#or useful databases that are just not very well known

[cuties-in-codices]

Where do you find these manuscripts? Is it like a website or do you find it randomly??

hey, thanks for the curiosity! lenghty answer below the cut :)

1)

medieval manuscripts are typically owned by libraries and showcased on the library's websites. so one thing i do is i randomly browse those digitized manuscript collections (like the collections of the bavarian state library or the bodleian libraries, to name just two), which everybody can do for free without any special access. some digital collections provide more useful tools than others (like search functions, filters, annotations on each manuscript). if they don't, the process of wading through numerous non-illustrated manuscripts before i find an illustrated one at all can be quite tedious.

2)

there are databases which help to navigate the vast sea of manuscripts. the one i couldn't live without personally use the most is called KdIH (Katalog der deutschsprachigen illustrierten Handschriften des Mittelalters). it's a project which aims to list all illustrated medieval manuscripts written in german dialects. the KdIH provides descriptions of the contents of each manuscript (with a focus on the illustrations), and if there's a digital reproduction of a manuscript available anywhere, the KdIH usually links to it. the KdIH is an invaluable tool for me because of its focus on illustrated manuscripts, because of the informations it provides for each manuscript, and because of its useful search function (once you've gotten over the initial confusion of how to navigate the website). the downside is that it includes only german manuscripts, which is one of the main reasons for the over-representation of german manuscripts on my blog (sorry about that).

3)

another important database for german manuscripts in general (i.e. not just illustrated ones) is the handschriftencensus, which catalogues information regarding the entirety of german language manuscripts of the middle ages, and also links to the digital reproductions of each manuscript.

4)

then there are simply considerable snowball effects. if you do even just superficial research on any medieval topic at all (say, if you open the wikipedia article on alchemy), you will inevitably stumble upon mentions of specific illustrated manuscripts. the next step is to simply search for a digital copy of the manuscript in question (this part can sometimes be easier said than done, especially when you're coming from wikipedia). one thing to keep in mind is that a manuscript illustration seldom comes alone - so every hint to any illustration at all is a greatly valuable one (if you do what i do lol). there's always gonna be something interesting in any given illustrated manuscript. (sidenote: one very effective 'cheat code' would be to simply go through all manuscripts that other online hobbyist archivers of manuscript illustrations have gone through before - like @discardingimages on tumblr - but some kind of 'professional pride' detains me from doing so. that's just a kind of stubbornness though. like, i want to find my material more or less on my own, not just the images but also the manuscripts, and i apply arbitrary rules to my search as to what exactly that means.)

5)

whatever tool or strategy i use to find specific illustrated manuscripts-- in the end, one unavoidable step is to actually manually skim through the (digitized) manuscript. i usually have at least a quick look at every single illustrated page, and i download or screenshot everything that is interesting to me. this process can take up to an hour per manuscript.

---

in conclusion, i'd say that finding cool illuminated manuscripts is much simpler than i would have thought before i started this blog. there are so many of them out there and they're basically just 'hidden in plain side', it's really astounding. finding the manuscripts doesn't require special skills, just some basic experience with/knowledge of the tools available. the reason i'm able to post interesting images almost daily is just that i spend a lot of time doing all of this, going through manuscripts, curating this blog, etc. i find a lot of comfort in it, i learn a lot along the way, and i immensely enjoy people's engagement with my posts. so that's that :)

[copperbadge]

So, I got tagged in a post, and I wrote a bit of a novel in a reblog in drafts, and then I realized that probably it wasn't for the best to post up All That Nonsense when the OP was just making a funny post about Wikipedia's fundraising. And it is a funny post! So I'll link here to the post and where I was tagged but I decided to put my thoughts here. Please take this as a hint to be respectful of OP and the person who tagged me both :)

I will say my initial reaction to seeing Wikipedia selling merch AND asking to be in your will was "Well, they're trying something." It's just such a weird topic to bring up, it's hard to be graceful about it, so I think what they were doing was probably the best you can do.

And the response did make a lot of the points I'd make about making a will and such. In fact, FreeWill is what I made my will with and we recommend them to our donors.

There was a study that came out a decade ago or more, so my numbers probably aren't accurate, but the statistic that knocked me back was that most donors who leave surprise large bequests (gifts to charity in their will) give an average of $17 a year during their lives. So there's likely a reason that Wikipedia is targeting users and not huge donors.

It's an ongoing issue that most people also don't document their bequests. By all means, leave money to charity in your will, they will be happy to have it, but they will be even happier to know ahead of time.

Perfect example, THIS WEEK we got a check for six figures from a woman's estate. It was an eyebrow-raising amount of money for us. My boss, who handles both "eyebrow raising money" and "gifts from dead people", immediately went to look her up in our database.

Which she is not in. We had no idea this woman existed. Never gave to us before.

Had we known she was leaving us this money, my boss would have made sure she understood how grateful we were and like, bought her lunch a couple of times a year, and when she did pass we would have known who to reach out to in order to offer our support.

Instead, he came to me and said, "I have a name and an address," and I set to work to find out why she gave and who we could thank. I found her obit, but she didn't die of anything related to our work. Using information from the obit, I confirmed none of her family were in our database either. I looked up her second husband, mentioned in the obit, and his obit said he died of lung disease, which told me that this gift is because she lost her husband.

This helps because I knew from her obit that they had a blended family; they didn't have any kids together but they each had kids when they married, all of whom are now like, my age. So we want to thank her kids but we want to make sure her stepkids, who lost their dad, get a specific kind of outreach as well. I told my boss their names and he said one of the husband's kids was listed as the executor of the will, but there was nothing (surname-wise) to indicate they were related. I found contact information for that person, and my boss was able to reach out to her. She didn't realize we didn't know about the bequest, and now she and her siblings are talking to us about their dad and their own health while her stepsiblings, whose mother left us this very generous gift, are getting condolences and thanks and getting to say how she will be thanked in our documentation.

And I mean, that's why my job exists, to fill in those blanks. We just...would really like to have told her thank-you while she was alive.

SO! The moral of the story is: please consider leaving money to charity in your will if you can, use FreeWill to make your will (they will also help you document your gift) and let the charity know you're leaving them an estate gift. Not only will you maybe get cool swag but especially if it's a concern close to your heart, you'll get to build your relationship with the charity.

[saywhat-politics]

Elon Musk has repeatedly claimed that his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project had uncovered massive government fraud when it alleged that 150-year-olds were claiming Social Security benefits.

But Musk has provided no evidence to back up his claims, and experts quickly pointed out that this is very likely just a quirk of the decades-old coding language that underpins the government payment systems.

Musk first made the claims during his Oval Office press conference last week, when he claimed that a “cursory examination of Social Security, and we got people in there that are 150 years old. Now, do you know anyone that's 150? I don't know. They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records … So that's a case where I think they're probably dead.”

While no evidence was produced to back up this claim, it was picked up by the right-wing commentators online, primarily on Musk’s own X platform, as well as being reported credibly by pro-Trump media outlets.

Computer programmers quickly claimed that the 150 figure was not evidence of fraud, but rather the result of a weird quirk of the Social Security Administration’s benefits system, which was largely written in COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language that undergirds SSA’s databases as well as systems from many other US government agencies.

COBOL is rarely used today, and as such, Musk’s cadre of young engineers may well be unfamiliar with it.

Because COBOL does not have a date type, some implementations rely instead on a system whereby all dates are coded to a reference point. The most commonly used is May 20, 1875, as this was the date of an international standards-setting conference held in Paris, known as the "Convention du Mètre."

These systems default to the reference point when a birth date is missing or incomplete, meaning all of those entries in 2025 would show an age of 150.

That’s just one possible explanation for what DOGE allegedly found. Musk could also have simply looked up the SSA’s own website, which explains that since September 2015 the agency has automatically stopped benefit payments when anyone reaches the age of 115.

However, on Monday morning Musk doubled down, posting a screenshot of what he claims were figures from “the Social Security database” to X, writing that “the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!”

[robin-evry]

HII i'm loving your works omg! could i ask you to make a bronya!yuu or silverwolf!yuu? (you can choose just one if you want). take care or yourself and do your work at your time, no need to rush! :D

I decided to do two but sorry if bronya is so short , aww thank you.

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐅 𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐎𝐋𝐅!𝐘𝐔𝐔 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐖𝐒𝐓🐺👾

A member of the Stellaron Hunters and a genius hacker. She sees the universe as a massive immersive simulation game and has fun with it. She's mastered the skill known as "aether editing," which can be used to tamper with the data of reality.

Silver wolf!yuu is rarely known in nrc, they prefer to stay behind the scenes only a few students know about their existence.

Rarely appear in public, mostly using their holograms to go to school. It's pretty rare to see them actually outside of the ramshackle dorm.

Has a habit of disappearing and appearing, imagine your standing there and suddenly a hologram or game particles appear and silver wolf!yuu appear beside you.

Every time Crowley manages to piss them off, silver wolf!yuu would choose an area to vandalize at school, and some students manage to learn when you take a photo of it you can get a hidden message from silver wolf!yuu about Crowley.

silver wolf!yuu has a habit of collecting data about students, they have a database about their past, quirks, strength and weakness.

A very famous gamer in twst known to beat unbeatable levels of any game in twst and they use a fake alias. They hear about idia ranting towards Ortho about their game persona and find it funny. And join many game tournaments and win them easily and they gained money for this.

The ignihyde dorm is their second home, the dorm has good wifi for gaming. And manage to get close to idia and Ortho and talk about games with each other.

Their uniform has technology imbued to it. allowing them to access and project holographic screens on command. These are mainly used for quick data checks, sending encrypted messages, or pulling up maps and files in real-time without needing a handheld device.

They possessed a higher advanced technology than anything in twst. Also they use their aether hacking to change the ramshackle to their liking.

In battle, they would dominate due to having a lot hex on their side, they can hack into reality and get in the students file and remove the overblot. Or use it to discover and apply weakness towards the enemy.

They also have a mysterious job, operated as a freelancer, known for taking on jobs that require skill, secrecy, and the ability to circumvent the most complex security systems. Their reputation was built on their expertise in digital infiltration, information gathering, and high-stakes hacking, often working for those willing to pay for their skills without asking too many questions. most of their clients seem to be suspicious or not morally good.

Notorious for being a phone addict always playing their game outside or inside of class and when they were asked a question they immediately answered it correctly.

They also have a talent of engineering zoning out imagining about creating new tech ideas, mods and strategies for games.

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐅 𝐁𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐘𝐀!𝐘𝐔𝐔 𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐖𝐒𝐓 ❄️🌬️

Heir apparent to the Supreme Guardian of Belobog. She possesses pride befitting of a princess, but also the determination and integrity of a soldier.

Bronya!yuu is the embodiment of what a leader and an heir should be. Their charisma is able to encourage people and lead them towards the right path.

As well a dignified soldier bronya!yuu may look weak but are by far one of the most efficient in hand to hand combat, able to pin down a student who is bigger than them.

Has a tendency to reminisce about their mother and would just sit there and reminisce about them and grim would always be there to comfort them.

An expert marksman, rook and them once a week have a contest with each other who ever is the better marksman.

They are by far one of vil favorite, they are dignified, elegant and strong like a soldier and a princess should be, they also inspired epel to be more like them he admired them and have lessons with him where they tutor him.

They are patient and calm in the heeds of battle always believing as being one in harmony they could work together and forge a more successful path, as well being the back bone of a battle planning and helping them behind the scenes by shooting at the enemy

Them and Lilia would usually trade military tactics to each other over a cup of tea and also discussing other topics

They usually get burned out and they don't know when to rest, since they always have to keep a princess like dignity many of the first years notice and comfort them during hard times.

Bronya!yuu abilities allow them to enhance their comrade ability extremely towards its potential, as well to summon winter soldiers to help them but it takes a lot of energy.

Have a love and interest in history, usually seen in the library studying about twst long history and enjoy talking about them to their friends.

As well being a top student, always studying and getting good grades without any issue and always be respectful towards people

By far have a good reputation at school for being a capable leader, many students admire their discipline, while others have some sort of a sense of rivalry with them.

[rubra-wav]

I had this interesting scenario where Vox one day becomes exhausted from his rivalry with Alastor after realizing that the one-sided interactions were becoming old. He later meets the reader (who can also be a part of the hotel) who starts hacking into Voxtech's database to troll the company for shits and giggles. This catches Vox's attention and he's pissed about it. You can do what you want for the rest but they continue to have this rivalry to the point where it's very well known around hell. From an outside perspective, there is just back-and-forth angry banter but there are moments where they're just;

Reader: *appears on screen* Hey Box head, guess who found some good blackmail with your name on it- Vox: *Is so close to having a breakdown, he had a bad week.* Reader: Oh shit- did something happen, are you okay? 😰

They hate each other but they don't hate hate each other. This can be taken as platonic or romantic. I sent this request to someone else but I wanted to share anyway.

Vox x troll/hacker reader: Why So Blue? (Oneshot/concept version)

Why So Blue fic Masterlist

A/N me when I get to write Vox getting utterly humiliated by a troll-y hacker demon 🫶

I changed about the order of stuff as things happen a bit and took creative liberties with this one - sorry if it's really different then the thought you originally had.

(REQUESTS ARE CLOSED, THIS WAS FROM THE LAST TIME THEY WERE OPEN)

Update: This was really well-received, and several people have requested a part 2. I've decided that I will be writing it properly from the start in a proper chapter kind of way rather than in this format so it makes continuity kind of work better rather then the drabbl-y format used here.

Cw: SFW, romantic, enemy's to lovers type beat, references to one-sided radiostatic, also references to staticmoth, mildly suggestive in one part 💀, gn reader, mostly light-hearted - idk if it qualifies as quite hurt/comfort lmao

- It was just a normal morning for Vox when you first showed up.

- As usual, he booted up for the day, got changed out of his casual clothes, and made his morning coffee.

- As he walked into his computer room, absentmindedly sipping his coffee while looking at his phone, he sits down in his desk.

- Then promptly spits out his mouthful.

- When he finally looks up at the screens around him, he's mortified to see a muted video of himself passionately (and very drunkly) singing and dancing horribly from last night while he was out with Valentino and Velvette.

- Posted on Sinstagram from his own account.

- Hundreds of comments flooded in underneath it; laughing, saying it's cute, complimenting his singing, and talking about the caption underneath with curiosity.

- The caption reads; 'For someone who talks so big about being ahead technologically, it was awfully easy to hack old Boxy here LMAO'

- Vox flips out instantly.

- It doesn't take long to take down the post, change all of his details, and post an official apology for his lack of professionalism with a hypnotising message to forget the whole incident occurred at all. He also does a massive comb over for any other breaches and changes all of his systems to be even more impenetrable to a potional attack.

- He calms down, and the incident fades away to the back of his mind.

- But then it happens again.

- Another morning, an employee is rushing into his studio as he wakes up properly, telling him this time that someone is somehow broadcasting Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' to the entirety of hell at 6 am, interrupting every one of the scheduled programs.

- There's a message in big letters on the bottom of every screen in hell, under the god forsaken video and song playing, saying, "What is love~? - U" Underneath them.

- And that's how it starts, the infuriating thorn in Vox's side that is 'U'. No matter how hard he tries, you're constantly undermining his efforts to keep you out of the system and tormenting him in ways that aren't necessarily malignant but are extremely damaging to his image as the overlord of technology.

- For some reason, he's the only Vee you seem hellbent on coming after as well. Vel finds your pranks funny or cute when they don't inconvenience her, and Valentino just likes to prod Vox into getting angrier further.

- He just cannot work out what your motivations are at all. Is it truly that you just want to piss him off? He doesn't understand why someone with such clear skills would simply use them to taunt him and leave him messages to unveil as he undoes whatever you do.

- It vexes him even farther when these messages from you that you leave for him to decode start to sound borderline flirtatious, which makes him feel all the more humiliated.

- He is a grown demon, skilled businessman and entrepreneur, an overlord, and yet you insist upon calling him things like Box, Boxbabe, Boxbitch, and even babygirl of all things for some goddamn reason.

- The back and forth goes on for months, and 'U' quickly becomes a long lasting meme, several people, much to Vox's horror, shipping you two together and even partaking in ship wars as to whether Vox x 'U' is better then Vox x Val.

- Theres one day where Vox quickly puts his phone down after reading a rather concerning expert from what is certainly explicit fanfiction between the two of you, even him deciding that that's enough internet for today while just sitting staring off into space silently for a solid 10 seconds.

- Vox's sleepless nights pouring over his code to try and keep out your attacks, him glitching out whenever he finds infuriating messages left by you, etc. Begin to become routine and he just anticipates the consistent blows to his pride you give him at every turn.

- A weird, unconscious part of him deep down begins to enjoy your rivalry, almost wanting to see what punches you pull out next to disarm his constant losing battle to keep you out, but it gets squashed down the second he becomes aware of it.

- The rivalry is always at arms length, but sometimes he has to stop himself from replying with the same vaguely flirtatious tone you take on whenever he experiences a small win against you.

- He fights to make sure he doesn't have any potential of getting too into it.

- Things take a different turn, though, with the double blow of Alastor coming back and his on-off relationship with Valentino once again going up in flames.

- After stopping his usual monitoring of all things going on in hell online and in real life as picked up by his cameras, he presses his face into his hands with a long, exhausted groan as he fights crying.

- All the people he was actually interested in were as unrequited as per usual. He always tried so hard with Alastor, but as always, he never got anything but met with the clear reminder they would never be anything more.

- And, of course, any potential of anything more happening with Val was completely off the table. It would be stupid to even think about anything real with him.

- He shut his eyes, putting his screen on the desk in front of him.

- Was he just not worth it? Was that it?

- He startled when he heard the familiar crackle of the speakers coming to life around him. It was rare he ever heard your voice coming through his speakers, you usually preferring to just leave messages, however you decided to surprise him tonight apparently.

- Your blurred out face appears on the screens, only showing the lower half of your grinning face.

- "Oh Boooooxybooooy! I found some world-shattering cringey shit you did 2 months back, i-" You begin singing out, before stopping, seeing by his expression.

- Vox was trembling, looking as if he was about fall apart at any second. His monitor was dulled, red eyes half lidded with pixelated bags forming under them, his bottom lip slightly quivering around his sharp teeth.

- "What the- fuck- ....are you alright?" You asked unsurely.

- Vox finally snapped out of it, realising that you were here witnessing him in a way that was very much not something he wanted you of all people to see him in. His mask slid back on, but it was hardly convincing.

- "Of course it is. What the fuck do you wa-ant. I've got shit to do." He inwardly cursed as his voice glitched slightly. God fucking dammit why did you have to show up.

- He watched your lips on your mostly blurred out face slightly curl as you hummed, clearly not buying it.

- "You wanna stop with the lying bullshit and tell me the truth, Boxhead?" You somewhat chided him, your hand coming into sight as you leaned your cheek onto it. Vox let out a growling sound, going to spit some vitriol at you, but was cut off as you absentmindedly made your next comment.

"Felt you once again have a fit about the radio demon going online. Lights in my house and the houses out my windows started flashing and shit. Is it hi-" your brows shot up and eyes widened, this hidden behind the censorship as you watched Vox, leader of the Vees, your rival, let out a shuddering breath and actually start crying comically pixilated tears right before your eyes.

- Vox's claws gripped into his desk as he grit his teeth as he let out a gasping breath he fought to stifle. He was so goddamn exhausted that he just couldn't be assed to keep it all up anymore. It wasn't like you hadn't seen rather unsavoury things he'd been trying to hide anyways.

- "No shit it's about Alastor. It's always about him. Does it get you off knowing I can't get with the guy I have always wanted no matter how hard I try? There. Are you fucking happy now?" His voice cracks as he snarls the words out at you.

- You let out a long humming sound, as if thinking. "I mean, not really. I'd only be happy if you were this upset over me, not some old hazbin radio announcer who fell off years ago." You shrug with a slightly sad smile.

- Vox squinted at you, confused.

- "I mean, come on, I'm your rival too. Why neglect me so much in all this?" You press your bottom lip out in mock sadness, tone mocking again. Your words are true despite the joking tone however, it did bother you that he always seemed so much more ready to go running after the most obviously aroace man you think you had seen in your entire fucking life.

- Vox couldn't believe what he was hearing, hot embarrassment caused his monitor to start heating up a bit, painting animated flush over his cheeks. "Oh, stop taking the piss, U. Fuck off." He scoffed, rolling his eyes, looking to the side in irritation.

- You chuckle at him, shaking your head and causing the thing blurring your face to shake with it. "Is it really that hard to believe I'm into what we have going on here?" Your voice is still lined with the usual tone you take on with him, but much less so.

- Vox looks back at your blurred, smiling face incredulously. "Yes." He growled, blinking his tears away as he regained his composure a bit.

- You sigh heavily, rolling your eyes. "Ooookay, well, once you're done riding the coattails of a man who will never want you, come hit me up, Boxhead." You say through smiling lips, before abruptly pressing 'hang up' on the call so he didn't have time to actually respond.

- Vox sat in bewildered silence, not able to react properly as his brain felt as if it was working on low resolution comprehending what you just said.

- His face heated up the more he thought about it, heart beginning to hammer in his chest as he laughed in disbelief. No way. No fucking way.

- But you had said it.

- Despite his usual pessimistic nature, he allowed himself to actually believe it, chuckling.

- He looked over to his phone as a notification sound rang out to see a photo of himself presumably just now; flustered, eyes wide in disbelief and unfocused while staring off into space, a crooked grin on his face.

- It was captioned as follows; 'POV: local pathetic radio simp finds out other rival actually wants him'

- "FUCK." He yelled out in embarrassment, knocking out several of his monitors with a surge of electricity.

I loved writing this sm omfggg.

There's definitely part 2 potential to this one, but it would have to be in a while w all the other stuff I'm gonna get to first.

Masterlist

[thezombieprostitute]

Tech Tuesday: Steve Rogers

Summary: It's only your first day on the job. That's way too soon to have an office crush. Right?

Warnings: Workplace stress and bullying. Please let me know if I missed any!

A/N: Reader is female. No physical descriptors used.

Previous

Tech Tuesdays Masterlist

Bucky sits across from Steve, a cocky smile on his face. Steve raises an eyebrow and Bucky says, "I gave her my number." Steve doesn't know that it wasn't about a date, but he doesn't have to know.

"You didn't."

"I did," Bucky smirks. "Which means, it's your turn."

"It's...it's not the same," Steve tries to argue. "You've known your Sweetie for months now, right? This girl is still a newbie. She's barely been here a month!"

"Deal's a deal, Punk," Bucky shakes his head. "One of us gives our number, the other one has to as well."

Steve's cheeks are incredibly pink from embarrassment. He's never been good at flirting, always stumbling over his words. Sure, his body attracts attention, but inside he's still the scrawny kid who always got laughed at when he tried to talk to a girl. Especially a girl as sweet and pretty as you.

The two of you had run into each other in one of the break rooms a few times. Every time Steve talked with you, he found himself getting lost in your eyes, but that led to him not knowing what you were saying. His face would turn red and he'd quickly run out of the room. Another time you'd complimented his art and he got scared you'd see one of the drawings he did of you so he quickly closed his book and you felt bad, like you had overstepped.

And now, thanks to Bucky, Steve needs to admit he'd like to spend more time with you. Admit that he thinks about you every day. Admit that he likes you. He can do this, right?

You were crying in the ladies room for the third time since you were hired. There was so much, so fast and your coworkers were already blaming you for things. Especially things you didn't even know were your responsibility. No one had told you or shown you how to do them but they still blamed you! It's not like you were entirely new to this kind of work, but the systems were very different and, most importantly, you didn't know what was and wasn't part of your job because they hadn't told you! When you finally calm down, you head to the sinks and wash your face, trying to hide the tears.

As you tiptoe back to your cubicle, trying not to draw attention to yourself, you end up literally running into Steve, the dreamy guy from the IT Department. He manages to catch you before you fall, bringing you in for an accidental hug. You find yourself instinctively hugging him back, squeezing him tight.

"Are...are you okay?" Steve isn't going to complain about being hugged by you, but he's worried you're not in your right mind.

"Oh, sh-shoot," you break the hug and jump away. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean...I'm just..." you fight a resurgence of tears and run to your cubicle. When you get there, Maggie, your least favorite new coworker, is glaring at you, arms crossed.

"Really, Newbie," she admonishes, "you've been here a month and you still don't know how to update the most basic fields in the database?"

"I...every person does it diff--"

"Enough!" she cuts you off. "Really, you should be able to do this. You're killing our metrics!"

"I'm...I'm sorry," you hang your head, trying to not cry again. "I keep getting told different things about how to do the updates."

"Empty apologies and excuses!" Maggie retorts. "I don't know why you got hired. You're bringing us---"

"Margaret," Steve interrupts her. You jump, not realizing he had followed you. "Tell me, Margaret, how do you think your boss would react if he knew you'd been spending half your day on Facebook?"

She fumes at both of you for a minute before going back to her own cubicle.

"I really wish you hadn't done that, Steve," you whisper. "I'm already on their sh-crap list. This is only going to make it worse."

Steve takes a breath, "you're right, I'm sorry. I just really hate bullies."

"Me too," you nod. "But right now I've gotta make these bullies happy, okay?"

"It's not okay," Steve shakes his head. "But I promise I'll be more careful."

"Thank you."

Next

Tagging: @alicedopey; @darsynia; @delicatebarness; @ellethespaceunicorn; @icefrozendeadlyqueen;

@jaqui-has-a-conspiracy-theory; @late-to-the-party-81; @lokislady82; @ozwriterchick; @ronearoundblindly

[artifacts-and-arthropods]

Doodles Made by a 6-year-old Boy Named Onfim, from Russia, c. 1240-1260 CE: created nearly 800 years ago, these drawings were scrawled onto the homework/spelling exercises of a little boy in Novgorod

Over the last 75 years, excavations in and around Novgorod, in Russia, have led to the discovery of hundreds of documents dating back to the Middle Ages. These documents were made using pieces of bark from the local birch trees; they include letters, notes, spelling exercises, shopping lists, receipts, and legal documents, among other things.

The most famous examples are the panels that contain the writing exercises of a 6-7 year-old boy named Onfim, whose work was often accompanied by drawings of knights, fantastical beasts, battle scenes, and depictions of himself in various forms.

These are just a few examples:

Birch-Bark Document no.199: on the back of a panel that had been used for his spelling exercises, Onfim drew this picture of himself as a wild beast, writing "I am a wild beast" in the center of the drawing; the beast is also shown holding a sign that says "Greetings from Onfim to Danilo," likely referring to a friend or classmate.

Birch-Bark Document no.200: Onfim began writing the Cyrillic alphabet at the top of this panel, but he then stopped to draw a picture of himself as a warrior on horseback, labeling the figure with his name; the drawing shows him wielding a sword while he impales his enemy with a spear.

Birch-Bark Document no.202: the boy's mother and father are depicted in this drawing, which accompanies another writing exercise.

Birch-Bark Document no.206: Onfim began to copy a liturgical prayer (the Troparion of the Sixth Hour) onto this strip of bark, but he apparently got distracted after writing just the first few words, and started drawing a row of people along the bottom of the panel instead.

The examples above are just a few of the many documents that have been unearthed in Novgorod (now known as Veliky Novgorod) and its surrounding areas. More than a thousand birch-bark manuscripts and styli have been found throughout the region, suggesting that there was a high rate of literacy among the local inhabitants. Most of these documents were created during the 11th-15th centuries, when Novgorod served as the capital city of the Novgorod Republic; they had been buried in the thick, wet clay that permeates the local soil, in conditions that allowed them to remain almost perfectly preserved for hundreds of years.

I know that Onfim's drawings are pretty well-known already, but my most recent post involved a very similar writing exercise/doodle from a child in Medieval Egypt, so I just thought I'd post some of Onfim's work, as well.

Sources & More Info:

Institute of Slavic Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences: Birch-Bark no.200, no.199, no.202, no.203, no.206, & no.210 (the site is in Russian, but can be translated)

Institute of Slavic Studies: Full Database of Birch-Bark Documents

The New York Times: Where Mud is Archaeological Gold, Russian History Grew on Trees

Russian Linguistics: Old East Slavic Birch-Bark Literacy - a history of linguistic emancipation?

[sleepybbywrites]

Happy Little Omega Farms (1) 18+

a/n: this is reposted! I am however the original author, my other tumblr was just casually deleted by tumblr smile

summary: reader is an omega. the avengers pack needs an omega. the pack leaders of the avengers arrive at hlof to see if they can find the perfect fit, will it be reader?

warnings: alpha/omegaverse, this chapter doesn't have too much but definitely mentions some adult things

pairings: this will eventually be avengers x reader, this chapter however has tony x reader and steve x reader

word count: 1.9k~

MASTERLIST (wip) | HLOF MASTERLIST/INFO

Happy Little Omega Farms was the biggest Omega sanctuary in the world. Which sounded extravagant and massive, but considering they only housed roughly 100 omegas (which was 95% of known remaining omegas), it was still a fairly small organization. Security however, was very tight. Protocols were in place to ensure the safety of omegas and some even worried that some of the omegas were purposefully unaccounted for in a secret attempt to create more omegas. Whatever the case may have been, HLOF was the best bet for the Avengers to find their pack an omega. The Avengers might have been a group of some of the most elite minds, but they were also still just as affected by the Omega shortage as every other pack.

Which was how Steve Rogers and Tony Stark ended up sitting in the small waiting room. Well, Steve was sitting. Tony was standing, one hand on his hip while he spoke to the poor unsuspecting beta behind the counter, ranting about how they were prestigious guests, they shouldn’t be required to wait, blah blah blah. Steve had tuned it out within the first minute of him opening his mouth. Steve sat quietly, his large frame dwarfing the small chair he was seated in. He had a tablet in his hand and he was reading through information about some of the ‘adoptable’ omegas in their database. It felt weird, looking over these little profiles about the omegas, he felt like he was shopping instead of trying to get an idea of which omega might best work for their pack of superheroes.

A different beta worker approached him, leaning forwards over the tablet. “If there are any that you’d like to meet while you’re here today, just click the little heart next to their picture.” The beta gave him a warm smile and he could feel the effects of their beta scent soothing his nerves ever so slightly. He gave them a small nervous smile in return and thanked them, returning to the top. Tony had apparently given up on trying to get them special privileges as he plopped down in the seat beside Steve with a loud huff.

“Anyone interesting?” he asked the blonde. Steve’s brows furrowed at his words and he cast him a quick sidelong glance before he sighed softly. “It just feels weird.. I mean what if I skip over someone and they’d be perfect for us?” he asked, reading over another blurb of information about the first omega. Tony took the tablet from him and began clicking the heart on every single one of them, until they had hearted all thirty currently available omegas. Steve rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “I guess that’s one way to do it..” You had been sitting on one of the benches outside, seated next to two very chatty omegas who were talking about– you tuned back into the conversation for a moment– dildos. Maybe it was time to go back inside. You rose to your feet, not even getting a glance from the two you’d been sitting with as you made your way back into the little side door to the sanctuary. As soon as you walked in you were hit with a cloud of nervous scents coming from absolutely everywhere. Almost as if on cue, the little bracelet on your wrist buzzed, lighting up a little heart indicator. You were chosen for consideration. Apparently, whatever prestigious alphas were visiting had selected not only you but also every other eligible omega in the sanctuary, which very easily explained all the panicked and nervous scents. You made it back to your room and rifled through your clothes. You weren’t not nervous but the idea of meeting with some rich alphas didn’t rile you up the same way it seemed to with the other twenty-nine omegas chosen. After stressing over your options for a lot longer than you felt you should have, you settled on a pair of light colored jeans, light blue converse and a matching light blue sweater. Now you just had to wait until your bracelet lit up once more.

Each ten minute session with the omegas seemed to fade into the next and eventually Steve just sat still in the room while letting Tony take the lead. Damn extroverts. He listened to the omegas talk about themselves, about the kinds of things they hoped for from a pack. Each one of them seemed to be cut off abruptly at some point or another by Tony and Steve just watched from the sidelines, unsure of what had prompted him to send them off in the first place. Tony was good at this, at figuring people out, so Steve felt strangely comfortable with letting him decide to shoo off the current omega and let the next one join them.

It had been almost five hours by the time they’d made it to the final omega on the list, the one that had been eligible but unadopted the longest. Tony had pushed his sleeves up to his elbows by this point, his jacket thrown over one of the chairs. Steve could smell the frustration on his scent, obviously displeased by every other omega they’d met that day. Steve thought they had all seemed nice and he could have easily pictured himself with any of them, but it wasn’t just about him. It wasn’t even about just him and Tony, it was about the entire team. Steve found himself sighing softly just before the door opened one last time.

You stepped into the small meeting room and your eyebrows rose at the sight before you. Tony Stark and Steve Rogers. These were the prestigious alphas that had rejected the other twenty-nine omegas? You were done for. You offered a small, slightly uneasy smile as you walked in. You missed the way Steve seemed to perk up slightly, but you didn’t miss the way Tony’s scent morphed, from one of frustration to a slightly softer scent. You introduced yourself and like the good little omega you were trained to be, you allowed them both to smell the slightly fainter scent glands in your wrist. Steve’s hands were massive compared to your own as he gently held your wrist up to his nose. His eyes shut and just as quickly as he’d let go of you, Tony had your wrist in his hand, inhaling your scent deeply.

It had been a long time since you’d noticed Alpha’s scenting aroused from you. The combined scent of both of them at once was almost overwhelming and you had to sit down to keep your knees from buckling from beneath you.

Tony stared at you across the small table, even from where you were seated you could see the way his pupils had dilated, swallowing almost the entirety of his deep brown irises. Despite Steve not having done much of the talking, he was the first to actually speak to you. “So.. what kind of pack are you hoping for?” His question was one that almost every alpha asked and you took in a slow breath, knowing your answer would most likely cause you to be sent out early, just like most of the other omega’s they'd spoken to today.

“I’m looking for a pack that will treat me as more than just a weak omega.” you said the words and lifted your head in an almost defiant manner. Steve looked over at Tony who was grinning. Something about the grin made your heart begin to race and the billionaire’s scent began to grow more and more intense. Steve rose to his feet, clamping a hand over the other man’s scent gland with a low growl.

“You’re overwhelming her.” he growled into Tony’s ear. The shorter man cleared his throat and straightened his tie, yanking a scent block stick from his pocket, aggressively rubbing it over his scent glands, shaking his head with a laugh. Steve seemed pleased with this but didn’t sit back down. His eyes found yours and he nodded, something that surprised you. “I think that’s an entirely fair request. Do you have a certain personality type or two that you’re less inclined to respond to?” he asked, brows pinching together in thought as he awaited your response.

You swallowed nervously, you didn’t usually get past the first question in interviews. Your eyes met with the man’s deep blue eyes, his own pupils a bit more blown now, though his scent remained a steady constant. “Just alphas that think omega’s are only fuck toys.” the words were out of your mouth before you could stop them and you felt your pulse race, cheeks flushing as you imagined them getting offended and tossing you out. The men cast each other a glance and you shrank back into your seat, waiting for the inevitable.

“It’s starting to make sense why you’ve been here so long.” Tony’s reply was blunt and you couldn’t help but wince slightly. Steve elbowed him in the ribs and there was a small exchange of low growls between the two Alphas but Tony cleared his throat and stepped closer to you. You looked up at him, expecting to be told off. However he simply crouched down in front of you. You could see the way his eyes dilated once more as he caught onto your scent and he tutted softly. “Hey, I didn’t mean that as a slight against you. I meant that Alphas are idiots and usually just think with their dicks rather than their brains.” His hand came up and gently cupped your chin in his hand. “I think you might be just what we’ve been looking for..”

You felt like the air had been pulled from your lungs. You’d been stuck in this stupid sanctuary for so long, meeting so many alphas that would rather ignore you and take home whatever omega was willing to bend over and let them fuck them senseless that the idea that you might be chosen was almost unbelievable. Your eyes roamed over Tony’s face slowly before you looked over at Steve whose expression was soft. Tony rose to his feet and he walked over to the door, knocking to get the attention of one of the workers. Once the door opened he began talking about another meeting, about bringing the entirety of his pack to meet with you. Your heart was pounding in your ears, making his words fade away. You almost didn’t notice when Steve crouched down in front of you this time, taking one of your hands in both of his.

You looked down at the way his hands engulfed your own, his hands were rough and calloused but so incredibly gentle. You had to remind yourself that this man was an alpha. Not just an alpha either, he was an avenger, a superhero. And he wanted you? They both did? Your head turned slightly to look over at Tony speaking with one of the workers of the sanctuary, both tapping over tablets and talking dates, times, expectations. Your gaze drifted back to the man in front of you and he gave you a smile. “I really hope you’re what we’ve been looking for..” his voice was soft and part of you found yourself wanting to lean forwards, to burrow into the massive expanse of his chest and just disappear. But you held back, you’d only just met him and you were much more than just a submissive little omega.

“I hope so too..”

[alexanderlightweight]

The way experiment baby alec rotates in my brain.... the possibilities.....

Hell hound alec,, mermaid alec, cannibal alec..... maybe some dnd bloodhunter type shit... damn

@queensaryn and I actually have a really fucked up idea/headcanon that I haven't worked on yet but that Robert Lightwood is actually sterile and when Valentine helps them with a 'special fertility treatment' but he really just does IVF with his own sperm.

So like, he does not have Maryse's consent and she doesn't know that Alec or Izzy are his and they only find out something is wrong when she and robert try to have another kid and go to the doctors of Idris who are like 'oh no this guys sterile' and maryse is like 'what injury did that' and they're 'oh no. we can tell by his system that he's always been sterile.' and then maryse has to have her kids run through the database because whose are they? like at this point Maryse's is just relieved they're fully shadowhunter with what she remembers hearing about Jonathon later. (who she thinks is dead and doesn't bring up).

They find out the they're Valentine's and the Clave basically is like 'wait... if you didn't know. what if he did this to other people?' and DNA check all kids born during the time Valentine was active (even before he started the circle) just to be safe. it's how they discover Jace is a herondale and that some other fucky shit has happened.

but also Alec on learning who his bio-sperm is immediately does a ritual that basically is destroying his own sire's legacy. like he creates a blood-oath that is basically he will kill Valentine on site.

the clave is all: okay with the evidence before us we don't know that Valentine is dead anymore. so if you see him try to capture him.

Alec: if I see him i'll try to remember to bring you a piece of his corpse. i'm a mama's boy even if she's not the best mom and he violated her consent and I am going to take it out of his hide. he is not my father.

the clave unable to argue since legally he's allowed to do this: ... well at least we don't have to worry about another uprising?

the clave: surely valentine's children won't be downworlders extremists as well? is this something we need to worry about?

Izzy growing up with Alec teaching her to hate everything Circle because it hurt their mom and fucked them over: screw shadowhunter politics. i'm going to live my best life and fuck a bunch of downworlders until my name becomes synonymous with a good time in the downworld. ha! take that Valentine. hows the legacy the kids you made created? is this what you wanted???

Everyone in the Clave: thank Raziel that Alec Trueblood is slightly more normal than his sister and just wants to tear apart his father and is known for killing and sometimes eating other nephilim (aka circle members).

Alec coming out as a consort to a Dominion King: excuse me. I may only fuck ONE downworlder but I do so in style. and I have the best taste.

Magnus and Alec bonding over hating their fathers and their father's hurting their mothers.

Magnus to Valentine: yes I am fucking your oldest. what are you going to do about it. nothing because he wants to kill you

-

but also experiment!Alec is amazing in so many different contexts and I really do enjoy using it because the timeline fits and it makes sense. I doubt Valentine experimented first on his own kid and while maryse wouldn't have been willing, Valentine knows how to lie very convincing. she wouldn't know they were anything but normal medical checks.

so it does make sense that Alec could have been experimented on and its very fun to play with the different things he could be or become.

especially if Alec develops them over time and its a steep learning curve.

thank you for dropping by the asks! this is very fun to talk about

<3 lumine

*mermaid Alec where alec haunts lake lynn until Magnus is called in. mermaid Alec where Magnus is lured to the beach on the waves of a sad song of yearning

i could go so many places

[gravity-between-us]

Gravity Between Us

Chapter 5: Lagrange Point

Summary: Caleb and I have known each other for as long as I can remember. We were once childhood friends, our bond as natural as the stars in the sky. But now, everything has changed. What used to feel like a safe, familiar orbit between us now pulses with unspoken desire.

Our friendship is no longer enough to keep the tension at bay, and the distance between us feels unbearable. Secrets, lies, and unhealed wounds stand in our way. I don’t know if we can survive this new gravity pulling us together... but I can’t keep pretending I don’t want to try.

Pairing: Female! MC x Caleb

Spoilers: Spoilers for Caleb's Myth's as well as memories. Read at your own risk for these. Lore spoilers.

WARNINGS:

Unlikely to be completely canon. The other love interests will not be likely to appear in this fic.

MC is named. MC is socially awkward. MC can be depressed at times.

Very? Slow Burn.

Very explicit smut (Chapter 12 onward): PiV/oral (male and female receiving)/anal sex. Fingering. First time. Pet names (angel, babe, baby, pip-squeak). Kinks: Praise, breeding, creampie, light dom/sub. Rough. Some consensual degradation talk (MC is into it). Probably many, many more that I am forgetting to name. If you see one that should be listed that isn't, feel free to let me know. (MC is a repressed deviant, and so is Caleb.)

Awkward blend of darker moments, angst, fluff, and humour.

Drinking. Questionable life decisions. MC spirals.

Protective Caleb. Both MC and Caleb are a little obsessive and overly protective of each other, which could be considered an unhealthy relationship.

We will revisit memory scenes, but they will be different from the memories in-game.

As proofread as I can get it, but not beta read, so probably some mistakes.

Limited plot - most focus is just on their relationship and interactions.

More warnings could be applied, but as a general rule of thumb, please read at your own risk and do not continue if you find the content triggering.

It has been weeks since Caleb dropped me off in Linkon. We haven’t spoken in all that time. This is the longest we’ve ever gone without speaking—except for when I thought he was dead. 

That silence had been different, sharp-edged and suffocating, filled with grief so deep it had nearly swallowed me whole. This silence is something else. It gnaws at me in quieter ways, settling into the spaces between my ribs like an ache I can’t quite shake.

Every now and then, I find myself typing out a message. I miss you. Just that, simple and honest. Other times, my fingers hover over something more dangerous. 

I love you.

It doesn’t feel the same as the easy, innocent I love yous from before, the ones that had always been woven into our friendship. This is heavier, deeper—like an ocean I’m too afraid to step into.

Each time, I stare at the words until they blur, then delete them before I can make the mistake of sending them. I push my phone away as if distance alone can keep me from wanting to reach for him. If Caleb wanted to talk to me, he would have.

I tell myself that. Over and over.

Instead of dwelling on it, I throw myself into the one thing I can control: the search.

My fingers move swiftly across the keyboard at the Hunter’s Association, combing through every database I have access to, scouring for anything that resembles the technology I saw in that room. I have been at this since I got back, hunting for answers like a starving thing, refusing to let the trail go cold.

If Caleb won’t tell me what’s going on, I’ll find out on my own.

Whatever he’s gotten himself into, I have a feeling EVER is involved. The thought sits in my gut like lead. I know Caleb well enough to be certain of one thing: he doesn’t bend. He won’t be bullied or manipulated into something he doesn’t want to do—unless it has to do with me.

He has always protected me, even at his own peril. I press my lips together, the familiar weight of guilt settling over me.

I pray he didn’t put himself in danger for me, but I already know my prayers are useless.

The Association’s archives are vast, but they yield nothing useful. No matches, no leads, just an endless loop of dead ends. Frustrated, I’ve taken my search beyond the Association, visiting every technology store in Linkon, sketchbook in hand, showing a rough drawing of what I saw.

The responses are always the same—confusion, skepticism. Even the shop owners in the city’s most prestigious tech hubs look at me like I’m asking them to build me a time machine.

Like I’ve drawn something straight out of a sci-fi flick.

Like I’m chasing something that doesn’t exist.

But I know what I saw, and I know Caleb is tangled in it. 

I am going to find out why.

“Inara?”

Tara’s voice cuts through my frustration, and I spin in my chair to see her standing there, clutching a thick folder of files.

“Hi, Tara,” I greet, forcing my voice into something light, pretending I have more energy than I do. “How are you today?”

“Oh! Good, thank you.” She smiles and settles into the chair beside me, her expression warm but tinged with caution. “I cross-referenced those drawings you gave me and did a deep dive through all known technology in our records. I couldn’t find anything that resembled the image.”

My stomach sinks. I already expected that answer, but hearing it out loud solidifies my frustration. If the Association doesn’t have it, if even the high-end tech shops don’t recognize it, then what the hell was that thing?

Tara must see the disappointment on my face because she quickly glances around before lowering the files into my hands. Her voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper. “But I did dig a little deeper on my own time.” 

She winks, and I catch her meaning immediately. She has connections outside the Association—ones with impressive skills. The kind of skills that can unearth things that aren’t meant to be found.

“I can’t exactly tell you how accurate this information is,” she continues, “but there were some interesting findings.” Before I can flip open the files, she grabs my arm, her grip firm. “But promise me, you won’t go looking for this stuff alone.”

I meet her gaze, wide and earnest, and force a reassuring smile. “Of course not.”

The lie comes too easily.

Tara exhales, her shoulders dropping slightly, but she doesn’t look convinced. “I mean it, Inara. Whatever this is, someone really doesn’t want it found. I had to go through some—” she hesitates, choosing her words carefully, “—unusual channels to get this, and even then, the info was buried.”

I finally open the file, my pulse kicking up at the grainy, black-and-white image clipped to the first page. The resolution is terrible, but the structure—the shape—of the device is unmistakable.

“There’s no official record of this tech anywhere,” Tara murmurs. “No company, no patent, no manufacturer tied to it. It was scrubbed from every known database. The only reason I even found this is because my friend knows how to dig through layers of digital footprints that shouldn’t exist.”

I run my fingers over the image as if touching it will make it more real. “Where was this taken?”

Tara hesitates. “That’s the other thing. The metadata was wiped, but my friend was able to recover just enough to get a general location.” She points to some coordinates—longitude and latitude.

Tara must see the gears turning in my head because she leans in, her expression fierce. “Don’t go looking for this. Someone went through a lot of trouble to bury this. If you go poking around, they’ll know.”

I hold her gaze, forcing sincerity into my tone. “I won’t go alone.”

Tara narrows her eyes. “That’s not the same as not going at all.”

“I know,” I say simply, and that’s all the truth I’m willing to offer.

I grip the file tighter. It is dangerous, but it’s also my only lead.

And I’m done waiting for answers.

After work, I throw myself onto the couch, files spread out in front of me, phone balanced on one knee as I punch in the coordinates Tara found. The location is hours outside of Linkon. 

The satellite image shows nothing but an unbroken stretch of dense forest—no roads, no buildings, no signs of life. I zoom in, scrolling the map, scanning for anything that doesn’t belong. A structure hidden under the canopy, a clearing too clean-cut to be natural—something.

There’s nothing, which only makes me more suspicious.

There’s only one way to get answers. If I leave now, I won’t make it until after dark. A smarter, more cautious version of me might think twice about trekking into an uncharted forest alone at night. 

But I am this me, and this me says fuck it and laughs in the face of danger.

I swap my clothes for something darker, something easy to move in. Strapping my firearms to my thighs, I double-check the charge, grab a flashlight, and throw some essentials into a bag—wire cutters, extra batteries, a knife. 

As I head for my car, I pull up Caleb’s contact, thumb hovering over the screen.

Old habits die hard.

Every time I went off on one of my so-called "adventures," I let him know. If he wasn’t coming with me, he would at least know where to find me. And most of the time? He would find me—be there before I even arrived, waiting in the shadows with that exasperated look, like he couldn't believe I was making him do this again.

Even when he was at the academy, he somehow found a way.

I sigh, locking my phone and shoving it into my pocket. I can’t risk him trying to stop me.

The drive takes three hours, the city lights fading into nothing, swallowed by the blackened countryside. By the time my GPS announces my arrival, I am parked on the side of an empty road, staring out at an endless sea of trees.

It’s exactly as the map said.

Nothing.

I don’t buy it. Killing the engine, I grab my bag and step out, wading into the forest.

In the city, even at night, there’s always some source of light—street lamps buzzing, neon signs flickering, headlights cutting through the streets. Out here, there is nothing but the stars blinking through the slivers of sky between the canopy.

The trees stretch high above, their silhouettes jagged against the night, branches shifting like skeletal fingers. The only sounds are the distant chirps of insects and the rustle of leaves in the wind.

I move carefully, searching for any sign of disturbance. At first, everything looks untouched, just another stretch of wilderness. As I trudge deeper, I spot something carved into the bark of a tree. The marking is deep, etched with purpose. Not initials, not some random graffiti—this was placed here deliberately.

I scan the area, eyes sweeping the trunks around me. More of them, spaced apart, barely visible in the darkness.

A path.

I follow.

The deeper I go, the stranger things become. I nearly miss the first piece of debris, half-buried under a thick layer of leaves—a slab of stone, rough-edged, the corner of what could be a broken wall. Further ahead, another piece. A fragment of a statue, the details eroded beyond recognition.

Something was here. Something old.

A chill creeps up my spine when I step on something that does not feel like dirt. Beneath my boot, the ground gives just slightly, with the unmistakable hollow sound of something beneath the earth.

I kneel, brushing away the layers of dirt and leaves. It takes time—whatever is beneath has been buried for years, decades maybe—but eventually, I uncover the edge of something metal.

A hatch. I curl my fingers around the handle and pull, but it doesn’t budge.

Locked.

I draw my gun, pressing the barrel to the rusted lock and fire. The sound is deafening in the stillness, shattering the quiet. I fire again, again, until finally—crack—the lock gives.

Grabbing the handle, I pull the hatch open. A rush of stale air escapes, swollen with the scent of damp earth and rust.

I aim my flashlight down. A metal ladder descends into the dark. I holster my gun, and without hesitation, I begin to climb.

The ladder is cold beneath my fingers, slick with condensation. I bite down on the flashlight, jaw aching as I keep the beam steady, but the darkness still presses in on all sides, writhing just beyond the reach of the light. My descent feels endless. The shaft swallows the sound of my boots against the rungs, muffling it, but the echoes still roll up like distant thunder.

I hate thunder.

It rattles my ribs, reminds me of a Wanderer’s roar and of the explosion. The force of it, the way the ground shook, the way I was thrown back, ears ringing, lungs burning.

The bottom comes suddenly, my boot hitting solid ground with a dull thud. I pull the flashlight from my mouth and sweep it ahead. A short tunnel stretches forward, reinforced walls eaten by rust, the metal streaked and pitted.

Water drips from the ceiling, pooling in uneven patches along the floor. Vines dangle from above, curling around corroded pipes. The whole place looks like it was left to rot decades ago.

At the end of the tunnel, a door looms, barely clinging to its hinges. The metal is warped, caved inward—someone tried to blast through it. I push my shoulder against it, but it doesn’t move. The only way through is the gap near the bottom.

I crouch, pressing my stomach to the wet floor, and crawl between the twisted metal. My shoulders scrape against the jagged edges as I squeeze through, but finally, I spill out onto the other side.

The corridor beyond is vast.

I stand slowly, sweeping my flashlight across the space. The moment I move, sensors flicker to life—ancient and struggling to function. Overhead, long-dead lights sputter, coughing out pale, sickly light in erratic bursts, illuminating the hallway in flashes like lightning.

The corridor stretches far in both directions, lined with heavy-duty doors. Some are numbered. Others aren’t. All of them are reinforced with thick metal bolts securing them in place. A keypad lock sits beside each one, grime crusted into the seams.

I press my fingers to one of the reinforced windows, swiping away a layer of filth, but the glass is thick, the room beyond drowned in shadows. Nothing moves inside. If there’s anything in there at all, it’s long since succumbed to the dark.

I keep moving. Most of the doors are locked, but then—I come across one that isn’t.

I push it open cautiously, stepping inside. The room is small. A bed is bolted to the floor, rusted restraints hanging from its sides—thick, industrial, meant to hold someone down.

The walls are covered in scratches, deep and erratic. Tally marks. Hundreds of them, carved into the surface with something sharp. Here and there, the scratches look like they could be letters, maybe words, but they’re too worn to read.

Something about this place…

I stare at the bed. The restraints. The scratches.

My fingers trail over the marks in the wall, and my stomach twists. I know this place, but how could I?

I turn sharply and leave the room behind. I don’t hesitate as I move through the corridors, taking turns like I already know where they lead. Left. Right. Another left. The choices feel automatic, as if my body is acting before I can think, pulling me deeper.

After one last right, I come to a halt. The hallway opens into something completely wrong.

A playground.

The floor is fake grass, still green beneath the film of dust and grime. A mural is painted on the far wall—a bright blue sky with puffy white clouds, cartoonish and artificial. A single swing hangs from rusted chains, swaying slightly in the still air. A slide. Monkey bars.

My breath catches as I step forward, my pulse pounding. I can almost hear it—the sound of breathless laughter. My own voice, small and delighted—Push me higher, Caleb! His answering laugh as we ran, as we chased each other.

But those aren’t my memories.

Are they?

I shake my head hard, dragging myself back to the present. Focus. I'm here for something real—something that ties Caleb to that room, to whatever this place was. Not to linger in some forgotten playground built to keep children pacified.

Turning away, I step over fallen beams and squeeze through collapsed hallways where the ceiling has given way. Some stretches are so tight I have to slither through, my body scraping against rusted metal and cracked concrete.

Water drips constantly, a steady plink plink plink in the distance. Pipes groan somewhere deep within the facility, shifting as though something unseen still stirs within the walls. The sounds coil in the dark, twisting into something just shy of mechanical breathing.

Eventually, I find a staircase leading downward with an old, dust-caked sign hanging above the entryway, the lettering still visible beneath the grime: Laboratory, Testing Facilities, and Medical Sciences.

The metal stairs are slick with moss and algae. Some are bent inward, warped from age or heat. Others are missing chunks entirely, making my descent slow. Debris from the ceiling litters the steps—broken panels, fallen wires, the skeletal remains of a ventilation duct twisted like a ribcage.

The air down here is worse. Thick. Rancid. The hallways are barely passable.

Some sections are so cluttered with collapsed beams, overturned filing cabinets, and discarded machinery that I have to climb my way over. Other parts force me to crouch low, slipping between the wreckage like I’m worming my way through a collapsed tunnel.

I check every room I pass, but most are useless. Storage closets filled with shattered glass and rusted tools. Offices where papers dissolve to nothing the second I touch them, the ink bled away years ago.

Then I find something different. A room unlike the others.

Concrete walls, bare. No peeling paint. No broken desks. Just two large chairs, bolted to the floor. Thick leather straps hang limply from the armrests and footrests—restraints. The kind meant to keep someone completely still.

Strange machinery is hooked up to each chair—monitors, tubes, old mechanical arms ending in sharp-tipped instruments. I don’t recognize half of it.

I run my fingers over the nearest chair, and my whole body shudders. Dread wells up so violently, I have to pull my hand away. My chest tightens. Panic claws at my throat, though I don’t know why.

Another door stands just off to the side of this room. It’s slightly ajar, wedged in place by fallen debris. I press a hand against it, testing the weight. It doesn’t budge. I set my shoulder against it and push harder.

Still nothing.

Teeth gritted, I shove with everything I have, my boots slipping against the damp floor as I force my way through the narrow crack. The metal groans in protest, giving just enough for me to squeeze inside—

My foot catches on something, and I hit the ground hard, my flashlight flung from my grip. It crashes against the floor, spinning, the beam whipping wildly before finally settling—

Right on a skeleton.

I freeze.

The remains sit slumped in the corner, still clad in an old, tattered lab coat. The skull is caved in. Several bones appear cracked, broken, like whatever killed this person hadn’t stopped at just one blow.

Swallowing hard, I crawl forward and reach for the ID badge still clipped to the coat.

Dr. Xander Voss Chief Medical Officer and Researcher for Technological Advancement

Voss? Like the woman who approached me at the Fleet’s party? Could there be a connection there? I pocket it.

When I finally look around the room, I realize I’ve found something. The space is filled with mechanical parts. Eyes. Hands. Feet. Prosthetics, but—more intricate. More advanced. 

Some still gleam under the flashlight’s beam, untouched by rust, while others have been reduced to skeletal frames and parts.

Against the far wall sits a machine. It’s similar to the one in Caleb’s secret room, but older. Less sleek. More exposed wires, more tangled cables. A cruder version of something far more advanced.

I lift my wrist, activating my Hunter’s watch. The scan flickers, then gives me a carbon date—

That can’t be right.

The range is impossible. It dates back to an era when this kind of technology shouldn’t have existed, stretching all the way to a thousand years into the future.

I frown, scanning the machine for a model number, a manufacturer,anything that might clarify its origins.

Nothing.

I move to the robotic parts instead, picking up cogs, wires, fuses, intricate pieces I don’t even recognize.

No serial numbers. No tags. No stamps.

Who built this?

And when?

Chapter Masterlist Thank you for all your support, and I hope everyone is still enjoying!

[max-levchin]

Shamir Secret Sharing

It’s 3am. Paul, the head of PayPal database administration carefully enters his elaborate passphrase at a keyboard in a darkened cubicle of 1840 Embarcadero Road in East Palo Alto, for the fifth time. He hits Return. The green-on-black console window instantly displays one line of text: “Sorry, one or more wrong passphrases. Can’t reconstruct the key. Goodbye.” 

There is nerd pandemonium all around us. James, our recently promoted VP of Engineering, just climbed the desk at a nearby cubicle, screaming: “Guys, if we can’t get this key the right way, we gotta start brute-forcing it ASAP!” It’s gallows humor – he knows very well that brute-forcing such a key will take millions of years, and it’s already 6am on the East Coast – the first of many “Why is PayPal down today?” articles is undoubtedly going to hit CNET shortly. Our single-story cubicle-maze office is buzzing with nervous activity of PayPalians who know they can’t help but want to do something anyway. I poke my head up above the cubicle wall to catch a glimpse of someone trying to stay inside a giant otherwise empty recycling bin on wheels while a couple of Senior Software Engineers are attempting to accelerate the bin up to dangerous speeds in the front lobby. I lower my head and try to stay focused. “Let’s try it again, this time with three different people” is the best idea I can come up with, even though I am quite sure it will not work. 

It doesn’t. 

The key in question decrypts PayPal’s master payment credential table – also known as the giant store of credit card and bank account numbers. Without access to payment credentials, PayPal doesn’t really have a business per se, seeing how we are supposed to facilitate payments, and that’s really hard to do if we no longer have access to the 100+ million credit card numbers our users added over the last year of insane growth. 

This is the story of a catastrophic software bug I briefly introduced into the PayPal codebase that almost cost us the company (or so it seemed, in the moment.) I’ve told this story a handful of times, always swearing the listeners to secrecy, and surprisingly it does not appear to have ever been written down before. 20+ years since the incident, it now appears instructive and a little funny, rather than merely extremely embarrassing. 

Before we get back to that fateful night, we have to go back another decade. In the summer of 1991, my family and I moved to Chicago from Kyiv, Ukraine. While we had just a few hundred dollars between the five of us, we did have one secret advantage: science fiction fans. 

My dad was a highly active member of Zoryaniy Shlyah – Kyiv’s possibly first (and possibly only, at the time) sci-fi fan club – the name means “Star Trek” in Ukrainian, unsurprisingly. He translated some Stansilaw Lem (of Solaris and Futurological Congress fame) from Polish to Russian in the early 80s and was generally considered a coryphaeus at ZSh. 

While USSR was more or less informationally isolated behind the digital Iron Curtain until the late ‘80s, by 1990 or so, things like FidoNet wriggled their way into the Soviet computing world, and some members of ZSh were now exchanging electronic mail with sci-fi fans of the free world.

The vaguely exotic news of two Soviet refugee sci-fi fans arriving in Chicago was transmitted to the local fandom before we had even boarded the PanAm flight that took us across the Atlantic [1]. My dad (and I, by extension) was soon adopted by some kind Chicago science fiction geeks, a few of whom became close friends over the years, though that’s a story for another time. 

A year or so after the move to Chicago, our new sci-fi friends invited my dad to a birthday party for a rising star of the local fandom, one Bruce Schneier. We certainly did not know Bruce or really anyone at the party, but it promised good food, friendly people, and probably filk. My role was to translate, as my dad spoke limited English at the time. 

I had fallen desperately in love with secret codes and cryptography about a year before we left Ukraine. Walking into Bruce’s library during the house tour (this was a couple years before Applied Cryptography was published and he must have been deep in research) felt like walking into Narnia. 

I promptly abandoned my dad to fend for himself as far as small talk and canapés were concerned, and proceeded to make a complete ass out of myself by brazenly asking the host for a few sheets of paper and a pencil. Having been obliged, I pulled a half dozen cryptography books from the shelves and went to work trying to copy down some answers to a few long-held questions on the library floor. After about two hours of scribbling alone like a man possessed, I ran out of paper and decided to temporarily rejoin the party. 

On the living room table, Bruce had stacks of copies of his fanzine Ramblings. Thinking I could use the blank sides of the pages to take more notes, I grabbed a printout and was about to quietly return to copying the original S-box values for DES when my dad spotted me from across the room and demanded I help him socialize. The party wrapped soon, and our friends drove us home. 

The printout I grabbed was not a Ramblings issue. It was a short essay by Bruce titled Sharing Secrets Among Friends, essentially a humorous explanation of Shamir Secret Sharing. 

Say you want to make sure that something really really important and secret (a nuclear weapon launch code, a database encryption key, etc) cannot be known or used by a single (friendly) actor, but becomes available, if at least n people from a group of m choose to do it. Think two on-duty officers (from a cadre of say 5) turning keys together to get ready for a nuke launch. 

The idea (proposed by Adi Shamir – the S of RSA! – in 1979) is as simple as it is beautiful. 

Let’s call the secret we are trying to split among m people K. 

First, create a totally random polynomial that looks like: y(x) = C0 * x^(n-1) + C1 * x^(n-2) + C2 * x^(n-3) ….+ K. “Create” here just means generate random coefficients C. Now, for every person in your trusted group of m, evaluate the polynomial for some randomly chosen Xm and hand them their corresponding (Xm,Ym) each. 

If we have n of these points together, we can use Lagrange interpolating polynomial to reconstruct the coefficients – and evaluate the original polynomial at x=0, which conveniently gives us y(0) = K, the secret. Beautiful. I still had the printout with me, years later, in Palo Alto. 

It should come as no surprise that during my time as CTO PayPal engineering had an absolute obsession with security. No firewall was one too many, no multi-factor authentication scheme too onerous, etc. Anything that was worth anything at all was encrypted at rest. 

To decrypt, a service would get the needed data from its database table, transmit it to a special service named cryptoserv (an original SUN hardware running Solaris sitting on its own, especially tightly locked-down network) and a special service running only there would perform the decryption and send back the result. 

Decryption request rate was monitored externally and on cryptoserv, and if there were too many requests, the whole thing was to shut down and purge any sensitive data and keys from its memory until manually restarted. 

It was this manual restart that gnawed at me. At launch, a bunch of configuration files containing various critical decryption keys were read (decrypted by another key derived from one manually-entered passphrase) and loaded into the memory to perform future cryptographic services.

Four or five of us on the engineering team knew the passphrase and could restart cryptoserv if it crashed or simply had to have an upgrade. What if someone performed a little old-fashioned rubber-hose cryptanalysis and literally beat the passphrase out of one of us? The attacker could theoretically get access to these all-important master keys. Then stealing the encrypted-at-rest database of all our users’ secrets could prove useful – they could decrypt them in the comfort of their underground supervillain lair. 

I needed to eliminate this threat.

Shamir Secret Sharing was the obvious choice – beautiful, simple, perfect (you can in fact prove that if done right, it offers perfect secrecy.) I decided on a 3-of-8 scheme and implemented it in pure POSIX C for portability over a few days, and tested it for several weeks on my Linux desktop with other engineers. 

Step 1: generate the polynomial coefficients for 8 shard-holders.

Step 2: compute the key shards (x0, y0)  through (x7, y7)

Step 3: get each shard-holder to enter a long, secure passphrase to encrypt the shard

Step 4: write out the 8 shard files, encrypted with their respective passphrases.

And to reconstruct: 

Step 1: pick any 3 shard files. 

Step 2: ask each of the respective owners to enter their passphrases. 

Step 3: decrypt the shard files.

Step 4: reconstruct the polynomial, evaluate it for x=0 to get the key.

Step 5: launch cryptoserv with the key. 

One design detail here is that each shard file also stored a message authentication code (a keyed hash) of its passphrase to make sure we could identify when someone mistyped their passphrase. These tests ran hundreds and hundreds of times, on both Linux and Solaris, to make sure I did not screw up some big/little-endianness issue, etc. It all worked perfectly. 

A month or so later, the night of the key splitting party was upon us. We were finally going to close out the last vulnerability and be secure. Feeling as if I was about to turn my fellow shard-holders into cymeks, I gathered them around my desktop as PayPal’s front page began sporting the “We are down for maintenance and will be back soon” message around midnight.

The night before, I solemnly generated the new master key and securely copied it to cryptoserv. Now, while “Push It” by Salt-n-Pepa blared from someone’s desktop speakers, the automated deployment script copied shard files to their destination. 

While each of us took turns carefully entering our elaborate passphrases at a specially selected keyboard, Paul shut down the main database and decrypted the payment credentials table, then ran the script to re-encrypt with the new key. Some minutes later, the database was running smoothly again, with the newly encrypted table, without incident. 

All that was left was to restore the master key from its shards and launch the new, even more secure cryptographic service. 

The three of us entered our passphrases… to be met with the error message I haven’t seen in weeks: “Sorry, one or more wrong passphrases. Can’t reconstruct the key. Goodbye.” Surely one of us screwed up typing, no big deal, we’ll do it again. No dice. No dice – again and again, even after we tried numerous combinations of the three people necessary to decrypt. 

Minutes passed, confusion grew, tension rose rapidly. 

There was nothing to do, except to hit rewind – to grab the master key from the file still sitting on cryptoserv, split it again, generate new shards, choose passphrases, and get it done. Not a great feeling to have your first launch go wrong, but not a huge deal either. It will all be OK in a minute or two.

A cursory look at the master key file date told me that no, it wouldn’t be OK at all. The file sitting on cryptoserv wasn’t from last night, it was created just a few minutes ago. During the Salt-n-Pepa-themed push from stage, we overwrote the master key file with the stage version. Whatever key that was, it wasn’t the one I generated the day before: only one copy existed, the one I copied to cryptoserv from my computer the night before. Zero copies existed now. Not only that, the push script appears to have also wiped out the backup of the old key, so the database backups we have encrypted with the old key are likely useless. 

Sitrep: we have 8 shard files that we apparently cannot use to restore the master key and zero master key backups. The database is running but its secret data cannot be accessed. 

I will leave it to your imagination to conjure up what was going through my head that night as I stared into the black screen willing the shards to work. After half a decade of trying to make something of myself (instead of just going to work for Microsoft or IBM after graduation) I had just destroyed my first successful startup in the most spectacular fashion. 

Still, the idea of “what if we all just continuously screwed up our passphrases” swirled around my brain. It was an easy check to perform, thanks to the included MACs. I added a single printf() debug statement into the shard reconstruction code and instead of printing out a summary error of “one or more…” the code now showed if the passphrase entered matched the authentication code stored in the shard file. 

I compiled the new code directly on cryptoserv in direct contravention of all reasonable security practices – what did I have to lose? Entering my own passphrase, I promptly got “bad passphrase” error I just added to the code. Well, that’s just great – I knew my passphrase was correct, I had it written down on a post-it note I had planned to rip up hours ago. 

Another person, same error. Finally, the last person, JK, entered his passphrase. No error. The key still did not reconstruct correctly, I got the “Goodbye”, but something worked. I turned to the engineer and said, “what did you just type in that worked?”

After a second of embarrassed mumbling, he admitted to choosing “a$$word” as his passphrase. The gall! I asked everyone entrusted with the grave task of relaunching crytposerv to pick really hard to guess passphrases, and this guy…?! Still, this was something -- it worked. But why?!

I sprinted around the half-lit office grabbing the rest of the shard-holders demanding they tell me their passphrases. Everyone else had picked much lengthier passages of text and numbers. I manually tested each and none decrypted correctly. Except for the a$$word. What was it…

A lightning bolt hit me and I sprinted back to my own cubicle in the far corner, unlocked the screen and typed in “man getpass” on the command line, while logging into cryptoserv in another window and doing exactly the same thing there. I saw exactly what I needed to see. 

Today, should you try to read up the programmer’s manual (AKA the man page) on getpass, you will find it has been long declared obsolete and replaced with a more intelligent alternative in nearly all flavors of modern Unix.  

But back then, if you wanted to collect some information from the keyboard without printing what is being typed in onto the screen and remain POSIX-compliant, getpass did the trick. Other than a few standard file manipulation system calls, getpass was the only operating system service call I used, to ensure clean portability between Linux and Solaris. 

Except it wasn’t completely clean. 

Plain as day, there it was: the manual pages were identical, except Solaris had a “special feature”: any passphrase entered that was longer than 8 characters long was automatically reduced to that length anyway. (Who needs long passwords, amiright?!)

I screamed like a wounded animal. We generated the key on my Linux desktop and entered our novel-length passphrases right here. Attempting to restore them on a Solaris machine where they were being clipped down to 8 characters long would never work. Except, of course, for a$$word. That one was fine.

The rest was an exercise in high-speed coding and some entirely off-protocol file moving. We reconstructed the master key on my machine (all of our passphrases worked fine), copied the file to the Solaris-running cryptoserv, re-split it there (with very short passphrases), reconstructed it successfully, and PayPal was up and running again like nothing ever happened. 

By the time our unsuspecting colleagues rolled back into the office I was starting to doze on the floor of my cubicle and that was that. When someone asked me later that day why we took so long to bring the site back up, I’d simply respond with “eh, shoulda RTFM.” 

RTFM indeed. 

P.S. A few hours later, John, our General Counsel, stopped by my cubicle to ask me something. The day before I apparently gave him a sealed envelope and asked him to store it in his safe for 24 hours without explaining myself. He wanted to know what to do with it now that 24 hours have passed. 

Ha. I forgot all about it, but in a bout of “what if it doesn’t work” paranoia, I printed out the base64-encoded master key when we had generated it the night before, stuffed it into an envelope, and gave it to John for safekeeping. We shredded it together without opening and laughed about what would have never actually been a company-ending event. 

P.P.S. If you are thinking of all the ways this whole SSS design is horribly insecure (it had some real flaws for sure) and plan to poke around PayPal to see if it might still be there, don’t. While it served us well for a few years, this was the very first thing eBay required us to turn off after the acquisition. Pretty sure it’s back to a single passphrase now. 

Notes:

1: a member of Chicagoland sci-fi fan community let me know that the original news of our move to the US was delivered to them via a posted letter, snail mail, not FidoNet email! 

[misfitwashere]

TIMOTHY SNYDER

APR 19

READ IN APP

Thirty years ago today, I was driving a moving van across the country, from the west coast to the east. The hold was packed well; the ride was wobbly, and I kept the heavy vehicle between the lines, mile after mile. Driving carefully, I was surprised to be stopped by state troopers. When I rolled down the window to face some polite questioning, I didn’t know that Timothy McVeigh had bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring 684 more. 

In the days that followed, the horror was treated for what it was: an attack by a racist, right-wing anti-government terrorist. I worry now that, thirty years on, a similar attack is very likely, and would have a different outcome. I don't want us to be more frightened than we should be. But I do want us to be ready, so that a moment of predictable shock does not become a lifetime of avoidable subjugation.

As I will try to show, the present government invites a terror attack. Most of the people directing the relevant agencies are incompetent; the next few layers down have been purged in culture wars; much the remaining personnel have resigned, been fired, or are demoralized; resources have been diverted away from terror prevention; Americans has been distracted by fiction and chaos; and potential attackers have been encouraged. 

And so we have to think — now — about what would follow such an attack. Musk, Trump, Vance, and the rest would try to exploit the moment to undo remaining American freedoms. Let me cite Lesson 18 of On Tyranny.

18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.

In just three months, the Trump people have made the unthinkable much more likely. They have created the conditions for terrorism, and thus for terror management. This is true at several levels.

Most obviously, they have debilitated the services that detect terrorist threats and prevent attacks: the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA is a foreign intelligence service. The FBI is the federal police force. The NSA, which specializes in cryptography and foreign signals intelligence, is part of the Department of Defense. Homeland Security is a cabinet-level department that amalgamates a number of functions from immigration control through disaster relief and anti-terrorism.

Overall guidance over the intelligence agencies is exercised by Tulsi Gabbard, who is known as an apologist for the now-overthrown Assad regime in Syria and the Putin regime in Russia. The director of the FBI is Kash Patel, an author of children's books that promote conspiracy theories, and a recipient of payments from sources linked to Russia. Patel plans to run the agency from Las Vegas, where he resides in the home of a Republican megadonor. The deputy director of the FBI is Dan Bongino, a right-wing entertainer who has called the FBI "irredeemable corrupt" and indulged in conspiracy theories about its special agents. He now draws FBI special agents away from their usual duties to serve as a personal bodyguard. The director of Homeland Security is Kristi Noem, who lacks relevant expertise. 

Noem has distinguished herself by posing in front of a cell full of prisoners in El Salvador. Homeland Security is focused on spectacular abductions at the expense of its other missions. Its programs to prevent terrorism have been defunded, and it is no longer keeping up its database on domestic terrorism. As one insider put it: “The vibe is: How to use DHS to go after migrants, immigrants. That is the vibe, that is the only vibe, there is no other vibe. It’s wild — it’s as if the rest of the department doesn’t exist.” The obsession with migrants means that local law enforcement, all across the country, is being in effect federalized in the service of an objective that is essentially irrelevant to core missions. That, too, makes life easier for aspiring terrorists.

The National Security Agency sits within the Department of Defense, which is run by Pete Hegseth, a right-wing entertainer and culture warrior. He has fired people who were qualified, and is unable to keep even his own people at work — he just lost four staffers in one day. The “meltdown” at the top of the Pentagon bodes ill. 

The leadership of the NSA itself was recently changed, under bizarre and troubling circumstances. After a meeting with conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, Trump fired the NSA director, General Timothy Haugh. Wendy Noble, the deputy director, was also fired. This decapitation was part of a larger set of firings initiated by Loomer. It takes place during an ongoing purge of military leaders and national security officials. From the perspective of potential attackers, the culture wars mean vulnerability. 

Meanwhile, other Department of Defense agencies that are central to the twenty-first century security of the United States, such as the Defense Digital Service, are destroyed by Elon Musk’s DOGE. It is worth contemplating the reaction of a former Pentagon official: “They’re not really using AI, they’re not really driving efficiency. What they’re doing is smashing everything.” In general, the penetration of the federal government by DOGE has weakened its functions, and likely made critical data available to adversaries who wish to hurt Americans. 

The rank and file of the critical institutions are subjected to administrative hostility and chaos. The names of active CIA officers have been sent on open emails to the White House, and in a Signal chat in which a reporter was included. CIA employees have been urged to take early retirement. CIA officers involved in any way in diversity recruitment have been fired (a judge has blocked this, for the time being). 

FBI special agents have been exposed to similar indignities. Top FBI officials have been pressured to resign and have done so. Musk-Trump is pursuingFBI special agents who were involved in prosecutions of people who stormed the Capitol on January 6th 2021. Patel proposes that special agents be trained by a company that promotes commercial fights that is based in Las Vegas. Sending FBI special agents to Nevada to simulate Fight Club for Patel’s personal delectation is not going to keep Americans safe. 

The Musk-Trump people run national security, intelligence, and law enforcement like a television show. The entire operation of forcible rendition of migrants to a Salvadoran concentration camp was based upon lies. It is not just that Kilmar Abgrego Garcia was mistakenly apprehended. The entire thing was made for television. Its point was the creation of the fascist videos. But this is a media strategy, meant to frighten Americans. And a media strategy does not stop actual terrorists. It summons them.

Terrorism is a real risk in the real world. The constant use of the word to denote unreal threats creates unreality. And unreality inside ket institutions degrades capability. Security agencies that have been trained to follow political instructions about imaginary threats do not investigate actual threats. Fiction is dangerous. Treating the administration’s abduction of a legal permanent resident as a heroic defense against terror is not only mendacious and unconstitutional but also dangerous. 

Moreover, Musk-Trump make the United States look vulnerable. Americans under the spell of Trump’s or Musk’s charisma might imagine that strength is being projected. Not so. To prospective terrorists we look erratic and weak. Even apparently unrelated policies — such as enabling foreign disinformation, gutting environmental protection, undoing weather forecasting, ending food inspections, and undermining disease control — make life easier for terrorists and open avenues of attack. By taking apart the government, crashing the economy, and dividing the population, Musk and Trump invite attention of the worst sort, from people who wish to hurt Americans.

Who are such people? Three possible groups of perpetrators of a major terrorist attack in the United States are native right-wing nationalists or white supremacists (“domestic violent extremists”), Islamicists, and Russians.

Most terrorism in the United States is domestic, and most of the domestic terror comes from the far right. We have recently seen a series of white supremacist killings. Cody Balmer, who wanted to kill Pennsylvania’s (Democratic, Jewish) governor, wrote that “Biden supporters should not exist.”

It might seem counter-intuitive that the far right would carry out acts of terror under Trump, but this is already the norm, and there are good reasons to expect worse. Musk pushes the story that civil servants deserve pain. The most lethal domestic terror attack in US history, McVeigh’s bombing, was directed against federal workers. Right-wing terrorists might believe that terror is what Trump wants. The suspect in the recent Florida mass shooting “advocated for President Donald Trump's agenda and often promoted white supremacist values,” according to someone who saw him regularly. Trump has long practiced stochastic violence. His pardon of the January 6th criminals encourages terror with the promise of forgiveness. Patel promoted a recording of the January 6 criminals singing the national anthem. This coddling culture of martryrdom makes more killing more likely.

There is also another scenario. Far right movements can divide, with the more impatient angry with those they see as compromised. This is a lessonfrom the history of fascism. Some supporters of Trump will be disappointed with him. The assassination attempt on Trump was carried out by someone whose social media posts conveyed hatred of Jews and immigrants. Bongino now has to contend with fans of his show who think that the January 6th criminals should be running the FBI. 

The Murrah Federal Building, Oklahoma City, 19 April 1995

And our guard has been dropped. Even at the best of times, the FBI has generally had trouble articulating the centrality of domestic right-wing terrorism. Now the risk is denied. High officials of Musk-Trump tend to sharethe views of right-wing nationalists, which makes it less likely that they will be seen as a threat. Under Patel, the FBI will deprioritize this important area of investigation. In keeping with his and Noem’s priorities, FBI agents have been assigned away from domestic terrorism. Thus far, the main "terrorist" threat seen by Trump-Musk are protestors in front of Tesla dealerships. Diverting attention to parking lots will not keep Americans safe. 

Musk-Trump are also generating scenarios for Islamicist terror. A motivation for Islamicist terrorists is contention over territory in the Middle East. The Trump administration advocates the ethnic cleansing of the entire (surviving) population of Gaza. The US armed forces are also firing ordnance into Yemen with the announced goal of "annihilating" the Houthis who hold power. In a Signal group chat, top national security officials rejoiced (with emojis) over a strike in which a building collapsed. It seems unclear that Musk-Trump will have accounted for the related terrorism risk.

Russia is now a risk in a way that it was not before. It has special units that carry out acts of destruction abroad, such as assassinations and sabotage. In the last three years, these operations have accelerated inside Europe, and include blowing up military sites. Russia also pays people inside other countries to carry out acts of terror and sabotage. Russia has been carrying out cyber attacks inside the United States for years. 

Before Musk-Trump, the United States had been fastidious about including Russia as a possible source of foreign terror. Now Russia is presented as an ally and Putin as a friend; intelligence and defense work designed to monitor Russian sabotage inside the United States have been scaled back, as has tracking of Russian war crimes in Ukraine and public reporting on Russia. Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, rationalizes Russian aggression. Patel, the FBI director, owes his career to the claim that people who (truthfully) speak of Russian operations inside the United States are carrying out a hoax. Trump’s nominee for US district attorney for Washington, DC, is a media star in Russia. 

This is all beyond the wildest dreams of the Kremlin. The Putinism on display in the federal government creates an atmosphere in which a Russian operation inside the United States would be much easier.

It is not hard to see what Russia would gain from a false-flag terror attack on American territory. Moscow would be seeking to weaken the United States, and by generating a response from Musk-Trump that suits Russia. Having Trump blame his enemies for what was in fact a Russian attack is in the interest of the Russian Federation.

Other actors than these three are also possible. I fear, though, that whether I am right or wrong about the specific source, there can be no doubt that we are far more vulnerable than we were three months ago. And any major attack, regardless of origin, would lead to the same kind terror management. The people in the White House have no governing skills, but they do have entertainment skills. They will seek to transform themselves from the villains of the story to the heroes, and in the process bring down the republic. Please indulge me if I ask you to consider Lesson 18 again.

18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.

20 lessons, read by John Lithgow

That lesson arises from two notorious twentieth-century examples: the Reichstag Fire in Germany in 1933, which Hitler used to declare a state of emergency, and the Kirov assassination in the Soviet Union in 1934, which Stalin used as an excuse to expand terror. In both cases, it is the reactionthat we remember, rather than the event itself. 

I wish that terrorist attacks were a moment when government could be trusted. But the temptation, for any government, is to take the shock and to divert it in a convenient direction. And the temptation, for us, is to imagine that our leaders will rise to the occasion. After 9/11, I listened to President Bush address the nation, sitting in my pickup, on the driveway outside a friend’s house. Though my own politics were very different, I remember the pull inside me, the wish to believe that he would do the right thing. I didn’t let myself believe anything of the sort, but I remember the feeling: and it is that tug that we cannot let get the best of us. 

Our present government would be the last to resist the temptation to exploit terror. Musk-Trump would, I fear, make little if any attempt to apprehend the responsible people, especially if they are Americans or Russians. They might blame the Democratic Party, or Americans they hate for other reasons, or the opposition generally, or Canadians or Ukrainians or other Europeans. They will likely try to put an end to the American republic. 

This is the critical moment when we must prevent ourselves from going along.

I do not relish describing this chain of events. But the only way to cut the chain it is to see the links. And when we can imagine that we ourselves have the power to cut the links, as we do, we can also imagine ourselves more free. 

History teaches us how terrorist attacks are exploited. Our advantage is that we know this history, and so react sensibly. Do not give the present regime the benefit of the doubt after it allows a terrorist attack to take place on American soil. Be skeptical about its account of who is to blame. Insist that Musk-Trump take responsibility. And understand that freedom is the first condition of security. A terrorist attack is no reason to concede anything to this regime. On the contrary: such a failure by Musk-Trump would be one more reason, and a very powerful one, to resist it. 

Throughout history, and around the world right now, government indifference and incompetence that leads to civilians deaths has been seen as a reason for protest.

The night before I was stopped by the police, I had been driving that truck through water. It was a time of high rain in the central United States. Highways were flooded.

In the pre-revolutionary France of the eighteenth century, decadent rulers said “après nous, le déluge” — “after us, the flood.” We care not at all about the consequences of our actions; we are here to profit so long as we can. This is the attitude of Musk, Trump, and the rest. They are in it for themselves, provoking disasters for the rest of us along the way.

A few days before that drive began, I finished my doctoral dissertation, about revolutions, based on research in post-communist Poland. One of my supervisors was the the British historian Timothy Garton Ash. Considering the task of Poland’s new democratic government, he reversed the formula of French royalty, writing: “après le deluge, nous.”

After the flood, we remain. The disaster brought by the decadent is part of the story. But it is not the conclusion. It is what we do next that matters.

[squishyneet]

on goo kim - official analysis!

this is going to take forever but here we go~ im here to talk abt goo's backstory. im not putting panels so ur just gonna have to trust me :D. im not sure why more people don't talk abt goo's lore in manager kim but i will include it. this is in no particular order. this is the definitive goo analysis backstory theory for this blog. grab a snack and a drink and let's go.

evidence 1 - "There are monsters above champions, and madmen above monsters." (Chapter 98 MK)

"One of the three madmen Master Cho recognized is currently in South Korea." <- he's very clearly referring to Goo.

evidence 2 - "Uhh, he's not on the list." (Chapter 98 MK)

Goo seems to pull up a website/document on his phone called...The World??? Like he has a database for bounties. In chapter 99, the website is referred to as the black market and is used by plenty of other bounty hunters. It's heavily implied that Goo is acting as some sort of bounty hunter, but he doesn't make it clear.

evidence 3 - "He is the fervent devotee of edges." (Chapter 98 MK)

Goo is apparently internationally recognized for his prowess (and craziness) and is well known to be a genius of weapons (wink wink). In this chapter, Goo was fighting with just a watch and also avoided a gunshot point blank!

evidence 4 - "I would hate being a soldier." (Chapter 99 MK)

Jincheol really wanted to recruit Goo as a mercenary, and Goo vehemently denied saying he would hate it, not caring if mercenaries were paid properly or not. He also did not want to partake in Jincheol's "mid-life crisis" and got pissed off the more he thought about being a soldier. He also freaking tackled and threw him out a window??

evidence 5 - "Should I ask for his signature?" (Chapter 101 MK)

Hyoseung Kim was standing behind Goo and just fucking fawning lmao. He was excited to see him in person.

evidence 6 - "Are you here for a bounty too?" (Chapter 101 MK)

Again Goo is implied to be a bounty hunter like the rest of them.

evidence 7 - "Countless hired killers across the world." (Chapter 93 MK)

Bounty hunters are being recruited and Goo quickly recieves a message from an unknown person where he finds out about the bounty.

evidence 8 - "From South Korea to Japan, Russia, The United States, China, Thailand, and Indonesia...We have recruited the most expert assassins." (Chapter 96 MK)

A lot to unpack here, Goo is internationally recognized (by the black market) as an expert assassin. He's also regarded as the most likely to win because it's his country and he knows the terrain/structure. Do with this information what you will bc idk what to do.

evidence 9 - Cousin Cicada (Chapter 55 Lookism)

I always wondered why his cousin had money and he didn't. Perhaps he is estranged from his family for his violence. Or after his juvie sentence? Maybe his line has the swordsmen and his cousin's doesn't? Maybe the entire family is prominent somehow? Did Goo used to have money and misses it after being estranged? Was he simply treated differently than the rest of his family? Abused? This obviously implies he has a family, knows his relatives, and was still in contact with his cousin somehow. This was so long ago. What was the intention behind making him Goo's cousin? Does his cousin know about his prowess because they have a family of swordsmen/assassins?? Or is that separate from his family?

evidence 10 - "There's a knife and a victim." (Chapter 55 Lookism)

Goo appears to be manipulative to some degree when he acknowledges that fact that he can "do whatever he wants" as soon as he sees a victim. This is likely the reason he primarily beat up bullies since he doesn't actually want to go back to juvie. I think he has a little compassion for the victims, but that's not why he does it. He ends up "exchanging" the fee for the opportunity for violence, prioritizing violence above even money. Also, Cicada seems to knows that Goo is a "crazy-ass" and and "evil guy". Wonder why.

evidence 11 - "There was a kid from my area who tried to cut me and I broke all his fingers." (Chapter 56 Lookism)

As much as Goo's story is all over the place, I really appreciate PTJ's consistency with Goo's personality. He seems to be truly passionate about swords (and any kind of edge) to the point where he gets offended by even rudimentary attempts.

evidence 12 - "Just like you did to them, I'm doing to you. I am also beating you for no reason." (Chapter 56 Lookism)

This is line is interesting to me because it shows that even though Goo acknowledges that he is the avenger in this situation, he really only cares about his personal interest in committing violence.

evidence 13 - Vasco's aichmophobia

Aichmophobia is defined by Cleveland Clinic as an intense fear of sharp objects and experiencing "intense fear and anxiety when around sharp objects like scissors, knives, needles and pencils". I think it's extremely poetic that the person who developed aichmophobia was saved by the person who is the master of wielding edges. Vasco's bullies were stopped specifically by the person who was superior at doing what they were attempting to do.

evidence 14 - "I ended up repeating what that old man said! I shouldn't have been playing around in a place like that in the first place!" (Chapter 473 Lookism)

This chapter has a lot about Goo so I'll cover it all here. There is a flashback to him when he was training. He's using a wooden stick/sword that broke and he seems to be maybe 12, 13, maybe 14? I gather from this that Goo did not begin his swordfighting training at a young age. This is supported by the quote, implying he found the studio and his master later on in life and was not trained by him from childhood. My guess is that he was a violent and problematic child to a degree, maybe even using weapons at a young age, and simply got curious about swordfighting. He also explained the importance of intelligence in a fight, which is pretty straightforward. That is also supported by quotes from Jincheol in MK where he acknowledges Goo's ability to constantly adjust his fighting style to what is necessary. Very impressive Goo!

evidence 15 - "I'll help you as long as you pay me." (Chapter 421 Lookism)

Even before Goo met Gun, Eugene, or Charles, he was behaving like a mercenary, offering do whatever for money. This is a two for one, Goo gets as much money as possible while also getting to fight, succeeding each time with little effort. He seems to have had the mindset of a mercenary or bounty hunter for a long time. He went out of his way to travel across the city doing these odd jobs.

evidence 16 - "I heard of a genius on the run after stabbing his master." (Chapter 527 Lookism)

My hunch seems to be correct in that Goo is not in school, not staying with family, and...homeless..? I guess?? I don't know where he's staying, maybe a hotel. But it seems that he just lost it. It being his temper. And stabbed that old man and ran away. I have a million theories as to what the master could have possibly done to piss him off, it's not worth discussing too much. Also the fact that he tries to be mature and not get angry as much as possible (and he succeeded for the last several years!) signals to me that he doesn't actually enjoy it. I think he enjoys fighting for real but regrets losing his temper as it is a sign of immaturity and neediness.

evidence 17 - "You're getting excited while fighting? Oi, you're a pervert, aren't you?" (Chapter 528 Lookism)

Goo recognizes Gun's behavior from somewhere else. Such an odd and specific thing to say.

evidence 18 - Goo's three rules (Chapter 528 Lookism)

Goo wanted the contract money, to not be treated like a subordinate, and to have equal shares as Gun. Seeing as he got mistreated anyways, it makes sense he betrayed Charles. Goo seems to know about contracting and finance. Makes me think someone's gonna mention the Hwarang sword soon...

evidence 19 - "Too vicious, eh?" (Chapter 297 Lookism)

Gun doesn't think Samuel will beat Daniel, but Samuel's crazy is exactly why Goo had faith in him. Also he throws a freaking bowling ball just to hit Gun's lol.

Okay there are other obvious quotes that allude to Goo's personality but I will stop here because those are pretty well known by now.

the backstory

Being bullied in school is kind of a cop out so here:

Goo was abused/mistreated by someone in his life. He was somehow "betrayed" by his master. He learned swordfighting later in life. Something probably happened to make him wholly dedicated to weapons, specifically anything with an edge. At an unknown age, killed someone, maybe multiple people (likely in a crime of passion) and became well known for his madness (specifically Master Cho). At an unknown age, became obsessed with money and thus pursued bounty hunting but equates being a mercenary with being a "soldier". At an unknown time, was most likely estranged from his family for an unknown reason. Likely to do with his violence and/or his juvie sentence.

things we don't know

Primary concern is that fact that we don't know Goo's timeline. When he went to juvie, when he left home, if/when he murdered somebody, when he started seeking money, etc. It's hard to tell whether he became crazy when he started training or later on or if he was always like that. Or when he became a bounty hunter/assassin and became famous. We don't know why he stabbed the master, why he hates Tom Lee, and why he sided with Workers for so long.

notes

1. Because of all the...bizarre references to people around Goo being..perverted, I always had the theory that maybe Goo was assaulted by somebody. I don't know who. But something kinda tells me it could have been his master. That would explain why Goo doesn't like it when people start freaking off (excuse my language) and why he stabbed him. However, the fact that he stills heeds his words as an adult makes me think it's not true. I still think he was assaulted/harassed by somebody tho because he is the only character that gets that kind of treatment/dialogue. Most obviously, it could have been Tom Lee bc he hates him too, but we will see. 2. Regarding Goo's tendency to let himself get hit: Goo is clearly known as a killer. He has the strength and intelligence to do whatever he wants. I think the reason he lets himself get hit and play around is 1) to avoid losing his temper or gaining a suspiciously large advantage, 2) to avoid showing his full power and 3) because he simply does not want to kill the person, so full power is unnecessary. I think he treats fighting like a game (he does like video games) as a person who was taught to be serious. He is more powerful than he actually needs to be so he uses limited power to support his daily life. 3. Goo's collection of fellow crazy people is fascinating because they all have similar personalities and became a little more mature. Goo did say he wanted his own crew and he got it I guess. Got a bunch of freakazoids and made himself the king. I still wonder what he's doing with them. Crazies taking over the world.

mini-theories

1. I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe the reason PTJ chose Goo to save Vasco is not just because he's the weapons genius. Maybe the reason he gets offended when other people use weapons on him is because he also had aichmophobia and overcame it by taking the power of weapons back. This would also explain why he dislikes scars on his body. It would be the complete opposite of Vasco. On that note, Vasco also smokes, which Goo also hates. 2. Goo, like Eugene, seems to be great at taking hits. I have a theory that he is used to pain from being cut and hit so many times in the past. Which would also explain his quickness to stab himself. For whatever reason, he just didn't scar or they faded. (Feel free to tell me all about dull and sharp blades!). 3. On the other hand, I have a theory that, like Gun, Goo has some kind of genetic mutation/superpower that allows him to heal faster or maybe feel less pain? That would explain why he goes to the hospital every other day and doesn't care. He lets himself get hit and doesn't mind. I feel like superior healing would suit him.

k im done tired now

pls feel free to add on

[robin-evry]

Heeeyyyyy~ it’s a me again, so just watched the Transformers one movie, and it got me thinking of what would happen if Yuu was a cybertronian/Transformer? Like alien robot that Can transform into a vehicle isekaied to a magic School? Imagine the fun! the chaos! They can pick up the overblot students and put them in air jail like a misbehaving cat! Ortho finally has a bestie!!!!

Sure thing, ask and you shall receive

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐅 𝐘𝐔𝐔 𝐈𝐒 𝐀 𝐂𝐘𝐁𝐄𝐑𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐈𝐀𝐍 👾🤖

Cybertronians are a species of autonomous robotic organisms originating from the distant planet called Cybertron that had their essences transferred into robotic bodies known as "Transformers".

Cybertronian!Yuu one of by far most unique students ever, they tower over most of the students. By cybertronian!yuu has received some modification in twst that helps them fit in the world more.

They can partially transform parts of their body into mechanical tools, like shields, scanners, or even small weaponry. This ability has led to some interesting duels in combat class, where they improvises with forms no one expects.

Cybertronian!Yuu sees magic as something like a digital matrix, with each spell having its own “source code.” While they may struggle with traditional spellcasting, Cybertronian Yuu can often rewrite spells or make unique modifications, leading to unexpected effects. This adaptability often puts them at odds with teachers, yet impresses friends like Ace and Deuce.

Cybertronian!Yuu can store and retrieve a ton of information like a living database, sometimes glitching and blurting out random trivia. Ace and Deuce find it hilarious, but it occasionally becomes handy, especially during exams.

Do you know the meme of the song I woke up in a new Bugatti, that's the first year riding on cybertronian!yuu on their transformation form. They have become their friends chauffeur around school pretty much everywhere.

Ortho + Cybertronian!Yuu : robot besties.

NRC tend to call them both a “tech wiz.” They often exchange “upgrades” and tech secrets, and Ortho even helps Cybertronian!Yuu unlock hidden Cybertronian features that they were previously unaware of. They’re like the school’s tech-savvy duo, making Idia’s life easier and sometimes scaring him with their synchronized techno-speak.

Cybertronian! Yuu has an “echo mode” that lets them record and replay sounds, which Rook finds utterly fascinating for tracking creatures or investigating mysteries. Sometimes, they use it to replay people’s voices, teasing Ace or copying Riddle’s strict tone. Grim once caught them imitating the Headmage and nearly exposed them!

Their system has an auto-translate function for languages, magical runes, and even animal sounds, making them NRC’s unofficial interpreter. This skill shines with Sebek, who tries to one-up them in translating ancient text, and with Kalim, who loves hearing animal translations from the Spirit of the Dunes.

Inspired by Pomefiore’s focus on beauty, they develop a “glamour mode” that projects holographic outfits, allowing them to “try on” new looks with a simple transformation. Rook and Vil are fascinated by their ability to shift appearances at will, and Vil even pushes them to “update” their glamour mode regularly to keep up with fashion trends.

Cybertronian!yuu is very curious about the world around them, since originally back in Cybertron there wasn't any organic like plant-life. You can find them being curious and browsing things that find them interesting.

When seriously damaged, cybertronian!Yuu has an auto-repair protocol that initiates a regeneration process. This usually involves a “recharging stasis” where they power down for a few hours to restore internal systems by transforming into a metal box to repair any damages coming to their body and database.

They also have the ability to heck or connect themselves into different technologies, they can see through the technology database as well copying the abilities of the technology.

They discovers they can use holo-projections to mimic voices and create illusions. With Ace and Grim, Yuu pulls harmless pranks like projecting an image of Crowley, scaring students into thinking he’s around.

During battles, cybertronian!yuu possessed a wide range of arsenal weapons. But one of their favorite styles of fighting is basically running over the enemies in their transformation form.

Imagine overblot Azul laughing and yapping about something, and the next thing he got hit by a vehicle as well putting their enemies in time out.

[berrywinner]

HOLY SHIT!!!! OPENED REQUESTS FOR HOUSE MD!!!! may i request a platonic duckling!reader and house where reader turned out to be his bio child or something like that... tysm!!!!

I love you, kid

House has always treated you differently, neither of you ever understood why tho. Until one tuesday, everything comes out

You had always known working on Dr. House’s team wasn’t going to be easy. Chase, Cameron, and Foreman had warned you,well, Chase had warned you in that polite, sympathetic tone of his. Cameron had just given you a soft smile and a “good luck.” Foreman smirked. But you weren’t just the youngest on the team.

You were new, fresh out of your residency, and you’d somehow impressed House enough to land a spot on his diagnostic team. He hadn’t said why he chose you, he never did, but over the months, you realized you were different from the others. Not just in age. House treated everyone like an annoyance. He teased, taunted, and poked at their insecurities. With you… he still did that, sure. But there was something else. He watched out for you. He pulled you out of impossible situations. He rarely belittled you the way he did with the others.

And, more than once, when you stayed late and worked yourself to exhaustion, you’d wake up in his office, his old leather jacket draped over your shoulders.At first, you thought he saw you as some kind of little sister. But slowly, painfully slowly, it began to feel more paternal. He scolded you when you took risks. He grumbled at you to eat. He noticed when you skipped meals or stayed on your feet too long.You started calling him “House” like everyone else. But sometimes, in your head, he felt suspiciously close to Dad.

It happened on a Tuesday, like most strange things do. The patient was a sixteen-year-old boy with unexplained seizures, high fevers, and severe muscle weakness. Every test came back inconclusive.

“We’re missing something,” you murmured, staring at the whiteboard.

House twirled his marker between his fingers. “Very astute, Baby Intern.” He had started calling you that, half-mocking, half-affectionate. You sighed. “I mean something genetic. Something we’re not even looking for.”

House arched a brow. “You want to run a full genetic panel? Do you know how long that’ll take? We’ll be attending his funeral by then.”

“Not if we use rapid sequencing,” you said, surprising even yourself. “I’ve been working on a protocol with Dr. Jacobson in genetics.”

House stared at you for a long moment. “You’ve been busy.”

You shrugged, feeling small under his gaze.

“Fine,” he said. “Run it. But if it comes back as something boring, like a mitochondrial disorder, I’m revoking your marker privileges for a week.”

You smirked. “Deal.”

The next morning, you were halfway through the patient’s genetic results when something strange popped up. A secondary result.

It was an automatic database alert: a partial parental match.

You frowned, double-checking the patient ID. No error.

It was from a case House had run tests on three days ago.

You blinked. Checked again.

Parent-child match. 99.98%.

Between you… and House.

You sat frozen in the chair for what felt like hours.

Later that day, House called a team meeting. The patient had viral encephalitis. Treatable. Good news.

But your mind wasn’t on the patient. It was on the blood test results burning a hole in your pocket.

“Hey,” Chase nudged you as the meeting broke up. “You okay? You’re pale.”

“Yeah. Fine.” Your voice cracked.

You stayed behind.

House was scribbling something on the board. He didn’t turn when he spoke. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“House… can I talk to you?”

“Unless it’s about getting me a better brand of coffee, save it.”

“It’s important.”

He finally turned, studying your face with that unnerving, perceptive gaze. “Okay. Talk.”

You swallowed. “I ran a genetic panel on the patient. There was another process in progress, and I have seen the results .”

House’s face didn’t change. But his hand tightened slightly on the marker. “Mh...”

Silence.

He knew something.

You took a shaky breath. “House… it says you’re my father.”

He didn’t laugh. He didn’t make a joke. He sat down heavily in his chair and looked at you like he was seeing you for the first time.

“I thought it was only a presentiment..."he started.

Your voice trembled. “How did you think about even take a DNA test? My mom died when I was ten. I never knew my biological dad. She said it was… someone she didn’t want to talk about. That he wouldn’t have wanted me, did you know I existed?-”

House looked down at the floor. For the first time, you saw genuine fear in his eyes.

“I… I didn’t know” he whispered.

The silence stretched between you, heavy and suffocating.

House rubbed a hand over his face. “We can run another test.”

“I already did. Three times.”

He nodded slowly. “Okay.”

You could barely breathe.

“I didn’t know I swear” he said again.

“I believe you.”

And you did.

You sat across from him in his office, your breath uneven, his hands nervously tapping against his cane. Neither of you spoke for a long time.

“I should’ve guessed when you came her the first time” House muttered finally, breaking the silence. His voice was quieter than you’d ever heard it. “You’re annoyingly stubborn. You ask too many questions. And God forbid anyone tries to tell you what to do.”

You laughed, but it broke into something like a sob.

House winced. “Don’t… cry.”

“I’m not.” You wiped your face quickly. “Just… processing.”

“I need a drink,” House finally said, standing abruptly.

“Yeah. Me too.”

You ended up in a bar. And in the moment you chose your drink he spoke

“I can already see the genetics”

The silence settled again, but this time it felt warmer. Calmer. He finally sat down beside you and exhaled like he’d been holding his breath for years.

The days that followed were strange.

At first, nothing changed. There were still cases, still rounds, still differential meetings with Chase, Cameron, and Foreman. House still teased everyone mercilessly.

But something had shifted between you.

He checked in on you more often. Brought you coffee without a sarcastic comment. Left Post-it notes on your desk that read things like, Eat something.

He tried not to hover, but he wasn’t very good at it. Him looking after you wasn’t something new, but now he had started to be obvious about it.

You had never said the word "dad". But it hung in the air between you like a whisper. You hadn’t dared to call him dad and he hadn’t dared to call himself your dad.

But actions spoke louder.

He started driving you home when you stayed late. Sometimes, he’d leave your favorite snacks in the diagnostics lounge with no explanation.

One day, you caught a cold, and he practically barricaded you in his office with a blanket, soup, and orders not to move.

Chase and Cameron noticed.

“House is… weirdly protective of you lately,” Chase said one afternoon.

You smiled. “Yeah.”

“Like, really protective,” Cameron added, eyes narrowing. “Should we be worried?”

“No,” you said softly. “It’s… good.”

And it was.

The first time you called him Dad was an accident.

You were exhausted, half-asleep on the diagnostics lounge couch, and he was fussing about you skipping lunch again.

“Okay, Dad, I’ll eat,” you muttered without thinking.

The room went silent.

Your eyes flew open.

House froze, blinking at you in surprise.

You covered your mouth. “Oh my God, I didn’t–I mean, I–”

He exhaled a shaky breath.

“Say it again,” he whispered.

Your heart twisted.

“Dad,” you said softly, deliberately this time.

His face crumpled for half a second before he composed himself, but not before you saw it, the crack in his armor.

He sat beside you, tugged you gently against his side, and for the first time in your life, you felt safe.

It became easier after that.

He’d leave you notes signed “-Dad” just to make you smile.

You started bringing him coffee in the mornings and teasing, “Drink up, old man.”

Chase and Cameron finally cornered you.

“You and House…” Cameron began carefully.

“He’s my dad,” you blurted out.

They both stared.

Foreman nearly dropped his coffee.

House pretended to hate the attention, but you caught him smiling when he thought no one was looking.

Months passed. You spent holidays together. Watched old movies in his apartment. He taught you how to play piano, sort of. Mostly, he just teased you for being terrible.

But he beamed when you finally managed a simple melody.

You helped him with his leg on bad days.

You argued. You made up. You grew.

He became your father in every way that mattered.

One evening, you sat on his couch, curled up with a blanket, and he handed you a battered photo album.

“I thought you might want to see these,” he said softly.

Photos of him and your mother. College years. Smiles, laughter.

“She loved you, this is why he never talked about you” you whispered.

He swallowed hard. “I know. I just… didn’t believe I deserved it.”

“She thought you did.”

He looked at you then, eyes soft.

“And so do I.”

He looked at you, he didn’t think he'd ever want a child, he never believed in paternal instincts, until he started acting like a father before even knowing you were his kid.

And now, now he was a Dad...a real one. And he never felt so good.

A year later you stood in front of the diagnostics board, marker in hand, surrounded by Chase, Cameron, and Foreman. House sat behind his desk, pretending not to listen.

“Okay,” you said, taking charge. “Let’s run through symptoms we've missed something”

House smirked. “Bossing them around. Makes me proud.”

Chase rolled his eyes. “Definitely your child”

You grinned. “Damn right.”

House tapped his cane against the floor. “Wrap it up, Baby Intern.”

You turned, gave him a look.

“Sorry,” he corrected, eyes warm. “Baby genius.”

You beamed.

That night, you found yourself back on his couch, watching old movies, popcorn between you.

“I’m glad I found out,” he said softly.

You smiled. “Me too.”

He hesitated.

"What?" you said

“I love you, kid.”

You leaned your head on his shoulder.

“I love you too, Dad.”

And in that moment, for the first time, neither of you felt broken.

You felt whole.

[specialmedicalcentre]

Delaney in Distress

Briony listened longer than she would have liked for the telltale sounds of rushing blood to trail off. She could almost hear the cuff protesting against itself, straining against her patient's fit bicep, as she squeezed the bulb that last bit. She had been glad she was available to see patients this afternoon, because she usually enjoyed the focus. Always best to try it manually, she thought, even when you had the machines do it several times already.

In fact, Briony recalled - as she listened for the Korotkoff sounds to cease - they had had to do it twice prior, just to be sure. The situation was almost as stubborn as the patient... ---

After triage, the patient had come in with a diastolic over 150 on the chart, which they assumed had to be a mistake. Hell, sometimes the roll-around monitors in the triage rooms are just too worn out. Briony's new nurse stepped in then, which Briony liked. Nurse Teri was young, unassuming, barely making a sound. "I've got her, Dr. Leclerc." And Teri was right in it. But she was known to be efficient, because SMC always trained them well. She put the patient on the room monitor, rewrapped the cuff like a dark blue masterpiece, eyes flicking to the screen, movements fluid. Then Briony saw the patient tensing up as the machine beeped at the pressure crescendo.

Then, unexpectedly, “씨발 !” That got an eyebrow raised. Definitely Korean, Briony thought, although the patient had spoken only English since arriving. Briony hadn't picked any up, yet, but she knew several of the nurses were fluent. Teri didn’t react visually. Just said, softly, “언니, 괜찮아요.” Unnie...so, Teri was one of those nurses, Briony thought, filing it away. The room had shifted. The patient exhaled, eyes blinking once, flickering over Teri. The patient's pulse was still racing, but her hands relaxed. She was very pretty, in a hard-edged way. Briony watched the entire exchange, silent.

---

Sounds gone, Briony noted the reading on the gauge, then deftly manipulated the valve to vent the cuff, as slowly as she dared.

Hisssss...was all she heard. Until! Luff-swoosh...she looked at the gauge again...bruup-pufff, bruup-pufff...and that was that. Briony lifted her eyelids, intending to look at her patient dramatically, through her eyelashes. "One-forty-five over ninety-seven," she said. She had wanted to be stern, judgemental, but it came out half-assed, almost with sadness and concern. The patient didn't change her expression a whit - or, at least, not that Briony could tell. She just sat there, looking back at the doctor. Or, perhaps, through her. Her patient's arms were both red where the cuffs had squeezed and squished her, coloring in the tats that she wore like warpaint. This was Briony's toughest patient in a while. They had taken her BP three times, now, before and after resting. Always hypertensive, and now it was for sure. Always best to try it manually, Briony thought again, cynically. The EHR chart was shaping up to be a hell of a story. ---- SMC Internal Record Type: Patient Intake Summary Patient: Da-Eun Seo DOB: Withheld Encounter Type: New Patient Intake Department: SMC-GM (General Medicine) Exam Room: C-2 Physician: Dr. B. LeClerc

Subjective: Patient presents for routine physical — self-referred following a “weird night” involving acute palpitations, described as “fluttery and pissed off.” Reports no previous cardiac history, though admits to infrequent healthcare engagement ("I don’t really do doctors").

Lifestyle history significant for irregular sleep, stimulant use (social), tobacco use (occasional but “trying to cut back”), and recent elevated stress levels. Patient is notably defensive when queried about substance intake, though admits to “not always treating [her] body like a temple.” Insisted on no DOB in record, states age "about 25". Name in public database is not her preferred name.

Objective: BP: 152/101 triage; 142/95 after 5-minute resting protocol (quiet resting protocol, no ambient stimuli); 145/97 manually. Prominent hypertensive. HR: 108 bpm, slightly irregular. Temp: 98.3°F SpO₂: 99% RA

Physical exam:

Unremarkable, though auscultation suggests possible irregular rhythm over apex complicated by irregular breath sounds. Mild tremor noted in upper extremities, consistent with anxiety or residual stimulant effect.

Patient appears visibly tense. Body posture withdrawn but alert. Eyes sharp, but guarded. ---- "Ms. Seo," Briony began, leaving the cuff in place. "...it's Delaney." Her voice was like polished leather. She doesn't speak much, Briony thought, but when she does she tries to mean it. Briony paused. "I'm sorry, Ms…" she involuntarily softened, "…Delaney." She looked at the chart she was building on her digital pad. "You've got pretty stubborn hypertension, and that's something we need to address. Immediately." Delaney didn't seem to respond except for lifting her head and looking off into the corner. Looking above Teri's head this time, avoiding her? Briony thought, looking over her shoulder at the young nurse, who barely shifted out of place. Delaney hadn't expected to find a sympathetic ear here, I bet. "I'm hearing some heart rhythms I want to look more closely at as well. Delaney..." Briony said with some firmness. The woman looked back at her, set her jaw. She looks so tough. This part would be, too. "...Delaney," Briony continued, "you've got a fast heart rhythm, and that might be what we call tachycardia. It might not be, too - we need to look further. You may have also have a type of arrhythmia - an unusual heart rhythm - called atrio-ventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia." Briony waited a beat after the mouthful. She knew that patients often don't hear it right away. But Delaney brought her eyes back to center, looked at Briony's chest - not my face, Briony noticed. "AVNRT can be treated, but I don't really know if that's what we've got. It's common in young..." Briony thought, she's 25, for shit's sake, she's a baby "...women. But there are other potential causes, some quite serious." Delaney looked up, suddenly, finally. "...how serious?" It was almost as if Briony could hear the woman's rapid heart rhythm in her speech. Briony blinked once at the change in Delaney’s tone — quieter, but something real inside it. How can she be so guarded, and still slip like that? Her patient's shoulders sagged, just so imperceptibly. Her eyes were stunning that Briony almost gasped. Looking at the young woman seated in front of her, exposed, in her bra, with goosebumps rising on her flushed skin and the flaccid bp cuff still wrapped around her arm...she suddenly came off as vulnerable as she looked. Briony found herself relaxing, in a way. "We're going to take a closer look. I'm going to order some diagnostics, but I want to get an ECG, immediately. Nurse...Teri will help you dress and get you up to Cardiology." Maybe keeping them together will be useful. Briony motioned to the quiet nurse behind her, who scurried off to gather Delaney's blouse and get the transfer orders sent. "...and I'll meet you up there." Briony said. Off to business. Briony ripped the cuff off Delaney's bruised arm, the sound of the velcro louder than it should have been in the room. The flourish was purposeful, both to vent her frustrations and to further disarm her patient. Delaney rubbed her sweaty arm, and set her jaw again, but perhaps just imperceptibly not so stiffly this time. Maybe I've gotten through to her? Briony wondered. Probably not, but there was more work to do now. ---

Assessment & Plan: – Rule out underlying arrhythmia – Schedule 12-lead ECG with continuous waveform observation – Recommend baseline metabolic panel and CBC – Evaluate Risk Monitoring options (PAMP prequal OK) – Patient flagged for Behavioral Monitoring if persistent tension persists

Additional Notes: Patient may benefit from Korean-language support. Nurse Teri Shin initiated brief exchange in native language during retake. Patient responded with visible calming. Consider linguistically attuned staff for future encounters.

ECG ordered. Long-Term Cardiac alerted to possible admit.

— B. LeClerc, MD ---

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