#parentheses nerd ( I do that too)

[mallleus]

the two NPCS still care 😭 They're honestly ride or die

[wolfjackle-creates]

I'll Carry Your Heart with Me (Until I find You Again): Part 1

I'll be posting parts 1 and 2 right now. The rest should be up later tonight, but I'm gonna be tied up the next five or six hours.

As you can see, we have a title for this fic! (I may drop the parentheses. Been going back and forth on that.)

Summary: Danny and Jason meet shortly after Jason becomes a ghost in the zone and become good friends. This segment will cover their first two meetings.

Word Count: 2k words

----------

Jason sat on the island that appeared around him when he landed in this strange place and stared into the swirling green void. It should have been unsettling, but it felt peaceful. If he closed his eyes, it felt like his dad would be right behind him and Alfred was going to call them in for dinner any minute.

But he was surrounded by silence and all alone.

He screamed just to make a noise and turned away from the void. Behind him a punching bag had appeared. Good. With another yell he went to town on it, practicing all the punches and kicks he’d learned at Batman’s side. Gloves formed over his hands, making him realize his clothes had morphed into his Robin costume.

It just made his punches that much harder.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been going at the bag when he realized some of the yells he was hearing weren’t his own.

“And fuck Chaucer!”

Chaucer? What could that be about? But the ridiculousness of it was enough to pull him from his anger. Robin faded as Jason, literary nerd, took his place. No one dissed Chaucer in his hearing. Where was the yelling coming from?

He flew up and looked around before shaking his head. He wasn’t alive anymore and his sight wasn’t his best sense here. Closing his eyes, he sent out his awareness. This close to his island, he could tell whenever anyone was nearby.

And there they were! Close, but not uncomfortably so which was why he hadn’t noticed sooner. Following the feeling, it didn’t take long to find a boy with a backpack on shouting and throwing what looked like green fire at pieces of paper.

“Oi!” he called. “Who’re you to diss Chaucer near my lair?”

“Well maybe if he would just make fucking sense, I wouldn’t have to diss him!” The boy’s hands still glowed green, and Jason fell into a defensive position.

“He does make sense! Not his fault if you’re too dense to know it.” Jason cautiously moved closer, keeping a close eye on the boy’s posture to prepare for an attack. People in this world loved to fight, but while the kid remained wary, he didn’t move to attack. As soon as Jason was close enough, he grabbed one of the papers out of the air.

It felt weird. Both more and less solid that normal paper. Where had this come from? He took his eyes off the boy to skim the paper. It was a page from an exam? Completely covered in red ink. Well-deserved red ink, too.

“Are these your answers?” Jason couldn’t help but look up with a raised eyebrow. “You really don’t understand Chaucer, do you?”

“It’s not my fault I don’t have time to study!” complained the boy. He drew up his knees and covered his face with his no-longer-glowing hands. “I’m so tired and it doesn’t make sense and Lancer doesn’t care.”

“Tired? But we’re dead. We don’t need to sleep. I didn’t even know there was a school for ghosts. Where is it? Is it any good?”

The boy pulled his hands away and looked at him with furrowed brows. “You, you don’t know who I am?”

Jason bristled and stood a little taller. “Should I?” he asked. Maybe he should venture out from his lair more. He just felt so uncomfortable anytime he left that he hadn’t bothered. What if someone came and tried to take it from him and he wasn’t there to protect it?

“No! It’s just… Everyone I’ve met has already learned about me from somewhere.” A ring of light surrounded his waist and passed over his body, leaving a living human in his place. Instinctively, Jason raised his hands again and flared his core in warning, but the boy raised his hands and sent out no-harm, peace pulses. “I’m Danny. The halfa. Half-dead, half-alive. Half-ghost, half-human.”

“How…?” Jason didn’t even know how to finish his sentence and let it trail unfinished. Though, he had seen people come back to life when he was Robin. So, maybe it did make sense.

Danny shrugged. “My parents are scientists studying ghosts. They built a portal to the zone and because I was stupid, it turned on while I was inside. Thousands of volts of electricity and ectoplasm killed and revived me at the same time.”

“That’s why the paper feels weird…” Jason grabbed one of them again and ran his fingers along it. “It’s from Earth.”

“Yep. My latest failed English test. I just don’t have the time to read the books. And when I do, I don’t see the same things Mr. Lancer swears are there! Or I don’t understand them.” Danny sighed and rubbed his face again. “I hate it. I was a straight A student before I died.”

Jason looked between the paper and the boy. “Why has it been so much harder since you died?”

“So many other ghosts are trying to get through the portal to spend time on Earth. And when they do, they hurt people or cause property damage or try and hunt me for sport. I have to stop them. Even if it’s the middle of the night or during class.”

“Oh, you’re a superhero. I was a hero, too, before I died.” He let his Robin uniform replace the civilian clothes and grinned at Danny. “I’m Jason. I’d say nice to meet you, but I can’t like anyone who disses Chaucer.”

“Why do you like him so much?”

“Do you have the book with you?” asked Jason, nodding his head at Danny’s backpack.

Danny shrugged it off and pulled out a book. “Yeah, why?”

“C’mon. I’ll show you.” He turned and headed back to his lair, gesturing for Danny to follow him. On his island was a building, the outside rather plain, like any run down apartment building in Gotham. But the door led directly to Alfred’s kitchen in the manor. He held it open and waved Danny through.

The boy, still in human form, looked around curiously. “You know, no one’s ever let me come to their island before. Or enter their door.”

Jason shrugged. “Well, I need to prove you wrong about Chaucer and no reason we can’t be comfortable as we do. And if I change your mind, then we can be friends!”

“And if you don’t change my mind?”

“I take you outside and we fight it out like proper ghosts.” Jason grinned. “It’ll be fun.”

Danny laughed. “All right, do your best.”

“So, the page I saw was full of questions on the Wife of Bath and her prologue and tale, so we’ll start there. To really understand her, you have to know what women dealt with in the fourteenth century…”

-----

Jason tried not to worry when Danny didn’t come back right away despite promising to return for more English tutoring. Jason also planned to help him figure out how to balance a civilian and hero life. He looked over the lesson plans for both English and martial arts training that he’d made for the hundredth time.

He was going to start with how to safely fall. Just as Dick had taught him back when Bruce first brought him home. Was Dick happy that he had Bruce to himself again now that Jason was gone? Shaking his head to dispel the thoughts, he looked around for something to distract himself. Bread. He could make bread. Alfred taught him how and kneading was excellent stress relief.

He’d just finished kneading and set the dough in a covered bowl to proof when he felt the unmistakable shiver that meant someone was coming close to his haunt. His Robin uniform replaced jeans and a t-shirt as he flew out the kitchen towards the intruder.

Only to laugh and relax when he saw Danny.

“So, the halfa returns! I was starting to think you didn’t like me.” Jason said it with a grin to prove it was a joke, even as something in his core relaxed.

“Sorry, life’s been hectic. Do you know Skulker? He got through the portal again and it took me three days to get him contained. And as soon as I did, Technus was out. And then my parents built a new defense system for the house that I had to dismantle before it could kill me. Again.”

“Woah, woah, wait. What was that last one?”

Danny paused. “Did I not tell you about my parents?”

“Not really. Just that they study ghosts.”

“Hunt, more like. They build ghost weapons to destroy ghosts. It’s why I haven’t told them about me. They’d accept me, I’m sure of it. But… then they talk about how they’d like to rip a ghost molecule-by-molecule and I can’t get the words out.”

Jason let out a low whistle. “And I thought I won the lottery for terrible birth parents. But at least I had Bruce and Alfred. You should contact the Justice League, get help. I can tell you how.”

But Danny just waved a hand in the air. “A year and a half ago, I would’ve jumped at the offer. But I’ve got it under control now. And I don’t want anyone with powers in Amity. What if they get overshadowed? Then I’d be fighting someone with both meta abilities and ghost abilities.”

“Overshadowed?” Jason wasn’t sure he’d heard the term before.

“You know, when you take over a human’s body and control it.”

Jason blinked. “We can do that?”

“You… didn’t know? How long have you been a ghost?”

Jason tried to consider. It was impossible to tell time in the Realms. The area off his island was always the same swirling green with no sun or moon in sight. And he wasn’t sure how long it had taken to gain consciousness after dying. He didn’t think it was immediate. “I’m… not sure. I died December 1st XX. What’s the date on Earth now?”

“So recently? I’ve never met such a young ghost before. Its only been a few weeks. Today’s the twentieth.”

That wasn’t possible. Jason shook his head. “No, that can’t be. I know I’ve been here longer than that. I know how long it takes me to read a book and how many I’ve read.”

“Time in the zone can be a bit wonky.” Danny clasped Jason’s arm. The gesture made him flinch, though he knew it was supposed to be comforting. Danny’s arms fell to his side again. “Sorry.”

Needing to change the subject, Jason asked, “So overshadowing, huh? What else can ghosts do?”

The grin Danny gave him convinced him he had the right idea. “Oh, you have no idea. How about instead of whatever you were going to show me, I teach you to fight like a ghost?”

Jason got an overwhelming feeling of fun-excitement-mischief that weren’t his own and his eyes widened. “Can I sense your emotions? Is that another ghost thing?”

Danny laughed and it was filled with so much enjoyment that Jason couldn’t even be offended. “Dude, you really don’t know anything. We can project emotions to other ghosts. It’s easy. Think something at me.”

Jason bit his lip as he considered what to do. His eyes lit up and he tapped Danny on the nose as he thought hard game-tag-play-fun before flying away as fast as he could.

Danny shouted after him, “You are so not getting away from me!”

As expected, Danny used the game to show him all the cool things ghosts could do. He could shoot energy beams now! Just like Kori! Or, well he would be just like her once he got a bit better at controlling them.

After who knows how long, they ended up lying on their backs on the grass, exhausted from the exertion. Jason wasn’t even sure who was It anymore.

It had been the most fun he'd had in longer than he cared to remember.

----------

Next

Have all the fluff. I love them so much.

Not much of a tag list yet since this is so new, but I can add more on if you'd like.

@britcision, @echoednonny

[jwirecs]

Recommended Misc Fics of January 2023💖

hello, hello! here are my recs for ateez & seventeen for january! hopefully these beautiful stories get more recognition as well as the writers 💝

** anything in parentheses and bolded are my thoughts that can be disregarded if needed **

🔞smut || 💔angst || 💕fluff || ✅completed || 🔄ongoing || 💯favorite

HYBRID AU

19.55 || @songmingisthighs​​💕✅

↳ san. what is san ? san's a cat. but san's not just a cat. san's an adorable cat

MAFIA AU

4.11 || @songmingisthighs​​💕 ✅

↳ you thought he didn't care, he was sure he doesn't, he had said it so himself to you. that was, until he almost lost the chance of being able to care for you.

OTHER AU

She Loves Me, He Loves Me Not || @thelargefrye​​💔✅💯

↳ an argument breaks out between you and yunho which results in yunho saying somethings he shouldn’t have. now you begin to question your place in the relationship.

EXES TO LOVERS AU

Heart & Seoul || @milfgyuu​🔞💕💔✅💯

↳ Your first love hit hard & fast but it was all swept away in the blink of an eye when your boyfriend is sent away to a Korean University after your high school graduation. Seven years later, work lands you in the heart of Seoul & never in your wildest dreams did you imagine running into the one person who’d left with your heart years ago. (literally will go back and read this. like i cant. prob 1/3 of my fav fic series that i have read so far)

OTHER AU

Between Heaven + Hell || @yoongimingyu​ 🔞💕✅💯💯💯

↳ Two of your hot friends get very into their halloween costumes. But when they said they were going to be an angel and a devil, this is not what you expected. 

KIDULT || @hvae​ 💕💔✅💯

↳ Two of your hot friends get very into their halloween costumes. But when they said they were going to be an angel and a devil, this is not what you expected. (was this one of the fic findings that i did? yes, yes it was. did i read this at work? yes, yes i did. did i cry at work because of this? YES, YES I SURE DAM DID BECAUSE AH. also who doesnt love children versions of idols. just imagine the faces they got now, but on tiny little bodies. like you know that snapchat filter where it literally baby-fied your face? yea imagine that filter on them but on tiny little bodies.)

Push It Down (Sooner or Later It All Comes Out) || @dontflailmenow​🔞💕✅💯💯💯

↳ thirsting over your ex’s best friend in general is a bad idea. given that you and seungcheol have never gotten along, it’s even worse. when you accidentally stumble across his stream, though, and he finds out? all bets are off. (listen, james can go choke BUT CHEOL CAN CHOKE ME ANY DAY. 2/3 of my fav fic series that i have read so far)

Reckless Driver || @hengqarae​ 🔞💕💔✅

↳ you hate racing and you don't date racers. kim mingyu loves racing, and he finds out that he loves you, too, from the moment that he first lays eyes on you.

Terrifyingly Innocent || @twogyuu​🔞💕✅💯💯💯

↳ Fearful of losing her, yet unwilling to leave; this agreement between Seungcheol and his best friend’s little sister was meant to be casual and temporary, yet he finds himself growing more attached to her day by day. (jihoon may be small but that man can probably pack a punch. gotta love me some fake dating cheol though. 3/3 of my fav fic series that i have read so far)

The Only Exception || @wonusite​🔞💕✅

↳ Your university’s star football player doesn’t understand why you don’t want anything to do with him. Several humiliating rejections later, Mingyu is more determined than ever to change your mind about him. Chaos and confusing feelings ensue.

Virgin Killer || @wonusite​ 🔞✅

↳ You can’t stand the clear line the cute nerd in your calculus class always draws between you two. However, you’re determined to show him that there’s a fine line between love and hate. And if you happen to get him to cross that line, even better.

SOCIAL MEDIA AU

I Like You || @taeyegu​💕💔✅

↳ “i like you so much, i want to give you my everything, only for you…”

You Were Beautiful || @viastro​ 💕💔✅

↳ a modernized cinderella au. in which you and joshua meet through your love for boba popsicles, but end up living out your very own complicated, mess filled, cinderella story.

Do check out all of the other Group Fics that i have reblogged as well!!

** if there is any fics that you guys would like to recommend, please do! i am slowly running out of fics to read **

[crustaceansingles]

Hello friends, fans, haters, etc. Tonight I want to talk to you about Places You Can Find My Stuff, subtitled Way Too Many Social Networks parentheses Some Are Worse Than Others. Footnote: you can find these all on my Linktree, which is of course linked in my profile. First, allow me to shill for Mastodon/The Fediverse. This one is cool & important for huge nerd reasons, but you don't have to be a huge nerd to use it. The general orbit I've fallen into there is extremely diverse, particularly neurodiverse, and above average in thoughtfulness and measured takes. There's no algorithm, no ads, and tons of pet pictures. Plus posts are called toots. The biggest con for me is that when I signed up in 2018, I tied myself to the basic noob server mastodon.social, which is not well-regarded, and switching instances is still difficult and incomplete enough that I'm staying there for now. Bluesky really does feel for me a lot like the twitter of yore, although maybe slower (non-pejorative) and populated by people who have been through the last decade & are just so tired. I don't post on twitter anymore. It is lost to literal nazis and scammers. Its owner is one of them. I'm on Tumblr as of recently. It's got some good niches and they're commendably apt at cyberbullying the CEO. If you use Tumblr at all, please go follow me. I'm posting for an audience of maybe five people over there. Threads: Stopped boycotting when they finally let users add alt text. I am supremely peeved with the way it takes two clicks/taps to get from the "for you" feed to your "following" feed, the first of which is non-obvious to make. Dark patterns, but what else do we expect from Meta? Instagram: Meta is a demerit. And I'm pretty sure The Algorithm is punishing me for my refusal to use it as though it were TikTok; I don't post or watch video and they hate me for it. I don't even do "stories". But I post the daily comics there for my second-largest number of followers there. Facebook...it's bad. This we know. But it is where I have been the longest. And it happens to be where I have the largest following by an order of magnitude. There's a good crowd that hangs around my page there, and it's where I get the most comments and interactions. If you're still there, you could do worse than having me in your feed.

[dontlookheswatching]

Okay here are the doodles! They all feature Ben, in ways that can be seen as either friendship or as a ship, I dont mind what you see it as although a few I did make specifically to be seen as a ship, because while they aren't a canon couple in au, my god they are so adorable and I can't help but draw them anyways-😭

There will be some lore underneath the pictures, and also I'll discuss a little more about the relationship chart and character refs im working on afterward

Okay, lore time. Im not a big pokémon fan. Nor am I big on the pokepastas, which seem, to me, to have honestly spiraled into their own mini fandom on the sides of creepypasta, which is actually pretty cool, I'd love to explore more of it, but again, im not big on pokémon, I've only played like two or three games throughout my life, and I just can't find the interest to do it. My sincere apologies if my lore for Silver upsets anyone who is super big on Pokémon or pokepastas for not being accurate, but then again, that's what headcanons are for, things that aren't canon. I've tried doing little research and the closest thing I could come close to developing lore for Silver was 'Snow on Mt Silver'. Im not sure if its the same character or something entirely different, so bare with me as I say im merging the two ideas from each into one. Now, lets get this mess over with because I have no idea what I'm doing im kinda revamping my own lore as I write this😭

If anyone noticed, on the birthday chart I have, next to Silvers name, in parentheses, is the name;

Jae-Ing.

It doesn't sound like an American name, now does it? No, thats because, im my lore, Silver had a life before death, he isn't just a glitch in the coding and what not. He was Korean. Throughout the more I explain, the more resemblance you'll see in Ben's story, thus why they get together well, because they share a somewhat same experience.

Going to a private high school in Korea wasn't easy. At all. 'Jae' didn't have it eady, either. He had to have a job ontop of all the schoolwork he was required to do to help his mother pay off the payments for attending a private high school. His father is out of the picture, having died before Jae was even born. He and his mother were extremely close, and even though they struggled at times, they never let their bond break.

Jae was 16 the year he died. He was a big fan of Pokémon, owning every game possible and knowing every small detail. He was harassed and bullied for his interests, and was always considered a nerd, barely having any friends. He was considered an outcast, and was always excluded of things other students did. He was very intelligent though, and did well in school.

Of course, that didn't matter to the other students.

Nearing the end of the year, staff had presented a field trip, one that would last three days, to hike Mt Hallasan. It was winter, however, so the mountain was covered in snow, so students were told to be extra prepared and to be cautious and stay within their assigned groups and to NOT leave the trail.

Jae wasn't going to go, but his mother had insisted on it, saying it would be a fun experience, and that he deserves a break anyways. So he went.

Not having any friends is why the whole trip backfired on Jae's side.

He was paired with kids who had commonly made fun of him, and being on an exciting field trip was no excuse. They'd constantly steal his things, such as his small console he kept with him in which he'd play his favorite games on. Or sometimes jackets or blankets he so very needed.

He was miserable and wanted to go home, but it was too late to turn back by the time the though occured to him.

On the second to last night, when their group had finally managed to reach the top, they thought it'd be funny to fall behind their supervisor, to walk with Jae, who walked behind all of them, to suddenly act like friends, forcing them all to walk slower and slower until the supervisor was far enough ahead to where he didn't notice one of the girls start pushing him as they resumed their bullying tactics. She kept pushing and pushing, trying to get him to fight, but Jae wasn't the fighting time.

She got angry, and kept pushing, until, before someone could say something, she pushed him over the edge of the trail, down a steep hill.

They ran off.

Didn't look back, didn't bother to try and help him. Instead, they ran, not wanting to be caught at the scene.

The impact left Jae scratched up and bruised. One arm was broken. He couldn't get back up to the trail, especially with a broken arm. He tried to find a way down the mountain, a way to find help. But night fell quickly and made it impossible to see. The temperatures dropped. His limbs began to freeze as he got colder and colder. He kept his bag close, scared. Scared, alone, nearing death. He kept going until he physically couldn't. Until his body gave out and left him a lying heap in the snow.

He died. Cold. Frozen, black limbs. Alone, scared, wishing he stayed home with his mother. Oh, and how the news broke her when her sons body was eventually discovered.

His soul was sucked into his console, into the very game world he loved, due to dark magics of some sort that I might explain in another post.

He lost any memory of his former life. He didn't know why he was so sad, why he was always scared, why he didn't like the cold. He didn't have the answers to his questions. He still doesn't to this day, even after exiting the console by the force of Slenderman and with the help of Ben.

He is yet to remember his past. But perhaps for now its a mercy that he doesn't.

---

ANYWAYS yeah that's my take on Lost Silver. Its kinda shitty and definitely not canon but it's whatever.

Moving on, I finally have the icons done that I'll be using for the relationship chart!

All I have to do now is digitalize them, make the chart, and boom, it'll be done. FinaLLY. so expect that MAYBE later today or tomorrow, we'll find out and see which happens first.

Now, about the character refs. I plan on doing them for Ben(which is done), Jeff(Hes next), Toby, Liu, and EJ, as they'll probably be the most frequently seen on the blog.

I would like to mention the fact my ref for Ben was a total flop. Its quite saddening especially since I spent more than a day on it, but its in the past, and can't control everyone's preferences. Hopefully the ones in the future will be more appealing, and if not, oh well, that just means I've got work to do and revamping and redoing them, because there's always room for improvement. I'd like to thank everyone real quick for the support I've already received so far, because even if the ref was a flop, im still extremely grateful for everything else!

Anyways thats the end of my super long post thank you goodbye im going to sleep this was too much writing

[notsoblackandwhite101]

I love your fic. So glad to read new chapter. I also love your worldbuilding. Especially family trees. Honestly, I'm dying to know more about Demelza and David. How did she became kinda snotty yet caring, and whether Dylan knew his grandpa, if I remember correctly Dylan might have taken after him when it comes to scifi

I'm glad your enjoying the story!

I can't quiet remember if the boys were born before David passed. If any were, I'd say he likely passed away when Dylan (And possibly Dawkins) were very young. Too young to understand death or its ramifications. However everything he has left behind has had a huge effect on them to this day! His study is full of science and history books. As well as his telescope and some nerd memorabilia here and there! Even if he was gone before they were born his memory has had a lasting impact!

As for Demelza, its a sort of Nature and Nurture situation. A lot of it has to do with who raised her and how. Her parents were a big influences, but so were her Uncle Radcliff and Aunt Dot.

Her mum, Orie (Oreo), is really instrumental. Orie grew up in a poor family and had, what I like to call, terminal eldest daughter syndrome. Not terminal in that it will kill you, but in that it will kill your relationships. Orie's parents were the lowest rung on the social ladder. Both working hard at menial jobs for long hours and very little pay. Her parents were happy though, loving each other and their children. It was just that Orie (Oreo) was the eldest, so when her parents were at work, she was raising her siblings. Unlike Dolly and Dylan years later, she had NO time off because her parents took NO time off. She also started caring for them when she was very young. She was basically parenthesized against her will with zero ability to punish them. Her siblings always acted up when she was caring for them, but became angels when her parents were home, with her parents downplaying the misbehavior they didn't see when Orie complained about it. Orie always had issues with her parents because of this and a few other things. (Including her birth name Oreo, which got her picked on a lot.) So as soon as she turned 18 she left, and hardly talk to any of her family again.

However that childhood made Orie dream of a Cinderella life. Where she'd marry well and never have to cook or clean. Never have to care for a flock of screaming children, with a nice big house. Not to say she'd marry for money alone. She just knew what she wanted. Patch certainly didn't match many of these prerequisites. He wasn't rich, just well off. He didn't have a huge house, he lived in a nice one with his sick parents. He had to do some cooking and cleaning, but it wasn't alot. However he did save her life and was very kind to her. (They met during an air raid and had to take shelter in a doorway together.) At first Orie just volunteered to help him with his block captain work, but they got to now each other, fell in love and married.

It wasn't a fairytale marriage, but it worked very well! Patch was passive and indecisive, but kind. Orie knew what she wanted and wasn't afraid to get it, even if she was a little rough around the edges. They worked together very well, even if it was Patch saying 'Yes dear.' most of the time. When the subject of children came up however, Orie was not interested... at first. She spent her childhood and teenage years raising her siblings, she didn't want to do it all over again as an adult. She was finally enjoying life for dogs sake! However as time went on, Patch's siblings had children.

Orie supposed Little Dipper and Domino were cute... Plus now that she was an adult they actually listen to her. Not to mention Patch was so good with them... hmmm...

Eventually she pulled Patch aside and agreed to have ONE child. Patch was over the moon, he just wanted one anyway! They ended up have Demelza and Patch loved her to bits! Orie went through a weird phase after Demelza was born where she didn't really ... love her baby? Not that she hated Demelza, it was just she didn't feel this instant love that she expected? (This is called the baby blues and its actually really common for many mothers!) After a week though the feelings came and Orie started to bond with Demelza!

Orie was content to let Patch do most of the emotional rearing for Demelza. She took over schooling, manners and other things. She had a pretty good life... but Demelza's could be even better. She was the one who pushed her daughter to climb the social ladder. Not wanting her to be stuck with tons of kids and house work when Demelza grew up. That mixed well with Uncle Radcliff, who had just moved back into the house after a stress stroke. Uncle Radlciff owned a factory and mingled with the upper crust a lot. (He and Orie got along swimmingly, both being a bit cold and grumpy, if well meaning.) Demelza looked up to Uncle Radcliff, whatever he and mum said was gospel just about. This also coincided with Aunt Dot moving in after her husband died suddenly. She was a bit like Patch, a push over and soft spoken. However unlike her three siblings she didn't work. So she took over cooking and cleaning, much to Orie's delight. (Orie got along best with Dot and Radcliff of all of Patch's siblings. Not that she argued with any of them much.) Dot wanted children but never had any, so she enjoyed helping to raise Demelza, which did help soften her demeanor greatly.

So yeah, it was a HUGE mix of four parental figures in her life that caused this. Her friends also play a part in how snooty and uptight she can be. David used to be able to settle her, but he's no longer around...

Oh and fun fact! Demelza was named by her mother. Orie, as I said, was bullied a lot as a child because she was named after a ridiculous, American snack cookie. (Oreo) She insisted that her daughter have a refined, dignified name! So Demelza it was.

(God I love exploring generational trauma with characters!)

[rene-of-the-blackouts]

H+M for fanfic ask game

How would you describe your writing style?

I have a style? lol

Seriously tho, when I was a bit younger, I had a very distinct quirk in my writing: overuse of parentheses. If you've read my fics or even longer text posts, I still do that, but to a lesser extent (yes, I did use more!)

I learnt to tone it down in order to make my writing legible lol, but it's still my specific trait

I also love to imply things without telling outright and wait until someone notices it in the comments!!

What's the weirdest AU scenario you've ever come up with? Did it turn into a story?

Ohhh, I love AUs!! My fic is one, but not that crazy ig. Miraculous FMA AU would be pretty crazy, given the spoilers from Discord, but no fic for it yet! I also have a "different toll" canon divergence AU that involves my linguistic expertise (read: lets me be a language nerd while writing), but I don't wanna spoil too much XD

[thotsforvillainrights]

I saw your recent matchups and I've been mustering up courage to ask for one too! :'v IF YOU'RE NOT MAKING THEM ANYMORE PLS IGNORE HHHH

I'm a 5'1 brown girl with short curly hair with a huge love for retro and traditional clothes mostly tophats and big skirts [cue sparkly eyes]) I'm on the chubby side but alas I have the strength of a wet noodle

I'm a amateur artist who daydreams a little too much. I adore lighthearted comedy and fantasy worlds

I think of myself as rather expressive (maybe with s bit of a temper), though I don't think I dont emote a lot because I also have a tendency of zoning out :'D but when my head is actually on my shoulders I wear my heart in my sleeve

I have a tendency to forget :(

A bunch of things I talk about will have side comments in parentheses (because everything comes with a extra chunk of thought)

I'm pretty shy so I don't have great conversation starters but I am very prone to rambling and I very might nerd out about things I like. And also I laugh a little too easy (the worst dad jokes make me giggle and it's pretty nice honestly)

I love video games, especially rhythm games and the ones where you can co-op (except shooters, I'm a disaster in battle)

and honestly I'm not the best writer so I'm ending this with a fun fact: Brazil nuts are 1000 times more radioactive than other foods but unless you're eating like 40 per day you're not likely to get poisoned

(Anon I mean this in the nicest way possible but I suspect something unhinged in the mist because how in the hell did you just have the brazil nut fact floating around in your mind like that???😂)

Match-Up #13

-I match you with Shuichi Iguchi-

headcanon|scenario|imagine|match-up

-You met him through a mutual friend: Toga! The two of you attended the same school together before the incident happened with her. Although you were in a much higher grade than her, you felt like she was a little sister to you. You hadn’t seen her in so long and the two of you were very close so it was rather saddening everything happened. You were worried down the line for a long time until you caught glimpse of her in the shadows of an alleyway one night. “Himiko?!” She wanted to run away but she knew she could trust you when she saw who it was. By now you must’ve known she was a villain right? You didn’t care (and I’m assuming you weren’t a snitch by any means). You were overjoyed to see your old best/friend again. A few people passed rather quickly when they glanced and saw two girls hugging and crying together in an alleyway. Lucky they didn’t notice Himiko Toga was right there. She had no time to do anything other than give you her cell phone number and vice versa. She quickly disappeared into the darkness of the night.

-The two of you connected like you’d seen each other everyday since then. She finally felt she could introduce you to the league members (against Shigaraki’s will). Some of them trusted you right away while some of the others were cautious of the complete stranger in the base. There was one that was completely head over heels for you. It was Spinner. The moment he locked eyes with you and you flashed him that sweet smile, he felt the room...haha...spinning! Whenever Toga would bring you over for girls night with Magne, and for some reason Twice, Spinner would hover around your group until they kicked him out of the room. You didn’t mind his company since he was usually quiet and nice around you. In fact, he was much nicer than Tomura, Dabi, and Muscular could be. Maybe a month later of knowing you and he finally gathered the courage to start talking to you, but he never managed to hold eye contact for long without blushing. He was often awkward when it was just the two of you talking. He fumbled with his words and scratched the back of his head a lot. You suspected he had a crush on you but you weren’t sure how to get him to admit it. Magne gave you her advice about playing the jealousy card to try and get it out of him. Your chosen victim would be compress! It wasn’t too hard to connect with Compress since you admired his Tophat and outfit honestly. It succeeded in making Spinner jealous but it didn’t succeed in making him admit his crush to you. However, now you had Compress thinking about fawning over you lol.

-Eventually Toga decided to take on the role as Cupid/the messenger and she spilled Spinner’s secret in front of his face to you. You had to pretend to be shocked. Spinner was frustrated and embarrassed to say the least. He stormed off into his room and this was your cue to go get him. He finally let you in on his secret and confirmed it was true. He was extremely worried about what you think of him but how lucky for him that you returned his feelings. Just like that, you two were an item (aw poor compress. Better luck next time haha). 

-Spinner was very protective of you. He knew that sometimes when you were brave enough to let that temper show that some of the guys there took it as a challenge. He also knows you couldn’t hold your own in a fight against any of them. He would jump to your defense in a heartbeat. You’re prone to teasing since your height is on the table and so is the face you make when you sone out too far from the conversation, but you don’t have to ever worry about it crossing the line into down right hatefulness since Dabi and the others communicate solely through sassy remarks with each other. Even so, Spinner still gets pissy when you get teased. 

-Spinner likes everything about you to be honest. He keeps getting called whipped and simp by the others but he doesn’t care. You could rip him to pieces and he’d still be in heaven just to be in your general vicinity. Lucky for him that you’d never do that! He admires your appearance and spends too much time trying to squish you under his affections. It might also be because he gets cold easily and you’re so warm when you’re with him. He loves the way you get when you lightly practice your art. He’d love to see you push it a little further someday but he knows art takes time and you sometimes get sidetracked when creating. Spinner simply adores when you geek out on him. He does the same thing with you! He especially does this when they drop a release date for a new game he wants to play. He goes over the lore and character back story with you. He explains the game mechanics and will even show you a line of the voice actors listed for it. If the soundtrack drops then expect to hear him gushing about that too! Speaking about games, he loves playing with you. I’m sure Tomura gets a little annoyed since Spinner is the only other person in the League that goes with him, but the man makes exceptions. This is especially true when it’s time to play a shooting game. You totally understand why you wouldn’t be invited to join the boys for that one haha. No need to worry if you ever feel left out. He’s going to always be back after the session to spend all the time in the world with his favorite person.

[adultswim2021]

Ephemera Week (2002)

Mission Hill (originally aired on WB, 1999-2000)

Mission Hill was a perfectly good animated series from former Simpsons show-runners Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein. It was a sitcom about cool young people in a cool young people city. Andy French is an aspiring cartoonist, intended to be a Matt Groening type who would (over the course of many many seasons) eventually find success and get his own super-successful animated series called THE SIMPSONS: SEASONS 1-8.

The premise of the show was that Andy’s parents retire and sell the childhood home, displacing his nerdy high-school aged younger brother Kevin. Kevin moves in with Andy and learns how to be a cool city style guy, you know, the kind that’s always “walkin here!” and sucking off Bob Balaban in the men’s room and whatnot.

The show is at least better than the bad seasons of the Simpsons, and has a cool alt-comics style that suits the show really well. Not to damn it with faint praise, it’s a good show. There are a handful of GREAT episodes and plenty of strong jokes. There's news of a revival in the works focusing on Gus and Wally, the older gay couple in the show. It's supposed to take place in the same era the show originally aired in, which is just great.

Like Baby Blues and Home Movies before it, I did catch this show randomly on it's network of origin. I saw one or two of the final episodes to air on WB. I liked it! I was glad to see it get revived for a run on Adult Swim. I've wanted more episodes ever since.

I don't think the show is available for streaming anywhere, which is too bad. It came out on DVD with special features. That DVD set was reissued on DVD-R without special features, so... buyer? be wary. There's also a number of music replacements that ruin some of the scenes. At one point I had a bootleg set where somebody took the DVD video and replaced the audio with the as-broadcast version of of the show. Good luck finding it.

Here's an episode guide showing their debuts on Adult Swim. Bold episodes were originally unaired, making their debut on the channel. Also note: episodes had an innocuous title and a spicier in-house title in parentheses. It’s real Police Squad! shit.

12AM Monday Morning:

May 20: Pilot (or The Douchebag Aspect) May 27: Andy Joins the PTA (or Great Sexpectations) June 3: Kevin's Problem (or Porno for Pyro) June 10: Andy vs. The Real World (or The Big-Ass Viacom Lawsuit) June 17: Andy and Kevin Make a Friend (or One Bang for Two Brothers) June 24: Andy Gets a Promotion (or How to Get Head in Business Without Really Trying) July 1: Kevin vs. the SAT (or Nocturnal Admissions) July 8: Unemployment Part 1 (or Brother's Big Boner) July 15: Unemployment Part 2 (or Theory of the Leisure Ass) July 22: Kevin Finds Love (or Hot for Weirdie) July 29: Stories of Hope and Forgiveness (or Day of the Jackass)

11PM Sunday Night:

August 4: Happy Birthday, Kevin (or Happy Birthday, Douchebag) August 11: Plan 9 from Mission Hill (or I Married a Gay Man from Outer Space)

ALSO NOTE: There are about five episodes that were in early-stages of production and if you poke around you can find scripts for these episodes ( here as of this writing). A full animatic and table read for “Crap Gets In Your Eyes” exists if you search for it. 

MAIL BAG

London Arbuckle ASKS! or, states! sorry I’m writing this lead-in without having read the whole message yet.

Another confusing Baffler Meal thing: the deleted cold open that's on the DVD. It gets called back to in the actual episode ("Between two steamed buns", "Nine dollars!? For what?") and provides crucial context, BUT it also gets contradicted in the actual episode (SG sells out for "one serious speaker" instead of owing a restaurant money). Also I remember all the ads for this episode used a clip from the cold open! It always kinda bothered me that they cut it but boys (matt & dave) will be boys!

I do think the cold open is nice and I always make a point to watch it with the episode. In my mind they are as essential as watching that boring Terry Gilliam short before Meaning of Life. The next step is pointlessly editing them together using Nero. Yeah, that’s the ticket

Here’s ANONYMOUS, baby!

It's summertime and we are talking about Adult Swim and I gotta ask when's the last time you've been to a pool. Have you ever in your adult life enjoyed the benefits of an adult swim. Tell us just how much you like splash around. Yes, that would be quite illuminating I'm sure (rolleyes).

Man, when was the last time I went into a pool? It’s been literally years. I think the last time I swam I did a bad job. I am definitely am getting “bad job” vibes off my hazy memories. Man, my memories used to be precious. Damn!

do you think theyll ever work with george lowe again in any major capacity or do you think he's just bad news.

I was about to say “isn’t he on American Dad” based on him name-checking American Dad as one of his many credits but I just looked it up and he was only in one episode. Damn. Somebody give George work he seems nice.

beakman's world, anyone? The wild and wacky world of Paul Zaloom? Hmm? Anyone?

lol you wish...

Baby Blues really was my everything back in the early 2000s, it may not have head the punk rock cred you clearly seem to crave it was a soothing balm for myself as a new father in a scary world (9/11 and all that, terrible stuff).

you raise a good point, that you’re a huge dork “with child” and I’m cool and laughed at 9/11 because it was funny to me, actually

Just read your Baby Blues "take down" and I gotta say: In the immortal words of Mike Francesca, "You're a fool. ho-kay? A total fool."

Uh huh. Yeah okay. Mike Francesca hordes pot bellied pigs in his apartment and lives in filth. He stinks, and so do youd

Baby Blue is like every animation nerd's wet dream. What if they made the rugrats with only the parents part. And here it is. Be careful what you wish for, chunky.

Yeah and it’s too bad because judging from the previous mail bags my audience is primarily made up of BABIES.

[lilacandladybugs]

Silly string and bold

silly string: do you play an instrument? is their anything you’d like to play?

I play the violin! It is a really hard instrument to play though so sometimes it can be discouraging :c I'd like to play an instrument just for fun that's not too hard to sound nice like the ukulele but I don't have the self discipline lol

bold: favorite font?

I like times new Roman because im a nerd and i like stuff to look nice. Okay except! I love the Snapchat font because i think it has the best parentheses for smiley faces -> :) vs.

It's just superior look at how perfect it is it fits so well

[philliamwrites]

Ocean Eyes, Golden Mind

Fandom: All For The Game (Nora Sakavic)

Pairing: Neil/Andrew

Tags: #math nerd neil, #neil with glasses, #no exy

Summary: In which Neil hates his new prescribed glasses until they attract the interest of a certain Andrew Minyard.

Commissioner: Ziegenkind

Notes: Title taken from Billie Eilish’s ‘Ocean Eyes.��

Ocean Eyes, Golden Mind

Dude, it’s just a frat party. Who doesn’t go to frat parties?

     The message flashes Neil’s screen white, its sender none other than his roommate Nicky who is supposed to study for an upcoming test in Public Policy in exactly nineteen hours. That’s what Neil writes him. Nicky’s reply comes instantly.

Those who study tend not to party. You know. Like you.

     Neil leaves him on read. If he wants to party, he’ll lock himself inside his room, two bottles of Jack Daniel’s by his side while watching every existing compilation of cats attacking people on the small screen of his phone. He knows how to have a good time, alright. Not everyone has to set their scale like Nicky: More than once Neil has been the spectator of him coming back to the dormitory completely wasted, but still eager enough to get frozen waffles from the fridge. Being too drunk to put them in the toaster, he usually just climbs up to his top bunk and puts them between his thighs to eat them partially defrosted. It’s this fragile line between genius and stupidity that has Neil doubting if he should fill in a request for changing roommates or just live with the fact that Nicky Hemmick is one special kind of man.

    So instead of spending his night curled into himself, wall against his back and eyes on every stranger distributing awful shots, Neil sits at the Math Tutoring Centre on the west side of the campus and gives group tutoring sessions.

    Math comes to Neil like breathing. Like Bertrand Russel said, not only does Mathematics possess truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture. It is sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. It is poetry—elegant and deep—of logical ideas to create harmony in a written line. Once he tried to explain that to Nicky over microwaved Mac n Cheese with Girls running in the background, clearly overestimating him, because Nicky only stared into space for a few seconds, and replied, “You really need to get laid, man.”

    Reluctant at the beginning, Neil only agreed to join the Tutor Program because his math professor promised to throw in some extra cash. Something about raising the graduate numbers in order to get the board of education off his back. That’s where Neil’s jurisdiction of interest ends, but he has enjoyed it more than expected—the empty hallways, the harsh light of the ceiling lamps, the smell of chalk, the faint echoes of students still lingering in classrooms. There’s this magic about the Palmetto State University at night—a vulnerability that can only live once the sun sets behind the horizon. When else would he find a kid sleeping under a table in the library, or seniors breaking down in tears for exact 10 minutes before continuing their studies as if nothing has happened.

    There’s another reason he’d rather spend his evening on campus, one Nicky doesn’t need to know because then Neil won’t hear the end of it. That reason being 5’0’’ tall chemistry prodigy Andrew Minyard, sitting in the last row of Neil’s math sessions each Friday. He only knows about him thanks to Nicky’s never-ending complaints, but that never really stopped him from throwing a few or more glances in Andrew’s direction. Just curiosity, of course.

    So when he stands in front of the blackboard now, putting away his lesson papers which are full of numbers and equations—the kind that has enough letters to look like sentences—he feels dozens eyes burn holes in the back of his neck, and one pair belongs to Andrew. No one asks why he’s here, but everyone knows he doesn’t need to be.

    In his one year of giving tutoring sessions, Neil has learnt that exactly three types of students exist: Students who are really good, certainly not in need of the extra lessons, but going anyway for some extra ego-buff and unnecessary brain-flexing. The second type is students who are okay, doing their tasks, following the lesson, not really attracting any attention safe for some crude jokes. The last type has Neil questioning his belief in the educational system of the whole state because he doesn’t understand how they are allowed inside the sacred halls of PSU.

    Andrew is a special type on his own—the enigma that keeps Neil awake at two in the morning because he’s desperate to solve it, but without knowing where to start, he’s just running in circles. His fingers itch to solve an equation with multiple variables, to find the solution to a problem and get it off his mind.

    He doubts it will be this easy with Andrew.

    “Before we continue to look at scalar products in R- and C-vector spaces, we’ll consider bilinear and semi-bilinear forms in general, and link them to matrices for their representation to chosen bases.” Neil’s hand flies across the board, leaving letters and parenthesizes that look like bizarre drawings—art in its most complex form. Once he’s finished, he takes a step away, wipes the chalk on his fingers off on his jeans, and turns to his audience. “What happens to this equation with the semi-bilinear form σ?”

    Two hands shoot up immediately. He ignores them; no need to feed their ego, and instead picks a freshman who’s been staring at his phone for the last ten minutes. Making way, Neil moves back to the student’s seats and leans against a desk.

    Is it the farthest place away from the board? It is.

    Is it the closest that will get him to Andrew? Might be so.

    It certainly gives him a good look at what Andrew’s been doing since Neil started—and that is not solving a single task on the paper Neil has handed out at the beginning of the session. Andrew, apparently bored before it even started, has taken out a slip of paper with a sudoku puzzle on it and is solving it against his leg, completely linked out of the instruction.

    Neil tries not to stare too much at Andrew’s bare arms, and instead looks back at the board.

    “Does that look right?” the freshman—Rhys or Rheeze or something like that—asks, turning around.

    Neil narrows his eyes and squints at the board. He can’t make out a single thing, and that’s bad, yes, but his feet betray him, staying rooted where they are instead of reducing the distance until he can distinguish σ from a.

    “Where does the l come from,” he asks. Multiple heads snap in his direction.

    “That’s a j, Josten,” someone says from the other side of the room.

    Neil squints harder. “And the u?”

    “A μ.”

    “No, it’s a v,” a girl next to Neil says, and that’s when the everyone starts shouting about what’s on the board and what isn’t.

    Neil bears it for a solid minute before he surrenders. He pulls a small case from his pocket, opens it. Puts his glasses on.

    The whole room goes silent.

    Neil checks the equation, nods. “Correct. Who’s next?”

    Multiple people stir, one manages to get up, and walks straight into a table leg. Neil questions that ‘straight’, because only then the freshman guy stops staring at Neil and steers his attention to the equation on the blackboard.

    It was a bad idea, and Neil still hates Allison for forcing him to go. She’d dragged him to the doctor last week to get his eyes tested, annoyed by his never-ending questions of ‘What’s written there?’ or ‘Is that a six or an eight?’.

    “They’re my eyes,” Neil had said, arms crossed as he sat in the office and waited for his turn.

    “And it’s me who has to see your ugly squinting face,” Allison had replied.

    Two hours later Neil had finally his prescriptions but that didn’t mean he was free from Allison’s clutches. He would have been fine with some glasses from the dollar store, but she insisted that if he’s going to wear them more than once a day, he should get designer glasses—thin frames and a color that matches his copper hair. She suggested gold. Neil picked black. The look of disappointment on Allison’s face was something that deserved its own painting to commemorate it. But once they’d finally chosen the right pair, she’d given him the very same look most of the students are giving him now—a mix between slight awe and disbelief as if he’s grown a second head. Or owes them all a month’s worth of lunch money.

    “Well,” had Allison said at least, turning away to pack up and go home. “Tigers have their stripes. I have my eyeliner.” She threw him another scrutinizing look over her shoulder. “You have your glasses.” If it was supposed to make him feel better, it didn’t work, and right now he regrets nothing more than allowing Allison to drag him around.

    Neil’s eyes land on Andrew’s sudoku puzzle, now half-hidden under his papers, and he sees now that he isn’t even solving the thing, but simply coloring in the empty squares.

    He takes a second too long and meets Andrew’s eyes staring back at him.

    “Problem, Josten?” Andrew asks with a blank expression, tapping the end of his pen against his monochrome picture of black and white squares.

    Neil wants to see how far he can push until he walks against a brick wall and breaks something. He returns his gaze to the board but feels Andrew’s eyes like a solid touch on the back of his neck.

    After the session, the students hurry outside, still throwing curious glances over their shoulders at Neil and if he could merge with the back of his chair and disappear forever, that would be totally okay. It isn’t until a shadow looms above him that he looks up from his own homework and draws in a careful breath when Andrew towers above him.

    Neil raises an eyebrow. “Problem, Minyard?”

    Andrew’s face gives nothing away, and when he stretches out a hand, Neil doesn’t flinch. His glasses slip off easily, held between Andrew’s thumb and index finger.

    “Nicky told me he’s trying to convince you to join him tomorrow,” Andrew says. Neil needs a second, because that is the most words he’s heard out of Andrew’s mouth.

    “I have no reason to go,” Neil says, his eyes jumping up and down, from the equation that makes his sight blur to Andrew leaning his slender waist against the table.

    “You have one now.” It’s barely neutral enough to not sound like a threat, but Neil stares at Andrew nonetheless, and when he puts Neil’s glasses on, Neil’s heart does a weird stutter. He’s still starring at Andrew when he leaves the room, and no, his eyes don’t stray, they stay on Andrew’s broad back, and if they dip lower it’s because of the light.

    Once he’s alone, Neil takes a deep breath, exhales slowly. Puts his head in his arms and counts to ten in French first, then again in German. His heart still does this weird thing, trying to bruise his ribs from the inside.

    He gets his phone, texts Nicky he’ll go to the frat party tomorrow and puts it away, not interested in his roommate’s reply. There’s still the equation he needs to solve, but for the first time Neil’s heart isn’t really into math, and he is quite alright with it.

[birlcholtz]

Okay, I'll bite. How and why did you learn to code?

HI LIN thanks for biting this is a story that tells you quite a lot about me as a person

so some background: my parents are both in compsci. they're the late 80s, early 90s silicon valley crowd, they've both had their fair share of established companies and startup-hopping, and my brother and i grew up here

my brother is about 5 years older than me and took to coding like a fish to water (like a duck to water??) which is to say he started programming on scratch at the tender age of.... i don't even know, honestly, maybe 9? too young for me to really remember, and he's been a compsci prodigy ever since

but then. then there was me.

now i do love scratch. when i was little i always copied my brother (not in like a cute way, in a 'if he can do that i can do it too' mindset that meant my third grade teacher REALLY struggled to find book recommendations for me that i hadn't already read. since my brother was above his grade's reading level, and i would read whatever my brother read. yeah that's the kind of kid i was/am)

so naturally i did what he did. i programmed on scratch, i did advanced math courses, i was in CHESS CLUB (i am so bad at chess by the way. i am not good at it. let's establish that. i think i beat my dad once and i genuinely don't know if he let me win or not. i never beat my brother so in that respect i failed. but i'm better than my mom so there's that)

HOWEVER. around fourth or fifth grade i was like hey. maybe i want to like... forge my own identity. and not just turn my life into 'do whatever elder brother does BUT BETTER.'

and thus began my campaign to NEVER DO ANY CODING EVER FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE AND WHILE I'M AT IT FUCK MATH

this gets long so there’s more under the cut sjflsghf

there are two problems with this. the first problem is my inherent pride and the fact that, despite my best efforts, i am actually decent at math and too proud to intentionally fuck it up. so i wound up in honors math. that made part 2 of my independence campaign a little difficult.

the second problem is that my parents were just as determined for me to learn to code as i was to avoid anything to do with coding for the rest of my life

(the third problem was actually a serious problem for this goal. and that was that in seventh grade, when i had a required compsci class where we learned basic, i found myself... enjoying it. HORROR OF HORRORS.)

so i was quite vocal about my anti-math stance and my determination to explore other avenues of life, to which my parents responded by listening with bat-ears whenever i talked about my compsci class and/or my love of spreadsheets so that they could jump on it and say 'YOU KNOW, COMPUTER PROGRAMMING IS JUST LIKE THAT, I THINK YOU WOULD REALLY ENJOY IT' whenever i said something remotely applicable

and to which i responded, of course, by plunging ever deeper into performing arts because fuck compsci, except when it's basic, because then i understand everything because of messing around w scratch when i was little and it's easy and i'm ahead of the rest of the class and can stare into space while the rest of them struggle with closing their parentheses (which is not to say i never messed up my parentheses. i totally did)

now, my brother, because he's a nerd, went to compsci summer camps where you'd spend a week or two learning some program or language. he did things like java and c++ and then would come home and use this knowledge for robotics club. like i said. nerd.

but my parents sensed a golden opportunity. namely, 'if we can get birl to go to these camps, she will actually learn programming things (not just being ahead of the class and spacing out in basic), and we'll probably get her to agree since it's only a week and she can do cost benefit analysis'

and, because i CAN do cost benefit analysis, i agreed to that deal. i'd go to a few of these camps, and then we'd agree that i was done with my parentally mandated computer science requirement. i learned some 3-d modeling, i learned to use unity (which involved some c+ as well), and i learned some java, and all was well. the camps were like 5 days long. we mostly worked on self-directed projects so i could do whatever the hell i wanted (and i made some pretty cool maze games if i do say so myself-- one of them in unity and one of them as a text-based game in java)

and.... horror of horrors....... i didn't hate it.

(of course i didn't want to go BACK any more than i had to but i also didn't hate every moment of those weeks)

so we were out of the woods right?

except no. we weren't.

because here's the thing. my high school ALSO had a computer science requirement. we had to take at least a semester. there were 3 levels offered: AP compsci, normal compsci, and then easy compsci (not its actual name) for the people who did not give a single shit

obviously i wanted to take the last one. my parents really wanted me to take AP but were willing to settle for normal. you will notice there was no overlap

i wrangled my way out of taking AP because that was a year-long course and i didn't have space in my schedule (my parents are wonderful in the sense that they didn't want to infringe on my actual interests to force me to do compsci which meant i had LEVERAGE)

but we literally wound up discussing it with the dean of students who was like 'well if you're capable of AP and just not taking it for schedule reasons then easy compsci would probably be boring for you!' which was an unhelpful take, thanks EVAN

but i did get my way by virtue of volunteering with a progressive tech organization in lieu of taking regular compsci, so i took easy compsci (in which i used scratch again, yay nostalgia, and also briefly flirted with html) and also wound up learning to use squarespace which is criminally easy but you can make it look like you're an expert

and all this while i was getting better and better with spreadsheets due to my own individual love for spreadsheets that near as i can tell, nobody in my family shares (my dad does have a lot of spreadsheets but his aren't as detailed as mine and he doesn't include data validation so HA)

all of which (plus my ap calc and stats classes) combines to mean that while i would not be able to just sit down and write you some code, if you give me access to stack overflow and tell me what language it's supposed to be in i can probably figure it out. especially now that i've become familiar with python by accident (well, more by my desire to write fic)

and because now i'm stuck in a rut, my current internship is with another civic tech company and that's probably what i'll wind up doing next summer as well. i don't actually work on software but i do comms which means i need to be able to have conversations with the engineers so i've been learning on the job. i know so much help

SO. with regards to my fic, my parents would both be thrilled because i taught myself some of a new programming language (python) and disappointed because i taught myself some of a new programming language with just stack overflow and some time and all i'm using it for is fic.

but near as i can tell we finished that battle long ago. it was a resounding victory for birl and i continue to expand my technical talents into areas like photo/video editing and CRM tools.

thank you very much *bows*

[zwritestuff]

8 + 19 with kyne/kiara, i feel like kyne would say some math things and kiara is like "oh, cool fact :)" and then she'd repeat that fact to almost anyone she comes into contact with because she loves her gf💕

THIS IS SO CUTE OMG. i definitely see kiara saying random math fun facts because kyne told her one and she just wants to show off what an intelligent gf she has!! 💕 thank you for joining me in the kyne/kiara crusade baby 😌💓 have a cute little college au! the fun fact here mentioned was acquired through kyne’s math tik toks, because a math nerd i am not.

8. bringing up small trivia facts you told them to other people /19. brings you up naturally in a conversation you are not in 

“Babe,” Kiara calls in a whisper, tugging at Kyne’s arm. Kyne lifts her gaze from her textbook and meets Kiara’s confused gaze. “Can you help me out with this? My calculus teacher is being an ass with homework, and at this point my brain is melting,” she dramatizes, making Kyne chuckle slightly. 

���Of course, honey.” She scoots herself closer with her chair, knees brushing against Kiara’s. Kiara briefly tells Kyne about the equation she’s trying to get done and Kyne quickly catches on, proceeding to explain with ease what she has to do and guiding her throughout the process. Kiara thanks every angel and saint in heaven for gifting her a girlfriend that’s good with math, because she certainly isn’t. She’s not even sure what calculus has anything to do with her major, but whatever. She won’t have it next year, anyway.

Kyne finishes off her explanation by telling her a fun fact about parentheses and brackets, how they’re used in other branches of math and an useful tip on how to know when to use each. Kiara thanks her profusely, but Kyne just cocks a brow.

“I accept payment via cashapp, not in thank yous,” she deadpans, earning a playful shove. She cracks a smile after a second. “I accept kisses as payment, too.”

Kiara stifles a giggle, trying to not make much noise; they’re still at the library, after all. “That I can pay,” she assures her, closing the distance between with a quick kiss. If it was up to Kiara, she would’ve deepened it, but right now she doesn’t want to be kicked out of the library.

***

The next day she meets up with Priyanka and Lena to study and go over their assignments in a cafe near campus. Lena whines about not understanding a damn thing about calculus, and Priyanka playfully nags at her by pointing out she wouldn’t be plucking her hair if she had paid attention in class instead of texting with Julia.

“I can explain it to you, I solved these with Kyne’s help. It’s actually really easy,” Kiara offers, brightening up when she mentions her girlfriend, and proceeds to explain how parentheses and brackets work depending on what type of exercise you’re resolving. Lena and Priyanka listen patiently, and once she’s done they coo a little. 

“Why couldn’t I get a girlfriend majoring in math too?” Lena playfully says, whining slightly, and Kiara just rolls her eyes with a smirk. 

“Do you want me to explain you or not?” She says, taking a bite from her cookie. Lena nods, shifting her position in the chair so she has a good view of Kiara’s notebook. “Fair warning though, I’m not genius like Kyne. Ask her for help if anything.” Kiara shrugs, focusing on the exercises.

“We get it, you love your girlfriend,” Priyanka teases, making Kiara blush slightly as she rolls her eyes. 

Almost as if on cue, she gets a text from Kyne asking if they’re still going to grab lunch together. She quickly answers it with a smile plastered across her face that only increase the teasing from Priyanka, with Lena joining her. Kiara just ignores them and sends a lot of heart emojis to Kyne as a response.

[chipotle]

Panic's Nova text editor (a review)

Review: Panic’s Nova text editor

Panic, the long-established makers of Mac utility software, seems fully aware that introducing a new, commercial code editor in 2020 is a quixotic proposition. Is there enough of an advantage to a native editor over both old school cross-platform editors like Emacs and explosively popular new editors like Visual Studio Code to persuade people to switch?

I’m an unusual case as far as text editor users go: my primary job is technical writing, and the last three jobs that I’ve worked at have a “docs as code” approach, where we write documentation in Markdown and manage it under version control just like source code. The editor that works best for me in tech writing is the venerable BBEdit. When it comes to editing code, though, BBEdit lags behind. My suspicion is that BBEdit’s lack of an integrated package manager has hurt it here. Also, BBEdit’s language modules don’t support extending one another, making it effectively impossible to do full highlighting for a templating language like JSX or Jinja.

When I was a web programmer, I was one of many who moved to TextMate, and used it for everything for a while. When the Godot-like wait for TextMate 2.0 became unbearable, I wandered the text editing wilderness, eventually splitting my loyalties between BBEdit, Sublime Text, and more recently VS Code. At this point, I suspect nothing will pull me away from BBEdit for technical writing, but for programming I’m open to persuasion.

So: meet Nova.

I’ve been using Nova off and on in beta for months. I’ve reported some bugs, although I may mention a couple here that I didn’t catch until after 1.0’s release. And, I’m going to compare it to the GUI editors that I’ve been using recently: BBEdit, Sublime Text, and VS Code.

Nova is a pretty editor, as far as such things go, and with files of relatively reasonable size it’s fast. With stupid huge files its performance drops noticeably, though. This isn’t just the ridiculous 109MB, nearly 450,000-line SQL file I threw at it once, it’s also with a merely 2MB, 50,000-line SQL file, and Nova’s offer to turn off syntax highlighting in both files didn’t help it much. This may sound like a silly test, but in my day job I’m occasionally stuck editing an 80,000-line JSON file by hand (don’t ask). This is something BBEdit and VS Code can do without complaint. Panic wrote their own text editing engine for Nova, which is brave, but it needs more tuning for pathological cases like these. They may not come up often, but almost every programmer has one stupid huge file to deal with.

Nova has an integrated terminal and an integrated SSH client, and even an integrated file transfer system based on Panic’s Transmit. In fact, if you have Transmit and use Panic Sync, it knows all of those servers out of the box. Nova has a task workflow system for automating building and running. You can associated servers, tasks, and more with individual projects; Nova’s project settings are considerably more comprehensive than I’ve seen in other editors. You can even set up remote tasks. Nova has a serviceable Git client built in, too. Like VS Code, Nova uses JavaScript for its extension API, and it has built-in Language Server Protocol support—it’s a superbly solid foundation.

Beyond that, some smaller features have become table stakes for modern GUI editors, and Nova handles them with aplomb. “Open Quickly” can jump to any file in the open project, as well as search by symbols or just symbols in currently open files; it has a command palette; you can comprehensively edit keybindings. It has multiple cursor support for those of us who like that, and a “mini map” view for those of you who like that, although know that you are wrong. Nova’s selection features include “Select all in scope” and “Select all between brackets,” a command I often use in BBEdit and miss dearly in Code. (Both Nova and BBEdit select between brackets and braces, although BBEdit also selects between parentheses.) This effectively becomes “Select between tags” in HTML, a nice touch. There are a few other commands like “Select all in function” and “Select all in scope” that I didn’t have any luck in making work at all; a little more documentation would be nice.

That’s worth an aside. Panic has created a “library” of tech note-style articles about Nova sorted by publication date rather than an actual manual, and it’s not always easy to find the information you want in it. I know this is just what a technical writer would say, but I’d dearly like to see a human-organized table of contents starting with the editor basics and moving to advanced topics like version control, server publishing and extension authoring.

The Zen of Language Servers

A lot of Visual Studio Code’s smarts depend on the implementation of a “language server” behind the scenes: language servers offer almost spookily intelligent completion. For instance, take this PHP snippet:

if ($allowed) { $response = new Response(405); $response->

If you have the Intelephense PHP language server plugin, Code understands that $response is an instance of Response and, after you type the > above, offers completions of method names from the Response class.

Right now, Nova’s mostly limited to the language servers Panic provides, and they’re… not always so smart. In that snippet above, Nova starts by offering completions of, apparently, everything in the open project, starting with the variables. If I type “s,” it narrows things down to methods that begin with “s,” but it’s all methods that start with “s” rather than just the methods from Response. The “Jump to Definition” command shows a similar lack of context; if I highlight a method name that’s defined in multiple places, Nova shows me a popup menu and prompts me to choose which one to jump to, rather than introspecting the code to make that decision itself.

But, this is a solvable problem: there’s (I think) no reason someone couldn’t write an Inteliphense plugin for Nova. If Nova’s ecosystem takes off, it could be pretty formidable pretty quickly.

Walk like a Mac

Even so, LSP support isn’t Panic’s biggest selling point. Unlike Sublime Text or VS Code, Nova isn’t cross-platform: it’s a Mac-only program written to core platform APIs. Is that still a huge draw in 2020? (Is it instead a drawback?)

You can definitely see a difference between Nova and BBEdit on one side and Sublime and Code on the other in terms of resource usage. With the two Ruby files shown in the screenshot above loaded, I get:

VS Code: 355 MB, 6 processes

Sublime Text: 338 MB, 2 processes

Nova: 101 MB, 2 processes

BBEdit: 97 MB, 1 process

Code is an Electron-based program, although Microsoft famously puts a lot of effort into making it not feel like the black hole a lot of Electron-based apps are. Sublime uses its own proprietary cross-platform framework. In fairness, while us nerds like to harp on research usage a lot, if your computer’s got 16G or more of RAM in it, this probably isn’t a big deal.

You notice Nova’s essential Mac-ness in other ways. Its preference pane is, like BBEdit’s, an actual preference pane, instead of opening in another tab like Code or just opening a JSON file in a new tab (!) like Sublime. And while all editors better have first-class keyboard support—and Nova does—a good Mac editor should have first-class mouse support, too, and it does. You notice that in the drag-and-drop support for creating new tabs and splits. Nova’s sidebar is also highly customizable, possibly more so than any editor I’ve regularly used. (Yes, Emacs fans, I know you can write all of Nova in Lisp if you want. When one of you does that, please get back to me.)

Unlike BBEdit, though, Nova doesn’t have a Mac-like title bar, or a Mac-like outline view of the project files, or Mac-like tabs. (Well, BBEdit doesn’t have tabs at all, which turns out to be a great UI decision once you have a dozen or more files open, but never mind.) This isn’t necessarily bad; people often say BBEdit “looks old,” and it’s hard not to suspect that what people mean by that—whether or not they know it��is that it looks like the long-established Mac program it is. Nova is relying less on “we have a Mac UI and the other guys don’t” than on “we have Panic’s designers and the other guys don’t.” Make no mistake, having Panic’s designers counts for a lot.

What may be more disappointing to old school Mac nerds is AppleScript support: none whatsoever. It doesn’t even have a vestigial script dictionary. Again, this may not be something most people care much about; personally, I hate having to write AppleScript. But I love being able to write AppleScript. BBEdit’s extensive scriptability is one of its hidden strengths. Nova’s Node-based JavaScript engine is probably more powerful for its own extensions and certainly more accessible to anyone under the age of 50, but it may be hard to call it from external programs.

So is it worth it?

That probably depends on where you’re coming from.

If you loved—or still use—Panic’s older editor, Coda, this is a no-brainer upgrade. If you used Espresso, a Coda-ish editor that always seemed to be on the verge of greatness without ever reaching it, Nova may also be a no-brainer for you.

If you’re a fan of Sublime Text, BBEdit, TextMate, or another editor that doesn’t have native Language Server Protocol support, you should definitely try Nova. Sublime and TextMate have more plugins (especially Sublime), but many extensions seem to be languishing (especially TextMate). BBEdit never had a great extension ecosystem to start with. All of these editors have strengths Nova doesn’t, but the reverse is also true, and Nova may catch up.

If you’re an Emacs or Vim power user, we both know you’re just reading this out of academic interest and you’re not going to switch. C’mon.

If you use Visual Studio Code, though, it’s way tougher to make the case for Nova. Code has a vastly larger extension library. It has the best support for LSP of any editor out there (LSP was developed for Code). Despite being Electron-based, it’s pretty high-performance. Code doesn’t have an integrated SSH or FTP client, but it does have an integrated terminal and task runner and Git client. If you don’t object to using an editor that isn’t a “perfect fit” with the Mac UI, Code is very, very good… and it’s free.

I don’t object to Nova’s pricing model—$99 up front including a year of updates, $49 for future years of updates—but I can’t help but wonder if Panic should have gone with super aggressive introductory pricing. Also, I saw more than a few suggestions on Hacker News about how there should be a Code-to-Nova extension translator; I’m not sure automatic conversion would be practical, but a guide on manual conversion seems like an excellent idea.

For my day job of technical writing, I’m going to stick to BBEdit. (One day I’ll write up an article about why I think it’s the best “documentation as code” editor on the market.) For programming and web editing, when I was working on both a Ruby and a PHP project—the former a Rails learning exercise, the latter an obstinate “I am going to write a modern PHP app without using a framework” exercise—I kept trying Nova’s betas and then switching back to Code for Inteliphense and, I swear to God, MacVim for Tim Pope’s amazing rails.vim plugin. I suspect Nova could duplicate both of those, but I’m not sure I want to be the one to do it. (Also, while Panic has decent reference documentation for writing extensions, I’d like to see a few simple end-to-end walkthroughs for those of us who look at a huge list of reference topics and don’t know where to start.)

But Nova isn’t just pretty, it’s powerful, and has a lot of promise. The editors I’ve been comparing it to have been around since 2015 for VS Code, 2008 for Sublime Text, and 1992 (!) for BBEdit; it’s not reasonable to expect Nova to blow past them in every respect right out of the starting gate. Even so, they are Nova’s competition. Catching up fast is an essential requirement.

So: yes, I’ve bought Nova, and I’m rooting for Panic here. I’ll come back in a year and report if I’m willing to stay on the update train.

[goldenart0]

RWBY and Aphmau, or Ruby, Weiss, Oscar, and Jaune playing video games (#1 featuring Fat Chickens)

Or RWBY is quotes from Jess’s videos what ever you want to call it

~~

Ruby: Wait a minute

Oscar: What’s wrong

Ruby: Well, normally when I say something positive, something then goes horrible wrong....wait a minute

Weiss: *walks by with a chicken*

Wiess: Hey, how’s it going

~~

Ruby: Since when did you have a chicken?

Wiess: Just you know

Oscar: That’s a nice chicken

Wiess: Well thank you, someone appreciates-

Oscar: *Punches chicken*

Wiess: Hey! That’s not very nice, you can’t have my chicken. It’s my chicken

~~

Ruby: Not even a, chicken finger

Wiess: Hahahaha But seriously, I’m not sure about my chicken

~~

Wies: Stop speaking Italian to us and start speaking English!

~~

Wiess: HE’S A WISARD!

Ruby: HE’S A sheep??

~~

Ruby: We got this!

Ruby: *Falls down hole*

Wiess: *Falls down same hole*

Ruby: You saw me walk right in why did you keep going?!

Wiess: Well I didn’t want to be left out!

~~

Wiess: Science has gone too far

Ruby: There’s creeper cats in here!

Wiess: Too far

Ruby: So cute!

~~

Ruby: Wait...he called us fat and that rhymes with cat! We have to use the car th get into the place!

Wiess: I agree, but I don’t understand the relation

~~

Wiess: These cats don’t give two hwits about what I’m saying

Ruby: Yeah, they’re cats

~~

Wiess: I am VEXED

~~

Wiess: Why won’t these cats listen to me?!?

Ruby: Maybe if you had some fish or something-

Ruby: Why do you have fish?

~~

Ruby: I’m face palming right now

Ruby: GIVE ME THE FISH

~~

Jaune: I happen to know your aim is terrible

Wiess: Oh it is

Ruby: What me? Yours is terrible-My aim isn’t terrible!

~~

Wiess: Hey- I want my fat chicken back! I know you have it in there! I’m coming for it!

~~

Wiess: Oh so we just have to hit the targets, that’ll take us about five years

~~

Wiess: *getting louder* First try, first try, first try, first try, first try, first try, first try, first try, I can’t go any higher, First try, First try, first

~~

Ruby: NERD! There’s a NERD up there!

~~

Wiess: I hope it’s not math

Wiess: It is math

Ruby: Oh, uhh

Oscar: Oh god it’s math, just kill me now

Ruby: Oscar stop it. Have faith.

Wiess: Just let me know if you need to phone a friend

Ruby: I can’t phone a friend. He won’t let me cause he’s dumb

~~

Ruby: 16 is my final answer

Wiess: Don’t overthink it!

Ruby: There was parentheses!

Wiess: No!

Ruby: There was parentheses!

Wiess: No!

Ruby: It’s 16!

Wiess: Oh boy the lava’s falling!

Ruby: Ahh! It’s wrong! Oh no!

~~

Ruby: It’s coffee

Wiess: Coffee!!

Ruby: It’s coffee

Jaune: Wait, what?

Wiess: Yeah, what, huh

Ruby: His favorite foods coffee

Wiess: That’s not a food that’s a liquid

Jaune: That’s a drink

Wiess: That’s a beverage yeah

Ruby: It’s not a drink you can eat it I promise you

Jaune: I mean, is that your favorite food Oscar?

Oscar: She’s not wrong-

Wiess: What

Ruby: *laughs* See! It’s completely valid I promise you

Wiess: Okay. Cool. Right.

Ruby: You can eat coffee. If it goes in your mouth your eating it!

Jaune: You’re all crazy!

~~

Jaune: Why’d the chicken cross the road

Ruby: I- oh god I’m bad at this question

Wiess: To find all the other THICK CHICKENS!

Ruby: Oh! That’s right, exactly to find all the other thick chickens cause they’re all fat chickens big old fat chickens Wiess you’re so smart.

~~

Wiess: Then you shouldn’t have installed a Starbucks down here!

~~

Ruby: Yeah but, we made fun if his fat chicken so let’s pretend that we were in danger.

Wiess: Oh no, the chickens! Oh no the chickens we left them behind!

[hi-i-love-u-bitch]

Here some more headcannons of my Sanders Sides Gamer AU nobody wanted!!!

Here’s part 1 if you missed it or just want to look over!

Background Time!!!

They’re all childhood friends that live in the same neighborhood. Patton and Duncan live in between Logan’s and Remy’s houses and Emile, Virgil, and Roman live across the street (in that order).

They had at first been forced to hang out by their parents and they really tried to get along (well, at least Patton and Emile) but they were all just too different.

But then one day on Emile’s birthday older brother gave him his old PlayStation plus all three Spyro games and he immediately set off to play it.

This of course caught the attention of the other boys (who had been dragged to the party by their parents) and timidly asked what other games he liked.

And that’s how they all found similar ground to work off and become friends, they all got along swimmingly after that. Remy showed the group an old GameBoy he had that his older sister repaired for him. Virgil talked about all the computer games his dad showed him how to play. Roman showed off his Magic The Gathering cards that were basically like video games in real life (so he said). The twins said they had a Game Cube and invited everyone over to play Mario Kart. Logan timidly said that he liked Pokemon which got an enthusiastic reply from everybody: I LOVE POKEMON!!!

So, yeah, the rest was history. Of course they’re all good friends but it seemed like Remy, Emile, and Duncan got along best and tended to hang out more while Logan, Roman, Virgil, and Patton did the same. They all still like to get together and hang out but they have their main group that’s real tight knit.

Fun Facts!!!

Note: they’re all in high school and around 16-17 years of age.

Logan hates Navi with the burning passion of a thousand suns! I know how to open a fucking door!!!

Virgil actually really likes Luigi’s Mansion because of the cheesy spooky aesthetic and he can relate to Luigi’s constant anxiety.

Roman and Emile have tag teamed and binged played through all the classic Disney games with NO cheats. Including the impossible Lion King game!

Patton played The Stick of Truth and The Fractured But Whole even though people kept saying he wouldn’t like it because it was too raunchy. He ended up loving them and lending them out to Roman.

Roman likes the series well enough but prefers The Fractured But Whole because of the smoother combat system.

Remy has played through the entirety of The Mother series but refuses to replay them because they still kind of freak him out.

Emile does a lot of video game fan art and often does commissions online.

Virgil is pretty straight faced and steady when it comes to playing horror games with jump scares but Logan is a fucking wall! It’s freaky how he doesn’t even flinch or show any sort of reaction towards anything!

Duncan also really likes sports games too, especially the FIFA series. He’s pretty good at them too, he has no idea why though.

Roman cried for two days straight after playing Valiant Hearts. The others didn’t understand why until they played the game for themselves then joined Roman in his depressed blanket fort.

Logan was obsessed with Clash of Clans! Then PokemonGo came out and he proceed to highhandedly take over ALL the gyms in their area.

Emile learned to play all the band songs from Night In The Woods on the ukulele. Patton begged him to teach him! They put on a mini concert together.

Roman knows the how to play piano so sometimes he joins them in their video game jam sessions.

Duncan one time just came barging into Logan’s room and slammed down Super Mario Galaxy in front of him and demanded he play it. They did not see Logan for hours afterwards.

Duncan does this a lot actually, he finds games he knows his friends would like, buys it, tracks his friend down, and orders them to play it. They usually do, if they aren’t still playing something, because Duncan always somehow knows what they like.

Virgil played Welcome to the Game 1 & 2 and was paranoid for a week and refused to sleep alone beCAUSE WHAT IF THEY COME TO STEAL MY ORGANS ROMAN!!!

Remy still has his GameBoy and convinced his sister to teach him how to repair new and old game consoles. He then in turn taught Logan (because he’s a nerd and wants to know everything) in exchange that he teach Remy how to fix up and assemble PCs and computers.

They are now each of their squads tech advisers and are usually the go to guys when it comes to rearing, installing, or debugging stuff.

Remy also likes a lot of tap games for phones like: Tap Titan, Battle Cats, and Free Flow.

Enter Player 2: Thomas Sanders!

They hang out a lot at this game/comic/novelty store called Rainbow Bird Games (and sorts) the parentheses are in small letters underneath.

Obviously it’s owned and run by Thomas and his friends. They have an appreciation for games and all things geek culture but also what to provide a safe place for LGBTQ+ youth.

It’s a mediumish two story building squished between a dry cleaning business and coffee shop located in a small plaza.

The first floor is dedicated to all things games be it video games, bored games, or card games. They have a few refurbished arcade games scattered about, good to play for a quarter and they host a lot of gaming competitions and meet ups. Like for DnD, Magic: The Gathering, Smash Bro tournaments, etc.

The second floor is dedicated to any thing comic, movie, or tv shows related. They have a wide selection of comics you can read and little lounging areas you can read them in. If you can’t find something you like you can always ask the front desk and more then likely the next time you come around it’ll be there waiting.

Obviously, Remy found it first because it’s near a coffee shop (and he knows all the BEST coffee spots) and peeks in out of curiosity. He geeks out over all the cool stuff the store has before racing back home and dragging Emile and Duncan over.

They proceed to geek out as well and like the soft bro he is Duncan immediately texts Patton about it. Soon enough everyone’s there and it becomes their permanent hangout spot/part time job because Thomas grows to likes these kids and could always use the help.

Roman helps organize tournaments and events because he’s good with advertising and crowed. Virgil and Duncan help stock and organize things as well as keep inventory. Patton and Emile man the cash register/front desk. Remy and Logan are IT support and repair.

Roman sometimes asks Duncan to help host events when it involves a younger audience because he’s surprisingly the best with kids.

The store wasn’t all that popular before the boys came in but now with more help and a younger perspective to help bring in more clientele business is going smoothly.