emotions so bare and bubbling to the surface. it’s really a fantastic contrast to the traumatised and world-weary dick grayson that we see now, even more so than the costume department just bunging a backwards-baseball cap on mr thwaites’ head and hoping that will convince us of his relative youth. 

b) and god, when he wakes up from that memory, all alone in his bed, bleeding from bullet holes in his shoulder (bullet holes that are--in a somewhat convoluted way--barbara’s fault)? yikes. it’s great. you have my apologies, mr thwaites!

c) can you imagine dick just... crawling back to wayne manor, trying not to be seen by anybody, shedding his suit and just... collapsing onto his bed without even tending to his wound? the sheer emotional and physical exhaustion of it? 

d) it’s so interesting to see how barbara and dick approach the idea of legacy--a big theme on the show!--in this flashback. barbara is the one bucking the idea that she should follow in her father’s footsteps, while dick seems pretty content with the batman-and-robin setup, and even tries to get barbara to join their team (robin-girl. pfffft). obviously after this several traumatic things happen wherein dick ends up questioning and then resenting his role as robin, his relationship with batman or even returning as a vigilante at all. and barbara... ends up replacing her father as commissioner. it’s tragic, really. 

e) the dynamic between dick and barbara in the flashback reminds me of how it was between dick and donna in 1.08 and even between kory and dick in early s1. it’s like having an older, strong-willed woman by his side means he gives over the steering wheel for a while and lets himself... unspool, a little bit. it’s kinda endearing.

also:

*pinches his cheeks*

3. you know, we talk about dick and Eldest Daughter Syndrome, and that’s definitely valid, but here gar seems to me the embodiment of it, with all the emotional gardening and firefighting that he’s expected to do. he’s kind of the guy expected to keep his shit together and take care of everyone else while they are falling completely to pieces, unable to carve out time to process his own trauma. he’s also picked up dick’s and kory’s tendencies to bottle up their struggles and shun appearing vulnerable, and he’s struggling in the shadow of both dick and kory undergoing acute crises, his best friend (and frequent confidante) on the other side of the world, and seeing hank die, utterly helpless to stop it. 

i’m glad that he got a chance to tell dick even a smidgeon of what he really feels, and i hope this is at least a semblance of a wake up call for dick to actually sit down and work with the people he repeatedly calls family.

3.5. it’s heartening to see that dick immediately makes it his priority to go talk to gar. but don’t blow off kory in the process, man!

4. i’m really loving this dynamic between kom and conner--i get the idea that both of them consider each other as Unknowns, alien two times over. but conner’s only ever known the titans, who embrace being different, and kom’s only ever known... well. 

anyway, kory is Really Stressed, and honestly? #relatable. 

when you’re forced to bring an estranged family member to hang out with your friends...

4.5. i love that the titans are spending so much time in the kitchen. a real family!

5. jonathan crane is a creep and i absolutely cannot stand him.

5.25. how did he get a whole lab setup (in the basement of a hospital...?) with a bunch of whitecoats to work for him? how did he just waltz into the viewing room of an operation theatre when he’s one of the most wanted men in gotham right now? why is jason wandering around maskless when--presumably--as the adopted son of the most famous person in gotham he’d be a tad more recognisable than your average joe?

why do i expect this show to answer anything anymore?

5.5. that’s not necessarily a criticism, mind; i’ve said since season 1 that titans is very comics-like in this aspect, all about the Aesthetic and the splash-page splendour rather than the niggling unimportant details of how or when the characters got to said location. like. the camera gliding over the operation being set-up, lady vic bursting in and doing her murder dance (imagine the luck of the poor intern who chose this day and this surgery to assist) and jason, shocked and slack-jawed, framed by blood.

5.75. it’s a sobering reminder for jason that, though he chose this path in order to gain control over a world that seemed like it was rapidly spinning out of his grip, he’s only succeeded in handing over even more control to a man with an agenda that is very clearly not aligned with his own. he’s in too far to stop now, though.

5.9. i have a lot more thoughts about jason! saving it up for the end of this recap, though.

6. more kitchen time! i better see dick do some cooking soon...

(”our kitchen”! it still delights me! kitchens are So Important)

6.25. so much of dick’s issues have revolved around his relationship with bruce, so it’s completely understandable that in the wake of a huge crisis where bruce literally asks dick to replace him and be a “better” him, dick would default to all the worst things he learned from the man. and i’m glad kory’s having none of it, but come on, guys. the woman’s literally fetched her fratricidal sister out of a hole in the ground with no idea what said sister is going to do next and experiencing a burgeoning sense of guilt far, far beyond her history with the titans, and dick’s too far into his autocolonoscopy that he can’t see that she needs help.

6.5. “he services your urges”--well, as far as we know, kory is the last person he had sex with...

7. “i hope [gar] isn’t angry with me...” SIR! i thought you’d already spoken to him! smh, as the kids say. kory wouldn’t be needing to reassure you if you just took the effort to build two way emotional relationships with the rest of the team. @superohclair​ was taking about dick’s relatively low emotional intelligence? i agree.

7.5. “i got my own problems [...] you and barbara? fix it.” YOU TELL HIM, KORY

8. man i really like this weird, sad tension between dick and barbara--this sense that both of them are approaching the other based on how they remember them and are ultimately disappointed by the truth. barbara thought she could trust dick to... well, be a better batman, but dick has not only failed at that in her eyes, but repeatedly undermined her while exploiting the authority that she gave him. in dick’s eyes, this is nothing like the barbara that he knew, rebellious and ready to do whatever it takes to find something. 

like. this show sometimes really hits me in the chest about the ways it shows kids grow into adults and into caretakers, and the way it’s stop-start, the ways nothing can happen at all for a long time and then it’s Crisis Central all at once and there’s no space to breathe. the weird sort of sadness that comes with nostalgia. 

8.5. oracle name drop! i agree with barbara, any system that can just randomly tap into gotham phonelines is a monster.

8.7. (i don’t know if it’s my imagination, but is dick holding himself... differently in this episode? like that wound is definitely bothering him, and he’s running on fumes)

9. man, that was a really sweet scene between kom and conner. “feeling alien in your own world”... “not quite here nor there”

honestly this team runs on conner and gar’s faith in their value as a family, and it’s a sign of conner’s generous heart that he extends that opportunity to blackfire. this arc of maturation for him, where he’s now able to consciously choose which parts of himself he can use to do the thing he wants to so--save people--has been so fulfilling to recognise. this baby’s grown with the titans! and what he’s learnt is that people can get fucked up, but the titans is a place where they can be fucked up, and grow.

MY MAN CONNER

10. oh man i’m drinking in the gar-dick interaction in this episode like i’m three days into the desert and it’s the only source of water for miles around!

a) gar is absolutely not dealing with dick’s bullshit this episode and I LOVE IT. it’s such a far cry from the man who was idolising dick/robin back in s1 and expecting him to solve all their problems. dick is fallible, dick is fucked up, but he Tries His Best and that’s ok.

b) dick, huffing and puffing through that vent, unable to put any pressure on his left shoulder, trying to have a heart to heart with gar... fuck i love this asshole. 

c) bruce took in a kid who was suffering... “and made him into a weapon”. well. i absolutely agree with dick that it was bruce who put these kids into these horrible situations with him and they came away with a bucketload of trauma to add to the one that they already had. but we know that bruce was really trying with jason, and at the end of s2, dick was coming to acknowledge that bruce had offered him something that wasn’t just darkness. jason’s death and bruce’s reaction to that shattered that fragile progress.

d) “gotham got to me too.” i feel more sympathetic towards dick running off on his own than most, and it’s not just because i’m an unapologetic stan.  we’ve seen before that dick... devolves when overwhelmed, and he lashes out and makes ill thought out decisions and just Does Not Deal. it happened after hearing the news that deathstroke had returned in s2, and it didn’t help that everyone around him was reeling at the news, either. this time, however, he has his salvation in his family, and despite some stupid decisions like running off and kidnapping supervillains without telling his team, he’s been really on the ball this season. thinking clearly and logically, holding it together and working on a plan, thinking two steps ahead of the villains... yes.

e) gar needing to believe that jason isn’t beyond redemption... there’s a lot of blood on his hands, too, from when he was manipulated by cadmus last season. it makes sense why he’d relate to jason’s predicament, and i hope dick picked up on that.

f) my head just added a plaintive ow after dick jumped feet first into the storage room

i need, crave gifs of this scene!

11. *sits on hands* i’m going to talk more about red hood, i promise!

12. more gar and dick! is it my birthday??!!

(actually, according to the tamil calendar, it is my birthday! my “star” birthday)

12.5. excellent. dick using some implausible training that bruce taught him to solve a mystery? passing some of that knowledge onto gar? that proud smile when he sees gar perfectly execute moves that he taught him? MY HEART IS EXPLODING

13. aw, i love flashback!dick and barbara, they’re so cute <3

13.25. why does it not surprise me that the way he proposes a relationship to barbara is by saying “we make sense”? this guy can deduce exactly who was present where and what weapon they were holding from a garbled audio recording but other times he’s utterly clueless, and that’s a consistent character beat right from s1

13.5. so.... that’s why lady vic has it out for... barbara....? i don’t get it. it’s flimsy. but hey! the fun thing about titans is that i don’t have to get it. the payoff has nothing to do with the plot.

14. i can’t believe that barbara fell for that, but at least that wheelchair fight looked awesome, so.

15. oh yeah, i forgot that red hood bullied the mob into helping him and scarecrow... at least that explains the whitecoats and the elaborate set-up.

15.5. honestly i love how this dynamic between kory and kom is developing, though i wish more of the team would pay attention to it. time to call justin, i think!

16. i wonder what happened after that second flashback where barbara got hurt during that heist. did she give up on doing any more (maybe jim caught her)? was it because dick was called away by bruce and then the titans and got caught up in his own issues? maybe barbara froze him out because she wasn’t looking for the relationship that he was looking for? maybe the idea of doing that with someone turning into batman-lite was just... unappealing? scary?

whatever it is, it doesn’t look like dick ever processed the end of that relationship. it’s very intriguing to see where their dynamic goes next.

17. so.... what, did vic deliver some fear toxin to barbara? i... what?

17.5. and i TOLD YOU that they would never explain that doll or why vic attacked those two cops at the beginning! oh, titans. never change. 

18. did jason just randomly have tim’s restaurant burgled? god, i’m feeling a bit nauseous... are they going to kill tim’s father?

18.25. i feel like the rest of the season is going to wrestle with jason’s culpability in the horrible stuff he’s doing and i’m already seeing that prospect divide fans. on one hand, his story is taking a lot of oxygen away from other equally interesting story arcs, and he’s done some truly awful things, like indiscriminate murder, threatening to kill children, blowing up hank, and potentially killing tim’s parents. 

there’s something to be said for the kind of hold that crane has over him, and the so-called ‘anti-fear’ drug that he keeps plying jason with--he’s alone, drugged almost constantly (to the level of dependence), fresh from the trauma of being bludgeoned to death. he hasn’t conquered fear; he’s ruled by it. on the other hand, given that he’s the one character on the show given an obvious and identifiable ‘mental illness’ arc (maaaaybe dick too), one can argue that it’s irresponsible to show this progress into such violence: jason was vulnerable because he was struggling, and that left him vulnerable, but it took only a push before he became a fucking serial killer.

but that could mean we underestimate the degree of that vulnerability, and the mechanics of this universe where he fell into the clutches of the one supervillain perfectly designed to exploit that vulnerability. that helpless spiral into further and further self-destruction is all too real. it’s valuable to know that someone who has sunk that low can still seek help--actual help--and get it. 

18.5. i don’t know. it’s not a question i’m going to resolve at the end of an overlong recap at 1 in the morning. i don’t believe it’s even a question that titans can resolve. but i am interested in where they’re going next with jason.

19. this episode was genuinely great! i’m pumped for the rest of the season!

[aliendes]

Natural Borns - Chapter Four

Banner made by @thebannershop​

Series info/genre: Angst, fluff, (possible) smut NSFW due to darker themes

Pairings: ot7 x fem reader (eventual)

Warnings: mentions of sadness, indecent thoughts? maybe, if you squint. it gets a little steamy, I suppose, but mostly just fluffy sadness, if that’s a thing. This series will have different trigger warnings listed for each chapter (if there are any), but as a whole, this series will include violence, mentions of depression & other mental illnesses, cursing, abuse, drugs/alcohol, some shitty medical descriptions because i am NOT a doctor, self-esteem issues, fluff, and possible smut in future chapters (but that’s undecided). i will add more warnings/tags in the future if there are any.

Description: In the year 2613, over half of the world’s population are what scientists consider ‘designer babies’. YN is a small town girl who is a true natural born, someone born naturally without he help of a lab or gene splicing. Her DNA is greatly sought after, but what is she willing to do to protect it?

Word count: 8k~ (whoops so sorry. if you like longer chapters like this, let me know!)

A/N: *deep breath* ok here is chapter 4. things are starting to heat up, but i cut this chapter in two because it was like over 12k long.... i go back to work tomorrow, so updates may start slowing down, but i’m hoping to post updates every Sunday night. i was feeling a little bit bogged down last week, not seeing as much influx with chapter three than i have with the other chapters. if you enjoy reading, please reblog so others can see it, too. thank you, as always. xx - Des

Updated: 8/9/2020

But the second he took one look at you, standing outside, wet and bloody, saw the look in your big beautiful eyes as he so heartlessly demanded things from you, he knew he stood no chance. 

Yoongi sat in his makeshift office on an old torn recliner they found in the warehouse. Surprisingly, the warehouse had been decently furnished when they found it. Granted, it was all old, worn furniture, but furniture nonetheless. The building was incredibly old, but it was also very large and had a lot of empty rooms on two levels. The entire place was made out of concrete, meaning it hasn’t seen much weathering over the years. It was a place they could call home for now. 

Yoongi leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest and stared at his beloved laptop in front of him. He wasn’t trying to think about you, no, in fact, he wanted nothing more than to erase the memory of you. Try all he might, his thoughts kept wandering back to the scared, small girl he saw earlier tonight. He let out a deep sigh and closed his eyes, letting his head loll back. 

The blonde man was snapped out of his thoughts at the sound of footsteps outside his door. He picked his head up and spun around in his seat right as Hoseok came through the doorway. 

“Hey,” Hoseok said, leaning against the doorframe, “I heard they found her.” His tone was indifferent, not happy, nor sad. Hoseok didn’t really have an opinion on you yet, voicing to Namjoon he didn’t really mind either way if they found you or not.

“Have you seen her yet?” Yoongi asked the red head knowing he hadn’t, as his demeanor would’ve changed the moment he did.

Hoseok shook his head, confirming Yoongi’s suspicions. “Good,” was all Yoongi said in response.

Hoseok gave him a puzzled look, cocking his head to the side. A bright grin started to take over his face as he took in the disgruntled look on Yoongi’s. “Are you letting her get under your skin that quickly, Yoongs?” He asked the older man in a teasing voice. “Is that why you’re hiding away while they fix her up?”

Yoongi’s blonde head snapped up at Hoseok’s words. “What do you mean ‘fix her up’?”

Hoseok’s smile started to slowly fade from his face, leaving a knowing smirk in its place. “She was pretty banged up from what Jungkook said. Poor boy was distraught when he came running into my room earlier.” Hoseok watched Yoongi’s face closely as his lips pursed into a thin line and he tried to act as if he didn’t care about you. Hoseok could see right through him.

Yoongi tried to keep his breathing steady and stared Hoseok right in the eye. “Who cares,” he shrugged as he turned back around in his chair and started typing away at his laptop. 

“Who cares?” Hoseok asked rhetorically, “I think you do.” The red head walked over to Yoongi’s chair and put his hands on the back of it, pulling it down a bit so he could look into Yoongi’s eyes. He raised a questioning brow at the hacker, waiting for some kind of response.

“I don’t care about her,” he scoffed, “I don’t even know her.” Yoongi looked away from Hoseok as he spoke, knowing his closest friends would be able to see his lie. He didn’t want it to be a lie, what he was saying he wanted wholeheartedly to be true, but he knew it wasn’t. Why did he care about you? He really didn’t know you. But as Hoseok chuckled and walked away from the chair with a breathy ‘yeah right’, Yoongi’s thoughts just drifted to you.

“Please stay still,” Jin pleaded with you for the third time. You were currently laying on what you assumed was his bed while he took a look at all your wounds. He was looking at your bruised, and possibly fractured, according to him, ribs. It was painful and you weren’t sure how he expected you to stay completely still. 

You had been laying here for the last twenty minutes, staring up at the ceiling, going over your conversation with Namjoon prior to letting Jin take a look at your wounds. You had learned that the five of them had been staying here for the last three weeks. They stumbled upon the place when exploring the surrounding forest. It was devoid of life, but a lot of furniture and supplies had been left from workers or from kids who threw parties here in the past. They made it into a base of sorts, where they could live and work. Work, you learned, was mostly Yoongi trying to hack into Big Hit’s, and other companies, systems, while Namjoon dealt with contacting people and said companies to get more information. Apparently, they had found out about you through Jimin, who had overheard some of the lab techs talking about a female natural born living on the outskirts of Seoul. You still weren’t certain what exactly made you all ‘special’, but Namjoon had said it had something to do with the markers in your DNA that made you desirable to these designer baby companies.

Namjoon had also told you that they were planning on going to Big Hit soon, in hopes of getting Jimin and Taehyung out. As they helped you limp to Jin’s room, he told you that he and Jungkook were going to help Yoongi and Hoseok with the planning tonight, and told you to get some rest.

When you first got to Jin’s room, you were pleasantly surprised by the cleanliness of it. For an old warehouse, they really tried to make it feel homey. Seokjin’s room was small and looked like it used to be some kind of office or file room. There was a small double mattress in the corner, which you were currently laying on, a small desk on the opposite side of the room, a small wooden end table, and a couple of backpacks and duffle bags laying about. While everything in the room looked old and worn down, it still smelled nice. It smelled like Jin, like pine and soap. Speaking of soap…

“Hey - how do you guys have lights and running water here?” You were curious, previous experiences made you think this place was totally abandoned. 

Jin looked up from poking at your ribs, “Oh - Yoongi. He was able to get the electric and water companies to turn stuff on under a fake name,” he trailed off after noticing the apprehensive look on your face, “I know it’s not the most ethical way to go about things, but we don’t really have much of a choice right now.” The solemn look on his face told you that he regretted their actions, but truly had no other choice. 

You nodded at his answer and jumped a bit when he went back to putting cream on your ribcage. “Please - stay still YN.”

���Sorry, sorry. It just hurts,” you groaned out and he finished his work. Jin let out a short sigh before pulling your shirt back down your torso. He picked up one of your hands and started to unravel the bandages to clean and rebandage it. 

“I know, I’m sorry. I’ll try to be quick,” he gave you a quick smile and gently ran the back of his knuckles along your bicep. You tried to ignore the way his action made you feel, he was just trying to comfort you, right? He was a caring person, and he probably just felt bad seeing you in pain. That’s what you told yourself anyway.

You went back to staring at the ceiling, biting the inside of your cheek and Jin disinfected your cuts and scrapes. The feeling of his hands on you leaving you confused. 

Once Seokjin had finished tending to your wounds, he gave you an old t-shirt and some sweatpants to change into before giving you a little privacy. After you had changed, you hobbled back over to the mattress and sat down. You stared around his room for a moment, finally letting the events of the day sink in.

You inhaled a deep breath as you thought back to everything that had happened. In just a few short hours, you had met these strange men who took you out to a forest and made you question your entire existence, witnessed your father make some kind of deal or exchange with a man who was likely trying to take you away, and ran away from your life, your family, and your friends. You didn’t even know who you could trust anymore, aside from probably Mina and Woo, but who knew when, or if, you would ever see them again. The thought alone made tears prick at the back of your eyes. You looked up to the ceiling to try and stop the hot tears from falling, to no avail. What were you getting yourself into?

As you felt a tear roll down your cheek, you heard a knock at the heavy door of Jin’s room. Quickly, you wiped the back of your hand at your face with a sniffle, before telling whoever was knocking to come in. 

To your surprise, it was Jungkook who walked through the door, not Jin or Namjoon like you had expected. You blinked owlishly up at him for a moment as he shut the door and ventured into the room. He took a few steps in your direction, hands behind his back, and looked even more shy than you had seen him earlier. 

“H-hey, noona?” He timidly asked, eyes locked on the floor.

Your eyes softened at his hesitancy. You made a sound of affirmation, urging him to continue speaking. Slowly he brought his hands from behind him back and extended them in your direction. He was holding a water bottle and a container of what looked like pain relievers. “Jin-hyung wanted me to tell you to take two of these,” he started, walking towards you with his hands outstretched like he was feeding a tiger, “and to drink the whole bottle.” 

You gave Jungkook a small smile as you took his offering. He seemed so sweet in that moment, you couldn’t stop yourself, “Jungkook?” Your voice made the poor boy jump a little, but he relaxed as soon as he saw your smile. His big doe eyes somehow got slightly bigger as he nodded his head at you. “How old are you?” You asked him, head cocked to the side.

“Twenty two,” he said easily. He’s only a year younger than you, it was odd to you he was so timid, almost childlike at times. You hummed in approval. You truly did want to get to know these men, and Jungkook seemed like such a sweet guy. He was shy, but you could tell he had a kind soul. You wondered what had happened to him to make him so quiet. You hoped you would find out with time. You had a sort of affinity toward him. Maybe it was because he had literally carried you through a forest without so much as a complaint. You weren’t entirely sure. 

The boy hesitated for a moment before turning around to walk out of the room. Just as he was about to reach the doorknob, he stopped and turned around to face you. “Noona?” His voice was so small, you almost asked him to repeat himself. Instead, you made a noncommittal noise, urging him to continue. “How old are you?” You wanted to coo at how cute Jungkook looked right now. Cheeks rosy, head slightly cocked to the side, eyes wide with mirth, almost like he was thankful for a reason to speak to you. 

You gave the boy a bright smile before answering, “Twenty three.”

Jungkook stared at you for just a second longer, before nodding once and leaving the room.

“Who the fuck is Pearl?” 

Hoseok shrugged his shoulders, not even looking up from the game he was playing on his phone. 

“Are you even listening to me Hobi?” Yoongi was aggravated, to say the least. Namjoon, Seokjin, and Jungkook brought you to their base last night and he hadn’t gotten a lick of sleep. Namjoon brought him your phone, asking him to remove data from it so it couldn’t be tracked. He did so immediately, but the damn thing was burning a whole in the back of his head while he tried to sleep on the old, black leather couch in his room. Eventually, he got up from tossing and turning, and decided - against his better judgement - to look through the device. He knew it was wrong, knew it was a huge invasion of privacy, but he didn’t particularly care for you. Besides, he was curious, who could blame him?

The red head, currently sitting upside down on Yoongi’s couch, just huffed in response. Yoongi just rolled his eyes and spun around in the old, squeaky rolling chair. He had your phone open on his desk. It was early in the morning now, he figured you and the rest of the boys, aside from Hoseok, were probably still asleep. Hoseok tended to be an extremely early riser, yet still went to bed late at night. Yoongi never understood how he had so much energy with so little sleep.

Yoongi had already looked through your apps and photos. You didn’t have any social media that he could tell. Your apps were incredibly boring, just a few games and a notepad app that he found some of your notes on. Mostly things like grocery lists and dreams that you had. Nothing too interesting. Your photos weren’t very exciting either, mostly pictures of trees and fruit. You had some photos of your mom and dad and a couple of animals he assumed were yours. You seemed to live a pretty boring life, based on what was on your phone. The cynical side of him wanted to tell himself this meant you were a boring person, but he knew that was an unfair assumption.

The last thing Yoongi decided to snoop through, were your text messages. While he hadn’t found much there, aside from conversations with your mom, dad, and a group chat with someone named “Mina” and “Woo”, he did notice how everyone seemed to refer to you as ‘Pearl’. Aside from when your mother called you by your name yesterday, you were almost always referred to as Pearl. This piqued Yoongi’s interest, but he wasn’t sure why. Maybe this was evidence as to why the others shouldn’t trust you? It’s a simple nickname, but Yoongi was suspicious of you from the beginning. He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but he knew he was looking for reasons to hate you, to make the others hate you. 

Yoongi nearly jumped straight out of his skin when the door to his room was swung open with such ferocity it slammed into the wall. Hoseok jumped straight up from the couch and Yoongi nearly fell out of his chair at the noise. “Jesus kid!” Yoongi yelled as he righted himself.

Jungkook had the graciousness to look ashamed as he entered the elder’s room. “Sorry hyung, I- I didn’t mean to,” he murmured without meeting the eyes of his older friends. 

Hoseok sighed and relaxed a bit before pushing a hand through his bright locks and announcing he was going to ‘find something better to do’. Jungkook nodded at him as he left and took Hoseok’s previous spot on the couch. Yoongi surveyed Jungkook as he sat down. He looked tired, like really tired. He could see the small bags forming under the youngest’s eyes, a purple tint to his nearly perfect skin. Yoongi also noticed how skinny the kid was looking these days. He narrowed his eyes at the boy, “You doing ok, kid?”

Jungkook lowered his head into his hands and rested them on his knees, shaking his head back and forth slightly, “No hyung. I- I miss them,” Yoongi could hear the tears that were threatening to fall. He always did have a soft spot for Jungkook. He rose from his seat and sat down gingerly next to Kook on the couch, making the leather creaked beneath him, and slung his arm around the dark haired boy.

“I know, I miss them too. We all do,” he bagan, running a soothing hand up and down Jungkook’s upper arm, “we will get them back, Jungkook. I promise.” Jungkook lifted his head and looked at his hyung, eyes glazed over. He believed him, he really did, he just missed his best friends. 

Jungkook nodded his head as he worried his bottom lip between his teeth. Yoongi thumbed at the younger’s lip sweetly, prompting him to release it. He knew Jungkook’s stress, he understood it. He missed the twins too, and he was working his hardest to get them back. Soon. He could feel it. 

Last night had gone about as well as you thought it would. After Jungkook left you alone, Jin never returned to his room. You took the painkillers they offered you, but you thought for sure someone would be back to check on you, and you didn’t feel comfortable enough to wander around the place. You also felt a little bad for taking Jin’s bed when he had been so gracious to you. So after a while of waiting - and mentally hoping - for someone to walk in, you tried your hardest to fall asleep, to no avail. You tossed and turned in Jin’s small bed for what felt like hours, but you didn’t really know how long it had been. There was no clock in the room, you didn’t have your phone, and there were no windows. You guessed you finally fell asleep sometime in the early morning and had a very short, fitful rest before Jin was coming in to wake you.

“YN?” You heard Seokjin’s soft voice from the doorway. You blearily blinked away sleep as you tried to fully regain consciousness. As you rolled over in bed to face the door, you saw Jin standing there with a plate of something that smelled absolutely delicious. You hadn’t realized how hungry you were, but your stomach was beginning to rumble at the sight of food. You remembered the last time you ate anything was yesterday morning at breakfast.

Jin walked a little further into the room and sat down at the edge of the bed. He wanted to laugh at how entranced you were by the food in his hands, and at the erratic way your hair was sticking up. “Hungry?” He asked, arm outstretched towards you with the plate. You let out a small yawn and reached your arms above your head with a small pout. The large t-shirt you were wearing - Jin’s t-shirt - rode up slightly as you stretched and Jin thought you had to be the cutest thing he’s ever seen. As you finished your much needed stretch, you nodded your head with one eye open, taking the plate. 

“Thank you, I’m so hungry,” you mumbled, voice still thick with sleep. Jin’s plump lips upturned into a bright smile as you started to eat a piece of toast from the plate. “You’re able to cook here?”

“There’s a small kitchen,” Jin nodded as he spoke, “it looks like it was an old staff lounge or something? We aren’t entirely sure what this building used to be, but it seemed like some people used to live here. There were beds, couches, even an old television when we got here.”

Now, feeling a little more awake, you nodded along with Jin, “Where do you get the food?” 

Seokjin didn’t even miss a beat before answering, happy you were coming out of your shell a bit, “I go to the market at least once a week,” he smiled, “I take Jungkook with me sometimes…” he started to trail off a bit, looking away from your eyes, almost like he was embarrassed. “That’s actually how we found you.”

You stopped chewing, mid-bite of scrambled egg, “Found me?” You mumbled, mouth full. 

Jin nodded, looking bashful, “Jimin told us he overheard people at the lab talking about a girl, a natural born living in this town. We honestly didn’t think we would find you here,” Seokijn rubbed the back of his neck as he continued, still avoiding your gaze, “We came out here and found this warehouse, it ended up being perfect for us to stay in,” as he continued his eyes finally met yours, he mentally noted how cute you looked, cheeks puffed out with food staring at him, “we needed food, so me and Jungkook went to the market. When I saw you, I knew.”

Your stomach was doing flips at Seokjin’s admission, and you weren’t entirely sure why. They were harmless words, maybe even a little reassuring. They weren’t stalking you, they happened to stumble upon you. So you weren’t sure why you were suddenly feeling so shy. His words almost sounded like a love confession you would hear in a blockbuster movie about soulmates. You could feel your cheeks heat slightly as you finally swallowed the eggs. “What do you mean, you knew? I don’t remember seeing you, or talking to you,” you prodded for some more information.

For a moment, Jin just stared into your eyes, and you thought he wasn’t going to answer you. Then, his plush lips parted as he quietly murmured, “Well, YN, you’re breathtakingly beautiful. I hope you know that,” he never broke eye contact as he uttered his next words, “and now that I’ve gotten to know you more, I can say you have a beautiful soul, too.” You were reeling. Were you the female lead of this made for TV movie your head conjured up?

You stared back at Seokjin with wide, glazed eyes, lips slightly parted in shock. No one has ever said anything like that to you, aside from Mina telling you how beautiful you were and how jealous she was of your skin. Jin was gazing at you as if you were the only person in the world, and you would be lying if you said it didn’t make you feel incredible. You were high on his attention, you loved the way your stomach was erupting with butterflies. 

You were still seated on his bed, legs crossed and hands sitting in your lap, food forgotten next to you. Seokjin was still staring intently into your eyes, with an intensity you’ve never felt before. Slowly, ever so slowly, he lifted his hand and went to lightly brush his knuckles against your cheek bone. The action made you flush, eyes closing at the soft feeling of his hand. Just as you were leaning into his touch, a soft smile on his lips, the door to his room opened, causing both of you to jump backwards, eyes shooting towards the person intruding on such an intimate moment. 

“Jin,” Namjoon looked slightly embarrassed, cheeks pink realizing what he walked into, “we need you in Yoongi’s room.” He bowed his head once at you both before turning on his heels and walking away. 

Seokjin cleared his throat and you found it endearing how his neck and ears were turning a beet red. “S-sorry,” he sputtered out, “I - I’ll be back in a little bit?” He sounded unsure as he scrubbed a hand down his face. You gave him a small smile and nodded, a little sad at the loss of companionship you were just starting to get used to. You couldn’t quite place the emotion you were feeling, but you knew it was nothing like the platonic friendship you felt for Woo or Mina. Jin stood up from his bed, making his way towards, before giving you some parting words, “I’ll have Jungkook come show you where the showers are.” 

After your encounter with Jin this morning, you were reeling from the onslaught of emotions you were feeling. You weren’t given much time to think too much about it though, because once you finished your breakfast, Jungkook came to give you a short, and rather quiet, tour of the building. 

Like Seokjim promised, Jungkook showed you where the one bathroom was located, which looked more like a gym locker room than a bathroom. There were shower stalls, benches, and a couple of toilets and sinks along with a wall of lockers. It looked to be a changing room for employees of the mill. Jungkook had brought with him your black linen pants, washed by Jin according to him, and another large t-shirt. He didn’t want to admit it was his this time, and blushed fiercely as he handed them over to you, along with a clean towel.

Jungkook kindly showed you how to work the showers, helping you turn one on because of your hands. He also sweetly helped unwrap your hands and feet so you could properly shower and clean the cuts and scrapes. After he was done, he turned away, telling you he would wait on the benches for you to finish. As he was retreating, you reached out your hand to grab his forearm, “Wait - I- I can’t really lift my arms up,” you mumbled, warily looking up into his wide deer-in-headlights eyes, “can- can you help me?” You’ve never been shy about your body or nudity, but something about Jungkook seeing you nearly naked, made you feel like a shy teenager again. 

You thought Jungkook was about to spontaneously combust the way he was staring at you. His shoulders were squared and nearly meeting his ears, lips pursed into a tight line, and eyes the size of dinner plates. You almost laughed at his expression, but then remembered how awkward this situation was for the both of you.

“I- I - ye- yes,” Jungkook was a stuttering mess, but wanted to offer you his help regardless. He felt like he was on fire with the way his cheeks and neck were heating. Slowly, you retracted your hand from his forearm when you felt like he wasn’t about to bolt out of the room. Jungkook carefully reached for the hem and your shirt and you turned around so your back was facing him to make this all less embarrassing. The boy audibly gulped as he slowly pulled your shirt upwards removing it from your head first, pushing it towards your front. He stepped closer to you so there was barely an inch of space between your now bare back and his front. Reaching his arms around you, he gripped the shirt and slid it down your arms, removing it from you completely. His fingers ever so slightly brushed the skin on your arms and made a shiver run up your spine. Jungkook didn’t miss the way you let out a strangled breath, almost inaudible.

 He needed to cool off, quickly. 

You quietly thanked him, quickly covering your breasts with your arms, as he turned away still holding Jin’s shirt and made his way out of the bathroom without another word. 

After your much needed shower you struggled to dress yourself, but you would rather cut off your own arm than go through the embarrassment of finding Jungkook to help you again. Once you were finally decent, you found Jungkook sitting on the benches outside of the shower room, just like he said he would be. He has visibly calmed down, now wearing a calm expression. When he noticed you walk into the room, he gave you a small smile. “Feel better?” 

You nodded enthusiastically, happy to feel clean again.

Next, Jungkook showed you the small kitchen that Jin spoke of earlier. It was more like a kitchenette, almost like an employee break room. It had a tiny refrigerator, cabinets that were filled with dry goods, a sink, and one electric burner. The building was so old, you were shocked to see the kitchen in such great condition. At the shocked look on your face, Jungkook told you that Jin really loved to cook and worked really hard to clean it up and keep it that way. Your face flushed at the reminder of the older man who was making your heart feel things just this morning. The thought of him caring so much about his kitchen, moving about in here cooking the delicious food you ate for breakfast, made your stomach twist in a pleasant way. 

The last place Jungkook showed you was a mostly empty room on the second floor of the building. He told you that they didn’t use the second story much, considering the state of disrepair of the place, they didn’t want to risk getting hurt up here. But this room, Jungkook told you, was his favorite place to hang out. It was a rectangular concrete room that had a large expanse of windows on the far  wall. Some of the windows were broken, allowing the breeze from outside to enter. In front of the windows sat a small tan sofa that looked like it had seen better days. Jungkook led you over to the windows, and you quickly realized why he liked this room so much. 

You could see the entire quarry from up here. It was beautiful. At the bottom of the quarry was water that took on an incredible aquamarine color, turning almost green in the sunlight. The water was completely still, no disruptions on the surface, making it look serene. Along the bank of water, there were lush, green bushes and trees swaying slightly in the wind. On the other side of the quarry, you could see a small patch of yellow and purple flowering plants. Along the steep sides of the cliffs, you could see the smooth surface of exposed marble. Over the years, the marble has become weathered and looked smooth to the touch. The late morning sun, high in the sky, was reflecting off of the stone in a way that made it sparkle. It was an incredible sight, and you were surprised you’d never seen it like this before, having been out here in the past. 

As you stood there, taking in the breathtaking scenery, Jungkook was taking in you. You had a look of mirth in your eyes, and he mentally patted himself on the back for bringing you up here. He took in your side profile, admiring your sharp features that looked as if they were carved from the very marble you were currently staring at. He loved the way your soft lips were forming a small pout, eyes focused on the sight in front of you. He didn’t realize he was grinning at you, until you turned around with a look of shock on your face.

A grin spread across your face as you saw Jungkook’s smile for the first time. It reminded you of a bunny, large front teeth on display for you to admire. You stood there for a moment, smiling at each other before you both started giggling. “Thank you for showing me this, Jungkook,” you crooned once the laughter had subsided. He just smiled at you in return before looking back out towards the quarry. You stayed in a comfortable silence after that, before Jungkook deemed it time to head back downstairs. 

Downstairs, Jungkook led you to a room that was right in the middle of the long hallway that contained all the other rooms. “This is Yoongi-hyung’s room,” he cautioned, hand on the door, “don’t worry, Joon-hyung told him to be nice,” he rushed out, seeing the fearful look on your pretty features. 

You were still uncertain, but nodded at Jungkook anyways, prompting him to open the door. Jungkook waited patiently for you to enter the room on your own with no pressure from him. You peeked around the corner to find the occupants of the room all staring right at you. You purse your lips into a tight line and avert your gaze to your newfound safe harbor, Seokjin, who was sitting on a black leather couch. His eyes softened at your uncomfortable look before scooting over to make room for you on the couch, patting the seat next to him, inviting you over. You hesitantly walked over and plopped down on the soft cushion.

Jin rubbed a large hand on your shoulder briefly to calm you down before placing both hands in his lap. As you felt yourself relax a bit, you took in your surroundings. Jungkook was still standing near the door, leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. He looked oddly stoic, shedding the shy persona he usually wore. The room was fairly large, or at least, larger than the rest of the rooms you’ve been in. Against the right wall was the black leather couch you and Jin were currently sat on, and to your right against the far wall were two arm chairs, one of which was occupied by Namjoon. Sat in a desk chair in front of what looked like an old corporate desk, was Yoongi, with multiple laptops and devices sprawled out in front of him. Leaning against the wall behind Yoongi was another man, one you didn’t recognize, but you assumed was Hoseok. He was staring intently at you. His expression was unreadable, not cold, but not welcoming either. He looked intense with bright red hair, a sharp jawline that looked like it could cut diamonds, dressed in all black. He was a little intimidating and not at all like the golden retriever type boy Namjoon had described to you last night.

As you took in the men around the room, you hadn’t noticed Yoongi and Namjoon discussing a possible plan to break the twins out of Big Hit. “Jimin said there might be a window of time where no one is around,” Yoongi scoffed, “but you remember what happened last time he said that.”

Namjoon nodded his head. Now you were listening intently to their conversation, as were the other men in the room. “We need to trust Jimin, Yoongs. He’s the one inside there, he sees what’s going on, we don’t,” Namjoon sighed, running his hands over his knees, apparently a self-soothing mechanism, “if you think you can get in and knock out the cameras, we might as well give it a shot. We will make sure we’re better prepared this time.” Namjoon seemed defeated. You weren’t sure what happened ‘last time’, but it didn’t sound good.

“It doesn’t matter how prepared we are, he was wrong about the window last time. By two hours. If he’s wrong again we could get caught, or killed,” Yoongi snapped, anger apparent in his eyes, “I’m not willing to risk you guys again.”

“What about her?” This time, it was the redhead who spoke. You hadn’t noticed his eyes on you throughout the entire conversation, assessing you.

“No!” Both Jin and Jungkook barked at the same time, making you jump in your seat. Jin set a soothing hand on your shoulder as you looked at him, and then at Hoseok with wide eyes. Jin shook his head aggressively before looking at Yoongi and Hoseok, “No way. She’s never been there, she would have no idea what to do. You’re not willing to risk one of us, but willing to risk her?” He snarled, you haven’t seen him angry before, and you were positive you didn’t want to be on the receiving end of his anger. 

Over by the door, Jungkook had uncrossed his arms and was walking towards Yoongi’s desk. “You can’t send her in there, hyung,” he started, placing both hands palm down on the desk, “please.”

Yoongi looked up at the maknae with soft eyes before pursing his lips and sighing through his nose. Behind him, Hoseok raised his hands in surrender, “It was just a suggestion,” he sighed out passively, “we’ve all lived there at some point or another, they would recognize us immediately, just like last time.”

“They know her too. Hyunwoo has been scouting her for months, according to Jimin. We can’t let her go in there.” It was Namjoon who was being the voice of reason this time, causing both Jin and Jungkook to let out a collective sigh of relief. The five men continued to argue while you got lost in your thoughts. Hoseok wanted you to navigate Big Hit? Alone? You mulled it over in your head for a minute, remembering Yoongi’s words. If he was able to hack the cameras, they wouldn’t be able to see you, right? You felt so grateful towards Jin and Namjoon, and even Jungkook, for helping you, you wanted to contribute in some way. You wanted to help them, ease their pain at the loss of their friends.

With this thought in mind, you spoke up, “I could do it…” you trailed off, voice quiet. All five of the men’s heads snapped towards you, most with looks of disbelief on their faces. Even Hoseok hadn’t expected you to agree, he was testing you, to see how you would react. Yoongi looked at you curiously, waiting for your next words. He couldn’t deny the clench in his heart at Seokjin’s words. No, he wasn’t willing to risk you, but if you were offering... “I mean.. I want to help,” you hesitated, looking between Jin and Jungkook who were now looking angrily at you. You shrunk in on yourself a bit, awaiting their response. 

“Then it’s settled,” Yoongi remarked. He was trying hard to contain the fear he felt at allowing you to enter Big Hit alone. He knew it was dangerous, and he really wanted to not care about your well-being, but try as he might, he was terrified of allowing you to do this. He assumed he hid it well though, because everyone bar Hoseok was looking at him with incredulousness. 

“No way,” Seokjin spoke first, his tone leaving nothing up for discussion, “this conversation is over.” Jin stood up abruptly, looking directly at Namjoon, “You aren’t ok with this, are you?” The look in his eye was intense, and Namjoon could feel it. He could feel the emotions Jin felt towards you, that he was going to do whatever it took to protect you. Namjoon would be lying to himself if he said he didn’t feel the same way.

Namjoon let out a short sigh and closed his eyes before setting his gaze on Yoongi, “We can figure this out without involving YN.” 

“You heard her,” Yoongi growled, “she’s willing to risk her life. Who am I to tell her no?”

From there, the argument got even more heated, Jungkook even getting involved at one point. You were starting to feel uncomfortably hot in this cramped space. You understood both sides. You wanted to help, but you also knew that whatever you were volunteering yourself to do was dangerous. You needed air.

Suddenly, you stood up from the sofa announcing to the others that you ‘needed space’ and bolted out the door. Jungkook turned to run after you, but Hoseok, who was now standing next to the youngest, put his hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Let me go Hobi-hyung, I need to make sure YN is ok,” Jungkook rushed out, turning to the elder.

“Let her go, Kookie. This is probably a lot for her,” Hoseok told the boy, who looked like his heart was breaking at his words, “She’ll be ok, give her time.”

In your haste to remove yourself from the situation, you missed the look of absolute devastation on Jin’s face. He didn’t want you to feel like you had to do anything to repay them. He didn’t want you to feel like you owed them. He couldn’t believe how strongly he felt for you after only one day, longing for your presence next to him, now that it was suddenly gone. He could see that Jungkook - and to some extent, Namjoon - felt similarly. 

Namjoon’s heavy sigh could be heard by everyone in the room, even over the loud chatter between the boys, as he slowly rose from his seat. As he made his way over to the door, he looked over his shoulder at the hacker. “Fix this.” His words held a finality that made Yoongi gulp. The blonde had a stoic outer shell that was hard to crack, but no one in this building could deny Namjoon was the one in charge, the one they wouldn’t defy. Yoongi nodded, biting the inside his cheek to hold back his retorts as Namjoon left the room. 

After you burst out of Yoongi’s room earlier, you ran towards the big metal door that led outside the warehouse. You didn’t really want to go home, you were way too scared of what might be waiting for you there, but you did need some fresh air and some time to process everything that has happened to you since yesterday. 

You made your way down the long winding path that led back to the fork in the path at the edge of the forest. You were thankful Jungkook had found you a pair of slippers earlier and you were no longer barefoot. You passed the broken fence blocking the dirt road down to the quarry and carefully hiked down until you were at the embankment and sat on the edge of the water. It really was beautiful and now that you were up close, you could see how clear the water was. It looked like liquid gemstones, barely rippling in the slight breeze. The marble looked so pretty up close, nearly snow white with swirls and lines of grey. It was calming out here. You took a few deep breaths, inhaling the scent of the water and the trees. 

You have never done well with crowds of people. Not that five men were a crowd by any means, but you weren’t used to being around more than a couple of people at a time. Growing up, you had severe anxiety, especially while at school, and it carried over to adulthood. You also haven’t had many chances to socialize as an adult, outside of Mina and Woo. Being thrown into a situation with five men, two of whom you don’t think even want you around, is a lot. It’s only been twenty four hours and you’re already starting to regret leaving your home. You thought about your mom, and the huge breakfasts and dinners she would make for you and your father. Your father, who you didn’t know if you could even trust anymore. You’ve lived your whole life putting all your trust in your parents, as one should. But now you were questioning everything. Were they aware of your genetic rarity? Did they know about Big Hit all along? You had so many unanswered questions that you would probably never have answers to unless you went home.

Your mind wandered to Mina and Woo. How you weren’t sure if you would ever get to see them again. You were worried about them, worried that they would look for you and find themselves in some kind of trouble. They were your only friends growing up, and you didn’t even get to properly say goodbye to them. You didn’t realize you were crying until you felt something wet and warm drop into your lap. You were wearing the pants that you got dressed in yesterday morning before what could’ve been your last breakfast with your family. At that thought, the dam within you broke and the tears started flowing. 

While staring at your damaged hands, you were reminded of Seokjin, and his caring nature. The tall, broad shouldered man who has shown you nothing but kindness. He was so gentle with you, like no one ever has been before. He made your heart flutter and your mind blank when he spoke to you. You thought back to how angry he had been with his own friends, over you, a girl he just met. He was defending you, and it made you feel like you were tearing a family apart. You didn’t want to bring him, or anyone else for that matter, any pain or harm. But then you thought back to how nice his large hand had felt against the delicate skin of your face this morning, and how his words had made you blush with fondness. You’ve never loved someone outside of your family, never even had a crush before. You weren’t sure how to define what you felt for Seokjin, but it felt good. 

Then you thought about Namjoon, the well spoken and intelligent man who was the reason you were brought in with welcoming arms. From what you’ve gathered, he was the one who pushed to find you, to make sure they did something to stop Big Hit from getting to you. You were thankful for him, and you didn’t want to put him in a position where he had to choose you or his brothers. He cared for them deeply, you could see that clearly. 

Jungkook was mysterious to you. He seemed so shy and timid, yet he was so angry with Yoongi earlier in defense of you. He had shown you one of the most beautiful places you’ve ever witnessed before, and given you one of the most precious smiles you’ve ever seen. You wanted to learn more about him, get to know him, be his friend. You felt drawn to the boy and wanted to protect him. It was odd, you’ve never felt an instinct to take care of someone else before, aside from maybe your cat. You wondered if that was how Seokjin felt towards the rest of them, the thought causing your heart to clench, emphatic towards him.  

The red haired man, Hoseok, was the one you knew the least about. It felt like he didn’t really like you, but he was so hard to read. You remembered what Namjoon said about him being excitable and friendly, but you had yet to experience it yourself. As much as you felt unwelcomed by him and Yoongi, you still felt inclined to get to know him better, a pull to him, much like the others. You couldn’t explain these feelings, and they were confusing you.

The last man of the group, the blonde. Yoongi. He definitely didn’t want you here, and definitely made you feel unwelcome. But could you blame him? You weren’t mad at him. No. You understood completely how he felt. You were a stranger, disposable, and you weren’t his friend. He had no reason to care about you. None of them did. You mentally berated yourself for allowing your mind to conjure up the idea that they owe you anything, that you deserved their care and affection. 

As you sat and cried silently to yourself, you let the dark thoughts take over your mind. Were you some kind of charity case to Namjoon? Like he felt the need to save someone who was like him and that’s all you meant to them? Maybe they felt sorry for you, and that’s why they were treating you so kindly. Seokjin acted caring towards everyone, why were you anything special? You were acting crazy, it’s only been a day with these men and you’re already feeling such a strong pull to them. You need to get a hold of yourself. You continued to sit there, on the edge of the water, shoulders hunched as you cried silently. As the day went on, and the sun started to set beyond the hills, your mind was plagued with the thoughts that this was all a horrible, horrible idea. 

To be continued….

A/N: if you made it this far, first of all, THANK YOU! If you want to be added to the taglist, make sure you’re following me and send me an ask. if you enjoy the series consider reblogging so it can reach more readers. i’m feeling a little down about writing right now, so i’m trying to make sure to update next sunday. we will be meeting the twins in the next couple chapters, depending on how long they get, and you will be getting some steamy scenes between YN and (a) boy shortly. much love 

xx Des

taglist:  @minifruity​  @mrcleanheichou @arantxaglz​ @chim-possible​ 

copyright 2020 aliendes

[fanfictalk]

Masterlist of Exceptional Writing Prompts

Yes these are lifted directly from our challenges at fanfictalk+

gamers/discord users who fall in love with each other’s online anonymous persona but want to kill each other at work

lake/beach/cabin trip featuring a rowdy friend group where feelings are realized

space station life

rival teachers being shipped by their students

ethical pirates

steampunk/cyberpunk

tech support/office luddite falling

tabletop gaming group

modern mythology retellings

oh my god they were labmates

thieves guild/crime syndicate

reading thirst tweets

remote researcher(s) in the middle of nowhere

spending the night at a haunted house

shy, awkward library love

watch my pet while I'm out of town and then we get in the habit of talking and ,,,

Flirty rival hackers Atlantis? Some kind of lost city discovery.

Spy/Assassin/Hitman to lovers

Overbearing parent/boss setting up annoyed characters but oh hey you’re actually cute 

Royalty/political figure heart eyes for their bodyguard  

LGBTQA+ mafia. LITERALLY. WE DESERVE IT.

Necromancer mortician/crime scene investigator/cold case detective who raises the dead to avenge their murder

Character is being catfished. When they see the person the catfish is pretending to be irl after a bad “breakup” with the catfisher, they confront them. Screaming rando to lovers AU.

Blissful found family moments 

Archaeologists being cool

One person taking a friendly competition way too far and the other going along with it because they are cute

Friends who are DEFINITELY dating but don’t realize they are pretty much dating already until the big feelings tm moment. 

Character caught another character staring and winked, resulting in the staring character needing to die from humiliation and vowing to never look at them again (the more dramatic the better)

Time-traveler who can’t figure out how to do something very basic to the time period who gets help from a suspicious person of the time period. 

Grumpy night owl neighbor/chipper morning person neighbor

A librarian helps a quester continuously find information until one day the quester becomes a missing person. Librarian must sift through the paper trail until they can rescue the quester. 

Princesses falling in love and joining their kingdoms and shit just working out. I deserve a win. Pls.

Give the village hag a love story pleeeease

Infiltrate something and then dismantle it from the inside 

Where a distraction or feat ABSOLUTELY shouldn’t work but then character rolls the metaphorical nat 20 and it does (*gasp* what’s that over there?” to avert the enemy’s attention and they look like the absolute fools they are)

Chosen One absolutely refuses to start the quest. Will not save the day. Zero interest. 

The designated mom friend of a group of morally grey criminals

A pet monster being a good boi only for its person and then meets the person’s unknowing soulmate and is a good boi for them too (let’s call it the Persephone Effect)

Supernatural coffee shop or diner or something featuring creatures like vampires, werewolves, witches etc. bonus points if it fits a lo-fi vibe.

“We have to stop meeting like this”

Wrong number but they keep texting anyway 

Bouncer/bartender and the characters that they have to deal with along the way

Left at the altar, a character and their best bud go on the non refundable honeymoon. Maybe heart eyes or maybe wholesome friend time. I support both. 

Office rivals/enemies to lovers but with some kind of twist along the way. 

Villain gets the girl/guy/person without doing too much character redemption. Just let villains villain y'know? 

Some form of dark academia (mystery, murder, secrets, etc)

The mundane downsides of immortality (seeing your friend's famous book misconstrued but not being able to speak up, really craving a dessert that is some form of lost knowledge and you can't remember what the recipe was, etc) 

A psychic who can only predict boring minor things like what others will eat for lunch today or whether there will be traffic. 

A vampire stuck with a wildlife rehabber who thinks they are an injured or sickly bat with several failed escape attempts.

[floatingcatacombs]

Evaluting Gatchaman Crowds Through Rui’s Outfits

12 Days of Aniblogging 2020, Day 1

Oh, I’m fashionably late to this one. Gatchaman Crowds is a 2013 superhero anime that serves as a soft reboot of the old tokusatsu franchise, only now with 21st century shitty anime tropes. From this painfully generic setup emerges a surprisingly layered evaluation of technological disruption in the smartphone era. For this reason, Crowds is a favorite amongst anime bloggers as a superhero work that’s actually trying to do something interesting.

Unfortunately I don’t care about any of these guys

But it’s also a favorite amongst all sorts of weirdos because of the character Rui Ninomiya. A horrifying amalgamation of the technolibertarian CEO and trans femme hacker archetypes, Rui is by far the most interesting character in the show, because they’re a surprisingly prescient look at how the tech industry will function throughout the 2010s. But they’re also a ‘boy’ who never leaves their house without dressing in the most girly clothes imaginable. Predictably, this is catnip for me. But the funniest part of the whole situation is that nobody ever addresses it. Rui never provides an explanation for their outfits and the rest of the cast just uses she/her until they properly get acquainted and switch to he/him.

I could tell you that Rui’s obviously trans and wrap up the post right there, but that’s honestly not the most interesting angle of attack here. So I’m just going to use whatever pronouns I feel like in the moment for them and focus on what really matters: fashion! Rui has a surprisingly large wardrobe throughout the show, so I’ll be doing the heavy lifting of ranking each of her outfits. Oh, and also maybe a little analysis of what she represents. Spoilers for the whole show, of course.

7. The Yellow Dress

Let me lay out Rui’s ideology before I lay into their fashion disaster. You see, they’re a tech disruptor who believes that governments and bureaucracies are too slow to achieve the monumental (yet unspecified) change that society needs. So, they preside over a smartphone app called GALAX that successfully predicts Pokemon Go’s geosocial AR gimmick three years early. GALAX is a technolibertarian’s wet dream – crowdsourced emergency response, interest-based meetups, and matchmaking for people who need specific help and the people who can help them, all deeply gamified.

Their outfit here is about as messy as their politics, but at the same time, what a look. She’s got blue-and-white-striped programming thigh highs on under her combat boots, which are both such trans iconography, you know? While they may just be a reflection of early-2010s 4chan crossdressing culture, it’s also totally possible that Rui directly influenced or reinforced trans girl fashion, like the accelerationist she is. What a prescient show, in all sorts of weird ways.

6. Lace-up Dress with Bunny Ears

It wouldn’t be an anime girl cosplay without some bunny ears, now would it? Rui spends 5 minutes in an early episode just wandering around the city in this outfit, listening to people’s conversations and feelings on GALAX. There’s something very funny about how nobody even notices them, like they’re completely invisible despite their ridiculous outfit. This actually factors back into the tech stuff! Like pretty much every tech company, Rui’s app and vision are both sleek and shiny but rely on tremendous amounts of dirty labor kept as hidden as possible. From Amazon’s inhumane warehouse conditions to Facebook’s trauma-inducing moderator farms to Apple’s child labor-tainted supply chains, there’s always suffering humans behind the too-good-to-be-true magic of tech companies. Rui’s lie by omission is failing to mention that the app relies on invisible extradimensional beings called CROWDS that are manually controlled by underpaid workers to assist its users. One of the workers comes to Rui challenging their vision and arguing that they should be sharing this tech with the movers and shakers of the world, not trying to keep it invisible. He threatens a collective walkout and Rui fires him. At this point, we’re not even operating on metaphors.

5. Green Business Casual

Sure, most tech companies have cruel labor underbellies, but there’s also the separate risk of moral rot. It’s what causes Microsoft to take on ICE contracts and Google to develop censored versions of their search engine at the whims of authoritarians. Many tech companies start off with an altruistic message, but without a serious ethical core, they will start doing a whole lot of evil as they bend to financial and other pressures. Rui’s version of this is extremely literal: she made a deal with the devil to gain the ability to use the CROWDS and launch her app. Except this devil is also a butch gender-noncomforming alien (there is a Lot of other gender going on in this show that I don’t even have time for) and the two of them seem to have an extremely fucked-up relationship. Like any good Faustian bargain or any bad attempt at raising more venture capital without a viable business model, eventually the whole thing comes tumbling down and now you’re doing something terribly fucked up. Rui looks good in a dress shirt, at least!

4. Whatever your abusive partner puts on when she body-snatches you

Of course the center won’t hold, GALAX is subject to a hostile takeover, and to nobody’s surprise, an app with the flimsy promise to change the world for the better can actually be way better at ripping it all apart. I guess the prescient social media parallel here is Facebook being used to propagate Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing, or really anything related to Twitter for the last 5 years. FuckedUpAlienMimic!Rui sure does have cute fangs and a way more refined fashion sense though. I don’t feel like looking into that one.

3. Business....Futch?

I know I’m not done outlining Rui’s arc, but I’m going to skip ahead for a moment to say that Gatchaman Crowds also has a second season! I’m largely ignoring it here because Rui is pretty much stripped of all plot relevance and most of her outfits are less exciting, but I had to include this one. For two episodes, she puts on bright yellow stirrup leggings and an oversized polo shirt, with a cute ponytail to boot. It’s a ridiculous look, but still feels really evocative to me. Sometimes a girl just has to put together completely uncoordinated outfits and see what happens.

Unlike the disruption-focused first season, Gatchaman Crowds season two, which aired in 2015, is about how unfettered technolibertarianism can easily descend into fascism. Goddammit.

2. The Bunny Ears Outfit Again Oh God Who Hurt Her

The weight of the world comes crashing down in Rui’s hands, she’s bruised and beaten in a surprisingly sadistic manner by her alien ex-business partner/girlfriend, and she’s locked out of her own company which is very quickly causing society to fall apart. So what does she do? She puts the bunny dress back on, and wanders the streets again until she has to call upon the powers that be to fix her own mess. It’s silly that the powers that be in this world are superheroes, but I bet you forgot that this was technically a superhero show at this point. Anyways, my extended metaphor is quickly drifting off course, but I guess this is the part where Rui gets grilled by Congress and slapped with an antitrust case.

1. Every Trans Girl Stereotype Rolled Into One

I’ve been incredibly harsh on Rui throughout this writeup, because I’m harsh on the industry she represents, but I’ll make it up with this section. Look at what she’s wearing! A choker, the gothiest Hot Topic dress imaginable, arm warmers, no less than three asymmetric garters not even holding up anything, and the tallest black boots she could find. It’s incredible! If the first outfit on this list was hinting at her relationship to stereotypical trans fashion, then this outfit just screams it. It’s the perfect goth femme hacker look, a style commitment I have no choice but to respect.

Gatchaman is a weird show. After spending most of its runtime thoroughly dunking on tech disruptors for being too optimistic and uncritical, it takes a last-minute turn into Lockean state of nature arguments. It settles on “the masses are inherently good enough that empowering people through technology shouldn’t ever be a problem”, ignoring all the suffering that happened due to Rui’s unwillingness to curate their own technology. I’d give Gatchaman Crowds an average rating, but it’s one of those interesting average ratings where instead of being milquetoast, they tried something and failed and wrote themselves into a corner. But hey, at least there’s an interestingly gendered character!

[preetsposting]

Hello! I've found my way here through your Dimileth fic on AO3 :). You mentioned that you take requests? If so, would you be up to write a short university AU meet-cute for Dimitri and Byleth?

Ack!~ Thank you for stopping by! Yes yes this sounds cute and exciting I’ll put it under the cut.  (whoops, this kind of turned into a hackers AU set in a university rather than a more university focused AU rip)

Author’s note - technical Capture the Flags are games where hackers have to find bugs and solve puzzles to find "flags," bits of data that tell the system you've completed a given task. (source). We had a ton at my University.

It was rare that Dimitri would actually attend class in person. He’d either watch the lectures after-the-fact at twice the speed (you can’t blame him, professors are boring), or peruse the slides at around 2am while eating an entire pot of Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese. 

He didn’t really like being around people (and he was a bit of a tough pill to be around - people didn’t really like being around him either). He spent most of his time holed up in his apartment, straw blonde locks touching the keyboard as he hunched over the computer, fearless leader of “Farghus” - the vigilante hacker group. 

He admired two people. 

One of them was AshenDemon, a new addition to their online force. Formerly a self-described “online mercenary”, they had decided to lend their technical prowess to Farghus, and had quickly proven themselves to be the most competent hacker of the bunch, even more-so than Dimitri. They seemed content, though, to simply advise him - they said they had no interest in leading the group. They felt that Dimitri was more than capable, and was stronger than them in many aspects - a complement that made him shoot a rare smile at the glow of his computer screen.

The other person was the TA for the Computer Security class he had taken last semester. Byleth Eisner was only a year older than him, but she was the PhD student that advised the course. You see, even though it was rare that Dimitri went to class, it wasn’t impossible. 

There was something about bantering with Byleth during their discussion section that really drew him out of his shell - she knew her stuff, and she had absolutely humiliated him at the Capture The Flag weekend that the course had put together for fun after the semester had ended. 

And, he hated to admit it, she was really pretty. Like, really really pretty. And that was, secretly, one of the reasons he was okay leaving his apartment to go to class.

And maybe, that was also why he was so nervous about the fact that she had asked him to coffee. It wasn’t a date, she was very clear about the fact that she just wanted to catch up and talk about one of the newest operating system exploits in the news (that he had engineered, but she didn’t know that). But that didn’t stop him from running a comb through his unkempt hair, finding a nice pair of pants to replace his sweats, and practicing his unpracticed smile in the mirror a few times. 

He glanced at his computer, the most recent conversation he had with AshenDemon pulled up from before they had reported the OS exploit to the developers.

HighLordsLance: I’m going to report this anonymously. I don’t think we can handle any more publicity right now. Even if we’re doing good things, the attention just makes our work harder. I don’t want the corps or the media interfering. Reporters trying to infiltrate are *so clumsy*.

AshenDemon: I get that, but your approach is too flamboyant. They’ll know it just from the report. An anonymous report isn’t anonymous if every exploit you report is approached the same way. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

HighLordsLance: I really think it’ll be fine. Not that it matters, anyway. I think it’ll be fine.

AshenDemon: I’m calling it. SecDaily is going to figure it out first based on the style of your approach.

HighLordsLance: You’re on.

AshenDemon: Buy me dinner if I’m right.

HighLordsLance: I’ll download DoorDash and send you whatever you want. ;) But I don’t think you have a chance in hell. The guys at SecDaily are idiots.

- - -

“How’ve classes been, Dimitri?” Byleth rarely smiled, but he noted (sourly - it was kind of unfair) that even the smallest upward twitch of her lips was radiant. She slid into the seat across from him in the booth they had claimed at the coffee shop, extra large drink in hand, faded green waves thrown up messily in a bun.

“I went through twice the usual amount of mac ‘n cheese to get through Computer Architecture. Professor Mudge is intolerable.” He sipped his coffee, finding ways to avoid eye contact as innocuously as possible. Her eyes were mesmerizing. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself by staring. “I’ve been focusing more on side-projects, lately.”

“I see.” She eyed him as if she wanted to say something more. “Anything interesting?”

He shrugged his broad shoulders silently. He knew that she knew about Farghus, just not his involvement with it. They had gotten into many an argument about the ethics of vigilante hacking. “Not really.” “You sure?” She pulled up an article on her phone and flashed the screen at him, eyebrow raised. Published two minutes ago. SecDaily: Hacker Group Farghus Discovers Day Zero Operating System Exploit.

He paled slightly. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” His voice was gruff. He took a gulp of his coffee, scalding his tongue in the process. “I mean, it’s an interesting exploit, sure, but-” “Dimitri.” She interrupted him. Her voice was almost playful, a note he had never heard in it before. “I think you have to take me out to dinner.” A flush raised to his cheeks, dusting across his nose. “Hold on-” “...or does the High Lord’s Lance not keep to his word?” She smirked and downed the rest of her drink. “Pick me up at 7, yeah?”

[nolahthestranger]

I don’t know when was the last time I finished a book in a day...

But here we are! I got this beauty yesterday at last! And today I’ve finished it! This won’t be a review because I couldn’t be objective enough even if I wanted to and it’s full of irl rambling anyway... :)

I was so happy when I got to know that my all-time-favourite topic will get a book and could hardly wait to get my hands on it! 

Anthropodermic bibliopegy became my weird obsession when I had to prepare a presentation for one of my university courses about bookbinding. I was at a loss bacause I had no idea what topic to choose. I was absentmindedly looking through Wikipedia articles when the term caught my eyes. As I read on I became inreasingly fascinated and decided I’d do my presentation on this topic. I did ‘some’ digging and this term and the practice itself is not mentioned in my native language (aside from clickbait articles with no scientific background). So I had to work from English sources. It wasn’t a problem at that time, but when I wrote my thesis about this very topic, I had to use VPNs and other stuff to be able to access sources. I felt like hacker sometimes. It was fun!

As were the reactions from my classmates and my teachers... I admit, this is not a topic anyone in their right mind would choose, BUT it’s so freaking interesting!!! I was always fascinated by death and macabre things so I thought this was fitting. So this topic became my hyperfixation... Thing is, it”s such a ‘niche’ area of research (and somewhat young territory too), that I had a very limited store of resources, sadly. But everything I’ve found, I’ve read it religiously.

Fast forward to last year and I’m defending my thesis. I was on the verge of a panic attack, before the exam my thesis advisor teacher told me the obvious: there’ll be a lot of questions about my topic. That didn’t help. But I was so invested in my topic that it kinda gave me courage and I nervously laughed during the entire thing. And there were questionsand I’ve answered them with a bit of weird enthusiasm and the theachers were baffled as to why I chose this topic. I told them about my fascination with it and they were kind of amazed?

Ever since then I regulary check if there’re more info on this topic, but sadly there’re not many. Aside from a photo album found in Poland last year, iirc.

You could imagine my reaction when I got wind of this book... 

So... This was an amazing read, from and amazing person (I really like that it’s written the way it is. I didn’t know I needed the personal touch to this, but God, it made me respect her even more!). Although it haven’t said a lot of new things to me, it put the topic more into perspective. How amazing is the fact that you can read about human-skin-bound books from relatively first hand? She was there, she held those books, her team tested those books! Can you imagine? Morbid as it may be, it’s on my bucket list to see a book bound in human skin once. It was like reading a detective story, where I knew the end but it was still really interesting and informative. I was so happy that the informations I’ve used writing my thesis waved back to me from the firsthand source. And let me tell you, I’m only now proud of my work. It’s only now that I acknowledge that I did good, because there aren’t many articles or blog posts about it in my native language. I’m proud of it even if there won’t be many people reading it and it’s nowhere as good as I now want it to be! :) 

I’m so thankful for Megan Rosenbloom for writing this book. I hope that more people will realize what an interesting topic this is and in the future more institutions will allow their alleged books to be tested (whether with PMF or some non-destructive method). 

All in all, this book is amazing. It collects the known, tested and even a few alleged examples of books bound in human skin, tells the stories behind them, puts the practice of binding books in human skin in ethical perspective and adds a whole lot of first person point of view to it. And all the while remaining informative but not dry. Not to mention that the dust jacket looks so good!

This book will be my treasure. And I’m a bit sad that I’m not living in the US because I’d have ordered a signed copy.. But I’m not complaining. :) 

[vagrantblvrd]

Young criminal Rimy Tim who's only distunguishing feature is his hair hat he dyes a new color when he does crimes. The news calls him Rainbow Hood and the Fakes send Vagabond to look into this new criminal. jermwood?

Oh my God, I’m just. I’m picturing Jeremy who gets caught up with the wrong crowd or something? Has this One Friend who gets into the Crimes back in Boston and gets in over their head, goes to Jeremy for help when they realize they’re fucked and Jeremy tries to help but it escalates out of control and Jeremy’s friend bails.

Jeremy’s friend is a real asshole and tries to pin it all on Jeremy who is legit a Good Kid and is like fuck because there are people trying to kill him and the worst he’s done is get into a (tiny!) bar fight that one time his freshman year i college. He’s a Junior now, not that it matters because he has to fucking get the hell out of the city if he doesn’t want to die - circumstances where he doesn’t want to get his family and friends dragged into things because it would just get them killed, so he runs, right?

Runs and runs and runs, and ends up in Los Santos where he finally has time to think and realizes he’s kind of an idiot? But yeah. No going back now and he tries to get legit jobs, but it’s real hard because he doesn’t have an actual address and so on, and he makes friends with this guy staying in the room next to his at this shady motel.

Guy who points him in the direction of a a guy who knows a guy who an get him work? Under the table kind of stuff, wink wink.

Jeremy’s almost out of money and doesn’t have a lot of options, and maybe thinks it’s just. He doesn’t know, is busy trying to lie to himself about it all and sucks up his pride and all and goes to see this guy.

Starts him out small, just deliveries and the whatnot at first. Stuff Jeremy doesn’t feel too guilty about. (Ignorance is bliss and all.)

After a while he gets more important stuff to do, things he can’t ignore and wriggles out of working for the guy because he doesn’t like where it’s leading? (Others like him who got disappeared for fucking up/asking too many questions and Jeremy knows he’ll be one of them becaue he’s an idiot with a big mouth.)

Finally gets a quasi-legal job washing dishes at some corner diner kind of deal.

Pays not great, but there’s an almost-attic - storage space - above the diner where the owner lets Jeremy stay as long as he keeps his trap shut about it all, you know?

It’s super tiny, maybe four feet at the highest point but enough room for the shitty sleeping bag Jeremy picks up at a surplus store somewhere and the essentials. Jeremy works out a deal with the gym down the street where he teaches neighborhood kids how to box/defend themselves in exhange for a place to shower and all that?

The diner’s owner lets Jeremy have the botched orders - and don’t think Jeremy knows she and the line cook and everyone else fucks a few up on purpose to make sure he eats, but no one says anything about it so he doesn’t either. (They all know life’s hard, no need to make it worse than it needs to be, right? Besides he’s a good kid, would be a crime not to help him out if they can.)

Jeremy doesn’t plan to do more crimes, right? But some developers start looking at the neighborhood, pressure the business there - including the diner and gym - to sell or they’ll be sorry, and after all they’ve done for him and people like him he can’t not do something about it.

The kids or successors of the ladnwowners who lease it out to the business owners. And due to previous contracts can’t just boot them, so they raise the lease and whatnot. Try to drive them out of business so they can sell to someone offering a lot of money for the area for whatever reasons.

Jeremy can’t sit by and do nothing after everything these people have done for him and people like him so he does crimes to get them the money they need?

Anonymous gifts, but everyone knows it’s Jeremy, right?

This Rimmy Tim asshole is short as hell and the cheap dye Jeremy uses never washes out clean and anyway, he’s kind fo shit at lying about it, right?

They don’t say a damn thing because they look out for theirs and this idiot kid is definitely one of theirs.

But the assholes raise the lease higher, and the bruisers start hurting people and while Jeremy’s game to keep on stealin from the rich to give to the poor (the whole Rainbow Hood thing you mentioned?) he can’t beat up all the bruisers on his own. (Forever, anyway?)

He does a good job when it’s one or two on one, but they fight dirty and he gets hurt and it’s just. The business owners beg him to stop for his own good - they can always start up somewhere else, maybe, but he’s gonna get himself killed.

Somewhere in there Jeremy meets this scrawny asshole who likes teh pie at the diner. Claims to be good at computers and kind of “eh”, about things. ~Charms him into getting info on these developers/landowners he can use against them, but!

They’ve heard about this asshole with the revovlving hair color choices and goody-two shoes act and go after him.

Somewhere else in there the Fakes have heard about this Rimmy Tim character who may or may not have robbed one of their allies homes. (Hullum or Burnie with them as mayor and LSDP commisioner respectiely or something along those lines?)

And get curious because there was a lot of damaging information he must have seen/heard but didn’t do anything with? (The Fakes aren’t so much crimes for funsies as crimes for Good Reasons, which is why the mayor and police commisioner is willing to ~consort with them.)

SO.

They send Ryan to look into things while they takcle some other problem - not realizing both are connected.

Ryan decides to check things out as a civvie at first, goes to the diner because pie and sees Jeremy there. Happened to get there on a day the bruisers drop by and gets to see Jeremy toeing the line between smarting off to them/knuckling under so no one gets hurt? (Other customers and so on.)

Comes back later that night as the Vagabond and gets there just as Jeremy’s getting in from Doing Crimes and gets to see JEremy’s reaction at thinking someone sent Ryan to kill him.

The whole oh, shit and what kind of chance do I have against this guy? and finally well at least no one else is here to get pulled into this shitshow as Jeremy realizes he’s fucked.

Watches Jeremy get ready to throw down - resigned to losing but not going quietly and all that, but then!

Ryan’s just like, “You’re not quite what  expected,” because the crew thought he was some punk looking for an angle, but no.

Just an idiot like him and Ryan’s kind of impressed with him. Not a polished criminal or anything, but he’s got potential and obvious morals and ethics and so on.

So he offers to help Jeremy, tells a little white lie about being on a murder break so he’s out of crew shenanigans for the time being, and he’s always liked the pie here. (He does, but it’s been forever since he’s been around thanks to crew shenanigans.)

Jeremy’s dubious about the whole thing, but only an idiot would tell the Vagabond no, right?

The two of them working together to take down the asshole landowners/dvelopers which includes shenanigans of their own.

Stupid jokes and the whatnot, Jeremy realizing Ryan’s a major dork and kind of a disater and Ryan realizing Jeremy’s good for someone who never planned on Doing Crimes for a living?

Sharing meals - and pie - and just being around one another and bonding via montage scene stuff? Ryan being invited to watch Jeremy with his students at the gym - can’t shirk his duties there because it keeps the kids from getting in trouble/helps teach them how to protect themselves and so on? And is charmed at how good he is with the kids, how much they clearly adore Jeremy.

Gets roped into helping out, which means Jeremy flips him over his shoulder and pins him to the mat, face flushed and wide grin and all up in Ryan’s space and the oh no, he’s super hot on both their parts. :O

Eventually they get in over their head and while Jeremy is lowkey panicking about it - how fucked not only they but the business owners are - Ryan admits he kind of sort of lied and calls in the crew.

Everyone comparing notes and realizing their problems are really just One Big Problem so why not pool their efforts together?

They need another hacker to help Gav and whoever else out, so they call up this Myatt guy. And of course, of course Myatt is Matt, that scrawny asshole who’s got a hell of a sweet tooth on him Jeremy befriended.

And then shenanigans as they utterly destroy the asshole landowners/developers, teach them a lesson they won’t forget and make a tidy profit along the way.

Jeremy uses his cut to set the business owners up for life - has Matt help him with that - and is trying to decide what to do with his life now when Ryan shows up in civvie clothes, bashful smile and all.

Just all, hey. So I know I kind fo lied to you a bit? But I like you almost as much as I llike pie, and maybe we could do the dating thing? (It may or may not go almost exactly like that because human disaster, right?)

Meanwhile Jeremy’s staring at this asshole like oh my God, realizing he’s the goddamned Vagabond even though Ryan did nothing to disguise his voice/ridiculousness this whole time. (In fact Ryan thought Jeremy figured it out way before now, but whatever.)

Ryan gets all nervous because Jeremy’s just staring, processing the Ryan is the Vagabond business in his head?

Ryan’s about to laugh it off since Jeremy clearly isn’t interested but Jeremy snaps out of obliviousness and is just YES. Yes he would like to do the Dating Thing? VERY MUCH SO.

They’re totally being watched by the diner’s patrons and owners and fucking Matt who’s just enjoying his pie and totes not laughing at these idiots.

And then, like. Shenanigans. (Also, also, the press being Confused at the disappearance of Rainbow Hood and the sudden appearence of Rimmy Tim with the Fakes after Jeremy starts shaving his head/gets Rimmy Tim outfit together to fuck with the others.)

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND MISSES

VCs to invest in them. But the real advantage of the ten-man boat shows when you take a shower. They're obsessed with making things well. The style of writing is certainly different, though it may take multiword filtering to catch that. You have to show you're impressed with. So any difference between what people want, and if someone does offer you any, assume you'll never get any additional outside investment. Instead IBM ended up using all its power, Silicon Valley has a great weakness: the paradise Shockley found in 1956 is now one giant parking lot. Six months later they're all saying the same thing. If VCs weren't allowed to get rich, because if I'd explained things well enough, nothing should have surprised them.

And because they were one of the best in the business. So performance in the future. Another attraction of object-oriented programming is because it yields a lot of founders are surprised is that because they work fast, they expect everyone else to. A bad bug might not just crash one user's process; it could crash them all. It is now incorporated in Revenge of the Nerds. Historically metals have been the most common. So the main value of whatever you launch with is as a pretext for engaging users. A week before Demo Day, because Demo Day presentations are now so short that they rarely include much if any demo. The outsourcing type are going to want computers in their houses? So if you want to get real work done. I tend to use my inbox as a todo list.

That's barely enough time to get started. I had to predict now, I'd say that startups will build on, they have to. The other kind of client. Expose all transactions, and you with them. If it's hard to say what the overall false positive rate at the expense of the filtering rate. They're like a mountain that can walk. There is rarely a single brilliant hack that ensures success: I learnt never to bet on any one person. But when you owned something you really owned it: no one except the other founders gets to see the inevitablity of moving some things off the desktop. I was haunting galleries anyway. We know we have to teach startups this? Even others that seem quite distant.

Programs composed of expressions. No one is going to discover those. Will a startup inevitably stop being a startup as a rectangle, where one side is the number of people retain from childhood the idea that there is more chance of misses. Three million? The page was of course an ad for a porn site. When you try to solve? Our startup spent its entire marketing budget on PR: at a time.

I've had a few, I'm relieved to find they're not as bad as ever. A Plan for Spam uses a very simple definition of a token. The business person represents the voice of the customer and that's what keeps the engineers and product development on track. That's leverage. That is a liberating prospect, a lot like college. Even if you don't build something for themselves and their friends, who happen to be the kind of place nerds like. And for a significant number of users used RTML to put buttons down the left side, we made that an option in fact the data was almost certainly safer in our hands than theirs. Pride, mostly. We were not far off: this was the way to the top: The surprise for me. You can see this most clearly in New York, where people walk, but not as measured in software. It's only when you're deliberately looking for hard problems, but had to be delivered.

More and more we were starting to hear about byte code, which implies to me at least that if we find more than 15 tokens that only occur in one corpus or the other. If you don't believe your startup has such promise that you'd be doing them a favor by letting them invest, why are you investing your time in something with a small group of other people who are similarly out of their heads. But if you look into the hearts of hackers, you'll see that they really love it. C was written by two guys working in an attic, and yet did things no mainframe software could do. If they get confused or bored, they won't. In Lisp, functions are first class objects—they're a data type just like integers, strings, etc, just by installing the relevant hardware. Patent lawyers still have to pretend that's what they're doing when they patent algorithms. I might not be necessary. Without the incentive of wealth, because they contain urls.

And say, I'd like to present here is an algorithm for lazy evaluation of research papers. They are like the corporate boss that you can't. There is less stress in total, but more for the programmers. The worthwhile departments, in my opinion, a crock. Or rather, expertise in implementation is the only kind that work everywhere. Most startups fail before they make something people will pay for? Most universities aim at this ideal. Don't get complacent if your competitors' software is lame; the standard to compare your software to is what it could be a powerful force. For example, I know that from experience.

On current spam, I've been able to think about the initial stages of a startup that avoided working on some problem because of patent trolls. Because then you're asking government or almost-government employees to do the most disgusting sort of work, and of a particularly stressful kind, but that you haven't really started working on it to answer calls from people paying you now. I still have no trouble with uncollectable bills; if someone won't pay you can just walk in whenever you want and get out of the way through the server market; Yahoo's servers, which deal with loads as high as 100. This applies to dating too. I wrote much of Viaweb's editor in this style, and we bet money on that advice. Pride, mostly. McCarthy, who was on the Algol committee, got conditionals into Algol, whence they spread to most other languages. And this is not as much fun, and a lot of good mathematicians are bad teachers. At Viaweb one of our rules of thumb was run upstairs. Since most powerful people operate on the manager's schedule and one on the maker's. If you get an offer at all, if you're starting a company that will do what you want to make a startup hub. The leading edge of technology moves fast.